Why political satire matters

Three years ago, the standup comedy group, Aisi Taisi Democracy (ATD), released a Hindi song that riffed, "As for me/ I'm the youngest in the family/ I'm my mom's last hope/ So I'm buckling down/ doing legwork, getting woke/ Yeah, I looked away from 2G & Coalgate / And jeejaji stashed Gurgaon in his pocket”.

Well, as we now know, 2G didn't happen and Jeejaji appears to be doing fine. So that verse might not seem too relevant  if we ignore the bizarre outcome of Coalgate. (It's still worth listening to). But I thought that song, along with other ATD efforts, such as the catchy "Modiji, Apne Sabko Dhodi Ji" were fine examples of political satire. 

A healthy democracy will have lots of people pointing at their elected representatives, laughing very loudly and inviting others to laugh along. Cartoonists and songsters will generate risible content about politicians and political issues. Novelists will stitch together ironical narratives about politicians. 

A dictatorship or a one-party state will generate similar content. But the content will go underground and be samizdat (Self-published) as the Russians say. Dictators really hate being laughed at. It is relatively easy to handle outright opposition; it can be stamped out. It is hard for a strongman to maintain gravitas if there are people constantly giggling. The Soviet Union produced some great underground political satire; much of it was crafted by folks who worked at state organs such as Pravda and Krokodil.

Political parties use satire as well; it is part of the standard tool-box of messaging. Every sort of political formation will try to poke fun at opponents. Once again, in a healthy democracy, this is a two-way street. In a one-party state, or a dictatorship, there will be attempts to turn satire into a one-way street either by choking access to public forums, or more blatantly, by chucking satirists in jail. Healthy democracies have strong laws protecting the freedom of expression and ensuring that satirists (along with other content creators) cannot be easily muffled. Sadly, India lacks strong protection of freedom of expression.

Sometimes, even in a healthy democracy, one political formation gains an asymmetrical advantage in weaponising satire. It is better at controlling channels of dissemination and thus, it gets more satirical content out there, and ensures higher viewership. This happened all round the world when social media exploded. Social media was a new, powerful channel, and some politicians figured out the medium's potential quicker than others. This gave them a key advantage. 

An early lead in the understanding of social media was an important factor in the Bharatiya Janata Party's successful campaigns between 2012-2016. It understood social media better than other political formations; it put together teams to exploit the medium, to generate satire, suppress other opinions and to get its own message out there.

Apart from slanted stories and outright fake news, satire was an important content element. Satire creates branding, or inverse branding, and it does so in the most insidious way, by making people laugh at the target. Dictators hate satire because it diminishes their aura — it is hard to take somebody seriously if you are laughing at him or her.

For a long while, Rahul Gandhi was written off as “Pappu" — an ineffectual idiot. Manmohan Singh was contemptuously dismissed as the "silent one". These were impression that the BJP's relentless satire campaign effectively created. Meanwhile Modiji was Modiji — the measured statesman, despite his manic hand-gestures and obsessions with selfies and bad acronyms. Nobody made jokes or imitated him, except Lalu Prasad Yadav and the odd standup comic. 

The first opposition party to figure out social media, and how to pitch satire on it, was the Aam Aadmi Party. It paid off when they won Delhi in a landslide. The Congress seems to be carving out its own space on social media now. There are far more jokes about "Feku" on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. It's no longer a one-way street. That to me, is a sign that Indian democracy is slowly recovering its health.

Twitter: @devangshudatta