As much as ‘man ki baat’, the regular radio broadcast of PM Modi to the nation, represents the voice of power, I often find WhatsApp forward messages as the real archive for learning about the new grammar of political faith which that power creates. A faith that has swept India for some time, turning upside down the expected conduct of government and citizens. One such message, which is not entirely new but has acquired renewed momentum in the last few days in the wake of Covid-19 induced havoc of death and near-death is to remain positive: think positive, be positive.
The latest by the Union Health Minister, that India is mentally and physically well prepared this year to beat the Covid-19 pandemic is also a ‘variant’ of this messaging. Remain calm, be positive, and trust the government.
Let us ask, what does it actually mean? What does it say, but more importantly, what does it hide?
At the first glance, the message appears benign, even sympathetic. It purports to bring people around the fundamental belief of human existence to hope for good, to believe in hope. In spite of despair, the times of crises are also the times when hope needs to be reposed, into each other, and, together in a collective, with others.
While the media cheerleaders, spokespersons of the ruling political party, the representatives of the government, as well as the numerous IT coolies of the paid social media ‘plantation’ latch on to this phrase, let me recount three measures the wielders of power have taken in the last few days to put things in a little perspective of what the intended meaning of this boost of positivity is.
One, at the instance of the government of India, around 50 tweets were removed from Twitter, a majority of which came from verified accounts including a member of Parliament, a widely popular spokesperson of the Congress party (Pawan Khera), and some filmmakers. These tweets were critical of the way the government has been handling the Corona crisis since a year, but particularly in the last six months or so.
The second instance comes from the newly emerged legal laboratory of state repression – Uttar Pradesh. Ajay Bisht has issued a firman that anyone found spreading ‘rumours’ and propaganda about oxygen shortage in the state should be booked under National Security Act. The person’s property should be seized. Much to the contradiction of what has been seen, read, and heard in the last few days about the lack of oxygen in the state, Bisht asserts that there is no shortage of oxygen in any of the hospitals across the state.
A state where a doctor languished in the jail for apparently no fault of his (eventually granted bail by the court); where a reporter is chained like an animal in the hospital because he was arrested for going to Hathras to cover the story of the 19-year Dalit raped-and-dead victim; and where ingenious ways of state-led ‘naming and shaming’ was adopted at the behest of the chief minister by putting billboards across the city with names of those who differed in their views, has in its recent spell of frustration invoked the harshest law to counter ‘rumour’.
It leaves little doubt in the mind as to how the meaning of the words has changed in the last few years. A fact that makes the government uncomfortable is now dismissed as ‘rumour’. A volley of questions which government finds difficult to answer has been given the name of anti-state, anti-nation ‘propaganda’. It is clear that what is really intended is to suppress the news and create an ‘image’ of efficient administration. This involves multiple strategies: from blocking the vision to negate the reality to invoking the law to instil fear.
In India, pandemic has been accompanied by ‘infodemic’. There might be some systemic bottlenecks, particularly in rural areas, with accurate death registration for instance (which also needs to be properly studied) but the current tendency towards the wilful suppression of fact is undeniably a moment in which the politicisation of information and data has been attempted to be applied in the management of pandemic as well. Headline management seems to have become, in certain parts, the frontline strategy to fight this disaster.
Both these examples – of tweet deletion and stringent law-based punishment – make perfect sense in the light of the third, which showcases what has really pricked this government. The Guardian editorial of 23 February unequivocally stated that Mr Modi’s brand of Indian exceptionalism bred complacency, which has led to the devastating human loss which India is facing currently. Many other leading international newspapers across countries such as the U.S, the U.K, Australia and many others have a similar tone when reporting on the extent of Indian surge, which is doubtfully not accurately represented in official statistics. Of course, the Indian right-wing is known for indulging in selective affair with ‘foreign’ appraisals: praises and endorsements are rallied to boost and approve brand Modi; critical remarks are shrugged off as ‘western conspiracy’. In India, those who work under the guise of free media are ‘patriotically’ part of this exercise: News 18 recently ran a programme (shall we call it propaganda?) ‘Anti-India Lobbies Hijacking Narrative’.
(screenshot from the Twitter handle)
And this is our third example: in the wake of the critical assessment and culpable responsibility, the government and its cheer leader media persons have sprung into image ‘damage control’ exercise. If you can’t handle the message, you surely can ‘handle’ the messenger. Criticism needs to be drowned and questioning needs to be silenced in the shrill of fake claims of patriotism.
If we just ponder a little over the title of the News 18 show, one feels compelled to ask, narrative of what? Of death and despair, anguish and loss, helplessness and fear? What is it that the so-called anti-India lobbies have hijacked which the majority of Indian media does not want to show? Have they hijacked the narrative of interrogating government’s preparedness? Have they hijacked the task of questioning government, which gleefully the majority of Indian media has given up? What alternative narrative does the type of media such as News 18 instead want to present? Surely, we can take a guess: they might reassure that the political leadership of the country is doing its best, and that the people remain positive. At least, this kind of messages I have seen circulating on WhatsApp groups. (A disclaimer: I could not bring myself to see the above programme).
A little jog down the memory lane would convince us that much like the other ‘feel good’ slogans which the government has used in the past (such as ‘Achche Din’ and ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vishwas’), ‘be positive’ also seems to be a well-crafted distracting euphemism ‘authorlessly’ floating on social media to divert, bully, and silence the critical voices that seek accountability from the government. Sadly enough, isn’t it the misplaced sense of positivity itself that has led to this situation?
Positivity must breed in the space of action and not in the echo-chamber of monologue charchas (conversations). What did breed through the numerous speeches and assurances given by the government between September 2020 and March 2021 was complacency and not positivity.
Numerous reports have pointed out how a tunnelled focus on elections, a hyper-nationalism mixed poisonous cocktail of Indian exceptionalism, and the recurrent hollow assurances given by India’s health minister to meet any surge in infections while appearing to endorse quack-cure remedy of kits such as Ramdev’s Coronil has led to this devastation. In September 2020, India’s health minister assured that the nation is prepared to meet any surge in infections. In February 2021, at the World Economic Forum, Modi mocked those who had warned of a tsunami like second wave of infections hitting India. He self-congratulated himself on controlling Corona in India. In early March this year, the health minister concluded that India is at the endgame of Covid-19 fight. These instances of proof can be endlessly multiplied. They all point in the direction that the government had gone simply complacent in its attitude, and a year-long time that must have been used to better coordinate the preparedness with the states was lost.
The key point here is exactly the messaging which the government and its cheerleader media wishes to ‘manage’. By asking people to remain positive amidst death two things are being attempted simultaneously: one, to convince people to not dig the recent past of callous governmental complacency; and two, to create the space in the ever-fading public memory for the upcoming onslaught of governmental propaganda in which everyone will be reminded of how the napping leader was working overnight to pull the nation through this calamity.
Almost with the power of prophecy, one can predict that the next few months will be heavily utilized by the government in running an advertisement blitzkrieg. When governance gets reduced to managing headlines, then slogans become important to create and capture political faith. Be positive is one of those slogans, which we might be listening of repeatedly in near future.
It is absolutely desirable to remain positive at the individual and collective level, and to comfort, console, and support people who have lost their loved ones. It will be remarkably appalling to use or allow this sentiment to be used for purposes of political justification. Any attempt to inject it into the body of the political faith, which the prime minister and his government are deftly adept at creating, would amount to camouflaging responsibility. Letting it extrapolated from the interstices of individual human emotion to the stage of political appropriation which would potentially work to put a gloss on governmental accountability, will be sad, even ugly.
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