Update“We are out here cleaning India Gate. Cleaning programmes are going on across the country. The message is we have to keep India clean. Everybody and not just government officials will have to participate in this. And it has to be an everyday operation, not just once in a year and not just for the camera.”
Alphons Kannanthanam, a recent inductee into the Union Cabinet, was doing his bit for the Swach Bharat cause — pity that he first arranged for cameras and the press, and then had volunteers litter the India Gate lawns so he could “clean it up”. That he then lectured about camera-ops is merely the ironical icing on the cake.
It is not an isolated instance. Back in September 2014, sanitation workers had to litter an area outside Red Fort so then Minister of State (independent charge) for Culture and Tourism Shripad Naik could clean it up. Around the same time, Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay and AAP-turned-BJP leader Shazia Ilmi did a similar number in the Lodhi Road area. A basic google search throws up any number of similar examples.
The supreme irony, though, lies in this: Kannanthanam did his made-for-headlines clean-up act on September 17. Two days prior, the prime minister had “cracked the whip” on his council of ministers. On that day the PM was — digest this slowly — launching a campaign to highlight a campaign (Swach hi Seva to highlight Swach Bharat).
Read the operative part of the news report:
The Centre has launched a nation-wide sanitation campaign that will be carried out over a fortnight, to highlight the Modi government’s campaign Swachh Bharat Mission.
The campaign, named ‘Swachhta Hi Seva’ (Cleanliness is Service) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be launched by President Ram Nath Kovind from Ishworiganj village in Kanpur.
According to sources, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cracked the whip, asking his Council of Ministers to perform physical labour and not just indulge in photo-ops.
Noticed the bit about “according to sources”? Why would “sources” need to remain unnamed when speaking of something as unobjectionable as this? Because in modern-day ‘journalism’, sources is a thinly veiled euphemism for PR plants.
In a wide-ranging interview to The Wire, Arun Shourie had reflected at length on this problem:
One of the instruments is headline management, so something bad happens in Kashmir, something bad happens in Gujarat, such as the Dalits doing this Gandhian leaderless protest, withdrawing cooperation, what does the government do? You plant another story or stories. Everybody runs these because you have a tutored media. Next morning you are not concerned about Kashmir or Gujarat, you are congratulating yourself on your success in diverting the media’s attention. It compounds the problem. It means that you will not pay attention to the fire that you have set. You don’t think there is a disaster there, you are busy celebrating a success. Your obsession is the media, not the situation.
Shourie’s words, on this and other aspects of the BJP government, were dismissed then as stemming from the bitterness of a leader who did not get his due in the Modi scheme of things. But you see his warnings playing out, in ways little and big, every day, in every sphere of government.There is nothing really in the cited story except puffery, an attempt to garner a benign headline at a time when so much else tends to the negative. And how hard Modi’s whip was “cracked”, how clearly the message got across, is evident in the fact that just two days later one of the newest members of his Cabinet did precisely what the PM supposedly “cracked the whip” against. To wit, indulged himself with a nice little photo-op.
That the nation has a garbage problem is not in dispute — at least, not by anyone who can see, and smell. That the Swach Bharat campaign has achieved zip — besides adding a little cess to our proliferating taxes and cesses — is equally obvious. The question not being asked is why a PM with an undisputed personal appeal is unable to rally the nation behind his call for a ‘jan andolan‘, to address an issue so obviously pressing.
The answer is: cynicism. From day one, the campaign has been nothing more than an extended photo-op, to be used by the PM and various other worthies whenever they felt the need to figure in the headlines in a positive light. So why would anyone take it seriously? You don’t inspire mass ‘andolans’ through photo-ops.
Ask yourself a simple question: Given there is so much garbage around, why would a minister who wanted to make a point about the need for cleanliness need to litter an already clean street, when for the same expenditure of time and energy he could clean an area that really needed cleaning?
This is not the only instance of its kind. A recent news report spoke of slums in Ahmedabad being hidden away by fencing and plastic sheets in preparation for the Modi roadshow with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe. In 2015, ahead of the Vibrant Gujarat event, a wall was built to hide a slum near the venue.
An earlier post, on the rise of the pseudo-event, might provide some context and background on this tendency to manage the headlines, control the optics, rather than to actually solve the problem. And equally such pseudo-events, however small, need to be called out precisely because while we are seduced by the benign headlines, the real problems remain unsolved, and grow.
Update, 5PM: And then this happened: BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiah decided to show up the West Bengal authorities by doing a highly public clean up at Kalighat Temple. The WB government got wind of it, and cleaned the place up before the BJP leader and his entourage could get there. The BJP then went ahead and swept the already clean area for the sake of optics.
Hidden within this superficially amusing story is a clue to why we are in the mess we are in. One lot does a ‘clean drive’ not for the sake of a clean India as a principle but for political point scoring. The other lot gets in first and cleans the place up — not because they see the act of keeping their city clean as one of their duties, but to sucker punch the political opposition. And then the first lot goes ahead with its drama anyway — because, photo-op. And because it was too much trouble to have walked a street or two down and cleaned up some actual garbage.
This is what government across the board has been reduced to: a photograph, a headline.
Smoke Signals 
Thank you, Prem, for highlighting this. This happens to be one of the features of this regime – guiding the discourse in the direction it needs. For example, before the elections, if you remember, Amit Shah was questioned several times about the ongoing cases and he simply did not reply. The same with Modi when questioned by Rajdeep. So, what they do is maintain a silence on things that are uncomfortable and hope that the things blow over. And, they happen to be absolutely right.
Attention is then focused on things happening elsewhere in another day or two. No one persists in asking the same questions, unless it is many months or years later – “What happened then?” and at that time the question becomes mostly benign or academic. This is actually a very effective ploy and they bank on the public memory being too short.
Another thing to notice is how they plant stories that are designed to somehow show outrage at things being done by “the others”. They themselves never get caught in anything. When the recent Manish Tiwary brought out the outrage in the BJP talking heads, you must see that it is the very same argument that they had faced from the Congress with regard to Dadichi and his tweets. And what happens then? The public joins in the outrage and then everything else is forgotten.
This question has been asked in the media for a long time – how is it that in spite of all the adverse effects of demonetization or brazen despotic acts the government still retains its popularity? And while you are right in pointing out the media support, what simply comes out is that the media does not really matter. Not to the great masses, that is. There is so much hand-wringing about TV anchors and the “godi” media etc. But the truth is that their reach is actually overestimated. Large imagery does work, I admit. But not the nitty-gritty, the small details. What the opposition uses as adverse remarks or whatever issues they pick up does not actually percolate down to the masses. There is no effective dispersal of information from mass media. But what has worked forever for the Sangh and its political factions is the movement on the ground, with whisper campaigns, with false info and a show of camaraderie with the hoi poilloi. False as it is, it works.
Do this yourself. For example, if you are traveling in an auto or a cab, chat up the driver. You can mostly guess which community he belongs to. Try putting in a really stupid comment like, say, “These days Muslim girls are not wearing Burkhas anymore. Did you see that? Those girls, so brazen… those were Muslims… look at them..” and say this casually … and pat comes the reply “They are like that only… shameless”… talk to another person from the opposite viewpoint “Look at these crass people…. they are wearing Burkhas in this day and age” and the same result “They are like that only”. It amuses me at times to try this experiment, but in the end it scares me shitless.
No matter what you say, the general perception is that the other side is wrong. And this feeling of Fake Oneness is so easy to develop. You just have to show your bias and then the bigotry arises out from the other speaker in no time at all. Even with educated people. So, to my mind, what this actually shows is that our people (or probably people around the world) are going through some form of identity crisis. They have this angst – to belong, to want to belong, to be identified as a part of a group/army/mob and that is why this works. The polarization is not actually about communalism or about faith or about patriotic sentiments. It is far more primitive and primal than that.
Arun Shourie and other commentators point out the visible evidence or the indicators, not the reason why it works. Maybe this lack of security among people or their fear that as society changes they are losing their traditional identities and the overwhelming deluge of change in technology and lifestyle is actually making them paranoid.
Sorry for the long comment, but this half-baked idea was forming in my mind over the years but I am still unable to articulate it properly. Maybe, one of these days, when I have clarity of mind and my health is a little better I will try and write it down more coherently. 🙂 Thanks, Prem, as ever, for the essential updates.
I think you should write. In fact, I think lots more people should write — pro, con, middle ground, doesn’t matter. A distinct lack today is that of voices — again, supportive, contrarian, doesn’t really matter so long as there are voices speaking out, and this speech, in turn, provokes thought, argument, discussion, debate.
You said: “No matter what you say, the general perception is that the other side is wrong. And this feeling of Fake Oneness is so easy to develop. You just have to show your bias and then the bigotry arises out from the other speaker in no time at all. Even with educated people. So, to my mind, what this actually shows is that our people (or probably people around the world) are going through some form of identity crisis. They have this angst – to belong, to want to belong, to be identified as a part of a group/army/mob and that is why this works. The polarization is not actually about communalism or about faith or about patriotic sentiments. It is far more primitive and primal than that.”
That is actually the peg of a piece. There was a time when politics looked to unify a majority under an umbrella of political and economic ideas. Today, there is a distinct paucity of ideas that people can get behind (hence, among other things, the increasing apathy of the majority of voters, who don’t even bother to show up). Given this, the political parties have no option but to divide, where they once united, and hope to end up with a slightly greater share of the voter pie. The best way to divide is tribalism — so there you go.
Get well, be well.
Evidently, littering a place only for photo-ops is bad. Same with 10 ministers with brooms sweeping 5 Sq metres.
That said, Swach Bharat message is really working for those who wish well. People *do* seem to notice, Railways stations were cleaner when i visited recently (admittedly, i dont travel too much by trains), but it was better than the last visit 5 years back.
Kids say swach bharat. But what of their cynical parents who throw orange peels on the roads from their plush mercedes? even the best govts cant do much if all the citizens keep littering.
Someone has to start somewhere. The govt may very well do some self promotion to exhort people to cleanup. But the press much rather would like the citizens to poop on the street, litter like before. it seems!