Our Intolerance to Truth - Gandhi Jayanthi Special

Never has the choice of prime ministerial candidate been so much a part of mainstream social discussions like this.

An emigrated Pandit from Kashmir to humble Kumars from Bihar to Chowdarys and Reddys from Andhra Pradesh to art loving Banerjees and Chatterjees   of   Paschim Banga to surname   less   Subramaniams   and Palaniappans of Tamil Nadu, all talk about the repercussions of a specific prime ministerial candidate . The prime ministerial candidate is none other than, Narendra Damodardas Modi or NaMo, who is being hailed as a Messiah of sorts to bring about a change in way, India functions as a nation.

You must be wondering why I haven't added surnames from minority communities in the paragraph above. Because, their views has already been misinterpreted, magnified and colored with a religious fundamentalist view by none other than our so called 'Pseudo-Secularists', who have watched religious   pogroms   right   from   post-independent riots to Sikh   riots   to occasional sectarian violence and had given their valuable arm-chair philosophers  styled  views,  which  just  doesn't  resonate  with  people  from either sides.

So now you would have started to think that, these words are coming from a person who supports Modi secretly and acts like a politically neutral person in outset. I don't blame you for it is a symptom of a disease that is spreading like a viral infection.

WIKIMEDIA

With me posting this on a blog, which naturally qualifies as a part of social media, let me talk about the cyber warriors of BJP and Congress. No other election has brought about such a level of clear divide, about how people approach certain issues. No other election has been contested on the basis of economic indicators as this.  In fact, when Raghuram Rajan, Governor of Reserve Bank of India, recently released a ranking for states based on Multi Dimensional Index, there was a furor of activity in social media for it ranked Gujarat as less developed in contrary to the public opinion, that is Gujarat is a state where milk flows in gutters, glittering gold could be found in street sides and power is generated by some unknown Shree chakram of Vishnu.

Thanks to this issue, because it brought out a single factor that unites cyber warriors of BJP and Congress.  That is, they are suffering from a serious disease which makes them immune to 'Hard facts'. A very serious disease which makes them blabber hollow claims , lie with a straight face , make completely   irrelevant   personal   remarks to deride a personality and importantly to enter the discussion thread on Facebook , discussion forums and troll everyone.

It is this disease that makes them quite a difficult group of people to argue with. Argument is defined as an attempt to convince someone of something by presenting them reasons to accept a certain conclusion. But it never works with them because

1. Reasons do contain hard facts and the affected people have deep disregard for anything that is a 'fact'.

2. The moment when they feel the argument supports a conclusion that is against their pre-conceived notion, they hop from one topic to other or accuse us of being a racist, religious fundamentalist, pseudo-secularist, leftists, Hindutva-vadi and to top it all, 'Traitor'.

Before 1990’s everyone watched Doordarshan and  received  similar  news across the country. Then, political parties started their own TV channels to peddle their point of views to public. The extreme example is found in Tamil Nadu, where watching news bulletins from channels of opposing parties would make any sane person to think whether they are living in two alternate universes at a same time. The problem starts there, for the lazy us, stick to a news channel than surfing more than 2 channels to know the truth. The more we hear from a specific news channel, our political stance slowly gets tied to their ideology.

Enter Facebook , twitter and the scene is getting more fragmented. People can choose the news they see and they have started forming a bubble around them. The bubble effectively covers their head which makes it extremely hard for us to take the facts to their well-functioning asset, which is their Brain.

Here, I would like to quote an example. On such a discussion on Gujarat, I stated to a person that Gujarat has a low HDI index.  For information, HDI is Human Development Index, which is globally accepted parameter to understand the social well being of a citizen. The answer which he gave shocked me, for he openly claimed that HDI is based on falsehood and added that it is inhumane, for it reduces people to some numbers. But he was part of a larger band, which plays the same tune for years, that is, their state has higher GDP and hence their citizens are well off. Am still trying to come in terms with how GDP is related to people's well being.

So here is a truth that has emerged.  Even before Lok Sabha polls, the Narendra Modi factor has divided people into two separate groups and I believe that this is to continue further, even if Modi wins these polls or loses it. Modi has already won the mind game for  he and  his public relations machinery has turned the game from BJP vs Congress to Modi vs Congress, in eyes of Anti-Modi fans and Modi vs Ills that haunt this nation, in eyes of Modi fans.

Win or Lose, Narendra Modi has entered the national scene and he is indeed a figure to reckon with. Call it illusion or real, the public relation machinery of his, has captured the imaginations of millions in this nation.

What if Modi loses his 2014 LS Polls?

He will get elected as Chief Minister of Gujarat for the fourth consecutive time and we may get to hear Rahulisms in upcoming Independence day speech like,

“Politics is everywhere. It's in your shirt, your pants”

“You go to a night club somewhere in Spain and there’s Amitabh Bachchan on the screen there, dancing around. That’s the power of India. That’s the power of Indian people”

“These roads can’t have potholes. They can’t break down in six months. They have to be big roads because they are going to carry strong people, strong forces”.

Am sure that would make us all proud and of course it's a point to cheer for many aunties and young girls who wanted him to be Prime Minister for his cute and charming looks, just like his father.

And here  is  a  social  media  alert:  

Brand  Namo  has  entered  smart  phone market too.

To hell with marketing.

Links:

Spotlight on some Rahulisms: In pics

Narendra Modi fans launch 'Smart NAMO' phones

Modi and the numbers game

http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=811586

Report development states

Guest post Link : http://www.deepakkarthik.com/2013/09/never-has-choice-of-prime-ministerial.html 

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters

This was the remark of Peter Theil , a founder of Pay Pal. 

It's true that our current innovations aren't having a big bang appeal which 18th and 19th century innovations had, like a Steam Engine or Iron Clad Ship or Radio. 

But this also explains a bit about inability of human kind to direct innovations in a specific direction and bit more about our inability to predict the impact of seemingly humble tools like Twitter, which asks people to react within a limit of 140 words.

Who would have imagined that those 140 words would have fueled a great socio-political churn in form of 'Arab Spring '. 

In 1990's our childhood dream would have been to travel in a flying car and not typing 140 characters on a glass screen. Jump to 2013. Flying Car is still a distant dream but those 140 characters are moving the world, changing the rules and made the ideator Jack Dorsey, A Billionaire for god sake.

And now he is going to kill another childhood dream of having our own credit cards with unending limits of withdrawal .  

Yes. His product Square is here , to disrupt the existing credit card framework and bring the wallet into our smart phones. Hence now the Credit cards are facing a slow death. How cool is that ?

Though sounding cool, we have no idea about it's supposed impacts on our spending habits and its reflection on actual economy. 

Below are the links which speak on how the present day Innovations is being viewed by majority and its implication ,which are far from unknown.

1. Founders Fund , whose motto goes like /// We invest in smart people solving difficult problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems///.
Their Innovation document is interesting and it can be found @ What Happened to the Future?

2. An Economist article on whether the present day Idea and Innovation have stopped benefiting the real economy : Has the ideas machine broken down?

3. A case of an unintended effect on real economy by 140 characters :http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/we-w...

Happy reading !!!!

Can Social Media 'Reform' Indian Society -2 : Social Media and Decision Making

Social Media: Can social media bring transparency in decision making apparatus of Government through crowd sourcing?

Let me try answering this question keeping in mind a developing nation with a vibrant civil society like India .

People, now clamor for transparency in policy making and functioning of government , and hence see Social media as a savior to reach those demands. 

As a developing nation, when we look around in the world, countries are struggling to create such an environment because it is prohibitively costly to create such an extensive framework where opinions of citizens could be taken by Government.

On the other hand, government is trying to take hold of Internet as a medium. Though it is impossible to achieve that state, it actively discourages people from voicing their concerns for the fear of spying by the government. Recently , our government issued a statement that it is creating a central authority for screening 'every byte' of information that is communicated. So these acts would just create a 'Unhealthy environment ' for discussion.

So what we need is a Citizen organization which can act as a facilitator of voicing grievances and Social media based framework would be much cheaper to establish and robust too. But can creation of such a body alone solve the problem ? No.

What we need is a change in stance by Government in tolerating opposing views in cyber space and it should try create a framework wherein better suggestions would be rewarded. The citizen organization should be in a position to exercise authority by having a partnership based interaction rather than being a postman. That would prevent government from manipulation and the worst case scenario of making the whistle blower, a convict. 

Distrust causes hesitation among masses to express freely on a forum that is run by the government, especially if censorship and punishment might follow.

A McKinsey and Co., report states that by 2015, 330 million Indians will be online. As of now it has 120 million Internet users and Over the next three years, India will add the highest number of Internet users, taking the penetration rate to 28%. India boasts of 62 million facebook users (3rd highest user base globally) and more than 15 million twitter users. These figures are likely to grow, indicating that there is a fertile ground which is emerging, wherein more and more people expect real time access and authentic engagement.

//Any problem is half solved, once it is properly defined//. Hence with existing social media and right policy decision from Government to facilitate such a Citizen organization, would help it to identify the problems and accelerate the implementation.

Here, I would like to add an recent development :

In case some of you are interested, the Urban Development Ministry (India) is inviting citizens to join a new Google group they have set up in order to crowd source/solicit recommendations and ideas on the 14th Central Finance Commission - with respect to Urban Local Bodies. 

The link to subscribe is as follows: 

google.com

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/moud14cfc

[Thanks to Arbind Gupta for providing the correct link]

Hoping to see how things get shaped up.