Whether those two billionaires have any political affiliation doesn’t matter. They will be brought up regardless. It reminds me of how, in any country, when there is an anti-US demonstration, protesters would throw bricks at KFC outlets. Ambani and Adani are the new KFC for all political parties in this election – even the ones they are supposed to support.
You could blame politicians and say they need to improve their intellectual discourse, turn perhaps to the great speeches of Vajpayee, JP, Nehru (oops) and George Fernandes. However, I don’t think it is the politicians’ fault. They’re looking for any trick in the book to entertain crowds. In the age of social media, the public has changed.
There was a time when Nani Palkhivala used to fill stadiums to give his erudite anecdotal speeches analysing the union budget in English. And it would be packed with people listening in rapt attention.
Today, especially in this scorching heat, armed with a smartphone and a promise of biryani, voters‘ attention is torn. Even if the politician on the stage is the world’s most popular guy. If you go to any rally, the audience is listening to the speech, clapping. Still, half the attention is on YouTube or WhatsApp, distracted perhaps by a Modi viral reel, while the real guy is 500 m from them.
In this climate, capturing a crowd‘s attention is hard work. Unless, as I saw at a rally in Bihar, people were employed as bouncers to hit audience members with sticks to put away smartphones and listen to the political luminaries. It’s a novel way to woo a voter.As a standup comedian, I know the pitfalls of trying to capture an indoor room of a few hundred people who’ve paid money to see you. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for any of these speakers to impress a crowd standing in the middle of an open-air dust bowl at 40°C. A blase audience brought in on buses, standing far away from the stage, while a celeb politician speaks in a language the crowd doesn’t understand.When I say the crowd isn’t listening, to compound their problems, sometimes translators aren’t listening. They are giving their own speech. There are two viral clips, one where Amit Shah tells a Tamil translator to translate what he’s saying instead of just shouting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai!’, and another where Rahul Gandhi is talking about a Congress scheme and the translator in Kerala is giving a parallel speech about the ills of Modi.
Therefore, experienced politicians are resorting to anything to get the crowd to listen. The most common one is, ‘Vote for us, and we will give you cash immediately’. The other is the perennial ‘Everyone is a thief, I’m honest.’
Usually, accusations seem to work with disinterested audiences. If you can barely hear a person, development, macro-economic talk is meaningless. Loud threats saying you’ll put so and so in jail, will, at least, have the audience pay attention, even if it is to make sure they aren’t going to jail.
Years ago, I’d seen a local politician give a speech in the Northeast. It was about 10,000 people. For a while, he talked about roads he’d built, water supply, improved banking. The crowd seemed uninterested, bored. Then he said, ‘And now a famous footballer will show you his signature header trick.’ A celeb footballer came on stage; the crowd went wild. He balanced a ball on his head for a significantly longer time than an ordinary mortal would – much like a circus trick. A month later, the politician won by a landslide.
BJP and Congress can take notes.