By Patricia Mukhim
About the only things that bring a smile to our faces or evoke laughter are the memes that travel at the speed of light. There is this one of the Prah (winnow) hitting the Lamborghini and wounding it. One thing is for sure – many hundreds or perhaps thousands of journalists have been born during this two-month long campaign. These are so good at getting the message out that they would put a trained journalist to shame. Sometimes one wishes one could learn that trade. It’s better than having to key in thousands of words that people may or may not read. Pictures truly speak a thousand words and videos and memes even more. They are the latest means of reaching the target audience with the message. For some reason the Prah tickled the imagination of people, especially women because they use it every day at home or in the fields. There’s a lot to be written about the role of emotions in voting. Someone has rightly stated that voting is not about reason.
Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, in his book “The Political Brain” makes a ground-breaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. Westen has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more “dispassionate” notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on “the issues,” they lose. That’s why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.
Westen says in politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote. It goes in this order (a) their feelings toward the parties and their principles, (b) their feelings toward the candidates, and (c) if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions.
Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head and suggests that the biggest challenge for politicians is how to move the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen’s discoveries could transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that matter to the least common denominator on the issues that matter to them the most. Westen concludes that while the structure of the brain cannot be changed what can be changed is the way we appeal to it.
So those that have lost the elections now have the time to sit and think about what Drew Westen has said. Better still they can get his book and chew on it. My own study suggests that voters don’t want to listen to staid speeches. They want moving speeches that move them, sometimes even to tears. Sadness resonates with more people than happiness. Some candidates have been known to weep in order to move the electorate. We might think its drama but it works. Politicians need to get into the innermost thoughts of people. Just giving them the basic necessities of life and promising them development does not seem to work anymore. Development is difficult to measure and has different meanings for different people. Vehicle owners want better roads; villagers want more public transport because they have to travel on Sumos that are packed to the hilt with people inside then with the load atop the vehicle and some passengers above the load. It always makes me wonder as to what would happen if that Sumo, often travelling over rickety roads were to lose control and the people on top tumbling down to their deaths. Meghalaya is not a cohesive state with people having homogenous needs. The needs are diverse but most politicians don’t understand this diversity and appeal to all with the same tone. There’s more on this topic but I will leave it for a later article. For now let’s focus on the election results.
Indeed now that the heat and dust of elections have settled down, everyone has to attend to their work in their farms, tend to their cattle, trudge over dilapidated roads, make long queues for water and women have to peddle their wares at every conceivable space. Children will still suffer from malnutrition, from stunting and wasting and there will be more kids out of school than inside. Women will continue to suffer from anemia and teenage pregnancies will not stop. Prices of essential commodities will go through the roof and many will lose even the one land holding they have because they will mortgage that to pay for a surgery or some hospitalisation. Insurance does not cover everything. The elections and the results thereafter are a five-year fanfare. We will continue with the revelry but nothing will change; just a few faces but with the same DNA. So the outcomes would be the same.
The only bright light in this election is the phenomenal win of the Voice of People’s Party (VPP) candidates who have offered their services to the people without giving them anything in return because they don’t need to buy peoples’ loyalties. They also don’t have the anti-incumbency factor to deal with. So they are starting on a new slate. Some of the young contenders from the Congress and VPP could not make it this time but they must hang on and continue with their work of addressing the needs of the underprivileged across the Khasi-Jaintia Hills.
The BJP put up 60 candidates which was an audacious move but had to be content with just two MLAs. For some reason the BJP has not been able to really expand its base in Meghalaya despite the years of hard work put in by the RSS and other wings of the Sangh Parivar. There is that undercurrent of fear about this being a party with no empathy for minorities and before the elections word had spread about how churches were being demolished in neighbouring Assam ostensibly because they were built on disputed land. Some of the candidates who left the NPP and joined the BJP got a drubbing. The BJP will perhaps take more time to establish its credentials in Meghalaya. The BJP is doing better in Nagaland which is a more Christian dominant state than Meghalaya is with 12 seats. Perhaps there are other underlying reasons such as the Naga Peace Talks which are still hanging fire and which the Nagas have realised is better sorted by negotiations rather than confrontation.
What is a matter of intense discourse across TV channels is the recession of the Congress in all the states of the North East. In Nagaland where it once enjoyed rare patronage the Congress is reduced to a cipher. Why this should happen is not a mystery either. The Congress Party today is caught between social activism and part-time politics. The Party seems to have lost its sense of direction. Mr Rahul Gandhi came to Meghalaya, attacked the Trinamool Congress right, left and centre and went off because he was too busy to spend time here or to do a road show. Prime Minister Modi with all his busyness did a road show in Shillong and went to Tura the same day. Rahul Gandhi’s Shillong visit was not even a talking point. How did the Congress manage to shoot itself in the foot? The Congress had its 85th plenary at Raipur and decided on several things that would be of help to citizens such as dedicated skills development programmes for the manufacturing sector et al but what the party did not perhaps discuss was a comeback strategy. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is a civil society action. The Congress is a political party dealing with a shrewd opponent. It has to do better and be equally aggressive in its campaign without the name-calling that lands Rahul Gandhi in trouble.
All the TV channels are looking at the outcome of the state elections as a forerunner to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Does the Congress really have a strategy for that other than the futile search for opposition unity?
As I see it the NPP+BJP+others will yet again form a government in Meghalaya. The pressure groups will now get busy with their laundry list of demands and everything will get back to business as usual. On that note I rest my case for the day.
