A senior television anchor who hogs the primetime slot every evening by virtue of the fact that he is his own boss and unabashedly bats for the establishment, asking leading questions to publicists of the Congress and loaded questions to critics of the Government, especially the Prime Minister, makes it a point to spend a few minutes on Twitter every night. He furiously denounces everybody who during the day has raised discomfiting issues, or contributed towards denuding the Prime Minister of his claimed honesty and integrity, pours bile on Opposition leaders, especially Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi if he happens to be in the news, pontificates on media ethics and lectures others about how ‘allegation’ is not ‘evidence’ and ‘being charge-sheeted’ is not the same as ‘being found guilty’ (although his channel is known for not sticking by those ethical norms) and then, after making a profound statement on the vagaries or higher values of life, wishes everybody “g’night” before vanishing from the ethereal world of the Internet.
There is another senior editor of a rival news channel who spends a significant amount of time on Twitter in between anchoring shows and late into the night. Like many others in media, she tends to keep odd hours and is given to being sleepless in Delhi. Unlike St Pontification who has a disdainful, sneering, I-am-the-best-and-the-prettiest attitude towards those who don’t measure up to make it to his channel’s studios, she seeks opinion, exchanges views, gets into scraps, admits errors and makes friends and foes in equal measure. In other words, she uses Twitter, which is easily the most popular social media among urban, educated Indians today and continues to attract people in droves from various social and economic backgrounds, to her advantage by making others feel important (even if she doesn’t really think they are), interacting with them, being feisty when the occasion demands without losing her sense of humour or humility.
The reason I cite these two examples is not because of any personal bias against an arriviste who mistakes bunkum for profound commentary or because I am a starry-eyed fan of the other news telly editor. I have known them for long years, in fact for far too long, to be impressed by their on-screen and off-screen activities. Delhi is an incestuous city where secrets have an extremely short life-cycle — one half of Delhi sleeps with the other half, metaphorically speaking, and drawing room secrets of the day become bedroom pillow talk at night. Journalists think they know everything and more that is to be known about politicians; not surprisingly, politicians actually know everything and more that is to be known about journalists.
But we digress from where we were. The two examples I have recounted are meant to make three points, all related to the emerging relevance of social media, which is part of the new technology at our disposal, especially in politics and for political campaigns. First, social media facilitated by technology, more so something which is as real time as Twitter, can be used as an effective means of two-way communication — to disseminate and collect information and opinion. Second, using social media for self-promotion and to dumb down others may fetch instant gratification and boost fragile egos that have been pumped up to bursting point by fawning flatterers and favour-seekers, but at the end of the day there are neither strategic achievements nor tactical gains. Third, social media users sooner or later get exposed for what they are: It’s not easy to get away with claiming that the genius behind the wonder called the Sistine Chapel is ‘Michaelangelo’; those who are not privileged enough to have studied in either Oxford or Cambridge will bluntly tell you that it’s Michelangelo.
Which brings me to a unique, possibly first-time-ever attempt to use social media and related new technology for gauging popular opinion and response to a political event: I refer to Mr Narendra Modi’s recent three-day fast to launch his Sadbhavana Mission which dominated news for more than 72 hours. To make the Sadbhavana Mission into a people’s movement, social media was used by his well-wishers for publicising a facility for joining it through a ‘missed call’. Those who were involved with organising the two-way communication facility tell me that “lakhs of registrations flowed in within two days to get regular updates about the movement”. After feeding updates on Day 1 of the fast, a text message via SMS was sent to these lakhs of supporters on Sunday morning, Day 2 of the fast, posing two simple questions: “What is India’s greatest challenge?” and “What should our response be?”
This, in turn, shaped a new initiative of connecting to people. Within a span of just few hours, over one lakh people responded from all around the country, offering their answers to these two questions. The common factor in the solutions that were offered was the need for improving the quality of governance across the board and the need for good people in Government. The overwhelming majority of comments received can be summed up as following:
- Lack of right vision. Give right education and opportunity. Empower our people. Empower India;
- India’s greatest challenge is lack of political will to lead India especially tackle and handle bureaucracy effectively;
- India needs a leader who understands the public needs as well as the needs for the treasury to meet the first, and frames policies accordingly;
- We should educate people to understand the need for efficient governance that would change their lives and their country; and,
- The most emergent problem in India is improving the quality of governance and eradication of poverty which can be easily done with the removal of corruption.
This was the first time ever that feedback was sought from people on such a mass scale by the well-wishers of a politician who has made good governance based on popular aspirations into a personal fetish. The idea emerged from Mr Modi’s desire to create a continuous interaction channel with citizens as part of fulfilling the objectives of his Government’s Sadbhavana Mission. The organisers of the e-campaign say that mobile technology made it possible to set up this continuous interaction channel. A missed call facility helped to opt-in to receive messages for free. An SMS publishing system was used to send messages and updates periodically to the opted-in mobile numbers. To respond, people simply had to reply to the SMS. An automated message collection system collated all responses, which were streaming in at a rate of nearly a hundred every minute. Text analysis on the messages identified the key themes across the messages. The entire system was set up in less than 24 hours. That’s what commitment can achieve.
This is an example of how technology can be used to create a two-way communication channel. For the Sadbhavana Mission, technology was used not just to pass information to citizens but also to seek their opinion on key questions. With access to technology now only a click of the mouse away, perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of a new era of greater democracy and a truly open society.
--- Follow the writer on: http://twitter.com/KanchanGupta. Blog on this and other issues at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com. Write to him at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
