City City, Bang Bang
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 22nd Jan. 2018
The topic may raise some eyebrows. But don’t worry, for I do not want to take away the credit of the ‘title’ from anyone else. With the politics in the City turning again the topic does strike some notes and being social media free of regulations so couldn’t resist temptations. Don’t want to step on the ruffled nerves though. It may however be pointed the ‘notes’ struck are however subject to the content under the topic, of course and for that the readers can continue with this article. As of the ‘state’ under question as per the topic, the legalese and the political one-upmanship is on display as is usual of politicians, rather than ‘difference’. This even when there does seem to be a crying need to focus on ‘issues’ of the public and highlighted by the likes of Delhi Dialogue and the Netas seem to be a bit ‘slow’ post elections. Even the commercial news media seem to have by-passed the City politicians for it failed to cover either the state of drive towards cash-less or the check-post level corruption post GST implantation for the reasons best understood by the Netas or by the Journos. It is also the media rather one of the Netas or elected member pointing out the malady of Rain-Basera in the City. Then again we have the City Netas wanting to pounce on at the Center Netas for issues ranging from Cross-Border security rather than Bus-shelters and thus looking at overall performance in an objective manner and neglecting the City, especially the performance of its local bodies. There seem to be no metric to measure the performance here even though a huge tussle to seek/get funds and the state funded projects. Hope the topic would help to tickle some of the nerves. As of the media, it has already made an assessment that each of the candidates would be scrutinized by the voters quite aptly and promptly this time round. This is however projected as a defeat for some Netas and their party, rather than as opportunity to showcase the strength mid-way. In an educated polity as in the City is, one can expect a little fairer assessment and therefore a narrative around distribution of responsibilities vis-à-vis performance under areas of control needs to be objectively conveyed. Therefore a categorization of the division of responsibilities towards citizens by various division of the government viz. Center, state and the local bodies such municipalities and rural government and performance measures for each of them regards their deliveries towards the residents, needs to be assessed. Journos view of such measures in meeting up with the expectations of deliveries towards citizen may count in overall image build.
It is also interesting to note that the commercial news media seems not shy of making some transformation within itself and also in selection of themes and there coverage patterns. This seems to be in-line with what was forecasted much earlier and the readers may click the link to understand more about the same (https://www.scribd.com/document/207382207/Political-Business-Transformation-in-India-and-role-of-Information-Technology ). Broadly the Netas and parties also seem to be taking cue from this and have picked up the themes around Youth viz. Jobs, Vikas/Development and Kisan/Farmer, even if that may still be for sloganeering. This again is in line with one of my oldest article in 2006 on poverty in India (http://hindustan.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-23.html https://www.scribd.com/doc/4973191/An-Essay-on-Poverty-with-reference-to-India ). One of the readers of these article may be tempted to argue that such slogans existed earlier as well with the Netas and Parties. This should therefore be pointed out that there does seem to be a difference as now the Netas and parties know that there sincerity around these slogans would make or break their political careers, this time round. Earlier any amount of sloganeering seemed never to have mattered. This is a good development that the Netas and parties are attempting to cover some of the interests of the public. And the coverage of the news and views picked up by the media is much more likely in proportion with weightage of the factors being as per the editorial discretion about the expectation of general public. The political propaganda (of the party in government as well as of all other parties) again has to be measured alongside these yardsticks rather than by what other parties may say and some progress seem to being made by select news channels and print media.
Politicians like businesses, Artists as well as journos, have a greater chance of survival based on adaptation rather than by being singularly glued to some haloed notions of yesteryears. Most Netas already understand the vote-potential especially that of ‘swing voters’ towards the mobilization attempts being made say on the Rajput pride lines or other similar attempts. The fact is the Netas in the government seem to be more responsive towards the rising crude oil should be a pointer, although the never say die attitude of Netas would continue to be on display. It might have been better if media had focused upon track record of such Netas on schemes like building ‘Toilets’ under the Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan on the sidelines to test the pride taken regards Women folks and the Community. The film community is expected to be a bit more creative probably or else the movies would continue to fail. Let’s see the ‘Game’ evolve…