I had a long day at work. I was tired. I went home and switched on the TV with a drink in my hand and my comfort food. I wanted to relax my brain and body after such a tiring day and that’s where my subscribed and unsubscribed (read, NAMO TV) news channels came in. They provided me with the best entertainment I could ever ask for.
I saw that hilarious fight between those two reputed ministers, I saw Aazam Khan talking about Jayaprada’s innerwear, I saw Modi Ji being dreamy and cloudy, I saw the Bengal fiasco and I needed nothing else. Lol, that is what everyone needs.
Netflix is “firangi” (foreign), we are “deshbhakts” (patriots) who need to promote indigenous productions and thus news channels during elections should be our go-to programmes.
I scroll through Instagram and Facebook and laugh my heart out at ‘Pappu’ memes and all the trolls made this election season. Oh, and how can I forget that I learned the technique of eating mangoes from our Prime Minister himself.
After finding comfort in all these and forgetting the real world and its issues, I sleep peacefully. You know what they say about ignorance being bliss.
Then all of a sudden, the climate crisis rises to such an extent that humans have just 10 years to save themselves, post which there’s no coming back. Water level decreases to a dangerous level, almost on the verge of scarcity. People are sitting unemployed. The education system is being systematically degraded and demolished. Reason and discontent are being questioned and termed as being “anti-national.” Pollution is choking people. Farmers are committing suicide.
Did all of this happen overnight? Or was it a result of those multiple nights of my peaceful and ignorant sleep? Was my entertainment now asking me for a hefty fee?
I couldn’t fathom anything. I was utterly and thoroughly confused. Consequently, the election result bewildered me.
That “I” is “you” and everyone else who is a toy of mass, mindless media which is distracting us from reality. We come home tired and all of us want entertainment. Politicians provide us that entertainment through their systematic use of politics of distraction that makes them talk about anything, but the real, pressing issues.
The greatest threat to mankind are these parasitic politicians who plunge and divide us, make us fight communal wars and then, rule us. From the day we are born, they fill our minds with fear, hate and ignorance, employing the tools of caste, class, race, religion and sentiments to lead us, the unsuspecting masses towards propaganda, a predetermined philosophy or a political action. To some degree, politics has always included lies and deception, but television and especially, the media has highly intensified it.
2019’s elections in India saw a similar tactic applied by the politicians. There was a “magic” in the way BJP talked about nationalism and the unity of the nation, rather, they ‘sold’ it. This magic made people believe that Modiji was giving the nation, something that no one else was giving. The lack of a solid opponent and a “choice” favoured them much more, and Modiji creating an identification with the nation worked wonders.
This magic was manipulated to such an extent that none of the MPs even spoke about themselves and/or their work. All they could talk about was what Modiji did in the last five years. If you think that the “Modi Magic” worked in 2014, it’ll be better to rethink because it certainly swept over India in 2019 where minority voting turnout increased drastically for Modiji.
This article doesn’t wish to blame Modiji, but every politician and political party that has engaged in politics of distraction when, in fact, this was a chance to bring a change in the Indian scenario. The Bengal fiasco involving the CBI is another example that garnered lakhs of views and comments, but no relevant output in the end.
While the focus of the ruling party was on ‘national security,’ the focus of the opposition was on degrading and demeaning the ruling party. What was important was to question the ruling party about matters of jobs, unemployment, education instead of getting tangled in caste, class, and religion politics. While the chowkidar himself worked on creating better and cloudy jumlas, “chowkidar chor hai” didn’t work at all.
This was not an election to show those dimples and being the eligible bachelor. It was to roar, to fight and to bring out the issues of the people – a constructive fight between the ruling party and the opposition could have actually raised the issues that we want to be addressed, but Indians can never live without entertainment and here we are with unaddressed problems.
Let’s hope that all of us receive answers and solutions to our problems, the biggest one being ignorance.
“You must be more alive than life.
You must see darkness dance
and hear silence sing.
You must be more awake than light
for we aren’t born sleeping
and we shouldn’t live sleeping.
Only then will death’s slumber
become sweet.”
― Kamand Kojouri