Danger Ahead: Portents of Crony Journalism?

Exit Polls became fashionable towards the end of the last century as the communication technology underwent a revolution in size, range, speed, reach and impact. Data collection and analysis, which discouraged and exhausted media enthusiasts of my generation, became child’s play. Gone are the days when however fast you worked, your analysis would take at least a day or two to reach the readers as print was the only available technology. Now all this happens nearly simultaneously: with broadcast, telecast and social media spreading information faster than lightning.

Now that the political heat and dust looks like settling down -though the monsoon is still weak - and NaMo has started talking in his all too frequent ukasao idiom- like his dig at the Congress for the Emergency of 50 years ago when Rahul (who is supposed to react) must have been a primary school goer - we can ponder the more serious pointers of the LS elections. The million dollar question is why no Exit Poll (EP) could foresee the drubbing received by the BJP. Their loss of 60 seats is 11 per cent of the LS number and around 20 per cent of the BJP number in the last LS. NaMo, habitually blind to whatever is not on his side, may continue to roar that this is no defeat. Yet the BJP rank and file is drastically shaken! The other question is are the now silent EPs making an attempt to analyse their self engineered fiasco?

No EP gave NDA-BJP less than 325 or around that. None of them gave the INDIA combine more than 225. It was the right arithmetic if there was a seal at the top: 542. Just one EP upheld NaMo’s boast of 400 par. The EPs also had to make room for ‘others’ and generally accommodated them from cutting the INDIA quota, it seems. In short all EPs were a reiteration that NaMo would finish his hat trick hands down! But the electorate produced a shockingly different rabbit from its hat and all EPs went out of the window like NaMo’s 400 par. In fact this a repetition of history. Back in 2003 BJP stalwart Venkayya Naidu had boasted in his Telangana accent: ‘wat yexit poll? YenDA ko poll hai, UPA ko yexit hai’ (What Exit Poll are you talking about? NDA gets the Poll and UPA will make an exit) and the voters had juggled out an equally unexpected rabbit. So the wheel comes full circle every twenty years? Let’s wait and watch.

Agreeably, EPs are a tricky business and we cannot expect them to be always right and exact. Yet it is rather irksome that all should have gone wrong: is dal me jarur kuchh kala hai!

EPs became fashionable towards the end of the last century as the communication technology underwent a revolution in size, range, speed, reach and impact. Data collection and analysis, which discouraged and exhausted media enthusiasts of my generation, became child’s play. Gone are the days when however fast you worked, your analysis would take at least a day or two to reach the readers as print was the only available technology. Now all this happens nearly simultaneously: with broadcast, telecast and social media spreading information faster than lightning. So EPs galore and will be here to stay.

No wizard is needed to enlighten the lay that EPs are in essence surveys and sample design, plus questions asked, are at their heart. So the primary reason for these EPs going hey wire must lie there. Certain leading questions were asked to a certain chosen (controlled?) section of the voters and the expected answers were recorded as a formality? If this was managed by the incumbent political establishment they must have learnt the bitter lesson-hopefully. The irksome part is why did the agencies agree to such doctored EPs?

Some fifty years ago when the Emergency was serving no purpose Indira Gandhi asked her state agencies to find out whether it was time to go for LS polls: meaning thereby that whether the people would uphold the ‘bitter remedy’ she had forced down the nation’s throat. The first survey was probably honestly done and the findings were negative. Indira believed (see any parallel in present times?) that she had a direct line to the voters’ heart and asked the agencies to go back and get the ‘right’ answer. ‘Most obedient servants’ went back, came back with the’ right answer’ and to the relief of all irked by the Emergency elections were held. The rest is known history.

We need to ask whether NaMo’s campaign managers made the same blunder or something else happened here and if that something is going to be ‘the’ method of EPs in times to come.

Parliamentary democracy rests on periodic elections where people give vent to their opinions through secret ballot. Opinions can be monitored and twisted by propaganada but are in essence products of information: as against imagination.

Information, the common asset of both the State and the Media, is an amorphous entity. It’s more mercurial in a half-literate society like ours where fact, hearsay, fiction coexist and are generally guided by sycophancy. So the State and the Media share a common occupational hazard: information has to be authenticated without knowing how. State has to be wary of human error and Media has to watch out for prejudice and hearsay. The relationship also gets complicated by the fact that lot of information sought by Media is State-controlled. So it is neither a continuous honey moon nor pure love-hate between the two.

The Indian Media have passed through three phases. During the first phase Media were State-friendly because now there was no foreign State. This lasted till the imposition of Emergency in June 1975 when Media were totally silenced. The 1977 LS polls freed the Media in a hurry but now Media was revengeful against the State which ushered in investigative journalism for a decade and a half. During this phase State and Media were generally at logger heads.

The third phase happened after globalization and liberalization which saw a sea change in the role of Media: It was no more a watch dog, not a source of information which would lead to opinion formation. Media started ‘creating’ information to engender public opinion! This further lead to its prejudice in both collection and circulation of information: now Media had to get double-faced (double talk was always there?). It could not be consistently pro or anti vis-à-vis the State.
Look at the EPs under discussion. Except the last one they were done over almost two months. All along there was a general consensus that the NDA and NaMo would comfortably win a third mandate. Even staunch critics of the incumbent government (like yours truly) conceded that and hoped NDA and BJP would be at least cut to size. So the agencies conducting the EPs probably met only the converted voters and did not suspect at all an anti-NDA opinion was forming. It was initially miniscule but snowballed after NaMo blatantly communalized the election. The unseen backlash of those who refused to get communal (time will tell whether they can be labeled secular) must have accumulated in voting machines. There would be no change at the top so be in favour of the rising sun. The establishment wanted the Media to reach a rendezvous in due course: the Media reached there before the establishment. No wonder they had to put their foot in their mouth!

This had to happen when crony capitalism became the new ethos. Now the State, the Big Players in the economy and the Media form the new oligarchy. Their faces will be of noble aristocrats and handsome do-gooders but their hearts and brains will be of chameleons who change colours the moment survival is at risk. They will control information, pardon misinformation but spread disinformation with zest and zeal. Just look at the daily exchange of muck in new parliament and its coverage or go far away to the US where it’s Thug vs Thug! The only way to contain this conspiracy of cronies (vested interests of yesteryears) is to get the electorate wiser and turn it truly democratic.

Read the Author's Artcle Series : Hard(ikar) Talk

George Orwell, in 1984, warned us of a world where the ‘hidden persuaders’ would prevail and flourish! History has proved him both wrong and right. Yes, democracy is under threat in the world’s largest democracy. Yet there are no hidden persecutors to be seen and eliminated. The tribe of ‘hidden persuaders’ is multiplying alarmingly.

Yet our voters have taken them by surprise this time. Let us find out how and work to strengthen that mechanism.

Vinay Hardikar
vinay.freedom@gmail.com
(The writer has been working in the public sphere of Maharashtra for the last five decades. His versatile personality has several dimensions, but the primary ones remain to be that of an established writer, journalist, editor, critic, activist, and teacher.)