Politics is a game of perception

I am a keen observer of politics, it amuses and surprises me and many unpredictable things associated with it keep me interested in it. Whether we take an active interest in politics or not, politics affects our lives directly or indirectly. I think there are very few among us who can claim to be immune from politics and the political environment around us. One can see the effect of this most during any major election, like the presidential election in the US or general elections in India. One noticeable difference in the style of election recent election campaigns is that nowadays they use a lot of data and statistics to push their agenda. They still use a lot of rhetoric during their election speeches, still, various leaders promise whatever they can think of without even bothering to check if they can fulfill them or not. I think during an election campaign the main focus is to win the election by making whatever promises and statements it takes to win it. Whoever is successful in making people believe in their agenda wins the votes and hence the elections. It becomes very important for candidates and their political parties to create a perception in voter's minds that they can deliver better than their opponents. They all claim that only they can deliver and their opponents are either with bad plans or won't deliver any of their good promises. In the end, any election is a game of perception.

One very good example of this was the recent general election of 2014 in India. BJP and its PM candidate Mr. Narendra Modi successfully managed to create a perception that the Gujarat model of development is an immensely successful model and can be easily replicated in the rest of India. They started really early and carried out a very aggressive PR campaign to spread this message with the use of selected data that suited their argument and people really believed in it. Other parties fighting elections against them including UPA which was in power tried to challenge this by using some data but it was too late by that time perception of the successful Gujarat model was already created in people's minds and it was difficult to break it. Many corruption cases which were discovered during the UPA-2 rule are still going on in court, so far no one has been charged or convicted in any of them, but there is a perception that UPA-2 was the most corrupt government India ever had and no one is interested in real data to confirm if this is true or not, people just believe that it was the most corrupt government based on media coverage and political rhetoric. This time the UPA is trying to use the issue of the land acquisition bill against the current NDA government and Mr. Modi. They want to paint the image of this government as "anti-farmer." I think they are somewhat successful in this attempt and their aggressive stand on this issue has put this government on a back foot. Now, whether Congress and its leaders are right in accusing this government as anti-farmer and whether they have any data to prove their claims or not, these things are not important. No one is even asking these questions, the government is trying hard to put some data to show that it is not their fault that farmers are committing suicide but it seems a perception has been already created that this government is pro-corporate and anti-farmer.

Actually, this game of perception is very good for political parties to win elections, but it is very bad for voters. While playing this game political parties try to take advantage of certain scandals or issues to build a positive image of themselves and a negative image of their opponents, there is no follow-up about various accusations and no one really gets convicted only voters are fooled. Once the game of perceptions is won, parties don't have to do much to win the elections, they don't even have to propose any concrete plan to resolve the issues, just hollow election promises and grand speeches by their star leaders are enough. In this whole game, voters are the ultimate losers as they only change the ruling parties without any substantial change in their own fortunes. I hope slowly voters understand this trick used by all political parties to fool and misguide them and educate themselves with real facts using various resources available to them. Once they start making choices based on fact-based information rather than perceptions, then I am sure these political leaders and parties will also be forced to change their campaign style. Then we might expect to have more meaningful political debates and discussions, but until then let's keep on fighting against this game of perceptions with the hope that we can minimize the effect of false perceptions during election campaigns.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]