Politics Nosedives In The Slur Of Social Media

By D N Singh No politician is without vanity, let alone being natural contrarian. Nobody should  take their adulation at face value and try to know why they choose politics as an eventual resort as is today. Now politics is run through random use of the social media and more so tweets. Either being so emotive about an issue or something politically contentious,  many are seen taking to the twitter  handle to assert themselves unmindful of the results. So fragile has become our political structure that, a single Tweet can be devastating enough to trigger a tremor in the political sphere. With the farmers' agitation on the backdrop, few tweets could do that what many agitations could not. Gretas or Rihanas have entered the arena of a political conflict for something they had no business to be a part of. Tweets have today become tools to eulogise performance or demonise some. It is a kind of sleeper shell like handle which remains laid. Nobody knows which one causes the explosion. Post the tweets of the two outsiders on farmers ' agitation, there was a huge repercussion making it appear like an issue which was, as if, far more important than any other in the country, reaching out to the orbit of debates across the country. In fact,  it was an issue that well could have been avoided from the itinerary of national discourses but it was made to be so, courtesy politics and a section of media driven by compulsions. Intolerance has become an essential ingredient of political dispensations everywhere. What made the farmers ' issue so burning one, was nothing but the positioning of the dispensation on one side, not to buckle down,  and on the other,  stance of the farmers who remained stuck to their demand so, any outcome through dialogues still eludes. In between, several tweets from within also added the fuel to the fire. And our leaders got far more serious on such tweets than on the real issues at the back-end. Often many of our leaders or celebs derive pleasure by texting tweets those do not merit serious attention but often turn out to be contentious in essence. It is time that the government legislate measures to put a vigil on the twitter. About the Author: DN Singh is a Bhubaneswar-based senior journalist. DISCLAIMER This is the personal opinion of the author. The views expressed in this write up have nothing to do with the www.prameyanews.com