This was meant to be a piece on the Congress party's Chitan Shivir. But it has become one on why the party has lost its "connection with the people" - these are Rahul Gandhi's words, not mine. It has to do with the Congress party's complete lack of understanding of how contemporary communication works. It doesn't get that political organisation today is no longer about boots on the ground and street-corner meetings, or even Bharat Jodo yatras. Politics today is mediated, quite literally, through the media. Not just mainstream media any longer, but equally, by social media of various kinds. The BJP learnt this about a decade ago, and has mastered it since then. The Congress simply doesn't get it. And no amount of "Chintan Shiviring" is going to change that.
The mediatisation of politics came to America 30 years before it hit us. Just go to YouTube and watch Ronald Reagan's 1981 address to the nation, a few months after taking over as the 40th President of the United States. It was an important speech. The US was just coming out of an oil-shock induced recession, and Reagan was to announce a new neoliberal economic agenda, which would gradually whittle away welfare and regulation. What is remarkable is not what Reagan says, but how he says it. Note the camera movement - how it zooms out at a key point to reveal photo-frames of the President with his family, carefully placed in the background. Reagan is humanised by the camera, and his monologue is crafted to make complex economic terms easy to understand. At one point Reagan whips out a dollar bill and a few coins to explain inflation and how it reduces the value of money. It is a masterclass in messaging through performance.
I am sure some people in the Congress party, which acknowledges that it is bad at messaging, would have seen this video at some point. There is enough awareness that something needs to be done. Here's Rahul Gandhi on the issue of communication - "21st century is about communication, and if there is one area where our opponents outdo us, it is in communication. They have much more money than us and are better at communication than we are. So, we must think about communication, completely reform our communication systems, and communicate with the people of India, the youngsters in a new way." The question Mr. Gandhi needs to answer is why was the Congress party waiting for eight years of being in the opposition to come to this obvious conclusion?
Sonia Gandhi looks on as Rahul Gandhi addresses the Chintan Shivir
Yes, communication is not easy. It needs skill, and the skilled want money. Rahul Gandhi hints at that in the part of his speech that I have quoted. And I will come to that a little later. However, one doesn't need money to be prepared for the stage. I had to watch Mr. Gandhi's Udaipur speech to write this article, and it was an effort. I say this as someone who has worked with extremely talented communicators in television for 20 years. Communication requires extreme hard work and diligence. Great anchors spend half an hour to write 30 seconds of what they'll read out on TV, practising, fretting over each word, rewriting till they are nearly satisfied.
Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, comes across as a casual communicator, who thinks that there is no need to rehearse a speech. It appears that he believes in spontaneity, a natural style, that is untrammelled by prior preparation. If he does prepare, he hides it very well. Contrast this with PM Modi. Those opposed to him allege that Mr. Modi fails if he doesn't have a teleprompter in front of him. This is the typical reaction of people who do not understand that a teleprompter is an essential tool in the technology of modern communication. At other times, if the PM comes across as being theatrical, then his critics need to understand that he is utilising very 'Indian' story-telling techniques of melodrama and hyperbole.
Rahul Gandhi, in contrast, delivers his speeches in a deadpan fashion, rarely showing the persona behind the words. A few years ago, Mr. Gandhi had a few mannerisms and affectations which would add life to his speeches. When he felt passionate about something, he would begin to roll up his kurta sleeves and keep pushing them up again, when they'd fall back. He would use his hands more vigorously, often waving his right hand, palm out, to make a point. There is a reason why people speaking on camera use such body language in a practiced, deliberate manner. It recreates gestures which viewers subconsciously see as passion and involvement. Mr. Gandhi made a good start a year ago, when he was in Tamil Nadu doing push-ups with school kids, diving into the sea with fishermen, or appearing in a YouTube cookery show. These are all methods of building bridges with voters and creating a persona.
Rahul Gandhi doing push-ups with a student in Tamil Nadu (File)
Of course, this is just one small part of an overall strategy of political communication. A larger plan requires a lot of money. And it can easily be blocked by platforms - YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter - under governmental pressure. But it is still possible to make a dent through understanding and implementing the science of messaging.
Take memes as an example. The right wing, across the world, developed great skills in making memes and other forms of instant communication, because they had very limited access to mainstream media. Today, the right's success in communicating its message has made mainstream media adopt its techniques.
In India, too, the right-wing has many highly skilled meme-makers - those who know photoshop and video editing tools like After Effects inside out. They have also developed a particular style of humour - sarcastic, often crude, sometimes misogynistic. The BJP ecosystem has a large army of such people who can generate memes, almost in real time, not just to push their message but also to target opposition leaders, journalists, academics and other public figures critical of the Modi government.
Liberals, on the other hand, consider this to be déclassé behaviour. They would rather write columns in op-ed pages of national newspapers or hold slow-paced conversations in poorly-produced YouTube videos. The Congress represents that mindset. It makes half-hearted attempts at copying the BJP's methods on social media, not realizing that the language and methods of the right do not work in the liberal space. The party and its supporters have had eight years out of power to crack the code on what will work for a voter who is tired of right-wing propaganda, or agenda-TV by prime time anchors. Barack Obama worked it out in 2008 - how to appeal to fence-sitters in the middle. The Congress needs to spend a large part of its energies on developing a contemporary liberal-secular language of communicating virtually with voters. And Rahul Gandhi needs to begin with himself.
(Aunindyo Chakravarty was Senior Managing Editor of NDTV's Hindi and Business news channels.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.