Patna: A cataract is an age-related ailment that clouds the lens of the eye, thus blurring one’s eyesight. In India’s Hindi heartland, a cataract is commonly known as ‘motiabind’.However, these days, the agriculturists of Bihar’s hinterlands are talking about a new age-related vision-clouding ailment. This eye disorder mainly affects the youth and unlike cataracts, which only affect individuals, the new ailment appears to be contagious and even seems to be approaching the status of an epidemic.The people of the hinterlands call this new disorder “Modiabind”, based on its primary cause: the excessive viewing of WhatsApp propaganda messages about the Prime Minister of India and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The symptoms of this disorder are the very opposite of the symptoms of motiabind. Where those who suffer from Motiabind can only clearly see things that are directly under their noses, but cannot see anything that is at a distance, victims of Modiabind cannot see anything that is right in front of their eyes, but instead have the ability to view things so far away that they are almost figments of the imagination.So far, no doctor or medical procedure has seemed able to cure the Modiabind disorder. Which is why, on October 8, 2022, Pankaj Yadav, an agriculturist from Raghopur, the constituency of Bihar deputy chief minister Tejawshi Yadav, together with a group of his fellow agriculturalists, informally met the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Lalu Prasad Yadav, to discuss this matter among other issues.Lalu, who was then at his daughter’s house in New Delhi, preparing for his party’s national council meet before travelling to Singapore on October 11 for a kidney transplant, asked me to look into the matter.“Talk to these villagers (Pankaj Yadav and the others) so you can understand this ‘disease’,” Lalu told me, laughing. “Then, write about it to spread awareness. I will provide the right medicine for this disease when I am fit again.”Caught in a blurPankaj Yadav and his fellow agriculturalists are not the only people who have observed the rapid spread of Modiabind in Bihar. The politicians in the state are also well aware of it. In fact, Prashant Kishore, the election strategist turned political activist, recently described Modiabind as a “new epidemic fast infecting rural youths”.“Some people approached me, telling me about Modiabind. Its patients are mainly youths,” Kishore was heard saying in a video of a speech he gave at a village in Bihar’s West Champaran district, where he is currently on a padayatra or long walk.Kishore continued: “They [the youth] are unable to see unemployment, the rise in the prices of fuel, food and other essentials, the broken roads and putrid drains crippling their lives, but they can see how Modi ji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) has set things right in Jammu and Kashmir, has silenced China and Pakistan and is known around the globe as a vishwaguru (guru to the world).”The only remedy Kishore could suggest was avoidance. He recommended that young people avoid reading messages spread by what he described as ‘Whatsapp University’ so that they are not infected by Modiabind.Meanwhile, illiterate or semi-literate agriculturists, particularly those who have no access to smartphones and internet-related technology, claim that it was they who first identified and named the disorder. They have added its existence to the local lore of folktales and folksongs as a way to LOL (laugh out loud) at the new generation that is dependent on mobile phones and is being “fooled” by BJP propaganda spread through WhatsApp messages.“The village youths are hugely affected by Modiabind,” Ramesh Giri, a semi-literate folklorist from Mathia in north Bihar’s Siwan district, told The Wire. “They don’t graze cattle, don’t plough fields, and don’t work in the fields. They don’t take care of the ailing and old in their families. They stay glued to their phones and talk about Modi, China and Pakistan,” the 65-year-old added.Seventy-year-old Keshaw Tiwary, who plays the dholak when folksongs are sung, said, “I am fed up with my grandson. He insisted that my son buy him a mobile phone. Now, he doesn’t feed the cattle. He doesn’t attend to his ailing grandmother. He only talks about Modi, China and Pakistan.”A phone(y) diseaseThe source of Moidiabind lies in the collective frustration of the older agriculturists and herdsmen who have noted how the younger members of their families are hooked to their mobile phones and the entertainment options provided by the internet and show no interest in the realities of their existence.“Sab barbad ho gaya, Modi aur mobile phone ke chakkar mein (Everything is destroyed because of Modi and mobile phones),” said 70-year-old Ramchandra Kurmi, a folklorist from Daraily in Siwan.According to Patna-based senior journalist Kanhaiya Bhelari who hails from central Bihar’s Rohtas district, some satirists of the state’s Bhojpur region have contacted Sampat Saral, an eminent satirist in Hindi from Rajasthan, and asked him to write a satire based on Modiabind.So far, the phenomenon of Modiabind seems to be restricted to the Bhojpuri-speaking region of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is not known if the disorder has spread to other parts of the country.Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author and independent researcher in social anthropology.