Byte soldiers in a cyber war

The party’s response to Jaitley’s response, to be signed by Congress economic guru Jairam Ramesh, was scheduled instead for dispatch the next day at 2 pm, a fruitful opening in the press cycle according to Vadakkan. The defence came this afternoon. “As usual,” began Ramesh, “the BJP master of disinformation Shri Arun Jaitley is high on noise and low on fact.”

So goes the manic debate of India’s electronic age, when statement, response and counter-response, are often discharged within the span of a single day. “The key is how fast you respond,” explained BJP media strategist Sidharth Nath Singh. In contrast to the more leisurely debates of past elections, the proliferation of electronic news media in recent years has flung this year’s Lok Sabha campaign into hyper-speed, as parties seek to torpedo opponents’ claims immediately after they are spoken.

Vadakkan says his staff has doubled since the last Lok Sabha polls . The workers now number as many as 100. “It’s a crisp-byte culture,” he explained. “You have to be much faster.” The BJP has matched the Congress’s efforts. In a monitoring room at its Ashoka road headquarters, young party workers peer into 10 small-screen televisions, showing eight domestic news channels plus the BBC and CNN, and scribble furiously. They scrutinise the sets for 15 hours every day, submitting their logs by the hour to party heads who decide whether a missive to the press is needed.

“It’s warfare,” said N. Bhaskara Rao, chair of Centre for Media Studies. “And the main artillery is TV.” According to a CMS report, more than half of all Indians rely on television for their news, while only one in five consult newspapers. Rao says that with 22 news channels currently operating in the country – each repeating much the same thing – the nuance of election debates has been lost. They simply “help to create controversy,” he said. Nearly one-third of all television airtime is devoted to news, according to CMS. So much attention to politics though doesn’t appear to have inspired many to get involved.

While campaign coverage has risen sharply in recent years it hasn’t translated into increased voter engagement. In fact, turnout was three percentage points less in 1999, when electronic media began its abrupt expansion, than in 1952 when 61 percent of Indians voted. “All of this hype,” said Rao, has failed to affect this most critical indicator of voter concern. “TV lends itself more to negative reporting, amusement and emotions,” he said. “This is how it holds on to viewers.”

In a campaign season where political debates, like those on NDTV’s Big Fight, have come to resemble shouting matches, Congress media strategist Vadakkan admits that the discussion of important issues has become clich‚d. But he complains there is little choice but to play along. “We have to react,” he said, blaming his plight on the furious demands of electronic media. “There’s no time to give a studied reaction.”