More column inches have been spent over the past week on the question posed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington than on the answer he gave at what was incorrectly billed an “unprecedented press conference”. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Modi does not address press conferences in India. He has also discontinued the practice of Prime Ministers taking journalists on Air India One for foreign trips. Previous Prime Ministers would hold on-board press conferences to save time, often having to shout over the hum of the aircraft as we journalists struggled to write notes amid the turbulence.
To be clear, the Washington event wasn’t the first time that Mr. Modi took a question or two from journalists with a foreign leader by his side. In 2015, he took questions when U.S. President Barack Obama was in Delhi, and after talks with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron in London. He discontinued the practice after that, making only one exception for the insistent German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. However, while at least four Indian journalists were present at the press event in Berlin (this writer included) in 2017, the Ministry of External Affairs chose a safer option, directing a question on the “benefits of India-Germany relations” from the Doordarshan cameraperson instead. In all fairness, questions at such limited press interactions by leaders worldwide are nearly always pre-selected. News is seldom made through them.
It is often the unscripted press conferences that make for more interesting copy. Asked about a contradiction between him and Foreign Secretary A.P. Venkateswaran over an impending visit to Pakistan in 1987, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi shocked the press by saying, “You will be talking to a new foreign secretary soon”. Venkateswaran, a self-respecting bureaucrat, resigned immediately. Press conferences on the fractious India-Pakistan relationship in any case regularly go off script: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s press conference in Agra was blamed for the failure of his summit with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001, while the joint press conference between External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in 2010 ended so badly that India scheduled another meeting only after Mr. Qureshi was replaced. In Goa last month, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had a similarly acrimonious exchange, albeit at separate press conferences. Sometimes leaders have to duck more than questions — both U.S. President George Bush in Baghdad and, subsequently, Home Minister P. Chidambaram in Delhi had shoes hurled at them during press conferences. In both cases, the journalists missed their targets.
