By H H Mohrmen
While the fight against the COVID pandemic is not over yet, the central government is embarking on another kind fight which a battle for the minds of the people. To fight against what it calls ‘bad press’ that it received due to its mismanagement of the second wave of the pandemic attack, the Government is, embarking on the so-called positive campaign. The negative publicity that the government received due to the pandemic has dented the image of the BJP-led NDA government in general and the image of the prime minister in particular.
The Government is obviously at the receiving end of all the news that is being reported by almost all media outlets which of course are unfavourable to the BJP too. It is no surprise therefore for the Government and its supporters to allege that the way the media is disseminating news about the second wave of the pandemic attack is, at the same time spreading too much negativity in the country. How else would the independent news outlet report the news? Or is there another way of reporting other than telling the truth as it is.
Government alleges that the visuals in the electronic media about shortage of hospital beds, video clips of patients gasping for breath, never ending cremations and now dead bodies floating on the rivers are akin to spreading negativity. But the point is whether what has been reported is the truth. Even a lay person knows that in any kind of news dissemination only truth matters. There is no such thing as bad or good publicity but telling the truth as it happened and this is what is expected of every media worth its salt. But some find that the news that was broadcast is a bitter pill to swallow and as the saying goes, truth is always hard to accept. Of course, there is no harm in the central government’s move to embark on a positive campaign but at what cost? Positive campaign at the cost of denying the truth that the Government has failed in a big way in handling the pandemic crisis? Positive campaign which tries to disregard the truth that hundreds and thousands of people had lost their lives in the disaster is not going to augur well for the ruling dispensation. This is like trying to create, produce and share positive contents in the country when the only ‘positive’ that people are talking about are stories of people being COVID-19 positive.
The NDA Government’s assumption that what is unfolding in the media is bad publicity for the central government is in another way of not accepting the truth as it happens. The Government instead considers the crisis as an opportunity for a public relations exercise while turning a Nelson’s eye to the hard facts and truth that emerges from the predicament. The Government should instead learn from the fact that there is no such thing as bad publicity as long as one is open to the truth and is willing to accept one’s mistake and say sorry. Any publicity is good publicity if one is willing to learn new lessons from one’s mistakes and try to mend one’s ways.
The saying ‘any publicity is good publicity’ owes its origin to showman and circus owner of America Phineas T. Barnum and this phrase rings true even in the present context if only the Government is willing to accept its blunders. But the saying, any publicity is good publicity whether it is positive or negative is also true only, if one is open to opinions that are contrary to one’s own understanding of the issue. The Government’s handling of bad publicity by countering it with a supposedly positive campaign raises another question and that is whether this Government is really serious in its attempts to solve this one big misfortune.
The Government is in the wrong if it sees the disaster only as an opportunity for a public relations exercise. The simple meaning of ‘publicity’s is to attract public notice. Now the entire efforts of the Government and the various BJP agencies, is to move the spotlight somewhere else. It will use all the power within its control to disseminate ‘supposedly positive’ information using various media platforms to attract only good and positive vibes towards the Government. This is not only abandoning one’s responsibility but more tragically it is leaving the very people it promised to serve, to their own fates. Is this even morally correct on the part of the Government? Is what the Government doing even fair to those who suffer, lost their lives and to their near and dear ones who are still alive?
Instead of trying to do something to recover from the fall, the Modi Government is instead choosing to ignore the truth. The public expected the Government to take charge, come out, own its failure and boldly shoulder the responsibility that the people of the country have placed on it. But maybe an apology is too much to ask from the people who run this Government. Or whether this has to do with Gujarati pride, is difficult to know. But one would honestly expect that they will at least promise to mend their ways to prevent similar disasters from recurring. One assumes that owning one’s mistakes and promising to mend one’s ways will definitely create a good story and more importantly it would give the Government an opportunity to regain the trust of the people and help it recover its lost reputation.
If the Government would have handled the crisis much more humbly, then it would be like pressing a refresh button which will enable it to restart right away. The approach will help reverse the bad publicity that it had encountered and possibly, it can even change the fortune of the Government in the near future. And this will in fact be a positive campaign which will also ensure that bad publicity does not always have to end badly. On the contrary the Government is found to be doing something else.
Clearly this Government exists only to gain attention, acceptance or approval of their supporters and they assume that publicity is the only way to get it. The positivity campaign will no doubt please the Government’s cheer party, but not its opposition as they will surely remain adamant. But the question that should be seriously considered is – what about the fence sitters? Will the good publicity that the Government is trying to promote not turn bad and end up as bad publicity instead? What the NDA Government needs to realise is that this is not mis-information or a smear campaign against the ruling BJP, but it is the truth as it unfolds.
However, this is not the first time that the BJP is indulging in this kind of exercise. It has been playing this battle of perception to perfection in the last few years. In fact it has been engaging in this exercise since Narendra Modi arrived in the national scene when his 56 inch chest and the BJP’s invisibility image was instil in the people’s perception. The only difference though is that this happened when the party was at an advantage point. This time around the party is getting a beating from almost every direction, so will the positive campaign be effective?
Is changing people’s perception from negative to positive as easy as applying white wash on the wall? The Government will find out sooner than later. The idea that all publicity is good publicity or any publicity is good publicity is based on Oscar Wilde’s story ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ where he says, ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’ While promoting positivity in the airspace, what the Government should fear is lest people begin to ignore the Government and stop talking about it completely. Rather than bad publicity, the Government should be afraid of not being talked about at all if it continues to try to fool people.
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