DailyPost 2420
POLITICAL OBFUSCATION
Political communication, written or oral, official or legislative, governmental or otherwise, does not reach the targeted audience with clarity. Whether to communicate with clarity was the purpose or not still resides in the realm of the unknown. Political communication and its amplification in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes, literally is the primordial communication regimen in the public domain. When you try and get into the nitty gritty of this complicated communication machine, one trait seems to come out very conspicuously, is that of political communication obfuscation.
Straight, simple, to the point, in a communication format understandable to the targeted audience and making it reach everyone concerned in any number of ways, which is certainly doable with the nature of resources at the command of the government and that political class is a natural expectation. The political agenda is exactly the opposite. Obfuscation means “the act or an instance of making something obscure, dark, or difficult to understand.” On a day-to-day basis our prime-time TV tries to unravel the obfuscation in political and governmental communication but it unfortunately makes the obfuscation more confounded. Might be, that it is the intention and it’s not to make the audience more aware is a pretention they need to carry on speaking about, for being a commercial success.
Political communication is the front end of political obfuscation that keeps on happening day in and day out. As has happened over the years and this is the way we have developed our democracy, one thing has been accepted that the Indian political game cannot be played with clarity, which means with transparency and probity. That being the name of the game, the they claim it to be existential and your expertise in playing the obfuscation game can be a gamechanger for your political fortunes. It will decide your success or failure. The same thing extends over to governments and governance where obfuscation is on fully display.
The person who decides or acts in a political or governmental position is not there to clarify in person. And that is deliberate. At its very best it is done by a spokesperson, that too political ones. Even worse, most of the times some odd person is mandated to carry the cross. Social Media has become a major tool of political obfuscation and it is being improved upon with every passing day. It is being practiced top to bottom. It serves the interests of the political shenanigans and is totally antithetical to the interests of the public or whichever group /section is to benefit out of that activity or decision or announcement or declaration. How do you get out of this communication morass created and meticulously executed for a specific yet generic devastation.
OBFUSCATION AND DEMOCRACY ARE ANTITHETICAL, YET IT IS ALL PERVASIVE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.