Source: Niti Central, 1st September 2012

Marshall McLuhan writing in 1964 coined the profound phrase “the medium is the message”. On August 31 night, in a digital first of sorts for politics in India, Google Plus and YouTube demonstrated that today “the digital medium is both the message and the messenger” as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s Google Plus Hangout breached an old perception barrier while setting a new bar for mass communication.

Narendra Modi not just demonstrated his tech savviness to Youngistan but did so with a resounding message on the huge political draw that he is with traffic crossing the million-viewer mark for the event. But more importantly Modi did so bypassing the brokers of news — the mainstream media, a majority of who continue to exhibit deep pathological bias against him.

With this Google Plus Hangout streamed live via YouTube Modi has also sent a message to the UPA Government in Delhi in general and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in particular given the ostrich like attitude demonstrated by them towards social media during the week gone by. Last but not the least a not so subtle message has been sent to his peers, some of who continue to suffer serious social media envy.

The exacting manner in which Modi’s many skeptics and critics judged Friday’s digital townhall reminded me of the burden of expectations I had to carry as a teenager preparing for the toughest competitive exam on planet earth — the IIT JEE. Nothing short of a perfect 10 would do for Modi’s skeptics and critics it would seem if their reactions are anything to go by. Leave alone the burden of expectations of the doting Modi fan.

They say hindsight is always 20/20, with Modi it seems everything has to be 20/20, no room for the odd gaffe. But there is something the media pundit misses. Mass politics is not about 20/20 vision or 10 on 10 execution but about the 80-20 rule. Yes that same 80-20 rule that both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs understood quite well to produce very different but hugely successful consumer brands at different points in time.

Eighty per cent of the people care only about getting 20 per cent perfection.

The questioners in Friday’s Google Hangout may have seemed boring, unexciting and not so flashy to the media cynic. It beats one what exactly were they expecting — stand-up comedy ?

But the reality is these questioners represented the 80-20 of Middle India to whom earthy issues and simple expectations mattered far more than trick questions and political polemics in Friday’s digital townhall with Modi. Whether this digital interaction fetches a real vote or not in the coming election, a barrier has been breached in direct political communication between leaders and their constituents with this digital townhall while the traditional brokers of mass communication, the mainstream media, looked on as mere bystanders.