Most of us remember the year 1999, for it gave us a movie- The Matrix with an idea of what can an illusion based mental prison which is drawn around us by an external agency can look like. In that iconic cult movie, the character of Morpheus, who guides the protagonist-Neo to free his mind, describes the helplessness of the people who are trapped in the mental prison designed as a computer simulated dream. Morpheus tells Neo that the people who are trapped in the world based on illusion are so hopelessly dependent on the system that their incomplete knowledge about it will make them fight to protect that false reality. In the same year, two psychologists from Cornell University David Dunning and Justin Kruger put forth a theory about a cognitive bias, based on research. The theory states that inept persons are mostly incompetent to identify their ineptness. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. This somehow mirrors what Morpheus described Neo about the people trapped in the world of illusion; that they will fight to protect their flawed and incomplete knowledge of the world around them. The parallels would become clearer as we move ahead in our discussion.

Over the past few years, there has been a common tendency across the world. Populist leaders have won elections by landslide margins of votes, India being a prime example in the case. The aforementioned effect can be found to be abundantly active among the population of the voters who vouch for such populist leaders. In certain countries, there are active groups of such voters who officially maintain that they have their own ‘set of realities and facts’ which they subscribe to and which confirms their beliefs. These voters simply refuse to accept their inability to see the bigger and the real picture as that seems counterintuitive or even blasphemous to them. This is the exact weird quirk that is explained as the Dunning-Kruger effect. These voters are at an intellectual and cognitive level incompetent to understand the exact realities pervading around them. They internalize the false imagery and chronicles generated and spread by the use of the ubiquitous social media by the handlers of the dispensation. It is exactly like the Matrix- the actual antagonist in the movie referred to earlier in the discussion. The ones who are victims of this effect cannot fathom their misunderstanding of the world. They accept the lens given to them by their beliefs which are reinforced by the continuous peddling of false facts through social media.

A major problem with the people under the spell of the D-K effect is that they perceive others who are showing them the reality as monstrous villains. This is reflected in the society when ones like the social activists, RTI litigants, and others try to peel out the truth and bring it in front of the people. In India specifically after 2014, there is an increasing risk to the people in terms of their safety when they bring out the truth in the public forum. To some extent, this causes a sense of fear of being socially ostracised, excommunicated, and perceived as a fraud in the public domain. This is yet another condition known as Imposter syndrome in which a person or group of people feel inadequate or incompetent and feel unsafe to express themselves on any platform. It is the opposite of Dunning Kruger effect. Imposter syndrome is reflected and evidenced when the majority of voters in 2013-2014 imported and internalized the idea of the Gujarat model without bothering to verify the actual on the ground scenario. Many have questioned the model and other political carrots thrown at the public in the run-up to the 2014 polls, like Ravish Kumar among the journalists, Janardhan Dwivedi in Congress, and Yashwant Sinha within BJP (from 2016 onwards). People like them were practically ostracised on the public forum. This is the result of the success of the narrative imposition on a mass of public who are under the shadow of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is pertinent to note that the percentage of vote share won by BJP in 2019 was 37.4% vis-a-vis 31.1% in 2014. It can be argued that it reflects the success of the pictorial tale painted by the propaganda machinery under the system despite the many questionable steps taken like that of the demonetization. The scenario has become exacerbated after 2016 when incidents of mob-lynching and harassing prominent women in the public space with name-calling were being trivialized under the garb of nationalism. This is nothing but a direct result of an increasing number of people falling preys to the effects of the D-K effect.
This development has a result in the form of a snowballing number of followers of the widely accepted false picture. But this false belief of a large number of followers are going to be impacted, which has already begun, when the ruling dispensation does not keep their promises to the people-i.e. the IT cell blokes, who are dishing out the snippets of the false picture over the social media. These IT cell people are not getting the promised level of income as was assured to them before the 2019 polls, which is evident in their venting off on social media. It is interesting to note that in 1914, exactly 100 years before the landmark year 2014, neurologist Joseph Babinski had termed a condition called anosognosia. This is a condition where a person with a particular disability is unaware that he has is suffering from it. This condition is generally attributed to issues in the parietal lobe in the brain. David Dunning had described the D K effect as a case which can be compared to a state where anosognosia gets in the day to day life of a person.
The less aware and mentally incompetent voters with a flawed idea more than often overestimate their judgment and place a tag of righteousness on their behaviour, thanks to the Dunning Kruger effect. They are like the people trapped in the computer-generated neuro-simulation world of ‘the Matrix’. It places the other people who can understand the real picture susceptible to fall prey to the Imposter effect. Is there a way out? Until the time, the people serving the false narrative to the gullible mass get hammered in their bellies due to the overall crumbling state of the economy, there seems to be no escape from this tricky situation.