Honeymoon period over, Modi-Shah duo right to worry about the changing narrative

Control over the narrative is of utmost importance for the BJP if it is to have any chance of repeating its 2014 performance, let alone achieve Shah’s ‘Mission 350.’

Something seems to have changed in the last few months in the political discourse of the country. The once hardly noticeable murmurs of critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have become more audible and those making them more visible and higher in number. Making both more difficult to ignore.

This has in a way brought to end the honeymoon period that Modi and his trusted lieutenant, Bharatiya Janata Party 's president, Amit Shah, have enjoyed since coming to power in 2014. And the duo can have little, if anything, to complain about given it lasted more than three years, during which their supporters while hailing them for everything that went right (even if not backed by facts at times), drowned the voices which named them when it didn't.

A monopoly (through its massive online machinery) of this nature over different platforms, especially two, social and mainstream media, which the ruling party and its followers prided over, has finally weathered.

On the conventional media (without a doubt still having a coverage highly favorable to the government) front the change has come with few more channels reporting stories and senior journalist replying openly to actions termed attacks on them by those in power.

Social media on the other hand, which from 2013 onwards saw circulation of all forms of informal but highly effective modern day communication weaponry such as GIFs, Whatsapp forwards, memes, among others, clearly beneficial to Modi and which worked like a charm without many questions asked or answers given, now has plenty of those with the opposite effect.

That Modi-Shah duo realizes this threat is clear from comments the party supremo made earlier this month while visiting his home state of Gujarat that goes to elections soon. He is reported to have said, "I appeal to the youth not to blindly believe the anti-BJP propaganda being spread on WhatsApp and Facebook." He also claimed, "This propaganda is largely spread by our opponent Congress."

The part of mentioning youth in his statement brings out the biggest worry for the BJP when it comes to the changing narrative on these mediums. As they are considered an important part of the electorate whose support was a major reason for Modi's impressive showing in the last Lok Sabha elections and these two medias play a major factor on how the youth views the world and communicates about it.

Though Shah would like to blame the opposition for a shift in the online narrative, and the Congress has been active with 'Vikas Gando Thayo Che' (development has gone mad or out of control) and similar other campaigns in Gujarat taking digs at BJP's development model, there is little doubt that the government and the party running it has given them enough ammunition for it, at national and state level. In particular when it comes to the topics that can be considered of importance to the younger segment of the demography.

Such as 'demonetisation' and its negative effects including loss of lives, livelihoods etc. with no credible benefits to boast of or the weak state of the economy with GDP numbers falling, with 5.7 per cent for the last quarter the lowest in three years. On the crucial job front, while Modi had promised one crore jobs per year before elections, the organized sector only added 1.55 lakh in 2015 and 2.31 in 2016, the worst performance since the 10 lakh added in 2009 under the previous government led by the Congress. To top it all, the violence and lynchings related to cow violence would definitely not have gone down well with the younger population of the country.

These issues along with others have combined with what is already a growing challenge on the social media front, following the opposition finally waking and catching up on its importance and how to go about it. This is compounded by the change in the mainstream media where some channels and publishing houses (online and print) have become more visible in their criticism of those in power. Some of them surely given added incentive of reasons like a new found intensity to the culture of attacks (physical as well as those of government action through ministerial decisions and investigative agencies) on journalists and writers, or just plain verbal spats and pressure on inconvenient stories between journalists and politicians, among others.

It is in this background of the two mediums and the difference in what they are conveying now compared to earlier that the importance of youth and other events related to them should be seen.

The latest of them which has gotten much coverage is the loss of the BJP backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) elections after a hold on it for four years. It's importance coming from the fact that DU is the largest central university in the country, with students from across India and the election has been used to gauge the mood of the youth of the country. Obvious from Shah's tweet after ABVP's victory last year, which read, "Congrats to ABVP. #DUSU verdict is of nationalism. Youth have reposed their faith in constructive politics."

Congress's student wing National Students Union of India 's victory in DU along with other universities in Punjab, Guwahati and Rajasthan along with the rise of other youth leaders who have attained prominence in the limelight and are seen against the BJP like Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor, Jignesh Mevani (Leaders from Gujarat), Chandrashekhar (BHIM army), Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid (JNU controversy), shows the importance and power of the youth and the narrative on both the mediums.

Despite this, both Modi and Shah would be comforted by their electoral powers, given the impressive run of victories they have been on in state elections after taking over at the center. With the party now in power in 18 states, 14 of them on their own. The most important of them, the landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh coming soon after 'demonetisation.'

Yet the change in play is clearly a worrying sign for the two most powerful politicians in the country as they were the first ones to realise the power of these mediums and use it to connect with the people, and the youth, in particular, to achieve their goals in 2014. With the next elections only 18 months away, their support in the next one is of utmost importance for the BJP if it is to have any chance of repeating its 2014 performance, let alone achieve Shah's 'Mission 350.'

OneIndia News