Bypassing conventional media could become norm

With supreme fatigue having set in on the One Rank One Pension (OROP) issue no one is really interested in the media about carrying anything on it. Unless one of the fasting ex servicemen cops it or there is a bonfire of the vanities and they burn their citations of bravery or hand back the medals, the party, as far as the TV and Press are concerned, is over, time to move on to tilt at other windmills.
It’s just a bunch of wrinkled uncles in white pajamas who have overstayed their welcome.
Curiously though, the major snub given the vets by Indian media per se and their deliberate ho hum turning of the back to the Ekta rally earlier this month in which 50,000 ex servicemen and their families displayed an impressive solidarity, has opened another front.
It is only the innate arrogance of the fourth estate that stops it from figuring out that there is an enemy and the enemy is at the gate.
The vets took the publicity blackout punch on the chin, realized that no mikes were now going to be thrust at them in a frenetic ‘push and shove’ that had marked the early days of the protest and so, like the soldiers they still are, developed their own strategy. Let’s go to the people and use the social media platforms, we don’t need the conventional press.
This could well be one more push in a global changeover where the conventional Press is made redundant.
Everyone of the OROP leaders I have spoken to says it may not set the Jamuna on fire but the word is spreading. The first signature campaign gathered 35,000 supporters inside two hours and is now a legitimate legal document that can be forwarded to the government.
It strikes me that the TRP race and the inward looking press and TV band of journalists might just be facing a future siege, a sort of Alamo without the heroics. The conceit is so tangible in our ranks that no one would even consider social platforms as a threat. But with bloggers more interesting and erudite than professional writers, the public involvement in issues intensifying and the chance for the individual to express himself sans interference is a heady elixir. The speed of delivery then makes for a deadly combination.
Anybody can be a writer and a dispenser of news and opinion. With very little editorial control or accountability.
The advent of the trolls who grasp any report on the websites and ignite verbal wars laced with malice is now an incontrovertible part of the scenario.
The adhesive which is still needed is a sense of organization and it is fair to concede that the OROP call may not achieve its goals at such an early stage but it has set into motion an alternative messenger. The geometric progression of 100 people sending forward a chain letter concept in the morning can reach hundreds of thousands by evening. Before you know it there is not just a groundswell of public opinion there is a visible reaction.
It is a sobering thought that it was Twitter and Facebook that accelerated the Arab Spring in Egypt and for a high density population like we have in India getting the nation to stir its conscience and come to bat for a cause is not difficult at all. Youtube is widely seen as a major element in the impact on US politics.
The Governor of Vermont Howard Dean was the pioneer for political activism through social media. He changed the paradigm on mobilization of numbers, accelerated fundraising and gave the likeminded their focus.
Remember the Oscar Morales saga where the Colombian citizen took on the guerrillas engaged in kidnappings and used Facebook to generate a global uproar that actually resulted in the release of a victim.
How rapidly a report on social media can spread can be seen by this rendition. A retired soldier spoke to the throng. He started by saying he was the father of not one, yes not one, but two martyred sons. He asked the Hon’ble PM (with reference to his foot-in-mouth public remark that he’d given OROP at the cost of the poor) what he need to further prove his loyalty to the nation? To stifle spontaneous cries of ‘Shame, Shame’ he declared that if the PM publicly proved that he indeed needed to deprive the poor to give OROP, he didn’t want it.
How many parents have given two sons in uniform and stayed on earth to mourn them?
The pass on effect was intense.
The problem is that the intensity is no different for rumors, half truths, mischief and prejudice. That is the scary part.