Outrage on social media: a positive effect, for once

Does outrage about the Chandigarh stalking incident mean that social media is starting to play a positive role in India’s online landscape?

On the night of August 4, Vikas Barala, the 23-year-old son of Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala, was taken into police custody after he and his friend, in inebriated states, chased a woman and attempted to drag her out of her car — in full view of police officers and CCTVs, no less.

It is doubtful that either of the two accused realised that she was the daughter of an IAS Officer – and, as a result, subsequent events played out quite differently than they usually do when a VIP’s progeny is involved.

Initially, though, things seemed to be going the way of the accused. The police were less than eager to register an FIR, doing so only on the insistence of the victim. Haryana BJP leaders soon showed up at the police station, and the charges filed against the accused were bailable. By Saturday morning, they were out.

Meanwhile, the victim’s father was inundated with calls from senior politicians, with some spokespersons for the party resorting to the by-now standard modus operandi of victim-blaming. People even shared old pictures of the victim with male friends, attempting to question her moral standing.

But social media can be a double-edged sword in an electoral democracy.

Turning the tide
India’s middle class, the most social media-savvy segment of the population, seems to be most outraged when an assault is committed against one of their numbers. This was clearly evident in the massive protests that erupted after the horrific Nirbhaya rape in December 2012. The victim then was studying to be a doctor, and came from a humble middle-class background.

The IAS, again, is the gold standard in middle-class aspirations. And an attack on an IAS officer’s daughter, it would seem, is an attack on the middle class. Over the next few days, Twitter and Facebook erupted in protest, and the victim-blaming narrative, the ‘guardian angel’ of elite perpetrators of sexual assault, was torn to shreds.

The old pictures of the victim were taken down and attributed to “hackers”. The question of “what was she doing out at that time of night?” was disavowed by BJP spokespersons. The police, who had claimed on Monday that none of the CCTV cameras on the stretch where the incident occurred were operational, changed tack and announced that they had the footage after all.

All the while, of course, insisting that they were under no political pressure whatsoever. The accused finally appeared in court on August 10.

This brings up a few questions. How differently would this incident have played out if the victim was not as well-connected as she is? Would social media have even bothered to notice if the victim wasn’t of the affluent classes?

Baying for blood
The Indian social media landscape is not known for its civility. Lynch mobs are often influenced by and coordinated through social media. Principled stands, as in the Chandigarh incident, are a small spot of brightness in an otherwise stifling, reactionary and abusive online environment.

On the surface, it is heartening to see that intense media scrutiny and public pressure seems to ensure that politicians are no longer able to brazenly use their influence to subvert the course of justice. Accountability, after all, is the bedrock of a strong democracy.

The question remains, however, whether what we’re seeing is the media actually holding politicians accountable, or giving the middle class what it wants – which is to defend itself against abuses by the powerful while leaving the less privileged to fend for themselves.

Furthermore, making the state afraid of PR disasters is not the same as making it respect the law. A digital mob baying for violence is a PR disaster, but a state that upholds the Constitution should not be affected by such considerations.

A recent incident can help put this in perspective. On July 12, a violent mob composed of the families of domestic workers laid siege to Mahagun Moderne, an upper-class residential society in Noida. They claimed that a maid had been detained by her former employers, who accused her of stealing money.

Searches by security and the police the previous night had failed to find her. She was discovered there, unconscious, after the mob attacked.

Boon or bane?
Principled stands on social media were nowhere to be found. Rather, it boiled with classist and racist undertones, accusing the domestic helps of being “Bangladeshis”. The society decided to ban “Bangladeshi” workers, and a few days later municipal authorities cleared the slum where the workers lived.

We would do well not to assume that social media has been an unmitigated boon for India. Fake news, anonymous trolls, and electoral polarisation have seriously damaged standards of public debate. On the other hand, citizen participation has brought some veneer of oversight to a generally arbitrary and overreaching state.

What do we need to do to ensure that social media strengthens Indian democracy? The “veneer” of public accountability and media scrutiny needs to be deeper and more consistent, and not vanish as soon as the mob has been satiated with digital, or literal, blood. Public institutions, for their part, shouldn’t assume that they can arbitrarily subvert the Constitution so long as they aren’t watched.

Democracy is more than about voting for the person who promises the most every five years. In India’s polarised social media environment, it’s high time we got around to holding them to those promises and, at a more basic level, making the state function the way it’s supposed to.

(The writer is a researcher at The Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru)