The Hindu : Small screen magic

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 23, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Small screen magic

A new breed of politicians owes its rise to television, says Anjali Mody.

THE HOWITZER 155 mm — the Bofors gun — guards the border between India and Pakistan. Its usefulness was proven during the Kargil war. Yet until Kargil, it was widely perceived as symbolising massive political corruption in high places, its contours familiar to anyone who had lived in India through the mid-1980s. In the world before hidden cameras, the Howitzer gun was the physical proof of political corruption.

The story of Rs. 64 crores in kickbacks to a Prime Minister remains among the biggest media investigations in independent India. The failure to prosecute the case clearly reflects an acceptance of political corruption and in some senses the diminishing impact it has on electoral outcomes. Yet media exposés of `petty' political corruption have grabbed the public imagination.

Bangaru Laxman of the Bharatiya Janata Party became the unlikely face of political corruption, filmed accepting money from an "arms dealer" in a media sting operation to uncover corruption in defence deals. The image of Mr. Laxman taking one lakh rupees was shocking, not because of the act, but because the transaction was caught on camera. This is also Dilip Singh Judev's story. Although the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi, is himself being investigated in a case of forgery, the video footage of Mr. Judev raising a bundle of rupees to his forehead has greater dramatic value.

Replays of such images on the television reinforce the view that `seeing is believing'. A newspaper scooped the Judev footage, but it was on television that he was trumped. For, all the verbal dexterity in the world cannot score over a moving picture. Particularly one that confirms, as it did in the case of Mr. Laxman and Mr. Judev, what everyone already knows — that every politician has a price.

The small screen is where it is happening. Although only some 30 per cent of households have access to a TV set, the reach of the medium in a country where functional literacy is low cannot be ignored. Political parties seem to understand this. Ironically for a party that has had both Mr. Laxman and Mr. Judev to deal with, it is the BJP that has best understood this. Its phenomenal growth in the last 15 years owes a great deal to its responsiveness to television.

The rise of a new breed of politicians, visually acceptable and verbally dexterous, is also a sign of how the television sets agendas. Television dramatises politics. It brings political opponents to the studio, pits them against one another and creates the illusion of a political debate and democratic accountability. In the studio, `tough' TV anchors, demanding answers to `tough' questions, become the conscience of the nation. The issues they raise become the issues of debate.

With politicians choosing TV as their medium of choice, newspapers increasingly take their cue from TV. But there is a world where electoral choices are determined despite television. Gujarat, the State with the first fully televised communal carnage, is one. Those who see television as agenda-setting would have expected the people of Gujarat to be outraged by the 2002 riots. But Gujarat voted overwhelmingly for the BJP.

The BSP leader, Mayawati's success as a politician with a growing support base is another example. One explanation is that her support base comprises a class of people without the economic power to make them television viewers. It is hopefully only a matter of time before this is corrected. The question that remains is, will Ms. Mayawati's politics change when this happens?

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