Public Debate 2.0, or Lack Thereof.
On 5th April 2011, all eyes in India were drawn suddenly to Anna Hazare. Clad in white from head to toe, this septuagenarian looked strikingly Gandhian. He was oozing with the passion of a wronged citizen and the determination of a long-time social activist as he commenced upon a fast-unto-death in protest against corruption in India. More specifically, Hazare aimed to pressure the Indian government to pass a citizensâ ombudsman (Jan Lokpal) bill that had been on the table for 42 years, without promise of enactment. The bill Hazare is fighting for sanctions the formation of an independent body of members from the civil society (no politicians) to monitor corruption within government bodies and prosecute politicians and bureaucratsâwithout authorization from any other government body. Hazareâs hunger strike generated a colossal wave of reactions among Indian citizens, particularly the youth. This generation of Indians has grown numbingly accustomed to thinking of corruption as a synonym for bureaucracy, but in Hazareâs crusade, they found new hope. He said that the Jan Lokpal Bill would help reform the democracy, and they believed him. He said it would rid their society of a long-standing, oppressive, evil force, and they agreed with him. He asked for their support in his fight, and they followed him. Hours after Hazare took his stand at Jantar Mantar, a historical landmark and common tourist location in New Delhi, the nation had arisen in uproarŸ on the streets and online.Â
The media immediately took up Hazareâs cause, too. In popular discourse, Anna Hazare has now been given several honorary titlesâ âyouth icon,â âthe man who canât be ignored,â âcrusader against corruptionââall emphasizing his agency in bringing together a people and charging them with emotion, anger and the will to fight for their own rights. Rahman Jahangir, analyst at DNA, a leading newspaper of India, wrote,â thanks, Anna, for the young awakening,â says adding that âAnna has flagged off a revolution never recorded in the annals of independent Indiaâ (Jahangir). Although Hazare claims to harbor no specific political interests or loyalties, wishing for the best of the nation, traditional politics has found its way into the arguments surrounding Hazareâs protest. Predictably, Hazare garnered the support of right-wing Indian political parties like the Indian Peopleâs Party and Shiv Sena, with many prominent Ministers from these parties standing against the ruling Congress and condemning them for letting corruption flair in their regime. On the other hand, Dr. Raj Baldev, Lead Man of a prominent Indian NGO, identifies these âvested political interestsâ, labeling Hazareâs actions as âpolitical blackmailâ and accusing him of anti-democratic intentions.
Whatever the political implications of this campaign may be, there is no questioning Hazareâs impact on the youth. As per data from The Hindu (an Indian daily), the Anna Hazare page on Facebook had over 130,000 âlikes,â not to mention incessant status updates, tweets and angry videos. Individual cases like that of 22-year-old Madhumitha Varadarajan, a third-year design student of DJ Academy who fasted for a short period of time to show her solidarity for Hazare, are being recognized as part of âthe Anna Hazareâ effect on a generation âlargely perceived to be indifferent to politicsâ (Valsan). However, Nishant Shah, director of research at the Centre for Internet and Society points out some reservations he holds about all of the celebration surrounding Hazareâs movement. In an interview with The Hindu on April 14th, Shah argues, âwhile during revolutions, the social media has proved to be a poignant and powerful tool to mobilize resources, last week it emerged that it can not only propagate dubious opinions, but also it often (because it relies on the temporal quality of making things viral) fails to give us time to form critical opinionsâ (Kurup). Clearly, divergent views of Hazareâs anti-corruption campaign exist. Why then does only a positive, welcoming view dominate popular discourse and the media coverage of the movement? Why do congratulatory words like âawakeningâ and âinvigorationâ supersede cautionary assertions like those of Shahâs?
 I am not against Annajiâs passionate fight. My argument is simply that the strength and unity of Hazareâs campaign was rooted not in its inherent truth, but in the power of the tools that carried this truth, namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other user-oriented social networks. Another prominent example of the use of these social networks is the youth revolutionsin the Middle East that successfully brought down autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia. Innumerable instances like the Time magazine cover on February 18, 2011, extolling the youth as âThe Generation Changing The Worldâ have sprouted across the globe. The perception of parallels between these rebellions and the youth action in India are explicit, as several Indian media outlets have termed Jantar Mantar âIndiaâs Tahrir Squareâ (Kurup). Was this revolution then based simply on the upheaval in the social media, rather than substance? In a seminar called Social Media: Social Uprising, Mona Eltahawy, a journalist for The Washington Post, was asked the same question about the uprising in Egypt. She refutes this assertion, pointing out that âthe social media only connected the activists. The revolution was one of courage. The internet did not invent courage...only amplified itâ (Eltahawy).
Hazareâs hunger strike was also a show of courage and such courage, generating from charged passions, is capable of creating a thrill, a viral thrill. But, today, Web 2.0 has stepped in to augment this viral quality further. Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and YouTube are platforms that allow opinions to be displayed to hundreds of thousands with a few clicks. Peer-to-peer influence has always been recognized as a tool to unite, but, in these labyrinthine networks, collective opinion formation is taken to a scale grander than ever imagined before. Considering the enduring pizzazz associated with courageous rebels, in moments when everybody is heated up and everybody is talking and everybody wants instantaneous results, it is easy for calm, careful, critical discourse to be swept aside. Yes, countervailing arguments about the anti-corruption protests did exist. But they were shoved under the rug simply because the mass appeal of social networks successfully carried the exciting appeal of this revolution, creating a sort of large-scale rippling effect.
Now that I have mentioned emotions, I must bring in the three basic persuasive elements of any argument as established by Aristotle Ÿ logos (logic), ethos (ethic) and pathos (emotion). In spite of being strife with complexities, the reasoning or logos behind the first two protests was clear. The college students in the South were fighting against irrational, inhumane racial inequality. The youth in the Middle East were fighting against brutal, power-hungry despots for a government of their own. What were the youth in India fighting for? The end of corruption yes, but also a Bill that, according to many, may in fact be counterproductive in the long term. Karan Bedi, a Stanford Alumnus, now working in media and relations, studies the proposed bill in its intricacies and long-term implications. âProtesting against corruption in itself is of course not wrong and should even be encouraged,â he states, âbut what Mr. Hazare is trying to do is influence the working of a democratically elected government and the due process of lawmaking by what is essentially blackmail.â He acknowledges that Hazareâs goal is a ânobleâ one but says that his method âsows the seeds of anarchyâ and is âtrial by media and trial by a kangaroo courtâ (Bedi). His reasoning is based on the most apparent elements of the bill. By creating a body independent of the government, the bill may aim to place members of Civil Society in regulatory authoritative roles, but it also makes these members virtually invincible. Who elects these members and who are they answerable to? These questions are not answered in any of the verbal and written support for the Bill. Worse yet - for the most part, they arenât even raised. This is where the logos of Hazareâs argument fails. There is something inherently totalitarian about having a few individuals above everybody else, regulating and controlling officials in a democracy. A democracy, in principle, is supposed to be built and rebuilt if necessary by the people and their votes, not by the stubborn demands of one person.
The existence of these arguments in the shadows of widespread acclaim of the protests raises some important questions. Why arenât arguments like Bediâs on the forefront? Underlying in its destruction of corruption, this bill also suggests a radical change of power systems. Why were the potential negative effects of this change not given enough attention? I am not saying that Bedi and others like him are right. They may eventually be proved wrong, but when there are two sides to an issue, common practice says we should hear from both sides. What about Hazareâs argument, if not the basic reasoning, caused the fight to be so one-sided? Here Aristotleâs other vertices of persuasion come into play - pathos and ethos. Attempts at building ethos and pathos are evident in Hazareâs statements to the press, where he seems to be repeatedly vouching for his own righteousness. In an interview with CNN-IBN, a 24-hour news channel, he articulates, âYesterday, a Congress spokesperson said that going on fast is a wrong path. I don't think he was born when Gandhiji went on fast. Hunger strike is used as a last resort⊠They (his opponents) have forgotten the sacrifices of Bhagat Singh and Rajguru. I have kept their sacrifices close to my heart and so I'm not scared of dying.â In history, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru are known for ideologies quite against those of Gandhi. They stood for the end of British colonialism in India, but the methods they chose often involved murder, theft, bombings etc. as opposed to Gandhian principles of rigid non-violence. Claiming allegiance to both those ideologies in one breath is paradoxical and therefore seems more like a name-dropping and credibility-building act, even more so since Hazareâs fight cannot be considered equal to the struggle for freedom from the British. On the other hand, the freedom struggle is the most significant fight in any Indianâs memory (whether personal or constructed through history), and therefore the analogy to it, and to Gandhi, comes across a rather shameless PR strategy.
Furthermore, the sight of a 70-year-old on a hunger strike in itself piques a great degree of emotional interest among the people. And the final touch Ÿ pathos-filled statements like, âI am feeling well, only feeling a bit weak. I have lost 1.5 kilograms. God is with me and he will protect me,â from Hazare (on Day 3 of the hunger strike). Did the historical and sentimental persuasiveness of Hazareâs argument supersede the need for a flawless logical explanation? Here I am not suggesting that winning peopleâs support was an easy task of Hazare and his team of activists, but merely pointing out the irony of the way the debate (or lack thereof?) about the Jan Lokpal Bill was carried out. Courting emotions such as patriotism, fear and anger to distract from real discussions is a common political tool. But shouldnât a believer of fairness, as Hazare claims himself to be, be averse to such manipulation? Moreover, if the citizens of India are so capable of criticizing the politicians for the corrupt ways, why didnât they attempt to question Hazareâs tools or the billâs anti-democratic implications? (IBNlive).
A fourth element becomes relevant here that Aristotleâs Rhetorics does not cover. We might label it technos. Here I am talking about the role technology played in the success of Hazareâs protestâthe unwavering media attention, 24-hour live coverage of the ongoings at Jantar Mantar, and most importantly, the raging online revolution on social media. The monumental response on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Orkut (Googleâs social network popular in India) is emphasized in almost every report of the protests. What amplification on the part of the Internet is inherent in these reponses? Yes, these protests needed courage but can this courage, in degree, truly be compared to the bravery needed to bring down the regimes of the likes of Gaddafi and embark upon the creation of an entirely new constitution? Certainly not. Compared to the fear that the youth had to rise against in Egypt, there isnât even a modicum of fear of the government in India. And why would there be? Itâs a democratic government! The job of amplification by the Internet was then much too easy. Here, I am not denying the sacred significance of Hazareâs fight. His cause was definitely a noble one. Corruption needs to be dealt with on a war-footing basis. In stead, my argument is about the ease of mobilization that comes with Web 2.0. There was only the need of a spark, which came in the form of Hazare, and mobilization was immediate. âWe are not running a dictatorship where one man decides what law should be there in the country,â said M.R. Madhavan of PRS Legislative Research, a Delhi-based organization that analyzes bills proposed before India's parliament (Overdorf). And we are not fighting a dictatorship either.
In the absence of fear, it is easy to get swept by a wave of viral reactions where the spirit of anger and unity cause people to shirk the essential, if tedious, task of asking the right questions. Hazare won the hearts of many, but was he right or just at the right place at the right time? And this is it, the basics - Argument 101. He who screams the loudest isnât always right. He just attracts the most listeners. Common sense says that we shouldnât simply favor the ones with the loudest voice, but, ironically, Web 2.0 does exactly that. Every PR strategy online is based on conspicuous âscreaming.âWho has the most âfollowersâ and âlikesâ and âfansâ? These are the questions that matter once you are in the network of social media. People are simultaneously followers and opinion-makers, as, with each link, consensus is built and the essence of the argument is hidden. Yes, Twitter is a great tool to spread a message, but at the fact remains that the message must be contained in 140 characters. How can debate take place in 150 characters? And as a part of that chain of receivers and publishers of these 140 characters, we forget our task, as critical thinkers, is to go in and break down an argument, analyze it piece-by-piece before passing judgment. Pressing a âlikeâ button is too easy, and seems insignificant. But even that move should be taken with caution because, in todayâs socially mediated environment, it may, indeed, contribute significantly to building the voice of a nation.
