Overpopulation, lack of jobs, poor education, income disparity, and so on are incredibly complex subjects in that to completely grasp the situation, you have to have a certain level of knowledge; the average person simply does not possess that knowledge, and that is why we have experts. Over the past few years, however, the media, all over the world, has consciously been choosing to ignore the experts. The explosion of entertainment options available to the consumers is leading to constantly shrinking margins, the only way media companies can sustain is through increasing their consumer-base. If the average consumer is not equipped with the tools to get a grip of modern, macro problems, the only way to access this mass is through dumbing-down these issues, breaking them down into bite-sized pieces that the regular Joginder could understand.

​

And so began a race to the bottom, once you had captured the lowest denominator of the population, you could just dumb it down further to access more people. Now politicians, activists, influencers on both sides started using these vanilla standards to push their agendas. Suddenly, feminism was all about not letting men spread their legs on the train and the employment crisis could be solved by building a real big wall. A huge Indian population suddenly getting exposed to the internet was the best worst opportunity to replicate this trend. An did it deliver? We were told that corruption could be eliminated by simply having our currency notes cease to be legal tender, and people bought it because your average Joginder does believe that if he were the Prime Minister that is the exact same thing he would do. The only time in his life Joginder found himself to be patriotic was while singing the national anthem in the morning ritual at his school and he does believe that playing it in theaters before movies is the surest test of nationalism. Results, meanwhile, are ignored and drowned. Results are ignored because intent matters and Joginder believes himself to be a man of good intentions, and by extension, so is his leader. Results are drowned in a sea of noise by making false historic comparisons, hiding data, discrediting experts, and creating strawmen enemies. Make no mistakes, all sides compete in this game: pujas are televised, elections are fought/won with reductive solutions like loan waivers, and minorities are appeased unabashedly. As a citizen of a democratic country, this is not how I would like to go about exercising my rights and responsibilities. Like any other profession, political leaders are supposed to be experts at their job and the mere suggestion that your leaders think like you is not reason enough for you to side with them. You would not choose a doctor simply because she agrees with your WebMD diagnosis. You would choose the one who looks the most capable of handling things you don’t know much about and let the results speak for themselves. The only results that matter to citizens are perceptible results, the improvements in our day-to-day life measured against expectations, or in the very least, promises.

​

“Narrative” is an escapist, despicable word, facts remain facts and they need to be reported as they are. We don’t need the media to handhold us to picking a side because, for starters, it reduces our choices. It only works to their advantage if everyone is either a bhakt or a congressi. It works to their advantage if there is a limited number of faces that get exposed to the public. Minimum effort leads to maximum soundbytes in an environment of personality cults. A pseudo paucity of choices is created which leads to questions like “If not the Prime Minister, then who?” to push people over the fence. How many of us know what is the attendance record of our MP, or how many debates she has participated in, or how many questions has she raised; yet she is the person whom we would be judging come voting day. But numbers are boring compared to 12 people simultaneously shouting on a single screen. We have been made so used to sensational news every few hours that anyone not flashing “Breaking News” runs the risk of getting irrelevant quick. This mad race to quantity over quality only leads one way and we deserve better. Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp, prime time news anchors, daily shows, woke comedians are all echo chambers whose primary aim is to make a ton of money and keeping us in artificial silos really works for them. Not all Quorans are insufferable, not all WhatsApp unkills are bigots; we all can learn and teach a thing or two and cut through the noise if we interact more, I’ve seen it happen firsthand.