When a television serial right in the middle of an innocuous narrative about a controlling mother and an independent daughter-in-law weaves in a little banter about demonitisation with one of the characters hailing it, when a plug inserted between ads on FM radio says, “Desh ko line pe laana hai toh line mein lagiye” and a condescending radio voice asks, “don’t people stand in the queue for reality show auditions and temple darshans?” and when bogus new items are planted in mainstream media channels like Aaj Tak to discuss the nano technology embedded in the new 2000 rupee note and when critics of the “historic” move are mocked and silenced by trolls, it is time to wonder. And ask if the thoughts we think truly belong to us or if they are somehow shaped, moulded and monitored so that the amorphous idea of the “greater good” can be served. Whose “greater good” one may ask?
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One is still waiting to see a headline celebrating the capture of a black stockpile belonging to a minister or an industrialist. And is anyone monitoring how funds flow into assorted party coffers during elections? The vegetable vendors across my street, my house help and thousands like her and the desperate Indians who make just enough everyday to feed their families and have no concept of plastic money or online transactions have taken the biggest blow as the cash inflow needed for their daily subsistence dries up. But as we have demonstrated right from the time of tragedies like the Bhopal gas leak to riots in 1984 and 2002, and the fires that are stoked just before elections, we can normalise and accept anything that doesn’t affect us directly. Including the oppression of ordinary people whose land, water and human rights are snatched away everyday in zones like Bastar.
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Recently Maharashtra ordered 148.59 hectares of forest land in Gondia district, Vidarbha to be “diverted” for the construction of a 1980 megawatt (MW) coal-based thermal power plant run by the Adani Group. Whose greater good was this decision in service to? We don’t really care about the dispossessed in this country. They are not a part of our nationalist narrative. They serve a purpose. They keep certain aspects of the economy running, they provide services but they have no say in the way they are governed. They have no political clout beyond a point. Their votes are needed but they are dispensable. Always have been.
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The numbers of the dead are exaggerated, we are told. Everyone is applauding the “bold move,” it is said. But well, when those in power spend more time in managing public perception than in running a country, at some point the bubble bursts but not before extracting a huge human cost. The world over, the use of perception management, the proliferation of fake news inserts and ideological propaganda via social media platforms is playing a key role in discrediting criticism and bolstering autocratic, supremacist agendas. Recently it was reported that such false inserts discredited Hillary Clinton far more than they did Donald Trump and affected the outcome of the American elections. Edward Snowden also said that if the percolation of fake news into America’s mind stream did affect elections, it was time to question the channels through which this news was spread. He added, “To have one company (Facebook or Twitter) that has enough power to reshape the way we think—I don’t think I have to describe how dangerous that is.”
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Propaganda is insidious because it is not factual but appeals to the prejudices of people rather than to their rational thought and hence succeeds because as Oxford dictionary’s word of the year, ‘Post Truth’ conveys, today debate in political culture is “framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy.”
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So repeated assertion of “talking points” negates arguments based on facts. Truth is falsified and incapacitated by rhetoric. The American election could very well be the case study for the assertion of perception over truth because to win, Trump employed some clinical brilliance in nullifying 30 years of Hillary Clinton’s career with the following tactics.
Name calling: She was “crooked” Hillary in every election speech. A liar. A nasty woman. And yes, no facts were needed to substantiate this labelling.
Discrediting rivals: So even though Hillary has served in key administration positions all her life, she was not “presidential” enough. She did not smile enough. Her suits were unflattering. And she was inauthentic.
The use of one persistent accusation: Every disgrace and accusation that came Donald Trump’s way was countered with just one big counter-point, Hillary’s emails. Even though half of the voting populace still possibly doesn’t know what was in them.
Appeals to fear and hate: Rabble rousing is where emotion wins and logic loses. You tell people that their majoritarian world view is threatened and their very existence is under threat by “liberal” agendas and walls need to be built, literal and ideological and minorities need to be kept in their place and they are in your pocket.
The construction of one, almighty figure head: Yes, so it is asked of you that faith be reposed in not a political system but in one defender, one guardian, one liberator, one deliverer of promises, hopes, aspirations. This figure head is an orator with a loud, emotionally charged voice, dramatic gestures and has crowd appeal. He is the only answer to years of perceived and real wrongs. There is no alternative.
Well-oiled propaganda machinery: The appointment by Trump of Stephen Bannon, a white supremacist propagandist in a key White House position is the reward for years of right wing poison he has spread with his Breitbart News headlines discrediting minorities, feminism and a liberal world view. Through out his campaign Trump also had campaign managers and spokespersons who refused to confront facts and just stonewalled every question by discrediting his rival. And succeeded.
Infectious sloganeering: “Lock her up..lock her up” was not the war cry of a misogynist villain in a Mad Max film, baying for the blood of a rebellious woman protagonist. It was Trump, the man who has fraud and rape charges sullying his name asking that Hillary be put away in a jail because that is where women like her belong. The orgiastic energy in his rallies was further raised to fever pitch by his insults directed towards Muslims, the media, immigrants and women.
The use of nationalism as a political currency: Trump promised to make America great again and America fell for it, debilitated by some deep identity crisis just as Germany had not too long ago when a despot decided to cleanse the Aryan race of vermin in one sweep. Every tyrant in history has appealed to nationalistic fervour and made it a non negotiable absolute that can justify just about anything. Even genocide.
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Now look for parallels closer home. You will nod in recognition possibly because some of the above tactics have been in play here much before Trump mastered them.
The lack of nuance in political reporting, the suppression of dissent by making it invisible, the control business houses and politicians exert over the media, the induction of rabid, right wing thought leaders into key positions, reduction of political rivals into cartoonish figures, the constant onslaught of propaganda from every platform extolling just one leader are just some of the things that we as a country are becoming immune to.
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As long as the sloganeering lulls us into a happy place, why bother reading the fine print? So whether it is demonitisation or a surgical strike, what we need to ask is just who is paying the price with their life, with their blood? Because in the end, neither progress, nor the bigger or higher good or nationalism can exist in a vacuum. If a nation isolates and disempowers its people by design or accidentally, it fails itself. The slogans peter out. Propaganda fails after a point. It is the resilience of the common, unsung citizen that finally makes a nation great. But we should not test that resilience too often. And we must never take it for granted. These invisible Indians are the fine print we don’t read when headlines scream out the promise of a better tomorrow. The tomorrow that never seems to come. And is as elusive as the fabled nano chip in the 2000 rupee note.
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Pic courtesy: Youth Ki Awaz
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Reema Moudgil is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US and is now retailing some of her art at http://paintcollar.com/reema. She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.