Kushan Mitra
Elections, particularly a general election, is acrimonious. If not, actually, very acrimonious on grounds where organisational skill matters. But the past election was the first in India where, the Internet had a massive impact. There is no doubt that the Bharatiya Janata Party won a comprehensive victory in the election and it also made the best use of the technology at hand. Whereas, the grand old party showed its age by failing to convince both the ground voters and the online audience.
The election ended in May. However, the decibel pitch of the Left-wing commentariat has become louder – and that of those opposing it, despite being in power, has matched shrill for irritating shrill. The fact is that it is impossible to keep everyone happy. No matter what the Narendra Modi Government does, in the next four years, people will continue to snipe at him with both fact and (increasingly) fiction.
There is no doubt that the Modi regime will make mistakes; possibly it will also make headline-grabbing blunders. That is the nature of governance. Those mistakes will be brought to the fore because the Indian media is often loud and disappointingly unscientific. The media is, for the large part, free. But short of a mistake that starts a war – and as American politics have proven, even that is not a deal-breaker – the idea is to discuss the mistakes, and for the Government to take corrective action. Mistakes are not the end of the world; isn’t that what we are taught in school?
Thankfully, following the election in Delhi, which will take place early next year; there are no elections scheduled until the Bihar one that will take place late in the year. While 2014 was a continuous stream of elections, 2015 is scheduled to be a quiet one. Not that any election is quiet. Radio airwaves and public advertising hoarding in Delhi have been taken up with political advertising, but following the election and hopefully a clean and clear verdict, maybe it would be a good time to stop outraging on just about everything.
It is incredibly easy to get outraged nowadays, and this is not just taking a dig at English news television. Anything and everything can set people off, from films to songs to newspaper columns. Maybe it is time to take a step back and become less confrontational; not everything is worth fighting over. Certain films, songs, columns and opinions are meant to be offensive. The way to respond to being offended is not to react in anger but rather to respond in a measured way.
Take the rather facile protests against Rajkumar Hirani’s latest film PK; short of gaining some newspaper inches and seeing themselves on television, what do the protestors achieve? Many Left-wing and Right-wing extremist commentators on social media platforms complain of being attacked by ‘trolls’ – usually anonymous online commentators who attack their views by threatening them. Make no mistake, the Right-wing does not have exclusivity on trolls. The fact is that many of these commentators put out opinions that can only be described as ‘troll bait’; intentionally attracting trolls so as to later claim martyrdom. This is a typical modus operandi.
The best way to deal with such people is to ignore them, or like the case of Mani Shankar Aiyar, use his own comments to highlight the fact that he is a pompous poof. All one needs to be outraged, it appears, is a small crowd and a few television channels or in some cases, a large following on social media platform. A topic to outrage about is the last difficult thing on the list. There are enough topics to be angry about everyday. But in India, we rarely get angry about things that we need to be angry about. We have been blindsided by a maelstrom of political opinions, and our views not to question why certain things still remain the same and why India’s ‘Chalta hai’ attitude, still exists. Instead a film becomes the overriding theme of the day.
We should outrage about lack of governance, we should outrage about the fact that the people’s mandate is being abused by the Opposition, we should outrage about the fact that politicians and their underlings have engorged themselves on the poor people’s money. The anger that Indians had towards the fag days of the last Government, came from the rampant corruption of the previous regime.