Making Sure 1.4 Billion People Are Very Aware India Is Hosting the G20

In cities across India, the beaming face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi adorns giant posters promoting the country’s G20 presidency. A hundred national monuments, including the Red Fort in Delhi, were illuminated with the G20 logo to encourage people to post selfies. Government reading lessons inform students that India is a fitting G20 host because it is “the Fountain Head of Democracy.”

To behold the advertising and public relations blitz that the Indian government has mounted as it prepares to hold the Group of 20 summit this weekend, one might think India had been personally anointed by its peers, rather than merely being next up in the hosting rotation.

But India, and its governing party, were primed to capitalize on the moment.

The G20 has arrived just as India is asserting itself as a rising geopolitical and economic force, courted by an array of global powers and offering itself up as a leader and model for developing nations. Mr. Modi has seized on the G20 presidency as confirmation and celebration of India’s ascent — a rise to which he has fused his own image — as he seeks a third term in an election early next year.

Mr. Modi has been a master political marketer ever since his time as a state leader, “and now he is also making good use of the G20,” said Neerja Chowdhury, a political analyst and editor. “That India has arrived on the world stage will go strongly in his favor with the electorate.”

To the prime minister’s opponents, the promotional barrage has been an unseemly political hijacking of an international gathering intended to foster economic cooperation. India’s G20 logo features a lotus, the symbol of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. At a launch event for the logo, he proclaimed that even at a time of global crisis, “the lotus still blooms.”

Television shows and newspapers in the B.J.P.-dominated media landscape have raved nonstop about India’s moment in the spotlight. The government is reported to have spent more than $100 million on over 200 G20-related events across dozens of Indian cities, a level of fanfare that has redefined — perhaps uneasily for future hosts — what it means to hold the G20 presidency.

The events have taken on the feel of a barnstorming carnival and, in effect, have allowed Mr. Modi to start campaigning long before the start of the political season. If Mr. Modi’s party reaps political dividends from the G20, it is well deserved, his lieutenants say.

“Why shouldn’t G20 be used for domestic politics? If G20 has come to the country during Modi-ji’s time and it is completed with success, then Modi-ji must get credit,” Amit Shah, the home minister, told an Indian news outlet in February, using an honorific with Mr. Modi’s name.

B.J.P. politicians have said that the G20 is a chance to show the “best face” of this country of 1.4 billion people.

Delegates at the events leading up to the summit have been treated to an array of Indian delights. Guests who visited Kashmir received walnuts, saffron and papier-mâché gifts. They were also taken to famed Mughal gardens and for boat rides on a pristine lake in an effort to project an air of normalcy in the restive Himalayan territory, where democracy has been suspended for the whole of Mr. Modi’s second term.

In Gujarat, his home state, delegates were kept entertained between meetings with fashion shows and a night featuring local dance. Delegates