Dark and Ugly vs Fair and Lovely: Political discourse nosedives in India

MEDIA IS COMPLICIT, SAY EXPERTS, IN MAKING ONE-LINERS THE HEADLINE AND TURNING DEBATES NON-SERIOUS

NEW DELHI: Perhaps talk is cheap. Which is why catchwords and phrases are circulating in the name of political speeches.

The jabs of Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi, observe political pundits, are turning out to be lethal. His 2015 barb, calling the Modi government a “suit-boot ki sarkar” that neglects farmers and labourers, was a “high point of low”. BJP’s Venkaiah Naidu’s response: “The Congress,” he said, “only spoke about farmers but did nothing.”

Gandhi’s post-budget interven- tion — “Under fair and lovely yojana, you can go to Arun Jaitley, pay tax and all your black money will turn white” — now just needs a Dalit or a feminist voice to object to it so that it can start wiring up social media, says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan.

Gandhi’s barb has been matched by Jaitley’s bite: “The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know, when will he know”. Jaitley’s party colleague Meenakshi Lekhi hit back with: “The dark and ugly secrets and conspiracies hatched by Congress are coming out in the open.”

The 2014 elections had kicked off the trend in contemporary politics of poll-speak becoming a matter of sound and spin.

Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal claimed “rapists” were sitting in Parliament. Narendra Modi, once the Gujarat chief minister, had called Rahul Gandhi “Mr Golden Spoon”.

2016 has seen no let-up. When Gandhi joined JNU students demanding the release of union president Kanhaiya Kumar, BJP’s Shrikant Sharma observed that Gandhi and his friends were “speaking in the voice of terrorist Hafiz Saeed who had tweeted in support of the anti-India event in JNU.”

Is public memory, however, being fed by political statements when politicians are not at their best? The media is complicit, say experts, in making one-liners the headline and turning debates non-serious. “In the same post-Budget debate, Rahul also made a point about how when he closes his eyes, he could well have been listening to Chidambaram’s budget,” says Visvanathan. “No one developed that point. Instead, he has been making the news for the fair-and-lovely remark.”