Life Beyond 140 characters!

It has become so damn easy to change the world. Just type how, under 140 characters. Ahh.. there you go, be happy. Doesn’t ring a bell? It’s the age of social media expression. And the funniest part of it all we think our opinion in it, matters. I have been fed a few posts on my Facebook feed and it has pushed me to write this piece here today. Friends on Facebook more predominantly than in real life, get to work spitting their thoughts on each other. Starts off as an exchange of opinions clearly stemming from a particular school of thought they are adhering to (or so they think), and then slowly drifts away into a debate where each parties involved are only trying to maintain character, nothing more. And the technology is built in what way I have no idea; after having not liked a single opinion (statement) of theirs, I still end up getting all the activities over that post.

First things first, let us make it very clear that our participation on debates in social media will not affect the electoral decisions of your fellow voters. No, it won’t. If there are people who get influenced by such outbursts, then they are all part of the same brigade that I will mention in here. And by the way, I am perplexed at such immense loyalty to a particular school of thought. I always thought that such stickiness to ideas come only after having sweat blood out working for it. Never did I know that the affiliation can be strong without metering in effort on that front. I was proven wrong by these debates that even without being down on the field contributing, you can still contribute sitting where you are right now. All you need is 140 characters. IYKWIM.

I have no idea what kind of an ego is satisfied by such seemingly witty posts online. They start off with a mention of these categorising jargons like liberals, neo liberals, right, left, center, whatever–tards, etc and then go about protecting their community. Throw in a –isms’ angle and link it to religions and minorities so to say. It’s a festival of chaos online. Such affiliation arising out of some misconception yields nothing but a bunch of loud mouths. Why do we have to belong to a particular community online? As citizens at best we can participate in a more structured opinion making, rather than random outbursts on platforms that are easily accessible but have zero impact and penetration.

The real shit happens when we cast our vote. That’s the only point where our affiliation matters. If in case a party stems a majority then the policies developed will for sure be for the vote bank that put the party into leadership. And then it requires a stronger opposition in the parliament. Shouldn’t it start from what we need as a society and then travel up the ladder to the representative who will facilitate for the society to take care of its needs? I personally feel it should end there. For all other ground work, we have diplomats and other people on the job. I seriously feel we should stop associating politics with power and start associating it with leadership. It’s high time we realised that all the issues today are not because of bad power at the helm of affairs. It’s solely because of a poor leadership at all levels of governance that has led to problems. And people working for the government are not servants. No they aren’t. The term ‘servant’ has given the job role such a cushion, that we know how hard it is to get people moving from it; ends up giving them a false high.

This whole matrix of individuals developing their own opinions and affiliations can be understood. But only because we aren’t dynamic enough we end up on a cushy couch throwing opinions out of the window rather than going out to work for a solution. We point fingers at elected representatives. We think they are in power and have got every cent of it and are faltering. Let’s remind ourselves of the fact that they are not in power and there is nothing to be emotional about that particular position. So much fear, so much obligations, so much bureaucracy all because of the whole thing being an emotional affair.

It makes sense to take debates out of a collective thought and opening it up to general public. I have no issues in real face time debates where issues get discussed face to face. It is bound to convert into arguments. But you know, people are just people; its what we think that makes us good or bad. So general public opinion is required and it is the need of the hour. The problem is, it is not coming out at the right places.

Will narrate a small incident in this particular context and you will know from where my thoughts are emanating from. I am currently building a career working with the farmers. On the job, in the middle of a very hot summer this year, at khamtana a small village in Bidar district, I was meeting up with a group of farmers from the region. They majorly grow corn and a few grains; which suggest that they are clearly short of water resource and are largely dependent on rains for farming. I was there to form a farmer group and then provide training so that they start practicing integrated farming. After the entire introduction and the pitch, the first question that came across was, ‘Sir, Can you help solve our power problem?’ And I am thinking, Dude come on, I am not here to solve your everyday problem. Why cant we just stick to Integrated farming and its benefits. Sooner I realised the dynamics of working with the communities. Their requirements are totally different. They may or may not have a birds eye view in their analysis of situations, but they need quick results. Its okay if its not long term, but it has to be quick. So I had to keep my cribbing aside for a moment. All my preparations for more than a week, all the running around travelling in busses without a break, without proper sleep, was undone by this sudden shift of agenda; an agenda for which I was not prepared and was a surprise. They expected that I am going to turn around their situation. I thought integrated farming was the answer, which still is, by the way. But their current pain point was different.

So this was what had happened. A tree had fallen on the transformer and the power supplies to the farms were cut. The solution is simple. Get the engineer from the electricity board on the job and get the thing sorted. It was three full weeks since the transformer had stopped working and there was no action taken. Why? Well, its not that the farmers were lethargic to attend to the issue. They did; individually and in groups. Still why three weeks, you may question and I request you to Question and think again, you will have the answer for yourself. A few farmers were even prepared to pay him what he asked but a few were not. Not that the farmers who were not ready to pay were willing to take the legal way, its just that those farmers were not even able to manage a proper meal on a daily basis. So paying money out of his pocket was not going to happen. He just couldn’t afford. The temperatures reaching a high of around 45 degree Celsius, the pumpsets had no power to pump out water into farms. The crops died without water. And the farmers suffered loss even before they were ready for harvest.

Such ineffective leadership has to do with a lack of personal connection of the person to the job he is into. Progress here was simple. Get the transformer in place and ensure proper supply of power to these farmers. That’s it. That was the job of the engineer in place; primarily why the government has created a job role there. Which means to say people in the government have to simply go about doing their jobs right, nothing extra. The problem as cited earlier is clearly with ineffective leadership. We should be electing representatives who will be leaders rather than voting people into power. That’s clearly two different ways of looking at it.

Now tell me, how our debates online on percentage of crop loss under the UPA versus NDA or on agriculture schemes on farming inputs or 24 hours electricity even matter. I understand that various kinds of people are exposed to various set of problems in the society and may not necessarily cross paths between the problems of other set of people. But I am telling that if we are not involving ourselves to solve a particular problem of the society, then it has not affected us much. If it has not affected us much then it is not worth debating just to satisfy our ego of a misconception that we are participating in the betterment of the society. And a group of such opinion makers come online, form communities and start arguments feeding fallacious statements into our online world and mess it up. It is very important to keep of such influencers away and look out for facts instead.

To form an opinion yourself and browse through a list of opinions and to be affiliated to a particular opinion are two different things. When you are forming an opinion either way please be careful where you look out for facts. It just doesn’t matter if you are a liberal, neo-liberal, left, right or center online. It doesn’t matter if you fight for the congress, BJP, Communists or AAP online. The world outside is functioning very differently. And if you are really that concerned, politics is not the only answer . Talk about how a problem has affected you and how we can all come together and solve it. Whats the point in fighting that a few people in power supposedly at the state, neighbouring state or center will bring in change. Get out on to the field and get your hands dirty for whatever time you can. Collective efforts are better than a collective argument.