The 2G Judgment and GOP Jingle Bells
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 21st Dec. 2017
Reducing Politics to an ‘Identity competition’ level as is practiced by the National parties and their Netas (in government as well as opposition) along with a supportive commercial news media would tend to have its toll. Politics especially identity politics is of the nature of ambiguous victories and nebulous defeats and the wise claim them all as ‘massive victories’. The breaking into of people into celebration is telecasted/reported as ‘something happening’ and a caravan is formed with the possibility of leading to some electoral victories. Only difference is that this time round the tables are turned and there might be somewhat better understanding of the ‘tough question politics’. Through ‘tough question politics’, one tends to shatter the ‘identity barriers’ and put focus on issues and it becomes a counter to ‘identity politics’ especially the one practiced by the Netas in government who are supposed to be providing answers, if not for the Netas in opposition. The ‘Game’ is well aware that for this no Goenka award would be conferred ever but that is secondary. Basically the tough question politics is/was always around voicing questions related to policy that are concerns of the teaming millions to the Netas drunk in power. Some of those questions were settled by the Hon’able Supreme Court when they took mass cancellation of the Telecom Licenses or dis-allocation of the mines. Of course there would be many individual cases or smaller battles which may not have had received much highlight or were more specific rather than a wholesale policy level mess. Sadly, there are still little attempts to come out of the ‘identity competition’ and the coveted Goenka awards are being conferred regularly. Very likely, the Netas do not want the commercial news media to lose its focus of pitching them or their own sales pitch instead of discussion on issues.
While the Netas in the opposition may have broken into song and dance mode for creation of the Caravan over the judgment with a supportive media carrying out its identity build-up agenda for a future identity face-off. It may be noted that of late there has been some attempts to focus ‘issues’ like the state of higher education in government, health care institutions etc. and these articles in Management Paradise have been appreciative of such attempts. However there are structural deficiencies in the commercial news media and its larger focus remains on identity politics and/or pushing political party’s agenda as public issues without questioning of logics, the promotion of the telecom judgment and ensuing song and dance being an example. Other issues which are not debated is that even though we have dedicated channels for covering activities of the ‘house of elected representatives’, however these have not ‘grown and matured’ to engage with the state legislatures and if there is a political ploy to keep focus on ‘larger identities alone’ in a structured manner and thus an avoidance of public scrutiny of the smaller voices so that these may not gain any appreciation for their merit. Of course such media focus goes to support the states Netas of these very parties ( some others as well) to slip of the radar even when there are scores of deaths due to disease or public facilities failure or economic distress. In fact such identity politics perhaps may not allow even the party and Netas to reflect on its electoral defeat (since they are keen that ‘even that’ be registered as victory) whereby they failed to follow-up on any significant charge (a la Vyapam) or raised such charges ‘too late’ and focus too much on shoring select identities rather. However the Netas in state have not demanded any change and seem happy to be oblivious to this fact which can be implemented easily if there is political desire.
And I must put the fact that identity politics is happening even when there is lot of noise around competitive federalism with states being enabled to promote themselves. However the state Netas are happy only when they can choose when to be on public radar and remaining off-radar on all other occasions. However we have proclamations around maturity of democracy without any attempts to bring an end to such dubious practices. Neither the Netas or the Journos of the commercial news media are likely to raise issues mainly on account of the unspoken understanding of not criticizing other media ‘directly’ and some other journos would happily proclaim them as responsible and may be ‘social media’ as irresponsible. These articles in Management Paradise have already predicted a brighter future for the regional leaders not following the Bhakti mantra as promoted vigorously by the Commercial news media ( http://www.managementparadise.com/article/9595/the-electoral-message ). Let’s see the ‘Game’ evolve…..