Punjab Elections: Hallmark of Sordid Propaganda

Election campaign to cherry-pick members of state legislative assembly to form a government has witnessed sharp convergence of propaganda, character assassination, and political marketing within a negative framework intended to adversely affect the opponents’ intangible assets in terms of image, brand, and reputation. Traditionally, the objective of political marketing is to make a political product more attractive in the political market. In this instance, by contrast, the goal is to severely compromise the political image and reputation of a political actor to the extent that it begins to affect the choice of voters.

As the final week of electioneering approached, the false claims of our leaders seemed to take a turn for the worse and even veered towards outrageous. It seemed the political class has taken the collective intelligence of the population for granted and believed that it can be swayed into taking a favorable decision without applying its mind. Maybe the earlier times were different and the lack of mediums of information made the task of our leaders simpler but the twenty-four-hour channels, social media, and smartphones have changed the game. It has also helped people remember your earlier statements and compare them in real-time. The increased information flow also helps the electorate to analyse and take decisions as well as the campaigners to defend and present alternate facts, if any.

        Even while we are talking about the reach and information available in the public domain, let us take a few statements made by leaders across party lines and check if they were factual or propaganda. Congress has repeatedly tried to project Charanjit Singh Channi as a person of humble origins brought up in poverty. In order to puncture this claim, Bhagwant Mann claimed that in his election affidavit Channi has declared his assets to the tune of 170 crores. It was a factually wrong statement as Channi had stated his assets to be worth Rs. 14.50 crores in the affidavit. Even when it was in the public domain and published in some newspapers Mann continued to make these claims in public speeches.  More interesting is Channi's reply when he stated that he had declared his assets at Rs. 1.69 crores and Bhagwant Mann being illiterate read them wrongly. So, in spite the information being in the public domain both the leaders were lying through their teeth as it suited their political arguments.

         Election speeches of stalwarts of these political parties grew even more bizarre and difficult to digest. We can examine some more statements to understand how the political class thinks about the intelligence of voters. Priyanka Gandhi in an election rally claimed that if Aam Adami Party comes into power it will be run by remote control from Delhi and people need a local government capable of making their own decisions which Congress will provide. Perhaps she forgot that for the past five months people have been witnessing daily sorties of congress leaders traveling to Delhi, first to get the incumbent chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh replaced and then to get  Channi and  Navjot Singh Sidhu on the same page. They even had to change the in-charge of Punjab affairs and the new in-charge from Rajasthan was forced to permanently place himself in the state and be a part of every meeting to take each and every decision. Even earlier major decisions emanated from high command that made Amarinder Singh alleging that he could not take action against his ministers involved in illegal sand mining because Sonia Gandhi did not give him permission to do so. The constitutional head of a state did not take any action according to the law of the state because he had to take permission from a person who did not hold any constitutional position speaks volumes about local decision-making.

   Sukhbir Singh Badal, a former deputy chief minister made another statement that Arvind Kejriwal had directed the cadre of his party in Dhuri not to vote for the official party candidate and chief minister ace Bhagwant Mann in order to defeat him. He further explained that this was being done by Arvind Kejriwal so that he can himself become the chief minister. Earlier, when the chief ministerial candidate was not announced by AAP, it was routinely emphasized by the political opponents that Kejriwal himself wants to rule this state. Even when the face of Bhagwant Mann was declared by AAP such conspiracy theories were still floated. Even when it seemed highly implausible that a party member will vote against its most popular leader in the state, still such statements were delivered from various stages.

Still more bizarre is a very serious allegation made by the home minister of the country against his political opponent without any proof or indication. He claimed from a political stage that if AAP comes to power, they will unleash terrorists in Punjab. This is a very serious allegation and that too by the home minister of the country to make. If he had any intelligence regarding the involvement of any person to indulge in unlawful activity why not take action against the said person. To allow such a person to roam freely and even to give him a chance to form the next government is a more serious crime. It implies that the home minister of the country was aware of a plan to harm the state but chose just to speak on a political stage in an election rally and did nothing concrete to stop such people.

This became more and more absurd in the last days of the campaign when the congress party also joined the chorus.  Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka, and Channi also accused Arvind Kejriwal of supporting Khalistan. This was based on an alleged conversation between Kumar Vishwas and Kejriwal around ten years ago, which Kumar Vishwas suddenly and conveniently remembered just one day before the campaign for assembly elections was to end. In a bid to swing voters Congress even forgot that previously they had accused Arvind Kejriwal to be an RSS man. On a number of occasions they had claimed that AAP was B team of BJP and Kejriwal was an RSS member. Now suddenly the person who is a serving chief minister of an Indian State for the last seven years was accused of being a terrorist and Khalistani supporter.  Channi even wrote a letter to the home minister, Amit Shah at midnight to look into these serious allegations. Even the home minister was very prompt in his reply and promised to personally look into the matter. This was contorted for the news channels to show this coverage for the entire day just before the voting.

Only time will tell if the voters were swayed or not but this type of political behavior raises some serious and pertinent questions. Shortly when results will be announced, the statistical pattern of voting and its effect will speak silently about how much resilience and purpose our citizens displayed to vote rationally in spite of manipulative maneuvers and sordid propaganda of politicians. The masses are growing with every passing election not to believe in whatever is thrown at them without even blinking an eyelid.

The aggravated trends of political propaganda are worrisome but these are mere desperations that will fade away with maturing electorates in the milieu of complex democratic processes.  Any number of reforms and punitive legislation may not suffice to curb misinformation and manipulative campaigns unless the political class raises itself ethically enough to operate in a positive constitutional environment respecting the democratic ethos without any intention to subvert the spirit of democracy. There are institutions being set up for vitiligo keeping in view the dignity of women. The Vitiligo Society of England also thanked Satinder Sartaaj for this song. Satinder Sartaaj is the first Punjabi singer to take this revolutionary step to give a chance to model who has vitiligo.