by Niranjan Kumar 3 February 2020
Truth is the quest of a continuous effort with clear motive. Humans by nature react to events in the influence of culture.
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” – Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898).
I assert , the view that institutional lie in an organized manner has started in forefront before the rise of the NDA government in 2014. India has witnessed the standard of political integrity beyond the partisanism and it has not been a part of Indian political ecosystem. Political Campaign is marked by the idea of development through several claims when Indira Gandhi gave the slogan of ‘Garibi hatao’ and Vajpayee gave the slogan of India Shine. The misinformation and lies has initiated with the aim to woo the supporters, major political leaders started a war of misinformation and downgraded the political discourse. Now, it has become a pooling strategy to distort the facts and disseminate. In the brazen manner BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) national general secretary Ram Madhav claimed that the recent masked mob attack on JNU students and faculties on 5th January, 2020 was a ‘conspiracy of leftists’ according to News18 report. In the absence of real facts, it provides an edge to bind people in the name of events influenced by religion and nationalism.
Category and The Beginning
The empirical studies also substantiate the author’s claim according to an article published in November’2019 by Clair wardle in first draft. She argues about the cultural meaning of misleading content. In current scenario she labeled the partisan contentious content into seven distinct parts.
After immediately, the election of 2014, NDA government started micro-targeting to enrich more people about their agenda. “At very large scale, the government delivered their messages to the voters and collated and received actionable insights of mobile phones which led them to strategize the campaign” said by Shivam Shankar- a data geek who worked with BJP in many elections.
Saturation of dissemination in terms of Policies
Demonetisation
According to central bank data, granular analysis presents a very different picture. A fight to curb the black money was one of the key poll promises by Prime Minister Modi himself during the political campaign in 2014. Due to the scrapping of higher denomination currency notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000, PM Modi sought to stash all the balck money in 50 days. RBI had data of 86.4 percent of currency values constituted in high-value currency notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 in banking system. Government fabricated the fact with 32 percent currency supply of total currency circulated had in the hand during announcement, that only in Rs. 2000 notes, and said to replace all invalidated currency values in 50 days, according to The Telegraph report. Central bank and the government faced a lot of criticism after 2016-17 annual report released. RBI claimed in annual report that 98.96 percent of the circulated currency has replaced with demonetised value of notes .
Also there were rumours of having a radioactive ink and nano-gps Chips in new Rs. 2000 notes circulating on social media just after demonetisation announced, according to business-standard report.
GDP measures alterations
Momentum indicates the growth in the value of an abstract. BJP government bewildered the real information about gross domestic product(GDP) of Indian economy. The government started to fiddle with Gross domestic product calculation methodology. Central Statistical office(CSO) revised the base year from 2004-05 to 2011-12. CSO sub-committee-II published a draft report which was contrasting the version of September 2014, submitted by sub-committee-I, according to livemint report. From new estimation methodology, 5.5 percent GDP growth rate of 2014-15 jumped to 7.4 percent. An advisory body, Niti-ayog presented the back series data of 2014-15 gathered by appointed committee of NSC(National Statistical commission) and the old one was removed swiftly from the website, according to economics times report.
Conclusion
Democracies of the world have chosen a populist as their leaders. It’s intriguing that far rightwing has also risen in european countries as same professed by current Indian government. Isn’t it a question itself that establishment of demorcratic populace leaders in India has given them more space. The space where these leaders have not addressed to climate change, education, hunger index, malnutrition, terrorism but the number of lies has been skyrocketing. Many populist leaders find a reason to blame on others. Minister of state finance Anuragh Thakur openly chanted like a slogan “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro ……….. ko”(shoot the traitors of country), from the print report.
The correlation between misinformation and populism rise is unignorable. Unrest, in all the major factors, Indian government never tried to establish credibility. It’s on the tipping point which has become the part of Indian politics also a framework to unite majors of country.