Let's discuss the media

The Indian media is sharp, lively and so much a part of our lives. Buzzing with activity at all times, the media plays a huge role in shaping our perceptions about the politics of our nation, society and future. In this article, the Oracle will assess the media and its impact on our world.

Unfortunately, in this article, the Oracle will only be able to discuss the English language media. This is the form of the media that the Oracle is most familiar with, and let's confess; loves to hate. Therefore, it behooves the Oracle to first acknowledge a debt to this media for providing the considerable volume of information that the Oracle in order to form his opinions.


Here, we use "English language media" as a generic and rather loose term to describe cable news delivered to middle class homes by the top media houses. We clarify that this term will be applied even to channels such as Zee News, Aaj Tak and Star News and NDTV India which do NOT report in English at all. Perhaps "elite media" would have been a better term.

Though freedom of the press would be defended by law in any real democracy, there will always be elements in power, in Government and society that will try to intimidate/subvert the media in subtle ways. The Indian media has generally performed well on that account, managing to remain fiercely independent at most times. And, even though the media may be accused of being hawkish in its tactics or insensitive in its reporting on some occasions, they deserve credit for keeping the citizenry fully informed of national events on a minute to minute basis. Brutal competition is usually good for any industry. Our media, its brashness, its enthusiasm, its zeal is in many ways a testament to our vibrant democracy.

Let us consider the "standard of reporting". It really depends on how we see the media withing the framework of our democratic society. For instance, we could excoriate the media for being obsessed with certain events of no consequence such as reporting on ... say .. Slumdog Millionaire (to take a fairly recent example) in the top story section. We could take the media to task for reporting on the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding way beyond its actual relevance. A slightly different allegation would be that the media is insensitive and seems to revel in tragedies. A case in point would be the stampede at Chamunda Devi temple in September, 2008 in which 249 people were killed. The media has also come under fire for irresponsible reporting during the Mumbai terror attacks when they were accused of allowing details about Army positions to pass to terrorists through the TV news. To sum up, the media often caters to the obsessions of the public with celebrities or feeds its voyeuristic desire to see blood and gore.

Of course, there is another way to see this. The media is a business and fools who fail to recognize it as such have only themselves to blame for any delusions that might arise. The dangers lie in the fact that the media often gives the public a false sense of empowerment. The corporate media masquerades as the "voice of the people". The Oracle has pointed out elsewhere that the corporate media is actually the least democratic of all the so called "estates of democracy". This is a fact that seems to escape notice completely. What actually happens is that the media essentially reports its own points of view rather than those of the people and we are told that these viewpoints should somehow take precedence over our own. Why? Are the mediapersons, journalists, newspaper columnists elected in any way? Do they even represent a fair cross section of our society?

There are many things we seem not to notice about the media. For one, we must remember that journalism is a fairly low skilled profession. Journalism, on an average, requires a skill set that can be hardly rated as being more specialized than an actor. Just because journalists pass judgement on issues does not mean that they are smart people who know what they are talking about. A glaring example would be the media reports on legal representation for captured terrorist Kasab. Not one journalist seemed to understand the depth of the ethical and legal subtleties of the situation and instead focussed on random remarks made by politicians, knee jerk Shiv Sena reactions and the like. Another case in point would be the ruckus created by Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami demanding the removal of a fellow Election Commissioner, when the media reported on the general smoke screen of sensation and completely failed to display even a basic grasp of the constitutional issues involved. Science journalism is, of course, the best evidence for the proposition that journalists are only semi-literate. We need look no further than the story of the "$10 laptop" that embarrassed India and IIT Chennai recently. The swanky studios, the eye catching graphics, the dramatic background music and imposing names like "Face the Nation", "We the People", "The Big Fight", etc. are all bluff and bluster; a cover for semi-literacy. It is a classic case of anything that glitters being taken for gold.

To be fair, the media never claimed they were experts in anything. "We the people" are responsible for our own stupidity. If we are unable to glean "information" from "opinion" and make up our minds based on what people with the most shoddy academic skills have to say, it is our problem.

Of course, no discussion about Indian English language media can be complete without paying a tribute to the dogged dedication with which the media is committed to eradicating the BJP from the country. There was a time when the "communal" BJP was an untouchable in Indian politics, even more than the forces of communism. Then the BJP forged alliances with anti-Congress forces in state after state and this tag of untouchability became all too redundant. Credit goes to the media for keeping the tired old genre of BJP baiting alive.

Even today, at the drop of a hat, the media goes into a frenzy of anti-BJP ranting at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, it is not even necessary for the proverbial hat to drop. A wonderful example would be the recent tirade that the media has launched against the BJP at the snapping of the BJP-BJD alliance. Instead of castigating the opportunistic stance of the BJD for betraying a trusting old ally at a vulnerable moment, the media is all too caught up with celebrating the BJP's setback. The buzz in the media is that the NDA is imploding, notwithstanding the fact that the BJP has added two allies (RLD and AGP) in the last two weeks; and the INLD before that. It also makes no difference that ever since the UPA was formed in 2004, the "United" Progressive Alliance has not managed to contest a single election as a unified whole. It also makes no difference that the BJP has won 7 of the last 11 Assembly Elections outright and made huge inroads into an 8th (J&K) and has just managed to defend two incumbent governments with substantial majorities in two large heartland states. In contrast, the Congress has managed to win one (Delhi) and emerged as single largest in another (Rajasthan). That has not, however, held the media back from declaring that the Congress is on an upswing. Take another instance, when the BJP bagged Karnataka last year, defying obviously contrived* and dishonest opinion/exit poll predictions, the disconsolate media sought solace in pointing out that the Congress would still be ahead if the Assembly segments were grouped in terms of Parliamentary seats. No one cared, of course, to do a similar analysis on Rajasthan. And when the BJP won 5 out of 8 Assembly bypolls in Karnataka at the end of 2008, and the Congress did not manage even one, the plan was to look the other way.

So, why would the media do this? In the short term, the media is relieved that the Mumbai terror attacks did not result in a paroxysm of support in favour of the BJP. But why would the media be against the BJP in the first place? We have to understand what a journalist does. The average journalist is faced with important political, economic and diplomatic issues on a daily basis and yet does not possess the intellectual capacity to process these in an appropriate manner. As such, the average mediaperson finds it vastly simpler to jump on to bogeys, focus on buzzwords and act like a swarm of bees than to think. 24 x 7 television further heightens the need to look smart as opposed to being smart. Blaming the BJP is easy. The BJP lacks a systematic multi level worldwide terror infrastructure unlike Islam does: ranging from the "few misguided youths" who fly planes into buildings to the "peaceful demonstrators" and "victims of discrimination" who burn down Bangalore because dictator Saddam Hussein is about to be hanged. In fact, the motley band of Shiv Sena thugs who show up to break glass panes make for excellent reality television; the meagre financial losses these events entail are more than justified by the money the channel makes by subsequently telecasting this "riot". Understanding the "secular argument against the savagery of Islam" is a nuance that is beyond the intellectual capability of the average journalist.

Perhaps the more pertinent question is : why is the media able to get away with this? The reason is that the media has the privilege of writing its own performance review, and therefore, is effectively free from the constraints of professional responsibility. When the media drives itself into a corner, as it often does, the media can pull out simply by deciding not to talk about their blunder any more on the airwaves. What India needs is a second line of defence against forces of misinformation, such as a higher penetration of media such as blogs and youtube. Media personalities such as Barkha Dutt have already gone public with their dislike of blogs. The fact that the media is the least democratic of all the estates of democracy is a point that cannot be stressed enough. Although we the people are grateful to the media for the wonderful coverage, we should know better than to let the opinions of some semi literate, self appointed intellectuals to influence our opinion beyond a point. Fortunately, most of us already know that. Election results bear that out.


* As a postscript, the Oracle will explain why he considers the Opinion Polls to be "contrived and dishonest". We start by agreeing that opinion polls have gone grievously wrong in recent years. The failure can be blamed on either of two sources (or a combination thereof): the science that underlies an opinion poll or the integrity of the people who administer the exercise. In view of this, the Oracle would much rather question the honesty of the mediapersons than the power of science and logical reasoning.

Political soup in Jharkhand

The political compass has been spinning madly in Jharkhand for a while now. Just so we can get a sense of how Jharkhand became the most politically unstable state in the country (perhaps after Goa), let us take a look at the timeline of events that have happened since the Assembly Elections of 2005.

1. Shibu Soren forced upon the state as Chief Minister by Governor Razi, by falsely claiming the support of 2 MLAs in his letter to the Governor.

2. BJP smuggles out 5 MLAs through Bhubaneshwar to Delhi and parades them before the media.

3. Supreme Court strikes down the nomination of an Anglo Indian member by Soren, asks proceedings of the Assembly to be videotaped: Arjun munda forms government. Governor Razi receives a severe reprimand from the President for his partisan role.

4. Coup engineered by Laloo yadav unseats Munda, replaces him with independent Madhu Koda who had been supporting the previous government.

5. Shibu Soren is convicted of murder and sent to prison.

6. Koda abdicates in favour of Soren.

7. Soren seeks election to the Assembly from Tamar constituency, loses miserably to a candidate from the Jharkhand Party.

8. President's rule is imposed.


...phew! It is difficult to believe that all this could have happened in just four years. And now the UPA "partners" continue their machinations to prop up a new government as the enraged Opposition demands fresh elections. The question is: could a political class get so self involved, so self centred that they actually forget that they are representatives of the people? The state of Jharkhand performs miserably on every indicator of development, the majority of the people languish in desperate poverty, illiteracy is rampant and social unrest threatens to boil over. Jharkhand is a microcosm which parallels the many states in Africa, etc. that are complete disasters.

The state of Jharkhand has, on an average, struggled to keep any maintain an organized polity. In Ranchi, for instance, where local bodies went to polls last year, the number of candidates was so large that special arrangements had to be made. While this is symptomatic of a vibrant democracy, this also suggests that the state might be falling over the edge into anarchy. Small state Assemblies have always been a bane, with smaller parties and independents having a field day, but Jharkhand has taken this to a whole new level.

So what options do the political parties have? The BJP has had to lie low ever since Arjun Munda failed to save his government. Ever since, the party has struggled to win by-elections, mostly due to organizational and local problems. The state unit has been torn apart by factionalism. Uncomfortable personal equations between party leaders such as Yashwant Sinha and Yadunath Pandey have taken a toll on the BJP's fortunes. Although party backed candidates performed handsomely in the local bodies a year ago, the party has let its tribal support slip away. The major architect of this decline has been former BJP leader Babulal Marandi, who is usually credited with having run a fair and decent BJP government in the state. But, in this election year, the BJP seems to be getting its act together. Recently, party leaders were in the streets of Ranchi together, in a show of unity, demanding fresh elections. The party has also gradually expelled the malcontents, who have found seats of opportunity in other political corners.

The BJP has also had to deal with a sulking JD(U). After JD(U) lost Namdhari, the party has been reduced to nothing in the state. This has not stopped JD(U) leaders from demanding a large chunk of the seats in the state. As a result, the BJP is now threatening to go on its own in the Lok Sabha elections. As in 2004, this gambit could cost the party dearly, since even marginal number of votes can tilt the outcome decisively in such a fractured polity.

Fortunately for the BJP, the UPA camp has been plagued even more seriously by internal problems. The bonhomie between all anti-BJP parties that brought all seven of them together as a mammoth alliance in 2004, is nowhere to be seen. It is noteworthy that the seven parties together had managed to notch up a mere 2% larger share of the popular vote than the BJP had on its own. Had the BJP been in alliance with JD(U) at that time, it would have won at least 5 seats.

The UPA's abysmal failure to run a confidence inspiring government or to put up a united face is going to cost them dear. No one ever took Madhu Koda's government seriously and how the people feel about Soren has become amply clear with the Tamar bypoll results. To my knowledge, a sitting Chief Minister seeking entry into the Assembly has never been turned down by the people. And Tamar is an utterly rural seat in the tribal heart of Jharkhand. If "Guruji" cannot make it there, he should think twice before trying his luck. The decline in JMM's fortunes is largely due to the fact that people are tired of the blatant opportunism of the party. The integrity of JMM is so low that disgust is the only possible reaction. The party has never had success in the urban areas of the state and now it is beginning to fall apart in tribal areas. This is the fallout of the whimsical leadership of Shibu Soren. JMM ranks cracked even as Assembly elections were in process in 2005, with the exit of Stephen Marandi. Less than three weeks later, Stephen Marandi was back at Soren's side as his trusted lieutenant. Things kept changing even after that; and Stephen was in the company of Babulal Marandi when the Oracle lost track of him.

The JMM's sour relations with RJD have not helped. In the aftermath of the Tamar fiasco, the RJD rushed through a proposal to have its own Annapurna Devi as Chief Minister (the RJD's obsession with food continues.... from Rabri to Annapurna). Soren, for his part, wanted Champai Soren to hold the position until the former managed to win a later bypoll. After Champai was rejected by UPA partners, the choice fell on Nalin Soren, then on Salkhan Soren and finally on Sushila Hansda. It took Shibu Soren four tries to figure out that the Congress was happy to rule the state through Governor Sibtey Razi and didn't mean to have anybody from the JMM as Chief Minister. Now Soren is threatening to contest the Lok Sabha polls on his own if the UPA partners do not cooperate. Given that the UPA has failed to contest a single election in the last three years as a united whole ever since it was formed in 2004, this is what would have happened anyway.

In all this, the man who has looked rather unperturbed is Babulal Marandi. His Jharkhand Vikas Morcha has gone from strength to strength. Some of this has to do with his stubborn refusal to return to BJP out of a sense of honour, a rare commodity in Jharkhand politics. His party has sapped the membership of the BJP, the latest being legislator Pradeep Yadav, who is now principal general secretary of the JVM. However, the JVM still lacks a credible cadre across the state, which means it might not be able to translate the generally positive impression of his party into votes.

There is a case to be made before the people of Jharkhand about rising above the minutae of local party politics. Too many parties have come up in Jharkhand in too short a time, each with its own axe to grind, each commanding a small sliver of the population that is too myopic to see beyond some small issue that is of marginal significance to affairs of the state. The outcome: the Congress, which has zero public support in the state, is now ruling the state by proxy. Governor Razi now enjoys power without responsibility. This is what happens when people abdicate their responsibility to the state and the democratic process.

Nagpur meet: BJP tries to close ranks

The Nagpur meet has come as a change to party watchers who thought the BJP's campaign would never begin. It has been a while since the BJP and NDA declared L K Advani as the Opposition candidate for Prime Minister and tried to build a buzz around his personality. The strategy never worked; Advani's efforts failed to arouse little more than scholastic interest among political junkies. To his credit, the formidable Advani tried his best to become larger than life; he wrote a massive volume compiling his immense political life experience, tried to reach out to the young through the internet and recently, through blogging; but things never qute took off. Advani was ridiculed for being too old to lead an aspiring young nation and a shamelessly partisan elite media kept rooting for Rahul Gandhi to take over as an "Indian Obama"... that's right; a man with a shockingly low political IQ as Rahul Gandhi, whose elevation to high office should cause any hard working man or woman to swear under his/her breath against the "class privilege of the lazy rich"; is suggested as a parallel to America's transformational new President, who overcame barriers of racial prejudice, institutional power and poverty to rise from the middle class wasteland to Harvard, to the United States Senate and then to the White House! It does not get any more surreal than this...

The BJP's Nagpur meet was an improvement in the sense that one saw nothing of the blame game that has become pervasive in BJP circles. The BJP is under pressure and frustrated at not being seen as a favourite to win the Lok Sabha polls in April-May. Ever since the BJP-NDA declared Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate, there have been 8 major Assembly elections. Of these, the BJP has won 5 on its own, improved its performance vastly in a sixth (J&K) and lost two. The Congress has won one, emerged as single largest party in one and lost six. That is 2 positives to the BJP's 6! The BJP realizes that it has to use its worker base to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, since not even a 6-2 advantage will translate into the slightest media coverage in favour of the party.

With this understanding, the BJP began at Nagpur, with LK Advani urging party workers to probe the ground and listen to the people. This meet lacked the bluff and bluster of previous party meetings, in that it was austere in self congratulation and forthcoming in terms of self evaluation. First of all, the BJP has decided to opt for a more "dissipated" campaign, with regional leaders taking charge of each state. This has been done in the absence of a single polarizing national issue and the failure to create an aura around the person of Advani. Advani, for his part, has been extremely dynamic in the last one year, struggling to repackage himself. Although the venerable leader probably realizes that it is well nigh impossible for him to break all associations with the past, he is not about to give up. Advani has been, in fact, spectacularly optimistic ever since he was declared as candidate for Prime Minister. Advani has appeared at book signings, has created a website with a smart new feel and tried to be everywhere at once. The party organization has often failed him in this respect. Advani conceived the series of Vijay Sankalp rallies across the country, but the party machine could hardly bear him out. Nevertheless, he has refused to be discouraged. At one such rally in Ranchi, he was so moved by the response that he asked for a personal video copy of the events.

At the Nagpur meet, Advani was his new self yet again, refusing to read from the prepared text of his address, instead launching into a fiery speech all on his own. In his speech, Advani mentioned each of the BJP's second generation leaders in turn, reserving the fewest words but the most fulsome praise for Modi. Modi, for his part, still seems to be taking stock of the situation, content to let the BJP leadership and the media hang on to his every word, holding back word on whether he plans to become Prime Minister one day. Modi's tirade against the Gandhi dynasty made headlines all around, but little else was heard from the BJP's most charismatic leader.

Apart from this, the BJP made some stunning decisions at the Nagpur meet. Following 2004, the BJP had, for long articulated their decision to make the top leadership of the party contest elections. It, therefore, came as a shock that both Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley had decided to stay away from contesting elections. Only Sushma Swaraj would try her luck, possibly from Bhopal. This is precisely the kind of flip flop that has been letting the BJP down in Delhi. Despite winning so many states, the BJP has never looked very decisive in the last five years. From Uttar Pradesh to New Delhi; and from Bihar to Jharkhand and Orissa, there is a sense that the BJP is bowing out of contests, very much like the Congress.

The absence of an NDA outlook at this crucial meeting was conspicuous. This can only mean that the BJP is getting too comfortable with its NDA allies and has stopped taking their occasional disgruntled murmurings seriously. After all, the NDA core group consisting of the JD(U) , Sena, SAD and BJD has come to be so closely identified with the BJP that chances of these parties seeking realignment are few. The BJP's main concern should be with how small this group really is and how the party has failed to draw any other major regional party "into orbit" since the elections of 1999. There have been alliances: with Chautala's INLD, Mayawati's BSP, Jaya's AIADMK, Naidu's TDP and Gowda's JD(S), but little has come of these alliances that is of lasting value. In fact, the BJP has grown increasingly distant from two former friends: Chandrababu Naidu and Mamata Banerjee.

The BJP is, therefore, caught between two stools. On the one hand, the party has had to contend with increasing disenchantment of core supporters, bickering among party factions and a diminishing Hindutva vote. On the other, the party has the challenge of coalition building. Paradoxically, the same issues that unite the BJP and give it its unique identity are those that scare away potential allies. Coupled with the fact that the BJP has been stripped of its "rising star" appeal of the 90's, the party has been limping around the political arena, looking for friends. The eagerness of the Congress to negotiate and compromise on all issues except the leadership of the divine family has proved to be a superior asset for the sake of coalition building. The extensive "name and shame campaign" carried out against "communal forces" in India still has some bite left. For the BJP, the stigma has remained, the star quality has not.

The BJP, in turn, chose to put its house in order. The party chose to project the two issues that virtually every BJP worker, leader and sympathiser can agree upon: building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and bringing down the Gandhi dynasty. This effectively means that the BJP has decided to seek no new alliances until the election. It's a cynical approach, built on the idea that post election support will coalesce around whoever is ahead. The trouble is; if the Congress goes into the election with too many allies and the BJP with too few, the NDA might just fall a few seats short of the UPA, at which time the secular bogey will be evoked to thrust yet another Gandhi government upon the country. The BJP hopes to maximise the number of seats contested by having fewer seat sharing arrangements, thus winning the race to become the single largest party. Unless the BJP can beat the Congress by a considerable margin, this strategy will not work.

As the BJP gets back to the business of working on the General Elections, it is good that the party has given itself a moment to plan about the future. It had been said that the BJP's political rise was only meteoric, with the party sure to fall apart due to internal bickerings soon after losing power. It had been said that the NDA would disintegrate after May 2004. In the later half of 2004, there were plenty of signs that all this was about to happen. But, slowly yet surely, the BJP and the NDA have prevailed over the prophets of doom. A face has begun to emerge, a hint of the "chaal, charitra, chehra" of the the BJP that is to be. It had been lamented that, "once upon a time, the BJP had a strong leader at every level", a setup that had collapsed when the BJP leaders flocked to the Centre to share power in Delhi. Ten years hence, Vasundhara, Modi, Shivraj Singh, Raman Singh, Yeddyurappa, Sushil Modi have fallen into place again. The managers and spokesmen: Javadekar, Jaitley, Swaraj, Naqvi, Ravi Shankar have come to the fore. A farmer's son has taken over as party president. It is a victory, not of dynasties, but of organizational ability. It has been a long time coming for the only political party in India with an internal democracy, but it has happened.