DailyPost 2495
POST FACT INDIA
The information age was supposed to settle the issues and smokescreen camouflaging facts, so far in human history and was schemed to provide a ringside view of facts as it happens as never before in this world. It’s *capability to validate, cross check and connect the fact to the ecosystem to find a meaning in a near dynamic manner, was enough to take out majority of ills out of public domain ecosystem. We have for long been cribbing regarding the lack of authentic information and also the delay which happened in getting it. Added to that the tools of validation were few and far between.
As it started around two decades back or so, things started opening up to a new beginning. The wedding of this world with data and facts, was nearly solemnised. Fact based world was just about to be ushered in, the first flashes were being seen at times and it also showcased with much fanfare. The fear of getting caught and not acting for valid information was slowly getting creeping in. Digital world would not allow anything that is not data based and factual was the feeling people started getting, as technology kept on getting enmeshed in our lives.
The accountability heat was being felt in the governance mechanism. Finally, one source of information will reign supreme, but that was not happen. The urge was missing for presumably ulterior motives. The internet and the digital world, with social media appendage, was to reborn many times over and today we in battle with it, endlessly and relentlessly. The information age has now turned into an information mess. Multiplicity of information sources, with contradictory information at times, has make a mockery of what was being created. Facts are at times presented in differential ways. Vested interests have picked up the art of playing around with facts, data and so to say with life and governance itself.
People and powers found this situation to be convenient. They have always lived with lack of facts / information and made the best out of it, so subserve their own interest. This was an even better situation to use the data, facts and information coming through multiplicity of sources, raw and vitiated too, to their own advantage. They also created their own credibility matrix, to bunk whatever they don’t like. They also created mass scale facts creating machines to provide a perfect smokescreen. In its midst they also gathered the courage to act at will. The narrative creating and diversionary army could create a magic out of nothing. Today, facts have finally lost out. We have arrived in the Post Fact Age. Even the level of sanity and clarity of reactions of the pre-information age is missing. Post Fact India serves all self-serving stakeholders to run an evil empire. Where to we go from here?
PROBITY AND TRANSPARENCY OF DEMOCRACY AND PRECISION DATA OF THE INFORMATION AGE TOGETHER COULD NOT STALL THE POST FACT AGE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.