In our licentious “anything goes” age, even an ordinary term like “role model” has been roughed up beyond recognition. It has been so cheapened by loose usage that piffling, one-off achievers in the sports arena and for that matter in any field, are now ordained as role models. In its pristine formulation though, a role model is someone you deeply admire and whose behaviour you try to emulate, which is an ever so slight contrast from your hero whom you worship but whose skills and magnetism are beyond replication. The role model is a potent educator, not through pontification but by example and deportment. 

The role model concept has much more nuance to it than hitherto outlined. The very young, groping their way in a complex world, are not only the most impressionable but are also the group with unformed views on life and therefore most likely to come under the spell of a role model. Also, on account of their sheer dependency, they do not choose their role models but are willy-nilly influenced by the elders within their immediate environment. 

James Baldwin, whose casual wisdom and understanding of human nature were awesome, put it in perspective: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders but they have never failed to imitate them.” He has pointed to the onerous responsibility that parents bear as role models for their children. George Carlin, my hero, was more forthright: “If your kid needs a role model and you aren’t it, you’re both ‘messed up’ (the actual word used was f- - - - d). All parents need to be aware that they are not only providers but the most crucial, if unwitting, role models for their children.

The outcome of the parent-child relationship can never be predicted. I remember an old associate, an unapologetic hedonist and wastrel, who never felt the need to change his ways even in middle age; he was everything that a father should not be. And yet his two sons are sterling young men -- brilliant professionals and exemplary citizens. This odd case demonstrates that regressive “anti-role model” parents can so offend the sensibilities of their offspring that the recoil results in them seeking their destiny by blazing out on their own. But not every greenhorn has the capability of overcoming such a handicap. 

The average run-of-the-mill youngsters who indiscriminately idolize their role models can go totally out of kilter. I did! I have been a cricket buff from my childhood; to be precise from that time in 1959-60 when I heard the legendary Alan McGilvary and his Aussie drawl on a crackling Marconi radio set, bringing alive the West Indies-Australia ‘Tied-Test’ series that was dominated by the batting pyro techniques of Garfield Sobers and Norman O’Neill. 

In that glorious age of simple pleasures, I put together scrapbooks with pictures of my favourite cricketers. My role models and cricketing gods were Sobers and, closer home, the charismatic M L Jaisimha and Salim Durrani. Over the years, as an ardent devotee, I gleaned everything about them from Sports & Pastime magazine and every newspaper and cricket book I could get hold of.

Sadly, having these heroes as my role models did not make me a better cricketer. The inspiration that they provided to excel in cricket flickered and died all too quickly when I realised that I did not have the wherewithal, namely, the talent. On the rebound and in desperate search for commonality with my sporting icons, I latched on to their other pursuits. My research had told me that apart from their cricketing genius, they had a-devil-may-care attitude and lived life to the lees, smoking and drinking with gay abandon! This part of them I could emulate reasonably well and did. The moral of the story: Role models, for no fault of theirs, can sometimes trigger neurotic quirks in a dim-witted follower!

In the context of role models and unhappy outcomes, how can I not mention a dear boyhood friend, the quintessential sucker for the role model syndrome.  In the heady days of the peerless Dev Anand in the 1960s, my friend, totally besotted, walked and talked like his tinsel hero and what a truly wonderful imitation it was! We loved his act which became so integral a part of him that he actually convinced himself that he was the provincial version of his hero. Tragically, his make-believe, fanciful world came crashing apropos of two resounding slaps from an irate girl acquaintance who objected to his lascivious Dev Anand advances. Decades later, he has still not been able to live that down! 

The wise – lonesome voices in our cacophonous world - caution against embracing the amoral tribe of politicians as role models. Across the world, we see political leaders appealing to the basest instincts of their people, rupturing harmony and togetherness with their cynical power games. Seeing the depredations wrought by such individuals, social scientists are wary of the very concept of the role model.

Noam Chomsky believes that we should not prop up people as role models but rather ideas, thoughts and principles, but that’s wishful thinking!  In a world where the powerful control even the way we think, autocratic leaders have, through consummate propaganda and advertising, positioned themselves as role models of the youth in their societies. 

Social media, apart from throwing up an abundance of nonsense, is especially dangerous as this medium is the sole repository for news and views for most of us. It is now the digital omnipotent presence, a status that God is still striving to attain. Reverting to nonsense, the other day, two articles were let loose in cyberspace extolling the virtues of our Prime Minister as the role model for the youth in India. These crude sycophantic exertions are but a perpetuation of an unremitting seven-year saga of thoughtless idolization.

The consummate purveyor of illusions and dreams, our PM has become all things to his people. He is advertised and proclaimed as the nation’s role model, fashion model, aging tear-jerking thespian, war strategist (remember the cloud-retarded radar in Balakot?), religious junkie et al, depending on the occasion and the setting. And his make-up department ensures the appropriate costume for every TV and stage appearance, particularly the headgear! 

The sheer posturing and theatrics that define the master manipulator of crowds need to be fleshed out with an example. In 2016, during a yuppie-fanned Coldplay concert in Mumbai shortly after the crippling demonetisation gamble, he made a video appearance and wowed the hysterical, predominantly youth audience by quoting from the immortal Bob Dylan lyrics “the times, they are a ‘changing”!

The supreme irony is that, apart from being a clearly tutored invocation of a balladeer he knew nothing about, our home-grown autocrat’s allusion to the celebrated freedom and protest anthem of the 1960s was totally incongruous as was the westernised, Lutyens-Khan Market-like crowd and setting because they represent an absolute repudiation of all that Hindutva, of which he is the mascot, stands for. But who cares for authenticity if hypocrisy can have an electric effect on the unthinking masses! 

Indubitably, he is a mesmeric orator for his adoring “Didi oh Didi” audience, though his interminable speechifying of the last few years reminds one of what the incomparable Christopher Hitchens said about Joseph McCarthy, the demagogic US senator of the 1950s known for attacks on the patriotism of political opponents and for fostering paranoia about widespread communist subversion: “…the slobbering bigmouth who still helps us to make the distinction between the crowd-pleaser and the democrat.”  

There is absolutely no doubt that our PM as role model has had an overpowering influence on the thinking and attitude of a large swathe of his people, a power that is almost deific in the near-religious frenzy that he invokes in his bhakts. The PM is rhapsodized as a tireless visionary committed to the values of truth, integrity, nationalism and social concern. He is portrayed as a ruler known for his courage, generosity and missionary zeal to make life better for all his people – the modern day Vikramaditya! 

But behind the veneer and the hype is the sordid reality, he treats the people of India as abject underlings who will accept whatever he says or does as gospel even when they know that he is spinning a yarn, so hypnotic is his hold. To cite one of his myriad brazen falsehoods, on Gandhi Jayanti in 2019, without batting an eyelid he announced that India was Open Defecation-Free, although even the landscape in parts of NCR is still dotted with bare bottoms in scatological pose every dawn. If truth be told, the PM has actually set the country back by decades with his hare-brained schemes and ill-conceived, malevolent actions. For an understanding of how badly he has hurt the nation, one must read Aakar Patel’s dissection of his reign in his book, Price of the Modi Years. It will open your eyes to the devastation that this man has wreaked on the nation!

If role models are to be ranked by the extent of their influence on society, then Narendra Modi stands peerless at the pinnacle, the dominant personality of our time. He has artfully exploited the unthinking credulity of his people and the palpable enfeeblement of our democratic institutions to set himself up as the ultimate arbiter of the country. He has already impacted society in ways that are permanent and indelible -- a terrifying legacy for future generations. Truth and accountability are no longer salient as inviolable values in public life. History is being turned on its head and our priceless, invaluable heritage vandalised with fanatic zeal. 

(The writer is a former civil servant. Views are personal)