How PM Modi's selfie trend at impromptu meetings might become a constituency-building tool for world leaders

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has enthusiastically espoused the current craze of taking selfies — the modern practice that puts leaders and the led in the same frame quite literally.

While it does not always make for the most aesthetic imagery — as senior members of his peer group Barack Obama, David Cameron and Helle Thorning-Schmidt who indulged in a selfie at Nelson Mandela's memorial service realised — they can be used to mutual advantage too. Catching his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang in a grinning off-guard moment should rank as Modi's best selfie yet.

That he does the same at impromptu meetings with local audiences imbues the selfie with a becoming egalitarianism that other politicians and statesmen will soon recognise as an effective constituency-building tool.

It certainly makes a change from the humdrum stock photos of leaders formally shaking hands interminably for the benefit of dozens of camerapersons, a practice for decades. Selfies at least promise more animation and, therefore, more interest, as well as the prospect of instant dissemination.

Should public personalities — especially those on Twitter and other social media — actively consider doing away with formal photo-ops altogether in favour of more scenic selfies, even if it marks the end of a media tradition?