KLNMurthy wrote:@Rudradev and others:
What do you think is the underlying cause behind not using Modi as a spokesman-resource to the public to explain these reforms ahead of time?
I can think of three broad reasons, though there may be others.
1) Modi himself. As a principle of allocating his time/energy/focus, he has often publicly reiterated (I paraphrase): " in the first four years of a term, it's all governance; in the last year, politics."
To carry forward the cricket analogy, he prefers to come to the crease 7 or 8 wickets down and then hit a barrage of sixes. Before that, he has other priorities than cricket (or batting, at any rate). He does come in at times to address rallies during crucial state election campaigns, but for the most part, he hardly ever interacts with the people
as a politician until the year before elections. Rather, he waits for the events of the first four years to shape the narrative (including events, policy implementations, opposition reactions, and enduring public perceptions); only then does he craft a hard hitting message around all of that, and bring it to the public.
One may try to convince him otherwise, but given that (a) he is getting older and (b) this formula has served him through a continuous 25-year streak of three state-level and two national election victories, that may be difficult to do.
2) The struggle between pre-internet institutions and the unique demands of an information-era public.
This is a broad sociological theme that defines many conflicts in our time. A prime example is the struggle between mainstream media institutions (Washington Post, BBC, Times of India) whose self-image is defined by decades of organizational history preceding the internet age-- and on the other side, a news-consuming public that is plugged into social media 24/7.
Journalists from those institutions
simply cannot believe that they're getting real-time, uncomplimentary feedback from readers who question their reporting skills, their sources, their motives, their credibility (ironically, this inherited attitude of institutional privilege also affects younger journalists, who are very much a part of the post-internet generation at a personal level).
To the journalists, it's a matter of shock and outrage that words printed in the august pages of the NY Times and The Economist-- which were accepted without question by the great mass of readers once upon a time-- are now met with lively skepticism every hour. Their outward reaction is mostly the cop-out of claiming they're being harassed, trolled, bullied and otherwise violated online. Their underlying grievance is a lament that the 'barbarians' have now breached the gates of their hallowed institutional privilege. Such injustice!
It will take another couple of generations for journalists to fully realize and deal with the fact that the internet has been a great equalizer between press institutions and their consumers, and account for this new dynamic as a matter of course in their professional lives.
In the GOI's case, the "pre-internet" institution involved is the Indian bureaucracy (the IAS and its sister services). The PMO today has become the province of high-powered IAS people who take the lead in implementing its policy changes (Modi and his ministers simply decide
what needs to be done, and provide general timelines-- the actual management of
how it is implemented is in the hands of these IAS folks).
The specific IAS people at top spots in the PMO may be
ideologically simpatico with the BJP and Hindutva in general. However, as a matter of
institutional culture-- a much more deeply-ingrained determinant of behaviour-- they are no different from all the other IAS cadres of all political hues. The IAS may answer to BJP today, but it was shaped by 70 years of Nehru-Gandhi mai-baap sarkar; worse yet, its attitudes and culture were inherited from the British ICS, which was full of contempt for the idea that natives should have any say in how they're governed.
So it's no surprise at all that these IAS babus simply do what their venerable forerunners have always done: simply announce on the appointed day that "this is now the policy, thathaasthu, deal with it".
Marketing? Why should they do marketing? Are they selling toothpaste? The janata voted this government into power, now they can jolly well shut up and be governed. To babus, the very notion of having to "sell" the hoi-polloi on the products of their mighty administrative faculties is an insufferable indignity. After all, the IAS is a better class of human beings than mere vote-hungry politicians!
The top ministers of GOI may be slowly waking up to the fact that this attitude of the Babus is a liability, with potentially damaging consequences for public confidence in the government. However, just as with the press, they will not have an easy job convincing the IAS to relinquish the haughty self-conception that is part and parcel of its age-old institutional culture. If the GOI mantris tell the IAS babus that they should "market" or "survey" or "communicate" before implementing a policy, they are in for a lot of resistance and pushback.
I hope they do it anyway, but it won't be easy.
3) That leaves the BJP itself (to do the marketing, surveying, polling, and groundwork communication before a new policy is implemented).
Here, the problem (I fear) is the classic middle-class-plus Indian problem. "We are like this onlee".
"Is it my job? Others should do it."
"Nobody else is doing it, so why should I do it?"
"I will do it after lunch, nap, and maybe vacation."
And worse, worse, worst of all:
"Suppose I take the initiative and do it. Then, what if something goes wrong? Everyone will blame me, no? Better to sit on my thumbs and do nothing. Then, at least, I am like everyone else-- and
if everyone gets blamed together, my own share of blame will be diluted."
The problem is exacerbated in BJP because it is the largest political party in the world. That's nothing to celebrate. It just means the ratio of duffers to competent individuals is 100,000:1 instead of 100:1.
So the BJP IT Cell, so notorious amongst the professional victims of left-wing social media, turns out to be this perpetually hapless, perennially reactive, insufferably dumb beast. It is pathetically easy to outmanoeuver, never takes timely action, and often makes matters worse with a desperately disorganized effort that comes across as making last-minute excuses for the indefensible.
QED.
