Devangshu Datta: Of frenemies and coepitition

It is normal for two students in the same course to be friends and rivals. They are in competition for grades and later, they will angle for the same jobs. But it’s in their interests to share notes and cover for each other when bunking, etc.

They are “frenemies”. Frenemy is a portmanteau of “friend” and “enemy”. The word is used to describe relationships between entities that act in tandem when their interests coincide while competing against each other at other times. Many business situations create frenemies and so do geopolitical equations. The word was coined to describe interactions between the western allies and the USSR in the WW-II period.

Frenemies indulge in “coepitition”, a portmanteau combining “cooperation” and “competition”. Every industry association exemplifies coepitition — business rivals join hands to lobby. Another common example of coepitition is setting industry technical standards, units of measurement, etc.

Politics is an industry, or if you prefer, a meta-industry, which generates extremely complex coepitition. Political parties have interests; every individual politician has interests. Those interests collide and coincide with the interests of other politicians and they may cut across party lines.

Coepitition is especially marked in coalitions. Coalitions occur after cut-throat but inconclusive electoral competition. Then hard-nosed bargaining becomes inevitable. Politicians are, therefore, inured to cursing each other in public and settling down behind closed doors to talk.

It helps if ideological biases can be shelved in favour of practical dialogue. Successful politicians are very good at that. Keeping communications open with the frenemy is integral to coalitions. One of the most convenient ways to do that is to use trusted mediapersons as go-betweens.

India is the most evolved coalition marketplace in the world. It has seen nothing but coalitions at the Centre since 1989, and multiple coalitions in various states as well. Each coalition involved multiple bargains forged by a common focus on return on investment (RoI).

During this process, the political industry developed a very complex relationship with the media. It is in the interests of every politician to get on with the media. It is also in the interests of every politician to deny the media damaging information.

This sets up frenemy relationships, between politicians and mediapersons, and between parties and media organisations. Those frenemy linkages are often invoked when inter-party and even intra-party dialogue is required. Again, the only common factor governing those relationships is RoI (the return is not necessarily monetary).

Luckily, the media is comfortable with coepitition. By definition, the media is everyone’s frenemy. It’s the media’s job to dish dirt. Every consumer wants to know the dirt about every other entity, and to keep its own dirt out of the public domain. This is true of the media as well. It is the largest industrial consumer of dirt and would much rather maintain its collective credibility by not having its own chuddis washed in public.

This week, a couple of media organisations broke ranks to publish some tapes and transcripts that throw a fascinating spotlight on the neta-patrakar nexus. Assuming the tapes are genuine, those conversations between various frenemies of the Indian state had a bearing on your future electricity and telephone bills, which is where the neta-patrakar nexus affects you.

The frenemy relationship between the media and politicians has evolved in an organic response to the market opportunities created by crony capitalism and coalitions. It can neither be regulated out of existence, nor can it be wished away. Anybody who can model the dynamics is likely to be a candidate for the Nobel.

In a narrower context, the media has to find ways to cope with the shifting dynamics. The media’s USP is credibility. It risks losing that credibility when it indulges in excessive coepitition with its frenemies, but a certain amount of coepitition is inevitable. Where do you draw a line in the sand?