Gujarat is synonymous with entrepreneurship and yet again! Well, now you know what’s common with Modi, Hillary and Obama. All the three are using Youtube for their political activism and propaganda. Orkut too isn’t far behind.
Never did anyone think that the Narendra Modi, the self proclaimed ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ would take to the internet so fast. This is the first season of youtube and politics in America and bam—the fever has already reached Gujarat, India. Following BJP, now even Congress has started to exploit youtubes popularity to stay up front with the Modi.
On another note, its is really sad that we don’t have Mr.Pramod Mahajan with us who is the harbinger of technology in India—be it for his party’s political agendas or introduction and popularization of cell phones in India. The man deserves a credit.
Without digressing too much, let’s go ahead. It now becomes imperative to analyze the internet as a medium for Indian politicians. This trend is an extremely positive one and very conducive for the growth democracy and will lead to increased accountability. It is a fact that the penetration of broad-band in India is very small but at the same time the growth is exponential. It is just a matter of a decade or even less when the number of broad-band users will surpass the number of mobile users (well, there could be a debate on this! J)
But coming back, we also know that currently the people wired to the internet are mainly composed of the so called elite class and then the middle-class. Both being educated and comprising the major segment of the tax-payers. Tradition the role that they both play in the electoral process is extremely small with the former being very close to negligent. Two reasons that come to my mind are the unwillingness to attend political rallies after a hard day’s work which might require some traveling too and the second being misinformed (grape-wine) about the political agendas which in turns contributes to unaccountability and hence anti-incumbency factor. Neither the politicians remember what they promised nor do the masses know what they had promised. At the end of the fifth year, both parties are confused.
Now with the inception of internet and youtube kind of media, the educated class have a chance to directly (virtually) interact with our representatives. The biggest contribution that this trend brings along is a many-fold improvement in the involvement of masses. Just leave alone the transformation from being an arm-chair activist to an active politician. This will leave no room for excuses for their ignorance and will be dubbed as irresponsibility if this fails to catch their attention. Political rallies and opportunities to question the elected ones from the comfort of their air-conditioned living rooms is now what they have! What more can they expect? This is something wonderful and my never dying optimism about the Indian political situation is being super nourished.
The debate can now be taken to the next level. How effective is this medium of expression going to be with?? Is this the inception of a new genre of politics? Is the content going to be bifurcated between the internet and the traditional rally attending audience? How important is the role one to one human interaction in conveying the message?
Only time can tell! But its impact is certainly positive and in the right direction.
Again, with already existing medium like television and SMSs, there needs to be a healthy balance between the all forms in-order to effectively reach out to the an increased number of people. Electronic media like these necessitate that the communication be summarized conflicting with the need for a full-fledged and active debate. Hence a judicious balance needs to be maintained.
In conclusion, Don’t confuse the messenger with the message.
