DailyPost 2468
WEIRD POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
India is a land of weird political communication, you can also it queer at times, and with it holds large part of government communication. The bifurcation of powers of legislature and executive is the core of our constitutional framework, but what has happened to the bifurcation of powers between the political party and the political executive. Is it one and the same thing? Are there no clear-cut channels of communication and nowhere near watertight compartments dealing with the affairs of the political party, legislature and the executive. The cocktail of this communication is at the vortex of the nature of communication mess we are into.
The one who decides does not speak, is the first principle of government communication. It becomes even more suspect; you don’t even know who has decided. There are endless debates to decipher why something has been decided up, rather than getting the person who has taken the call to explain and end all speculation about the issue / decision. Has any decision maker ever come to explain and defend his decision? Can speculation be a critical element in communication? Or is effective communication tantamount to elimination of speculation. Purposeful communication is completely missing our political communication and extend seamlessly in governmental communication.
Day in and day out, either they talk to media or get across through the social media. The political class cannot talk to each other directly and sort out any issue. Every single issue has to footballed in the public domain, knowing fully well that it would not get resolved, but just to prove it to the world that they are right and well meaning. The political parties and even governments have never been able to make any stringent protocol for communication, and thus masses are caught in the crossfire. They remain confused. It is propaganda vs propaganda. Political communication is organized in a manner not to give voice to the people, the main stakeholder. One vituperative statement and comments and comments on it, is the mode of political communication.
Zero worthwhile content or utility of communication is the hallmark of political communication. If political communicators are taken as a breed, they don’t have any accountability and anybody can speak anything. Plagiarizing and proletarianizing every issue are tantamount to communications success. Social media is added to provide glamour and reach to the rotten communication. Political communication to capture the masses is an element that has been perfected, some recent larger than life figures have emanated out of this fold. Communication between governments is at the lowest ebb. If it is between governments of different parties, the less said the better. Governance communication is the last priority, as they feel that it does not yield results. Governance enabled results are in reality the real touchpoints. They camouflage and express what governments and their functionaries should bring to the public domain. It seems the aim of political communication is stalemate.
THE CURRENT STATE OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION DOES NOT AUGUR WELL FOR THE NATION.
Sanjay Sahay