Media Meets Message: Phone The People In For Democracy Now!
An Insignificant Man (2016) documents the polemic man, Arvind Kejriwai and also the way politics and technology work at unusual intersections. Especially with the way the documentary document the importance of social media and the rise of mobile activism, it becomes clearer the ways messages are projected on traditional formats and how they translate to political change. Politics permeates throughout India quickly through a combination of grassroots politics and mobile activism. Given how the unique challenges a political candidate like Arvind must face in the multi-party political system of India, it becomes clear that media, appearance, and performativity play huge roles in swaying a nation. Or, at the very least, the people who will support you.
Rachel Jolley reaches those same conclusions on the importance of technology in politics in “India Calling”. Given the post-colonial India, Jolley describes the history of BBC South Asia Producer Shubhranshu Choudhary whose innovation in media service didn’t arrive from creating an emerging technology or reinventing the new. Instead, he used an existing technology that Indians already had for telecommunications: the telephone. The stories of how telecommunication through community-based translators and mediators brings up a common thread in most societies, but specifically India, with disgruntled, indigenous individuals who feel unheard and neglected.
Techno-democracy is the theme that beckons in Jolley’s “India Calling”, which supports notions of a techno-utopia of a world where “technology by virtue of being neutral” and where individuals can separate themselves from the techno-aristocrats through these growing channels of communication, whether it be the phone or the internet (Jolley 110). It makes sense why Arvind’s political team is obsessed with every detail in content from ideation, generation, and execution. The distinct language gaps of English and Hindi, the low language and media literacy, and the clear divide between the average Indian and the aristocratic Indian leave little room for many in a society where communication channels are regulated by the state. Activism starts with the message. These social class divisions make it hard to arrive at equality, especially if the media isn’t equalitarian. To exercise democracy the people must have a voice in democratization.