I often wonder why the aftertaste of such a bitterly fought and exhaustingly long election lasts only for a fortnight. It is a staggering statistic; 7 phases, 45 days, 543 constituencies, 2,660 parties, 10,00,000 polling stations, where a million registered voters were expected to cast their vote. At a projected cost of 1.35 trillion rupees, this is probably the planet’s costliest election in a year when 64 countries are choosing a new government.
The scale of conducting an Indian election— which is a dramatic operation at best— is often eclipsed by the hyperbole of the caste and pitch of the propaganda. However, forgotten in this epic event management are several things that make India and its election, in general, a bit of a contradiction.
While it is a massive victory of parliamentary democracy, it is, rather, unequal; smaller states with lesser representation are (almost) by default out of the so-called media discourse.
I must hasten to add that these “small states” are not categorised by land area, but instead by population. Therefore, Arunachal Pradesh, covering 84,000 square kilometres of area, sends 2 members, while West Bengal with 88,752 square kilometres of area sends 42 members. They miss out on star politicians’ campaigns or the lucrative slice of the whopping budgets set apart by the political parties. Regional parties that are not in alliance with the Central government are very careful with the surveillance of electoral expenditure. Hence, the bluster of a typical Indian election was in many ways missing from the 2024 edition.
As reporters, our job was straightforward. Every five years we got an opportunity to produce a “report card” of the government for the population, and that meant covering the length and breadth of the country from the poor health infrastructure of Kavaratti Island in Lakshadweep, to the big dams in Arunachal Pradesh. Even if that meant the village or the province was politically not “relevant” to the democratic arithmetic.
It is not for nothing that the massive electoral management ensures that a polling booth is set up even if the constituency has one voter and it doesn’t matter if that is at an altitude of 18,000 feet, where you use mules to ferry ballot machines or cross distances on elephant back to reach that last mile of India’s “margins.” That era of reportage is long dead, replaced by high-decibel and allegedly biased talking heads and television faces, most of whom have cut their teeth in uninformed newsrooms. The senior anchors who jumped ship long ago let loose their vitriol, unabashedly peddling lies. A middle range of fence sitters has kept it going with crushing mediocrity. There was one feeble attempt by an election veteran but one smacked of old boys’ club room chatter.
Whether print, digital, or broadcast, news has been one of the biggest casualties in a majoritarian ecosystem. Will the results of this general election make a difference to a pliant media? Given the opportunistic work ethic we have nurtured for a long time, I wouldn’t wager a bet so soon. Smaller, independent organisations have been trying to disrupt the status quo but how far can they venture beyond the big cities?
Issues that ought to have caught attention in media debates and investigations are health, education, economy, employment, etc. But the one thing that echoed loudly was Islamophobia and the vulgar grandstanding of a nation.
Isn’t it absolutely stunning how the Prime Minister completely stayed indifferent to a battered Manipur for over a year through the election? The state sends only 2 members to the Lok Sabha and therefore isn’t on the front page or prime-time television. Some have attempted to raise the matter, but their reports and opinions have received little traction. Manipur has always challenged the limits of Indian democracy and this time around it has exposed them thoroughly.
I was quite certain that the “bulldozer” would become a potent symbol and metaphor for this election. “A report by Housing and Land Rights Network revealed that governments in India, through forced evictions, demolished 46,371 houses in 2022. This figure more than doubled in 2023 with 1,07,449 demolished houses.” An estimated 7.4 lakh people were evicted. This didn’t find any salience in Indian media. One must be reminded that the bulldozer has not been suspended and even after the results of recent elections, 11 houses in Madhya Pradesh were demolished by bulldozers. In some cases, the evictions were carried out as “punitive measures”. It may be useful for the media to reflect how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stunningly lost its seat in Faizabad despite the Ram Temple extravaganza. Faizabad—Naya Ghat (Ayodhya) — was one of the major sites of forced evictions.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) chronology and the countrywide protests surrounding them didn’t gather any discussion nor did the unprecedented farmers protest or the strike by athletes against harassment and nepotism in boxing. How can an election coverage of such magnitude evade, for example, a discussion on detention centres where close to 200 people are still held and 31 have died since these were set up?
There is a disturbing silence on these issues despite how quickly the anti-CAA protests spread across India. How is it possible that in a civilised nation with free media (it is a different matter that media has tangled itself by its own accord) Father Stan Swamy’s incarceration and death are not remembered and questioned anylonger? Or every other controversial incarceration? Nothing that ought to be of consequence featured in the election news cycle relentlessly weaponised by only the centre that clearly doesn’t hold.
Digital newsfeeds have wilfully done away with corrigendum altogether, so unless called out by attentive observers, many of the self-proclaimed pundits of Indian journalism absolve all responsibility for erroneous information that can often be attributed to disinformation. Fact-checking which was otherwise the thumb rule of journalism is now a separate industry of its own set up as watchdogs to the watchdogs!
The 2024 general elections may be studied as one of the vilest yet dullest election coverage providing no space to any political dispensation other than the ruling one. Unlike any election in the past, this was completely devoid of investigative reportage that holds the government accountable. Yet, one must appreciate the sincerity, courage, conviction and consistency of a few portals, pages, and programmes that managed to stick their neck out, holding power to account. Their effectiveness in terms of footprint may not be as much as legacy or language media, but they didn’t give up. What any media enterprise failed to gauge, however, was the mind of the Indian voter!
This election will not necessarily purge the toxic newsrooms but will stand as a strong reminder that you must get your boots on the ground.
Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a senior political journalist, author, and dean of JSJC
This story was edited by Muskan Kaur, a final-year journalism student at JSJC.