Five seconds are enough for a new wave of “Melodi mania” to break out. On the sidelines of the G7 summit in Puglia, Giorgia Meloni met her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, who recently obtained the green light from voters for a historic third term. “Hello from the Melodi team,” greet the two heads of government in a short video published on social networks. It is only five seconds of film, which travels at more than a thousand likes per minute, much more than all the videos published in recent hours by the Italian Prime Minister, including the one showing the arrival of Pope Francis in the Apulia, the first time of a Pontiff at a G7 summit. The craze for “Melodi” – a portmanteau of Meloni and Modi – broke out in India last year, after the first official meetings between the Indian Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister.
What is “Mélodimania”
A huge amount of memes and imaginative reconstructions about the friendship between the two leaders began circulating on the Asian country's social networks. A game that even those directly involved did not fail to joke about. Last December, during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, Meloni published a selfie with the Indian Prime Minister, relaunching the hashtag “Melodi”. Also in 2023, the end of the relationship between the Prime Minister and the journalist Andrea Giambruno made Indian citizens dream. And there were those who hoped that something more than simple friendship could finally arise between the two heads of government.
The meeting in Puglia
Imaginative reconstructions aside, there have always been excellent relations between Meloni and Modi. The meeting on the sidelines of the G7, we read in a note from Palazzo Chigi, allowed the two leaders “to confirm the strong growth of bilateral relations in all sectors, within the framework of the Strategic Partnership launched in 2023”. The two heads of government notably discussed the agreements recently signed in sectors such as mobility, migration, defense, energy transition and industrial property rights. But also “the strengthening of collaboration in the infrastructural, spatial, digital and cyber fields”.
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