The Rise of Lollipop Politics in India

The Rise of Lollipop Politics in India - How Manufactured Outrage, Lies, and Empty Promises Are Stealing Our Future

Indian democracy is being hollowed out — not by coups, not by foreign powers, but by a steady diet of lies, distraction, and fake promises. We are living in the era of Lollipop Politics: a system designed to keep the masses busy sucking on outrage candy while the nation’s real wounds fester, unaddressed and unseen.

It all began visibly with the spectacle of demonetisation in 2016 — sold to a gullible public as a “surgical strike” on black money. What followed was economic carnage: small businesses destroyed, lives lost, and the informal economy crippled. Years later, black money remains untouched, but the spin machine had already moved on to the next “nationalist” high, keeping the country permanently on a sugar rush of slogans, memes, and scapegoats.

Fast forward to 2025: the terror attack in Pahalgam, where 26 tourists were massacred. Instead of demanding a sober, forensic examination of how such a colossal security failure could occur in the world’s ‘MOST MILITARISED ZONE’, the state and its media courtiers immediately flooded the narrative with hollow rhetoric about “something big is cooking”, “iron resolve” and “swift justice.” No hard questions asked, no accountability demanded — just another round of manufactured hysteria designed to distract and pacify the masses. The facts are buried under a mountain of propaganda and muslim-hate, while the true lessons of yet another tragedy stand at the verge of being irrelevant yet again, just like Pulwama.

This is the machinery of Lollipop Politics. Promise the moon — announce new grandiose projects, rename cities, proclaim impossible schemes — and ensure the headlines sing your praises, even if nothing changes on the ground. Distract the public by inventing new enemies every week: minorities, activists, students, journalists, whoever it takes to keep the anger flowing and the attention diverted. Avoid accountability at all costs by launching new controversies the moment an old lie begins to unravel. Saturate the public consciousness with outrage and emotion until nobody even remembers what the original problem actually was.

The result is a government that treats governance not as a responsibility, but as a never-ending reality show. It relies on the same exhausted playbook: whip up hate, dazzle with spectacle, drown every failure in noise. And it is shamelessly abetted by a mediascape that has abandoned journalism for servility, eagerly acting as an amplifier for fake victories and non-existent threats.

Meanwhile, the real rot spreads unchecked. Unemployment has hit historic highs while hollow boasts of economic miracles continue to dominate the airwaves. ‘Job Mela’s only happen right before some state is about to go in for elections. Freebies are handed out for the same reason, and then instantly taken back once seats are secured in the halls of power. Healthcare, exposed brutally during the pandemic, remains woefully underfunded and unprepared for the next disaster. Education is disintegrating, but all we hear are sugary announcements about new curricula and token scholarships. Farmers’ suicides and rural distress have become just another invisible statistic, drowned out by the latest outrage du jour.

Perhaps the worst crime of Lollipop Politics is that it infantilises the citizenry. It no longer treats Indians as thinking, responsible adults capable of engaging with complex realities. Instead, it reduces them to a hysterical fan base, drugged on spectacle and manufactured rage. It does not feed their hopes — it feeds their hatreds. It offers not solutions, but enemies.

How long can a nation survive like this? How long can we substitute real leadership with endless marketing? How long can we postpone the hard conversations this country desperately needs to have, by instead throwing new lollipops at an increasingly restless population? India deserves better, Indians deserve better. We deserve truth, not theatre. We deserve leaders who govern, not marketers who manipulate. We deserve a politics that treats citizens with respect, not contempt. We deserve a future built on foundations of reality, not clouds of sweet-tasting, toxic lies. Until that day comes, this game of cloak & daggers will go on. Another manufactured controversy tomorrow. Another flash of outrage. Another sticky, empty promise held out to a distracted, exhausted public. And the slow death of a great republic will continue — not with a bang, but with a billions licks, of the hate-lollipop.