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#MeToo: Organising a campaign in a neo-liberal space!

By Manik Raj. Dated: 10/18/2018 3:06:33 PM

It is a limited discourse in the limited space provided by the neo-liberal democracy

It is a moment to cherish that #Metoo has stood for shared solidarity of millions of working women. It needs to be trickled down to other classes of women folks suffering more brutal incidents on daily basis which exist outside the popular power centres. I wish it to be extended to other spheres of ordinary women and also survive long to expose the subtleties of violence against women but it may not.
The movement has exploded in a neo-liberal era which is largely marked by individualism, consumerism, information age and techno-modern developments. In such a world virtuality is created to appear real. In the words of Rosenfeld 'cyberspace, i.e. internet and www', is a vehicle by which we enter a state of psychological immersion. Psychological immersion happens when we are intellectually and emotionally transported to another environment that often exists in cyberspace'.
#Metoo is a campaign of expressing real life experiences, of violence against women, on a virtual space. Here, real life experiences of sexual violence are transported to social media to present the case. There are two aspects to this phenomenon. One is social media as a 'medium' to express dissent and another is 'dependence' on the medium to express the dissent. Both are fundamentally different from each other. Unfortunately, the latter aspect is the determining factor in #Metoo and here also lays the weakness of this campaign. In the latter case no physicality is attached with the virtual world i.e. the campaign is not organised on-ground.
The target population who can become support base to sustain the movement are sitting unorganised far away from this campaign. There needs to be a physical organic linkage with these dormant voices. This phenomenon is also best explained by the theory of 'narcotising dysfunction' propounded by media theorist Paul Lazersfeld and Robert. K. Merton. They explained that "there is overwhelming flow of information through mass media and through the consumption of this information people believe that they are helping to resolve the issue, however they are not. Contrary to this they become passive in their social activism."
The other key player is the media which is always selective in making scenes. Most of the media houses, proximate and fascinated with power, are always ready to grab an opportunity to make stories. They set agenda which can be popularly consumed by a targeted audience but should be acceptable in the eye of 'power'. In this 'agenda setting' cases are categorically sampled and filtered before being broadcasted. To name a few cases, rape and molestation of Soni sori, a tribal rights activist from Chhattisgarh, in police custody does not find a space in this agenda setting list. Similarly, violence against Kashmiri women by coercive order and a recent incident in Rajasthan's Banswara where a couple, who married against the wishes of their families, was stripped naked and publicly molested does not figure out in the agenda list.
Moreover, the idea of 'organisation' and 'organising' has itself changed in this era. The orientation of modern organisations has witnessed a drastic shift. Now they are 'output oriented', not 'people oriented'. In fact, output is almost predefined for the members, of all organisations, like doctors, teachers, police officials, lawyers, bureaucrats etc. In an unequal society, where patriarchy has a strong hold, organisations too become 'gendered organisations'. Organisations have been made more flexible to run and settle the dispute economically but not 'substantially'. Because settling a dispute substantially requires a systemic overhauling, time and energy, which doesn't suit the economic interest of profit oriented organisations.
Whether corporate, political or interest-based organisation, profit is the basis of most of the organisations. Moreover, decentralisation is buzz word for modern organisations which has been designed to serve centralisation and more often a man chairs the centre (head). For instance, all works are now output oriented and the surveillance mechanism has become exponentially robust. In this scenario resolving harassment at workplaces, which is all pervasive and 'normal', rather seems unprofitable.
So, if #metoo has to survive for long it has to develop an on-ground legitimacy or organically link it with organised grass-roots movements, otherwise it will just fizzle out.
(The author is Research Scholar, Department of Public Policy and Public Administration. Central University of Jammu. E-mail: manrajin10@gmail.com)