Politics of Perception

It has been almost five decades since Marshal McLuhan's iconic apothegm 'The Medium is the Message' transformed our understanding of content and its vehicles. The societal manifestations through unavoidable re-organization effected by a medium redefined our understanding of media and communication. Despite several reservations expressed over the generosity extended to the medium by McLuhan, the profundity of his perspective seems to find relevance, time and again, across and beyond the domain of media and communications.

McLuhan's axiom promotes the intrinsic dynamism of a medium to be far more influential in collective perceptual evolution of a society than the content that is disseminated continuously with a conscious and  purported consequence through that very medium. When one tries to attach analogies to decipher this explication, the examples where innovations in delivery have revolutionized societal characterization can actually extend beyond the realm of Media and Communications. One then is forced to appreciate the appropriateness of, and ponder over the inspiration for, McLuhan's realizations. The closest example to Communications is the evolution of Transport where technological innovations in the medium through road, water, rail or air overhauled societal organization much more significantly than the nature of the transported population. If one were to draw a direct illustration between the two verticals, the population or the content that travels today in an airplane or on the internet respectively might have anyway traveled, albeit painstakingly slower, on a ship or through a book or newspaper. The connectivity provided by the Rail network in India, for example, augmented societal optimism for opportunity and economics among a population that until then operated within an intensely localized organization. Societal transformation in these cases have been a consequence more influenced by progressive evolution in the medium than the packet of exchange itself. The essence of McLuhan's observations where the definition of the medium was to deduce the societal implications are in fact easier to comprehend when viewed pragmatically outside the boundaries of its definition. The applicability including in a world today that is witnessing a digital revolution truly underlines the immortality of McLuhan's aphorism.

While McLuhan most often discussed these observations in the context of Media, Communications and Advertising, a rather intriguing application of this concept was when he equated a medium to an individual in the framework of electoral politics. The medium here undergoes a curious customization where its capacious nature from its definition in media is replaced by a highly individualistic nature of a participating politician, yet remaining entirely capable of impacting society with similar amplitude. The abstraction in McLuhan's concept of the medium is for once given a relatable, mortal and, an almost, obvious application. McLuhan's definition lends more significance to the cognitive acceptance and adulation of a leader by the electorate than the nature of policies or polities he or she advocates. An affirmation of this definition has, perhaps, never been more pronounced than with the medium called Barack Obama.

President Obama's campaigns in 2008 and once again in 2012 conquered the electorate with an association that politicians seldom achieve. A distinctive feature of the President's campaigns have been to emphasize as much on the person as the politician. Few leaders, of course, enjoy a luxury that establishes them as a medium so strong that the electorate chooses to overlook deficiencies in the message. An illustration of this intangible, invaluable might enjoyed by the President, paradoxical to statistical deductions, surfaced right after the first Presidential debate in Denver, Colorado. While the Republicans celebrated and the Democrats cringed, the innate willingness of the electorate, including the undecided, to discard this performance of their beloved President as a minor aberration was a clear reflection of the strength of Barack Obama, perceived and accepted, as a person.

While the statistical projections promised a photo finish, Governor Romney's campaign was always waging a losing battle for perceptual dominance. Losing, because the Governor was competing against a medium attributed with the rarest of qualities in the context of politics - Sincerity. While this in no measure questions the integrity of the challenger, the comparative deduction of the electorate provided the President with an almost unassailable advantage. The President's campaign, through continuous reference to a humble background and middle-class values established a medium that the electorate associated with, more as an individual than as a politician. While Governor Romney supported his manifesto with his experience as a successful businessman, the President resigned to more simplistic foundations of family and values. In a country where terms such as business, profits, CEOs, currently suffer from an unfortunate skeptical generalization, Governor Romney's background might have created an unforeseen disadvantage in the perceptual war against the President.

President Obama and the 2012 US Presidential elections are the most recent and perhaps one of the strongest manifestations of McLuhan's observations. Electoral politics apart, the relevance of McLuhan's propositions across domains continues to confirm him as not just the 'Oracle of the Electric Age', but as a true visionary whose one message continues to impact multiple, unexpected mediums.

Responsibility of challenging the status quo

Its  been the year of super hero movies, so why not!
Uncle Ben once said, "With great power comes great responsibility". Oh, how right this old man was!

As India welcomed its thirteenth President in July 2012, Anna Hazare and team were back in New Delhi to salvage renewed support for their crusade against corruption. As team Anna (or Team Kejriwal as it has now turned out to be) resorted to their characteristic rhetorical nonsense, oddly, the populace that had poured onto the streets during earlier protests seemed to have vanished. So, what caused this absenteeism that would have been unfathomable during the protests last year? An inherently indifferent civil society who just got jaded of an unnecessarily loud-mouthed brigade, or a realization of the realities of actually transforming a country beyond their then new-found patriotism, or the inadequacies and arrogance now apparent in the path of the messiah?

At the height of its campaign last year, any and all views against the Anna movement were dismissed as balderdash and downright cynical. If one wasn't part of the battalion stomping across the major cities of the country, it suddenly seemed to reflect an absolving of one's responsibility towards the nation. The maidans of the country became a stage for instant gratification to a civil society that hitherto had nourished the demon of corruption across the echelons of power. The entire country was buoyant with a sense of unprecedented fervor to kill this demon and the Jan Lokpal Bill was hailed and vehemently proposed as the only route to redemption. The media, unsurprisingly, jumped on the bandwagon and fed the public with what it wanted to hear. As propagated continuously by Team Anna, the time for change had arrived, the liberator had risen, the status quo had been challenged!

A year later, amidst a realization of the ineffectiveness of his, almost extortionate, fasting escapades masqueraded under the facade of Gandhian-ism, Anna deals not just with a fractured purpose, but also a fractured team. The lack of consensus, over diving into the very system that they had distastefully abused when they enjoyed blind public support last year, has alienated Anna from his trusted aides. During the course of their directionless revolution, not only has Anna and team succumbed to jokers to garner inconsequential footfall to conform relevance, but have inflicted a greater disservice to this nation by cementing a thick layer of skepticism against any real messiah, if we are ever destined for one.

The circumstances under which thousands flocked toward an 'India Against Corruption' campaign last year made it especially unique. Unique, because this revolution was not born out of strife, was not forced out of despair or was not coerced out of some sort of continued intolerable subjugation. Team Anna had managed to inspire a relatively comfortable, often passive, inherently indifferent section of the Indian civil society to rise. Perhaps, this outpouring was not just inconceivable for an initially dismissive political class, but was also entirely overwhelming for Team Anna to provide direction for. The taste of power that paralyzed an entire Government not only turned poisonous, but, as is most often with clueless leaderships, derailed a cause through the imposition of egoistic and unreasonable expectations. Team Anna went from being entertainers disgracefully abusing members of parliament, to whimsical egoists refusing to participate in dialogue, to impractical strategists laying nonsensical deadlines. Not only did they show utter contempt for the democratic setup of this country (however corrupt it was/is), but destroyed the most sacrosanct of human emotions that fuels any revolution - a sense of Hope!

Team Anna with an almost callous negligence, disregarded this responsibility and destroyed the hope of a nation for a reform that, for once, transcended over the quotidian politics of roti, kapda aur makaan. While it is certainly not polite to doubt the intentions of any of its members (yet), Team Anna has shown a serious lack of judgement and a lust for limelight through sensational, often ballistic, displays of criticism. The exhibition of brash, hotheaded defiance towards the establishment that a power-drunk, immature Team Anna irresponsibly practiced has inspired yogis and cartoon(ist)s, while pushing 'that' inspired civilian society back into a shell of indifference and hopelessness. In a country where hope is seldom inspired, Team Anna has left an entire, and perhaps the most significant, segment of the population dejected, betrayed, skeptical and foolish on introspection.    

PS: This article, in no measure, is meant to defend the imperfections of a democratic society or to deny the urgent need for corrective reparation. It is only meant to advocate the need for more reason and less rhetoric when undertaking the responsibility of inspiring a nation and for a recognition of the paucity in the capabilities of self-proclaimed Gandhians and their corrupt implementations of a powerful tool called Satyagraha.