Surprising and funny to see few of the so called intellectuals expressing their displeasure at Modi’s speech after Mission Shakti and wanting Election Commission to act on it. This stems from serious lack of understanding of how modern world works and failure to understand the information flow that gets disseminated in this digital age. it would equally naïve on part of these intellectuals to think that Electorate will be swayed by one address to nation from prime minister.
In modern era people are constantly bombarded with news clips, messages and information via social medial platforms and leaders are in constant visibility of the electorate on various digital platforms. To think that by covering statue faces with cloth, banning movies on television (thank god not on amazon prime) in garb of electoral code of conduct is best archaic understanding and will be forming a visionless institution that is not in terms with modern world. Real focus of election commission should be looking into following key aspects in this modern age.
Monitoring fake news: Election commission should equip itself with technology and means to monitor and stop the spread of fake news via various platforms. This will require significant investments with news monitoring tools and modern IT infrastructure.
Guidelines on Manifestos: Party manifestos nowadays are sounding more like fictional comic books than the real vision documents. Election commission should frame strict guidelines on what all details and various data points that need to covered by political parties in any manifestos. For example, any scheme announced should clear indicated Why scheme is need? To whom it intended for? And how it will be achieved. This will in way help the overall thinking quotient within the parties and they can come up with real meaningful Manifestos that will help people to decide and make right choice.
Misuse and Reporting Mechanism: Curbing of bribing voters is one of the major headaches in current electoral battles, money exchanging hands is humongous and despite EC’s best efforts things are not looking good. Election commission can come up with ways and means to report such incidents with anonymous tips via digital apps. This should also be supported by adding enough manpower who can catch, confiscate and debar individuals from contesting. Election commission can float temporary jobs during the election days and engage the dutiful and concerned citizens for these activities.
This is path forward to build a robust and modern Institutions and this should be the real focus on debate from the so called intellectuals.
