If Modi answers reporters’ questions, mark the day – it could be the first.

It’s not just that Narendra Modi rarely answered live press questions during nearly a decade in power. If Modi responds to questions along with President Biden at a press conference in Washington on Thursday, it may be the first time since he was first elected prime minister of India in 2014.

Even when foreign dignitaries visit, Mr Modi has made a habit of walking onstage with those officials and then walking off after making a statement to the news media. Answering questions live is left to others.

From the start of his tenure, Mr Modi and his staff have been fastidious in controlling his message and trying to control the media in general. While he loves to give speeches at public events and has used his monthly radio show as a way to get messages across to the nation, any exposure to unscripted events is a no-go.

Mr Modi’s aides claim that social media, which controls his party’s vast communication apparatus, has made press conferences obsolete. And other branches of government deal with reporters.

Modi’s recoil from media involvement dates back to his days as chief minister of Gujarat decades ago. Under his tutelage, the state erupted into widespread riots in 2002, and Mr Modi was accused of looking away from — or even enabling — Hindu gangs who staged deadly rampages in Muslim neighborhoods.

Mr Modi had long denied any wrongdoing. But he has also publicly said that his biggest failure at the time was his inability to control the media – something he has striven diligently ever since.

By dangling the incentives of government advertising and employing the pressure tactics of tax raids and arrests, he has so manipulated large swathes of India’s media, especially the broadcast media, that most outlets are limited to dispensing his official line .

Perhaps the closest he came to participating in a formal press conference was the day of his re-election in 2019, where he appeared on stage for one time. But even then, he only made an opening statement. Who answered the actual questions? His right-hand man, Amit Shah, who is now the powerful Home Secretary of India.