How UP was won - a Political Communication Analysis

By Dr C.V. Narasimha Reddi

The stunning victory of Mr Narendra Modi with over 320 seats in the state Assembly of 403 seats, is indeed a Tsunami that no one predicted as the party vote share jumped from just 15% in 2012 to 39.6% in 2017. “This will usher in a big change in the Indian Politics” said Amit Shah.

Three Pronged Strategy

What could be the reason for such a massive mandate? An objective analysis of results and media reports reveal that Mr. Narendra Modi as an icon of the party with Amit Shah Party President as a strategic tactician (action man) evolved a three pronged strategy to win the war of UP elections. It includes: Modi's ideology and his development schemes; propaganda and communication strategy and the third most important one is grassroots communication through booth level samithies.

Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas - an idea that clicked

Ideology and Performance Indicators

First, the BJP has evolved a content strategy based on its ideology and high performance indicators of welfare schemes. They include:

•    Creation of a sectarian division between Hindus and Muslims by not having fielded a single Muslim on the 403 Assembly seats. A sense of loyalty developed by Hindus towards BJP

•    BJP’s viewpoint against triple talaq to woo muslim women.

•    It is not caste that matters but development said Modi Ji which has broken the caste ridden society of Uttar Pradesh, by highlighting that one needed development, innovation, a new sense of spirit to eradicate poverty and not the old lethargic caste based reservations.

•    The Prime Minister address to the nation on demonetisation watched and heard by millions of people created a war resonated so strongly with the poor for establishing an equitable society, who became his captive vote bank. As a result Mr. Modi not only became pro-poor but also anti-corruption crusader. In the process, a type of social coalition has been created comprising the poor, the new middle class, marginalised sections of other backward classes and dalits. This has been a strong point in favour of BJP.

•    The B.S.P's strategy Dalit - Muslim vote bank has been shattered by social coalition.

Along side ideological connotations, the BJP's election strategy included the achievements of NDA Government’s welfare schemes during the last two years. Among others, the credits of the Government comprise make in India, the concept of 'Roti Kapda and Makan’ (Food, Clothing and Shelter) for the poor, national policy for farmers, “Phade Bharat Badhe Bharat”, “Aam Aadmi Bhima Yojna”, Prime Minister’s foreign travels that brought 'Samman' to India, Skill India, Digital India, Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan etc. Other welfare schemes that were included in the strategy cover: the initiation of 52 lakh gas connections to women in UP as well as disbursal of Rs. 20,000 crore loans through the Mudra Bank and opening of three crore Jan Dhan accounts.

If the recent notebandi topped the list of achievements, sending of 104 satellites to space by ISRO in one go became an added value to boost the image of Modi Government.

Amit Shah - Big  Change in
Political Communication

Multi-media Propaganda Campaign

All these ideological and performance indicators were sold to the electorate more forcefully and effectively through a strong multi-media propaganda campaign. Second part of the election strategy was, therefore, a multi-media communication and propaganda campaign to reach out to the electorate. Media included: interpersonal media, folk arts, mass media – newspapers, radio, TV and social media – facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. The Prime Minister’s speeches in the course of his Man Ki Baath, radio broadcasts, TV news and speeches delivered in India and abroad, election rallies, and his views expressed on the stump made more impact on the voters mind, particularly, those who are exposed to mass media.

Modi’s Dress

GandhiJi's dress made all the more difference for the people to identify him as a man of the people in the freedom struggle. Similarly, Modi's dress, overt change in style and his energetic personality – all created an effective veneer around his political style which has added to his vote catching power among all sections of the people including the Dalits.

Among all, Mr. Modi is an excellent orator whose oration with parables not only attracted the attention of the public but also influenced their mindset towards his ideology. One of the strategies has been his punch dialogues such as SP Leader Akhilesh Yadav and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi were described as “old furniture”, while BSP leader Mayavathi as “Yesterday's newspaper”. Amit Shah treated all opponents as “Kasabs” who was executed in terrorists attacks case. Mr. Modi's speech modulation and body language also projected his personality and influenced the voters. Prime Minister even participated in street shows to reach out to the people at the booth level. Above all, people say that Modi had a better hearing aid to listen to what we call grassroots voice that helped him to evolve his communication strategy.

As a result of his style of speaking and achievements, people praised Mr. Modi calling him honest, clean and “Garibon Ka Messiah”, a symbol of India and immediate cause of the elections that helped his party to win the elections.

Booth Level Samithies

Third, an effective grassroots communication strategy was designed almost in 2014 to reach out to the village voters through booth level samithies. These samithies were constituted at 1.4 Lakh election booths with BJP party workers and RSS pracharaks. In fact, RSS paid a pivotal role at the grass roots. This aspect of strategy was more forceful than the other two strategies. If the second strategy of propaganda was through mass media, public meetings and rallies, the third strategy was based on two step - flow of communication – Modi's message first reached booth level samithi members through mass media in the first step and in turn these members of booth level samithies reached every household in the village, town or city to carry the messages of Mr. Modi. House hold communication was yet another feature of the election campaign in which messages of MR Modi were humanized and personalised to influence the mindset of the voters.

Whither India

Dr C V Narsimha Reddi

India was ruled by foreigners for about 1000 years of which Muslims ruled for 600 years including the Mughals. A dichotomy surfaces in the recent election campaign of BJP that if “Sabka Saath – Sabka Vikas”, was the BJP's election campaign in 2014 while the winning BJP consciously excluded Muslims in the 2017 election fray. What message does that send? People ask what will be the future of our secular country? An issue to ponder over. (The author is Editor  of Public Relations Voice; Former Director Information and Public Relations Department, Govt of Andhra Pradesh. Email ID – drcvn@hotmail.com

Of poverty, Radio Rice, farm revolution, Mahalonabis Plan

• Political Communication-Part IV

By S.Narendra

Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer

to Government and Spokesperson

The socio-economic agenda of the political leadership from 1952, when the first five-year plan was launched, until the economic reforms of 1991 was articulated in the Plans. Planning and five-year plans were considered as something like a magic wand for delivering the dreams of millions of Indians. And, thus began the halcyon days for development communication, serving as the oxygen of political communication…….and official propaganda. Read on the 4th Installment.

Nehru - the brain behind Five-Year Pans
that shaped dearly days of Independent
India's economic development

It began as an era of unimaginable scarcity and deprivation. Rationing of food, fuel, firewood, cloth and other essential commodities continued for several years after independence. As an eight-year-old boy, I remember, I had to stand in a queue for collecting mere 6 to 8 pieces of firewood. That was the weekly quota! My four older siblings were detailed at other queues for basic items like rice, sugar, wheat (a rare commodity), and cloth. On many days, after waiting for hours in the line, we would return empty handed, as the ration shop was short of supplies. Poverty was something that was shared by the majority of people. The advent of freedom and the promise of INC during the freedom movement that it would address poverty issues on a priority had kindled a faint hope among the people.

Agriculture, though of subsistence kind, dominated the economy. Overcoming scarcities, especially of food (the foodgrain output was less than 50 million tonnes) was a political priority as well. Congress as a national movement had committed itself to abolish Zamindari and now time had come for redeeming that commitment. While public pronouncements on honouring this commitment were sweet music to the landless and the farm tenants, the party had to contend with behind-the-scene opposition from its leaders and legislators. According to studies, nearly 12% of them were landlords. The new Constitution had included private property ownership right as a Fundamental Right.

Bhakra-Nangal Dam

A British government report in the early part of 20^th century had famously said that India’s agriculture was a gamble in monsoons.  And, the new government’s focus was on making farming less dependent on rains by building big irrigation projects. The core economic content of political communication in the initial days of Independence was naturally was on growing more food. After the famine of 1940s, the predecessor British government had launched a low key  grow more food campaign and it ended up only as  posters exhorting farmers to grow more food.  The campaign got subsumed and imbued with new energy in the first five-year Plan the focus of which was on improving agriculture. A large share of the  first five-year Plan of over Rs 2000 crore went to fund the grow more food campaign and multi-purpose irrigation projects.

Radio Rice Revolution: The policy makers were greatly impressed by the American  Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that had harnessed the Colorado river for greening the arid western America. This model was adopted lock, stock and barrel by India. The political communication went lyrical while presenting this government initiative. Prime Minister Nehru, who opened the sluice gates of 700-feet tall Bhakra dam in Punjab in 1954 called it ‘the new temple (s) of India’. According to newspaper accounts of the time, people lined up for miles along the canals branching out of the dam to witness the Sutlej river water entering their area. Many more such projects such as the Tungabhandra, Nagarjuna Sagar, Damodar, Hirakud laid the foundation for the  in the ‘green revolution’, catapulting India on to the way to food self–sufficiency. But it took more than a decade for this ‘green revolution’ to come on stream.

The communication saga surrounding India’s farm revolution, especially the ‘green revolution ‘has spawned thousands of Ph.Ds in the US and India. The political leadership that spearheaded this movement showed an extraordinary vision that resonated among the farming community. A notable feature of this political communication was that it was sans party politics. This effort also created a massive country-wide machinery including innovative communication channels reaching out to the villages. One of the AIR initiatives in this field -RRF or Radio Rural Forum - has donned the folk-lore of development communication. The illiterate farmers who were taught by participatory radio programmes to grow a high yielding rice (IR-8) associated it so much with the radio, they termed it  ‘Radio Rice’. I was a very, very small part of this farm revolution machinery when I started my career. I had the privilege of writing a series of feature articles on the green revolution that was taking place in the Kosi river command area in Bihar. 

Planning as an instrument of national development was, however, embraced by the Indian national Congress in as early as 1938, and Jawaharlal Nehru had headed the party’s committee on Planning. And, the National Planning commission was set up very soon after India became a Republic in 1950 and the first five-year plan was rolled out in 1951. Its first chairman was PM Nehru himself, who was also its foremost spokesman. The 1952 general elections was the first poll campaign in which INC showcased many of the five-year plan programmes. The party manifesto declared: “it is Not possible to pursue a policy of laissez –faire in industry....it is incompatible with any planning. It has long been Congress policy that basic industries should be owned or controlled by the State...State trading should be undertaken...A large field is left for private enterprise... Thus, the economy will have public sector as well as a private sector’.

Tungabhadra Project

The concept of this mixed economy progressed further for addressing the prevailing wide  income  disparities. In 1955, the All India Congress Committee session held at Avadi decisively moved for controlling the commanding heights of the economy. Its resolution said: “In order to realise the object of the Congress,...to further the objective of the Preamble (of the Constitution of India), and Directive Principles of State Policy ...Planning should take place with a view to establishing a socialist pattern of society, where the principal means of production are under social ownership or control, production is progressively speeded up and there is equitable distribution of national wealth’.

The IDRA or Industrial Development and Regulation Act (1951) had already anticipated such a political stance.

On the political front, the party Resolution not only reflected  Prime Minister Nehru’s own economic thinking but it was also a response to the criticism by stalwarts like Acharya Kripalani, Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan that the Congress was not sufficiently socialistic. These persons had left the Congress and formed new political parties. In fact, there was some discussion within the party at this stage whether farm land should be owned by communities but it did not go further. The Avadi session was a watershed moment in India’s economic history and decisively influenced the later official industrial policy.

A year later, the II five year plan, known as the Mahalonabis Plan- was unveiled. (Per Wikipedia, The Feldman–Mahalanobis model is a Neo-Marxist model of economic development, created independently by Soviet economist G. A. Feldman in 1928, and Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1953. Mahalanobis became essentially the key economist of India's Second Five Year Plan, becoming subject to much of India's most dramatic economic debates.)

The Plan fully embraced the Avadi philosophy, with the government getting into running of big heavy industry enterprises such as steel. The political communication that emanated was somewhat jingoistic in the sense that India would build some of the world’s ‘biggest’, world’s ‘first’, ‘largest’ projects. While the policy of import substitution, self-sufficiency, had not yet appeared in political parlance, there was a definite  stress on ‘self-reliance’. This was also the period when Nehru had given his famous call for inculcating ‘a scientific temper’ among the people and had  laid the ground for setting up various institutions for scientific research and higher education like CSIR, Atomic research, IITs and others. But India had not closed its doors to foreign technology, expertise and enterprise. Media reports about projects were highly appreciative accounts of government policies. There was a spirit of ‘we can do it’ in the air and the impact of this spirit can be felt even to this day. 

Foreign Media watch on India: From the II Plan onwards, the Planning Commission became almost a supra-body that overshadowed the cabinet. The Plan document itself with its grandiose schemes was something like a post-dated cheque. It was an invaluable companion of government publicists. The newspapers gave prominent coverage to announcements of Plan schemes and the Plan document served as a great source for news stories spun out by economic journalists, especially on days when the news fall was thin.   

A largely illiterate population (85%) adopting the democracy based on universal franchise had excited the western developed countries and their media. No such example existed in political history. A poverty-ridden India’s experiment to push planned development in a federal democracy was another factor that came to be watched with keen interest. The compulsions of World War II had made the western capitalist countries also to accord a dominant role for the state in running the economy. Leading captains of Indian industry had come out with their own Plan document known as the Bombay Plan that had strongly argued for the state to take a lead in economic development, and had visualised a supplementary role for the private sector.  And, therefore, the Indian government declaring its intention through Planning to control and manage the economy for the greatest good of the greatest numbers was not contested either at home or abroad. The sheen of freedom movement had not left the Indian national Congress and the credibility of the prime minister was unquestioned. He spoke for the government and the nation on almost on all matters and dissenters were seen as an aberration.

One had to wait until 1959 for major political dissent on economic policy to surface in the form of the Swatantra party founded by C.Rajagopalachari, a close associate of Gandhi and Nehru. Minoo Masani had set up his Forum of Free Enterpise. The editor of Current weekly, D.F.Karaka was a trenchant critic of Nehru and had begun his free enterprise crusade. Around this time, there was also some disquiet on on Nehru’s foreign policy, especially with regard to China and its actions in Tibet. The first biggest scam of independent India -Mundhra Scandal- was coming to light. But let me not jump into another period.

The author
sunarendra@gmail.com

Returning to 1950s, a remarkable facet of political communication on economic development in the early years of independence was that the political leaders who had suffered incarceration at the hands of the colonial power, did not hark back to the economic havoc brought upon India by the colonial masters. This was in stark contrast to the content of political communication on the same theme that took   place in the recent past. Political parties at the centre and the states come to power by blaming the predecessor regime.

When several Afro-Asian countries gained independence from the colonial masters, very soon after India became free, the leadership of those countries kept blaming the predecessor regimes for their under-development and used this theme as an excuse for them not making economic progress. But Indian leadership, in contrast, was more far- sighted and kept focus on what it could do to remedy the aborted economic development of India under foreign rule. (To be continued)

From dusty to dirty poll campaigns - anatomy of political communication

By S.Narendra

Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer

to Government and Spokesperson

(Political communication is the oxygen of democracy like India. It can sustain political institutions of a parliamentary democracy and empower the people as its responsible participants, as demonstrated by the first generation of leaders of independent India. India became a Republic on January 26th 1950. In a formal sense, the nation embarked on a new political journey that was bound to be marked by electoral battles and power politics. The leading lights of the freedom movement, who can be regarded as the founders of the new nation had donned the role of ageing  guardians who were in a hurry to secure the hard won freedom  by ringing it with political institutions, appropriate political conventions and traditions. There were both open and covert political contests among them and honest ideological schisms. The national movement called the INC had become a political party in quest of power. This formidable monolith was showing faint signs of cracking. This process had unleashed political communication of many hues.... Read on --- the third installment)

The world’s longest written Constitution was a done deal, and India became a Republic on 26^th January 1956. Unlike the contemporary new constitution of Japan, (known as Gen. McArthur’s constitution) this document, debated with much passion and light, was a totally an Indian product. Soon after, the Constituent Assembly had converted itself into an interim Parliament and transacted some momentous legislative business. From the political communication angle, the RPA or the Representation of The People’s Act set the rules for the conduct of first elections in early 1952 and provided the platform for the functioning of the political parties and their political communication.

Another piece of most remarkable but highly controversial draft legislation was the Hindu Code Bill. This was a daring social reform attempt that touched literally a holy cow -the customary Hindu Law. Remarkably, it was spear-headed by two Brahmin leaders -Nehru and Rajaji - and a dalit Dr.B.R.Ambedkar. The heat generated by this attempt to deal with the Hindu marriage, inheritance, status of women raised as storm of protest from inside, led by the president of the  Interim parliament Rajendra Prasad and Sardar Patel. Outside, the orthodox priests, scholars and Hindu organisations cried foul. The RSS (banned in the wake of Gandhiji’s assassination) and the Hindu Mahasabha took up the fight to the streets. The Muslims became apprehensive over demands for a uniform civil code in place of a Hindu Code. There were public protests  and effigies of Nehru were burnt.

In the end, the prime minister gave in to the chorus of protest and the Bill could not become the Law. A disillusioned Dr.Ambedkar, the most brilliant law minister India ever had, quit the government and later formed his own  Scheduled Castes Federation, thus marking the launch of political communication from the dalit aspect. It is another story that the new parliament constituted after the general elections once again took up the Hindu Code Bill, but it was broken up into several legislations mainly to soften the opposition aroused by the earlier  comprehensive  Bill.  There was robust debate and finally the legislations were passed. The first President of India Dr.Rajendra Prasad had toyed with the idea of withholding his assent to the Bills. The newspapers dutifully reported the disagreement between the government and the President but did not take sides. And finally, Dr.Prasad, did not press his disagreement further and signed the Bill, making it into a historic  social reform  Act.

A moot point to ponder in this context is  whether such a law treading  on the  religious sentiments would have gone through peacefully if India of those times had 24x7 TV news channels. The short notable point was that the instruments of mediated political communication were rudimentary.

The Election and Political Education: Aptly described by foreign media as India’s biggest gamble, the first general elections held in early 1952 were unprecedented in its scale of operations. Over the years, the poll operations have only grown in size, complexity ,noise and colour. The poll process and the campaign have themselves turned into the medium and the message of political communication.

Only looking at the official logistical arrangements made then (1952), there were unique communication elements for overcoming  the prevailing mass illiteracy (85%) and even the absence of communication infrastructure. The political parties were assigned unique symbols for identification by voters to overcome the problem of illiterary. Unlike the present elections, there were individual ballot boxes for each party with its symbol. The very fact that at present Voting machine have replaced the ballot box itself shows the long democratic stride India has made. The Election Commission produced AV or audio-visual communication in the form of documentary films for educating the voters on how to exercise their ballots. The radio valiantly tried to supplement but its reach was limited.  From the time of its setting up, the Commission took almost one year to prepare for the polls. The mobilisation  of the general government staff such as teachers, clerks  and other government staff  and training them in conducting free and fair elections was another gigantic communication input.  

The political campaign adopted the communication methods, such as rallies, and public address, tried and tested during the freedom movement. People thronged to hear their heroes of the movement. The prime minister, who had by then wrested the Congress presidentship, led the campaign not just on behalf of his INC but for rallying the people behind the ballot box. The vigour of the opposition campaign could not be quelled by Nehru and INC juggernaut, as could be seen by the election results.

While ‘historians record the fact that Nehru’s Congress won a two-thirds majority in a House of 525 members, they failed to recognise the significance of  the opposition winning  more than 100 plus seats against severe odds. It was not a walk-over for INC, that speaks volumes for the effectiveness of political communication from the opposition parties.

The first general elections was held when there was no Gandhi  or Sardar Patel. They both passed away. Patel had out-manoeuvred Nehru on two crucial occasions. The first was in getting Dr.Rajendra Prasad elected as the first President of India. The prime minister’s wanted to nominate C.Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). Before Nehru could recover from this set back, both Patel and Dr.Prasad  got their nominee –Purushottam Das Tandon-elected as the Congress president at AICC session at Bangalore. The prime minister was more than upset by this choice, as he considered the new party president as a traditional conservative.

Contrast this with the AICC session held at the same venue almost 20 years later (1969), when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. Following the 1969 AICC session, there were daily attacks against the Congress president and her supporters  like Kamaraj, Morarji Desai, S.K.Patil, A.P.Jain and others (branded as Syndicate), and counter attacks. There were mid-night media leaks of letters exchanged by the rival factions in order to gain prominence in the morning newspapers. Unlike Nehru who conceded the presidentship of India to Dr.Prasad, Mrs Gandhi chose to put up her own candidate, V.V.Giri in opposition to the party nomiee-Neelam  Sanjeev Reddy. This was the first and last time (thus far), the election to the office of the president of India generated not only political heat but exchange of polemics by proxies working for the rival candidates. The media chose to be part of this partisan war. On the daily newspapers front, the Patriot (started by left party stalwarts like Aruna Asaf Ali,Sripad Dange)  batted  for V.V Giri and the Indian Express took up the cause of the other side. The Bombay based tabloid weeklies like the Blitz of Rusi  Karanjia and  the Current edited by the redoubtable D.F Karaka battled it out, spitting much venom. Mrs Gandhi after getting Giri to Rastrapati Bhavan,   also split the party.

In contrast, Indira’s father bid his time and made the party president’ s tenure so difficult that the latter was forced to  resign. Patel was not around and Dr.Rajendra Prasad as the president of the country could not intervene. Nehru assumed the party presidentship before the general elections. From the political communication point of view, it was a very strategic move by the prime minister, as he became the biggest vote catcher for INC. A political commentator wryly remarked that ‘even a lamp- post could get elected, if it stood for election under the INC  banner’.

The prime minister Nehru undertook a whirl wind campaign (that could  matched by his daughter during the 1971 campaign and a comparable effort that comes to mind is that of Narendra Modi election campaign of 2013-14) covering almost 24,000 miles. Rarely the prime minister attacked other political parties or their leaders. Of course, at that stage of India’s politics, Nehru need not have had to attack his rivals. Most of them were his comrades in INC until recently. The prime minister was essentially engaged in selling his dream of India, as a nation anxious to put its poverty and illiteracy behind through the magic wand of centralised planning and destined to play a leading role on the world stage. The media followed the prime minister everywhere and every word he uttered was printed, faithfully. As mentioned by the historian Ramachandra Guha, a scribe compared Nehru’s election campaign to that of Samudra Gupta’s (patriarch of Gupta dynasty) campaign for conquest.

A little before  the elections,  a few new parties took birth. Except the CPI or the Communist

The author
sunarendra@gmail.com

party, all others including the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) were founded by ex–Congress leaders. The Communists had established a strong base in Telangana, that had witnessed much violence. As they were perceived to have sided with the British rule, their image was not very positive. Senior leaders of the Congress such as Jayaprakash Narain, J.B.Kripalani left INC to form their own socialist parties, as they felt that Nehru was not sufficiently socialist in his economic thinking. Shyama Prasad Mukherji of West Bengal broke away to found the BJS. At the state level also the INC faced  dissensions as there were political tussels for power. Although the birth of new parties was triggered by personality clashes, the political communication that emanated  during  this period was devoid of personal  attacks. No one questioned each other’s integrity or sincerity of purpose.

How I got the scoop on Gandhi’s assassination! I received severe spankings from my mother. As an eight year old boy, I used to play football (with used Tennis balls) with my friends in a park near our house in Mysore. We used to see older boys and men gathering near our play area and hoist a flag every evening.  After hoisting the flag, they would engage in vigorous exercises that used to end with a chorus of songs. Before dispersing some of them would come to meet our foot-ball team and spend time in telling us stories of Shivaji, Rana Pratap, and tales from Ramayana and Mahabharata. On some festival days they would distribute candies. On the evening of Janruay 29th, this group of men sat with us for a while and distributed Laddoos. We heard from them that Gandhiji will be no more. As I returned home, I told my mother, who was fond of telling me stories about Gandhiji (we had a big picture of him in our drawing room) that I heard Gandhiji will be no more.  She instantaneously began to beat me and admonished me not to say inauspicious things. I received more beating the next day when my brother rushed home around 6’O clock and informed my mother about Gandhiji’s assassination. On hindsight, I keep wondering as to how the news of a plot to kill Gandhiji could have travelled all the way to Mysore. Or was it a political communication of another kind!

Morarji Desai & the Art of Silence as Communication From July 14th to 19th  1969 evening, I was at No.5 Rajendraq Prasad Road, the residence of Morarji Desai, then Deputy prime minister and finance minister. I was his information officer and was asked to be present at his house from morning to till late in the evening for media relations. On the 14th afternoon, PTI flashed that the prime minister had relieved Morarji Desai of his finance portfolio. Without wasting any time Desai got into his private car and drove home. The media persons, some of the biggest names in contemporary journalism, would visit Morarji Desai throughout the day. All of them would bring latest news of some personal attack against him or the other  from the prime minister’s camp and expected Moraji Desai to react. His standard response was:’ I have nothing to say.If some has attacked me, please ask them the reason for it’. He would receive every journalist warmly, speak to each one but refrained from making any adverse comments. Desai also said: ‘it is the prime minister’s prerogative to appoint ministers. So also her prerogative to remove them’. He called me to his room and thanked me and instructed me not to continue my vigil at his house, as he was no longer in government. (From Desai’s residence, I rushed to the office of the Economic Affairs Secretary Dr.I.G.Patel to get a briefing on bank nationalisation that  followed. That is a separate story)

Satyagraha to Storms in Parliament: Political Communication comes a long way

By S.Narendra

(Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer &

Govt. Spokesperson)

Political communication, the oxygen of an open, functioning democracy like India, is at the present moment choked with vituperative confrontation. Te recent parliamentary proceedings and the TV debates have left much to be desired as far as the behaviour of our political leaders. The political institutions supposed to be dedicated for leading the healthy discussions at national and State capitals have become non-functional and alternative channels like media and social media have taken over. In this tit-for-tat era, it is instructive for students of communication like me to take a look at the evolution of political communication from the freedom movement to the present. I am sure, as you read, you will agree with me!

 

Political communication (PC) is the oxygen of a democracy like India. When it purposefully moves through the body politic, it will keep the heart and mind of the democratic polity healthy. It follows from the premise that the PC comes from many voices and in many hues, making the Indian democracy vibrant and colourful. One of the  most respected scholars on Political Science, Earnest Barker in Reflections on Government calls democracy as the revolution by consent. He pays a great tribute to India by reproducing the preamble to our Constitution as his Forward to another book of his. According to Barker, this preamble epitomises the best in western social and political theory that developed over three centuries. The preamble, along with the chapters on Fundamental Rights, (of which the rights to freedom of expression, practice of faith and profession, are critical parts), and the Directive Principles of State Policy set the framework for our political communication.

Charkha - symbol of the original political communication

The evolution of political communication in India runs parallel with the political development of India from the 18^th century. This background is essential for understanding PC. The inspiration for political communication and its broad socio-political agenda came from decades of freedom movement that preceded Independence. It initially addressed the elites of India at home and the political opinion makers in Britain. Leading intellectuals of the time  such as Gopalakrishna Gokhale and Srinivasa Shastri  adopted the British political communication styles and modes as they believed in changing the colonial rule while working from inside. In contrast, Balagangadhar Tilak and several others wanting to change the system while remaining outside of it, took a more strident stand. Tilak’s famous statement:’ Freedom is My Birth Right’ echoed in his newspaper Kesari, stands out and posed a direct political challenge to the British. With this began the political communication of confrontation. Gandhiji’s differed from Tilak in so far as the means for achieving this birth right. His peaceful civil disobedience, that set the tone for freedom struggle morphed into mass Satyagraha movement. This was a mission, a medium as well as a message all rolled into one. It galvanised the ordinary people who were recipients of political communication and became its messengers.

Wrapping PC  around symbols drawn from the common man’ s everyday life such as making of salt, making one’s own cloth from  Charkha and Khadi (to teach self -reliance), burning of British cloth (Swadeshi) for infusing national pride and arouse anger against colonial suppression of Indian enterprise were part of Gandhiji’s master stroke series! In an era when there was no media, the use of symbols (wearing the trade-mark lion cloth, half dhoti and displaying of bare chest, and symbolic acts like Dandi march, fasting, travelling by III class coaches, courting arrest, prayer meeting followed by discourse, Prabhat Pheris all became the political media and the message of  a mass movement.

Scholars’ Perspectives: The broad features PC adopted by leaders at this stage of India’s political development very tightly fits in with the definition of ‘political communication’ given by leading scholars on the subject. R.E Denton and G.C Woodward in their Political Communication in America characterise it as the ways and intentions of message senders to influence the political environment. Another view is that  the key  factor that makes communication ‘political’ is not the  source of a message, (sender and form of communication such as speeches, media coverage, ordinary citizens’ ‘talk’, public discussions) but its content and purpose. Another group of scholars emphasise the ‘strategic nature of political communication in which the role of persuasion in political discourse is critical. It is noteworthy that PC has to be ‘strategic’ strategic’ for influencing public knowledge, beliefs and action on politics. For some writers, PC covers verbal or written communication as well as visual representations such as dress (Gandhi cap, wearing of Khadi clothing, dhoti, by politicians), make –up, hairstyle (Indira Gandhi’s famous silver streak and wearing of simple sarees in public appearances) and party symbols and various other props to establish political identity. In PR terms, we call it as Image management.

Allow me to get into some nitty-gritty since its relevant in the context of current political communication scenario.

A writer regards strategic  political communication (SPC) as comprising ‘PC that is manipulative in intent, that utilises social scientific techniques and heuristic devices to understand human motivations, human behaviour and the media environment, to inform what should be communicated and what should be withheld, with the aim of taking into account and influencing public opinion, and creating strategic alliances and an enabling environment for the policies of the political establishment-at home and abroad. The PC that emanated from the freedom movement leaders stands up remarkably well to all the above cited academic frameworks and attributes  defining PC.

Initially, available media in the form of newspapers, pamphlets and widely publicised petitions to the Imperial government in London complemented the political campaign for gaining Indian representation in the governing system of India. Then came the trend of leaders of freedom movement like Gopalakrihna Goghale (The Maratha, Servants of India Soceity journal) and Balagangadha Tilak (Kesari) starting  their own news newspapers. Having one’s own communication vehicle also increased the political clout of such leader-publishers. Gandhiji’s Harijan and Navjeevan were not only his political instruments but also vehicles for propagating his social reform mission. If one glances through the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi running into more than one hundred volumes, he was an incessant writer of letters and most of them were loaded with political messages. Separately, publishers of newspapers in different languages arrived in support of the struggle for independence, especially after Gnadhiji took over its leadership. These newspaper owner–publishers were observers of the movement as reporters or even commentators. At the same time, they became participants in the freedom movement by making their newspapers as its  campaign vehicles. It was not usual for such owner-publishers to hitch their newspaper to one or the other leader. These publications came to be known as ‘nationalist newspapers’. Their credibility and influence (if not their circulation) grew in direct proportion to the government’s action to block them. It was not unusual for literate participants in the struggle to make a digest of news relating to the movement published in newspapers and circulate among the people who had no access to them. In my own house in Mysore, my elder brother and sister and their friends were engaged in this work. The word of mouth played a significant role in rallying the illiterate people.

Media’s Legacy: This ‘participatory role’  of Indian newspapers had a profound impact on the way the newspapers functioned, including  their content  in the first decade of independence. The newspapers could not shed their perspectives and orientation as less than critical followers of leaders. As Inder Malhotra, a senior journalist noted in a newspaper column that the newspapers adulation of leaders made them blind to the blind–spots of leaders who had now become rulers. If one examines the contents of newspapers of this period, they continued the practice of reproducing the speeches and statements of politicians and official press releases (the practice of printing verbatim Rastrapati Bhavan’s daily press notes of President’s engagements - an imperial legacy-  was stopped in 1972). Among the staff, political correspondents outnumbered the other reporters, causing heavy coverage of political news. Only a shock like the Indian army’s debacle in the Sino-Indian war of 1962 made them sit up, get out of their awe of erstwhile leaders of the freedom movement and  ask questions normally raised by journalists in a democracy. Of course, there were exceptions to this practice but such exceptions were drowned out by cheer-leaders. PC had to wait for many more years to emerge as communication for empowering citizenry to hold the rulers accountable. This clearly establishes that PC as a theme and its consequences for the evolution of economic and political policies deserves deeper academic studies.

Immortalised at Sabarmati

The Government Media: On the colonial government’s side, there were a few newspapers like the Statesman, Civil and Military Gazette and others.The government’s political communication translated many times into brutal action against the freedom movement, like incarceration of its leaders, mass lathi-charge and censorship of newspapers.

This action had twin effects. The first was the case for freedom emerged stronger, attracting an increased number of people into the struggle. The other was to make the political opinion in Britain to sit up in horror and search for a compromise. Not only the press in Britain but also the media in the US began to focus on the freedom struggle and the political communication, indirectly.

As and when the British government came up with constitutional reforms like Minto-Morley Reforms, later Montague and Chelmsford Reforms and the Cripps Mission, the government made efforts to put across its point of views through the official machinery. An Information department was created within the Home affairs department. The Indian involvement in the  first and second World Wars moved the  government to scale up its  information (propaganda) dissemination machinery .The radio, named AIR/Akashavani came in 1927 and acquired the tradition of working as the megaphone of the government. Ownership of radio sets was limited but as a novel electronic media wielded a great influence and increased the velocity of the word of mouth. The PR wing of the government-Press Information Bureau (PIB) was set up in mid-1930s. Its first chief J.Henessy in a first of its kind submitted an official report containing PIB’s performance to the government. In this meticulously compiled report, he tried to correlate the use of government money on PR and media relations with the output and impact. In table after table, he records the column centimetres of space gained in newspapers through press releases and other activates. Perhaps this was the first and the last such attempt by an official media unit to hold itself accountable to the money spent by it.

                   The author                 
         sunarendra@gmail.com  

The birth of official journals like the defence magazine Sainik Samachar (Ruskin Bond was associated with it), PIB and AIR during the Raj laid the foundations for the development of a larger official media system after Independence. The launch of five year plans for socio-economic development in 1952 moved the  government to expand this official ‘publicity’ set up with the addition of field publicity vans  for contact with the people, an advertising wing (DAVP), Song And Drama division for harnessing folk media, and the Publications Division for publishing books and official journals like Yojana, Kurukhetra (for publicising CD or Community development movement, an idea of S.K.Dey, a favourite of Nehru). Doordarshan made its appearance in 1959 but acquired momentum in 1970s with SITE experiment. While the official media machinery’s stated role was to spread awareness about development among the people for bringing about their participation in it, in practice they have been used by governments of all hues for political communication. The never ending  debate about their use and abuse by governments in office  is now part of political communication and electoral code of conduct for contestants in elections. (https//Spokesperson,blogspot)

Next: Post Independence Period.