DailyPost 2743
STRAIGHT FACED COMMUNICATION
Straight faced communication leads to straight faced democracy. Straight faced governance leads for straight faced communication. What a mirage we live in, in our convoluted democracy. When we live in purely codified, process driven and result oriented system, how have we been able to create exactly the opposite. How does it so happen despite a clear-cut laws and also equally clear procedural law in place, there can one thousand ways of doing the same investigation and worse still more than one thousand ways to communicating the same. The communication can happen by all and sundry in the manner they deem fit, which more often that not, is some variant of quixotic communication.
We start with the first issue, vested agenda in communicating the same incident. Over the years communicating the facts has lost its charm. The interests who want exploit the system to the hilt for their advantage slowly and meticulously pushed the death of objectivity and empiricism is communication. What is today projected as straight-faced communication is the farthest from it. Huge amount of money and time is spent to prove objectivity and that only hard facts are being spoken by the concerned. Is it so difficult? It was the norm till at least two decades back. Why did it vanish into thin air?
If creating a communication smokescreen has been the agenda all supposedly major stakeholders of the democratic ecosystem, then for sure they have been hugely successful. At a complete loss have been the sovereigns; the people and all the causes they espouse. If in a criminal case investigation, only the investigating officer, spokesperson or the head of agency are both authorised and legally bound to communicate at milestones deemed fit or pre-mandated, half the media space can be completely wiped out. Criminal case investigation dimensions; good, or ugly, and right, wrong or insane, has become the staple of public domain communication.
Political spokespersons cannot be fielded to justify or otherwise, ongoing investigations. Decisions and the rationale behind it have to be communicated by the concerned person himself, it would cut down the maximum clutter. Hiding the real decision maker is the biggest curse of Indian democracy. Cabinet decisions need to communicated by the spokesperson of the cabinet. We don’t have any. If all have rights to speak anything or any topic, then we are straight away heading into democratic disarray. The choice of communicating or not, shall not remain with any constitutional or official functionary, they should be legally mandated to do so, for actions / decisions, which should be made known to the public. In a law-and-order situation only the concerned commander should furnish the facts in the public domain. The instances are illustrative, the communication transformation needs to be comprehensive.
TIME TO CHANGE OUR DEMOCRATIC COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL, OR ELSE WE LOSE DEMOCRACY IN THE COMMUNICATION WILDERNESS.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.