Bengal Polls: Rightist Intellectuals incube Para-social interaction

Sayon Ganguly

With the assembly polls doing rounds in the state, the Rightist allaince have started it all over again. The prospective candidates, the expected result, the blessings of the mass they would get, and what not. Along with the bifurcating political equations, another thing that has assessed the political situation is the entry of the so called celebrities in the poll drama.

Now, one may wonder what that has got to do with the fate of the assembly polls. Let’s be very clear in a fact that the state is going to witness the most important poll of the millennium. The in-power Left front or the oppositions in the Trinamool Congress, both the groups would try it out to get back to the power lurk once and for all. For most of the parties in the Indian politics, celebrity handling remains one of the major weapons to win the poll match, and West Bengal is no exception to it.

Here too, the Trinamool Congress, who are eyeing to stage to be in the power hunching politics have made it clear that celebrity management is going to be the key affair to register wins in the ballots.

Promoting the para-social interaction mode of communication (unknowingly though), the right parties are trying to win over the people. As communication theorist John Fiske and James Watson puts it, “para-social interaction is the process of communication, directed to the heavy viewers, who can actually relate a star with his next door neighbour.”

That is it. After dramatic success in the last Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress is now largely trying to sweep away the heavyweight poll battle by presenting a chunk of celebrities. Celebrities, as the adage rightly says, ‘packs and sells a product well’, are going to be the second largest factor in the assembly polls of the state. Incidentally, the party is strategically trying to place them in specific genres.

An intellectually acclaimed celebrity would be a plausible choice for the urban area; while once upon a time film hero (who has produced innumerable melodramatic potboilers in his days) is well going to be the probable candidate in the rural belt. Particularly so, the leader of the oppositions are even making it clear that the para-social interaction is rightly planned.

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