Democracies think of poll strategising in terms of VACO -voter arithmetic, chemistry with voters, and orotund orators thundering down the masses into awed genuflection with their magniloquent rhetoric. Our party thinktanks, however, have two more instruments uniquely desi - lexical SEMANTICS that puts wicket-taking top spin on meanings of orated words and phrases , and ‘JAM’ ,no not the acronym present regime swears by, nor the sweet jelly stuff we grew up on , but the pesky jam as in a traffic jam.
Take the first one - lexical semantics . Needn’t go further, suffice it to give a few examples.
Spoken Spin
*नीच राजनीति - नीच जाति
*नीच क़िस्म का आदमी - ग़रीब आदमी -चायवाला
*Give Modi a slap of democracy - give Modi a slap
*Modi is arrogant, Duryodhana
was arrogant - Modi is Duryodhana
Next ,Jam . Its earlier two variants are now SOP (standard operating procedure). Both originating from the eastern part of the nation, Bihar birthed the first one - vote jam, that is voter’s inability to vote because he is physically prevented from reaching the booth and his vote is cast by booth looters. But what if the voter did reach the booth ? Bengal’s response wombed the other one -booth jam. Even before voting officially opens , supporters of the dominant party at the booth queue up at the gates in long serpentine columns. Any suspected ‘unsympathetic’ voter now has to stand at the tail. His voting turn probably never comes as ‘sympathetic’ voters coming after him manage to find a place ahead of him courtesy other ‘fellow sympathiser’ in the queue . Both variants continue to flourish in select parts of the country .
Under the Modi dispensation an entirely new variant has emerged -Discourse jam. It’s like the booth jam , just as the ‘other’ voter is frustrated from voting , in the discourse jam the ‘voice’ of the opposition fails to find space in the media. Through financial patronage, ideological colonisation and the unchallenged first-movers advantage for BJP in the case of social media , election reportage has now been ‘flattened’ - space only for that which bolsters electoral prospects of BJP or detracts from that of opposition parties, put succinctly, nothing save a ‘Modi discourse’. ‘Other’ news goes down an irretrievable memory hole , unseen, unheard, un-debated .
To a disinterested viewer it sounds pretty dull - vapid , monochromatic, single frequency monotone not a cacophony of dissonant notes from different bugles that a typical animated multiparty Indian Election is known for. Rajiv Gandhi ‘s INS Viraat ‘personal taxi’, Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship, Mamta not responding to Modi’s call , 1984 Sikh riots, Rajiv Gandhi ‘Bhrashtachari No 1’ ,coating and re-coating of a Balakot strike with various nationalistic hues and such like rhetoric find multiple echoes across a broad swathe of media space. The dire state of economy, unemployment, worsening Kashmir turmoil, rising crimes against women, dalits, minorities, deteriorating status of poverty alleviation, failures in governance, brazen attempts to recast the constitutional ethos in a majoritarian mould, concurrently reshaping institutions to facilitate this nefarious grand design, all issues raised by opposition find muted sound bites and little print ink in media. The social media space is even more asymmetric for the right wing voices reign supreme by default . There are no competitors.
That precisely is discourse jam, shrinking opponents’s media space for articulation of its electoral narratives. It is a stark reflection of the stranglehold Mr Modi has on media spaces as also his signature contribution to Indian electoral practice.
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