Elections to the two District Councils are scheduled for February 21. Meanwhile political parties go around playing loud music, knowing fully well how easy it is to lull people by playing with their emotions. Drew Westen in his book, “The Political Brain,” has demonstrated how people vote with their emotions and not with their rational brains. Music also releases dopamine – the feel-good hormone. Politicians and their campaign curators have understood human responses to different stimuli and have realised that song and music score above rhetorical political speech-making. Naturally political parties these days send groups of supporters to different constituencies and play their theme songs throughout the day. When the lyrics hit the right chords they resonate with people. But what is observed is also that the public is exhausted. People no longer want to listen to speeches which are either aimed at demonising and castigating a political rival or of adding to the list of protectionisms which exacerbate the victimhood syndrome and create fear. Voters now know that 99 % of the election promises made will never materialise.
The political class always thinks of problems that defy solutions and they perpetuate those problems. Psychologists who have studied the subject say that those afflicted with the victimhood syndrome act inconsistently. One moment, they present themselves dramatically as victims; the next, they morph into victimizers. In Meghalaya it has been observed over the decades that elections are used as platforms for the blame game. The non-tribal is always the favourite whipping boy. He is responsible for ‘taking away’ the business opportunities of the tribal. The non-tribal is presented as the one with a greed for land and who aspires to settle down in tribal land and therefore the demand for the Inner Line Permit (ILP) something that is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. But it is an emotive election ploy.
The tribal youth instead of learning to compete are told that they are not as intelligent as their non-tribal peers even if this is not borne out by any research. Young people who venture out of Meghalaya and have an open vista to showcase their talents don’t show any signs of being second to their non-tribal peers. It’s the youth who shirks hard work and aims to get things the easy way who are also the biggest complainers that they are deprived of opportunities. And politicians and the plethora of pressure groups riding on the same bandwagon of competing on what to add to the list of protectionist policies, only add to the noise. Of course, they gain in insidious ways by doing so. People are so used to this game that they become victims by choice. And ironically, they are frequently successful in finding willing victimizers. For such ‘victims’ even their way of absorbing information causes chaos and stress. But this game is repeated in every election and it continues because no one dares call out the lie.
