MEDIA MATTERS
Action aplenty
SEVANTI NINAN
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The elections in U.P. are a veritable goldmine for the media.
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Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
Inside the "den": Rahul on the campaign trail in U.P.
SOMETIMES journalists, pen-pushing sociologists and psephologists all have to be grateful for a subject that is a veritable gold mine. And that is the case with the Uttar Pradesh elections. What a cast, what a scenario, and what a windfall from the Election Commission in terms of an extended election process. For practically two whole months the media business is guaranteed unfolding news and constant grist for analysis on a platter. U.P., with all its complexities and stereotypes, is a joy for field reporters and armchair sociologists alike, and is a sub-editor's delight. As epitomised in the headline, "Mayawati Dalit Queen, now Brahmin Messiah" (rediff.com).
Possibilities and limitations
This election is a good test of the possibilities and limitations of each medium. If television brings you Rahul Gandhi's road show, the Indian Express veteran on the ground tells you what people are saying before he arrives and after he leaves in greater depth than the piece-to-camera of a TV reporter, shouting to be heard above the din, can. But some pictures are more telling than others. As in Mulayam Singh's benign messiah smile when he is being feted at the Aligarh Muslim University. When the NDTV reporter cuts immediately after to AMU students saying Muslim or not, they will not rule out voting for the BJP, it undermines that smile somewhat. Similarly, when NDTV's poll shows that 65 per cent of BJP voters think the Ram Mandir is no longer a big issue, it underscores the naiveté of the communal CD and undermines the bluster of a besieged L.K. Advani or the disingenuousness of a Rudi Pratap Singh pleading that it was an inadvertent release.
Using the opportunities
At election times leaders turn prisoner of the media op, waiting for their turn to speak on a live poll show, hamstrung by the limitations of that media opportunity. Mayawati, explaining in this forum why she is attempting the forging of a Brahmin-Dalit alliance, sounds less like the shrewd and opportunistic tigress media analysts make her out to be, and more like an unconvincing peddler of impossible dreams: "The upper caste used to exploit, now they will not exploit but create brotherly feelings (bhaichara). We will expand this alliance in U.P. then in other states."
To go beyond this pat simplification you have to turn to the newspapers which have more space, and more time for reflection, to interpret both her calculations as a strategist and the nature of the upheavals U.P. is experiencing. (The Hindustan Times and The Hindu, April 10).
On television you find a bone for the day and chew on it, and since it is a newsy bone, several can chew on it together. The BJP's covert communal CDs provided grist for several days, particularly for channels such as Star News and Aaj Tak which have begun to move away from politics in their newscasts, but also for all the news channels. The news bulletin coverage never went beyond the immediacy of the fracas it created. "Socio" triumphs over "economic" when the coverage is always from the caste and communal prism. And when in the middle of that the High Court tossed in its Muslim majority observation it could not have given the frenzied TV channels a better gift.
On April 9, there was another bone, pounced on with delight, and chewed upon for the rest of the day. A Varanasi blasts accused, Walliullah, was a candidate from Phulpur. Not a big deal surely in a State where, the media tells us, one out of four candidates has a criminal record? Ah, but this was different, said the reporter feverishly. Here was a case of an alleged enemy of the State contesting, and from the constituency of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. You have to admire the dogged pursuit of stories and tireless digging up of angles.
Instant reference
The Internet, always a triumph of retrievability, brings together all the coverage on a site like Rediff. You can read all the reports on Rahul Gandhi's road show, or Sonia's forays or on Mulayam and Mayawati together at any point and arrive at your own conclusions. The pity is that the current crop of U.P. election reports on this site are sketchy and do not sufficiently leverage the advantages of the Net. And the blogs on Sulekha and elsewhere, from writers in Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Raipur holding forth on these elections, are inane. As are the comments posted on them.
The consensus from the acres of newsprint and TV time expended so far on this election is that the Congress is a bit of an orphan in the teeming hothouse of configurations and alliances that U.P. is today. What price then, Rahul Gandhi's "freshness and honesty" that breathless journos have been going on about? If you are in the media business you flog star quality, even if it is irrelevant. And have the sub-editor's satisfaction of crafting a headline like "Rahul enters Mulayam's Den."
Sevanti Ninan's Headlines from the Heartland: Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere will be published later this month..
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