The Politics of ‘Winning Elections’ rather than Delivery
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 6th Mar. 2019
With electoral season round the corner, the Netas and the commercial news media are ripe on imagination. They want to control ‘agenda-setting’ as the one who ‘masters this’, usually wins. So we have some Netas who want to digress from ‘old agenda’ to ‘new agenda’ for it opens up ‘delivery numbers’ for debate and ‘others’, who are simply wanting to ‘spoil’ the ‘new agenda’ being pushed in gung-ho fashion. The issue is non-realization amongst political parties and Netas that it is not easily possible to side-step the ‘old agenda’ that was set by ‘Game public’ and some of the Netas rode on the back of it, while some others lived in denial and messed up their chances in a competitive polity. What is required is just the ‘new champions’ for the ‘old agenda’ rather than skull-drudgery or avoidance, and reliance on ‘Game public’ that keeps surprising the ‘know-alls’ in polity. What is the casualty is ability of the commercial news media itself to be able to define ‘agenda’ even for their respective ‘loyal viewers’. In fact ‘news channel surfing’ seem to be on rise as more and more people want to hear about their concerns, but yes there may still be a few who may want to hear about ‘the concern in neighbourhood’. Playing with ‘news’ is likely to all Netas quite handsomely in the longer run as every social media veteran with a large followership starts to challenge them and credibility of ‘coming on national news is diluted further’. In any case the broadcasters have little time to verify credentials of any snippets that they run.
What of course is now going to be raised more strongly is ‘how’s’ for delivery and this would require a lot of practice to handle such queries. The Political Netas and parties don’t seem to be liking to do any work on this aspect though, for now. Otherwise, they would have been changing Netas in ‘wholesale’ rather than in ‘piece-meal’ fashion that is happening presently. The ‘Game’ Netas would however know who the real competitor in their constituency is and prepare for the same leaving the rest on ‘Game public’. Quite a few Game Netas and parties seem to have already figured this out, it seems and would want to ride the ‘old agenda’ but later in the day when ‘how’s’ don’t require much time spend for elaboration due to general paucity of ‘time’ during elections. It is funny to watch some news-wallahs reminiscing that the ‘old agenda’ is being twisted left-right and center by powerful PR machinery. It seems that they are yet to figure out the ‘power’ of the ‘old agenda’ which rubs well and quite closely with publics. The issue here is that the ‘old Netas’ neither want to make way for new Netas nor are ready to put in the ‘hard work’ required to lead the ‘old agenda’ and take to answering of how’s at this juncture for ‘farm distress’, ‘jobs’ etc. So for now, the easier pastures of foreign policy or external/internal security is the focus of the commentariat. However almost all of them would be ‘falling’ back on the ‘old agenda’ when the ‘going gets tough’ and leave public judgment on ‘relative level of preparation’ between serious contenders within each constituency and of course sprinkled with some ‘expose of corruption allegations’ keeping in mind the ‘taste’ of the public.
What is however clear from the news reportage is that ‘Caste’, ‘mandir’ and ‘Cow’ aren’t selling any more, however the main political parties would still keep them ‘hot’. It is evident because the Netas and parties wouldn’t have dumped the most mis-used (mis-used even by ‘Game’) ‘Reservations’ proposition that was cooked up in a hurry. This seems to be the case for all important ‘Jobs’ in particular the lack of ‘government jobs’, but even there seems to be a palpable decline in ‘free seats’ in some of the quality government run educational institutions or may be a general declining standards thereunder with ‘bombing of Skill India slogan’ (this is no longer user for vote catching and even opposition doesn’t seem any need to trash this, although they would go gung-ho to spike the new flavours been concocted by you know who). And this may be true for most areas except for in certain limited pockets may be, but ‘some Netas/Parties’ may be a bit ‘slow’ to realize this. And of course the financial defaulters of all hues and shade continue to be ignored generally by the media, be they defaulting to pay cane/agri dues like mandis or mills etc., or chit funds/other ponzis, or defaulting to banks/bond-holders or public fund managers. It may be noted that this remains even when farm distress is a big challenge to re-elections (as proved in some recent states) and political patronage for such defaulters, seems to be ignored for the want of funds, political support, adverts etc. with only very selective focus by the machinations of the governance system. A good part of the ‘mess’ in select sectors may be attributed to ‘policy and political wrangling’ but again there is a good chunk attributed to ‘wilful’ grade as well, which ‘mixes’ .Let the ‘Game’ evolve….