The great communicator may be a media construct that is too eager to turn every windbag on the stump into a Cicero, but certain politicians have had an easy access to the popular mind; for instance, storytellers such as Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher. They make political communication an art of alternative reality—beyond the wretchedness of the present lies a perfection worthy of us. As one of the most effective communicators in politics today, Modi makes the idea of the nation a shared enchantment among the millions who see in him their own unrealised possibility. That’s a sure recipe for a…