Good public posture

In their flowing costumes and beards, their turban headgear, they cut daredevil-may-care figures, the kind you read about in historical romances, the sort who belong on the sets of the film, Lawrence of Arabia, the type Ally McBeal would hang her tongue out for men to slide up and down well8230;. Mmmmnnn. If this sounds almost carnal, itcould be because compared to the Indian politicians on view, these guys were slurp, slurp.8217;Twas not merely their physique. They spoke. English. Fluently. Eloquently.

Came as an electric chair shock: bhagvan ke liye, They are not supposed to be acquainted with the Queen8217;s tongue; they were meant to be backward, uncivilised, ultra-conservative fundamentalists stuck in prehistoric times while the rest of us have reportedly reached the end of history8217;.

Notwithstanding such handicaps, their spoken English was superior to our ministers: Civil Aviation8217;s Sharad Yadav and Chaman Lal Gupta found angrezi mein kahte hain tough going. They strung words together as perhaps the blind do beads by feeling around for them. Which is super alright in multi-ling India, where you may barely not speak Hindi or English and still become Prime Minister sorry Deve Gowda-ji, but is kinda unhelpful and uncommunicative when you8217;re on international television or radio.

And then there was the moment: Taliban Foreign Ministerseen standing next to India8217;s Foreign Minister at the hostage handing over ceremony on December 31. That tele-photo opportunity, flashed across the world, was better for the Taliban than being accorded the diplomatic recognition it has been denied. This may have been only the first page of history8217; as people are wont to call TV coverage, but it was historical. On television, the Taliban were credible, convincing, HUMAN.

Good public posture is as crucial as the physiological one. The Taliban, instinctively, seemed to appreciate this. So had BJP, the first party which understood that a sagging public image was chronic bad for its body politic. For two years, BJP has made tremendous efforts to bolster its public standing by becoming more media-literate and telly-friendly. Conjure up Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitely, Jaswant Singh, L.K. Advani, Pramod Mahahan and the Prime Minister himself: weren8217;t they oodles more tele-communicative and telegenic than their Congress counterparts?

Sad to say, they8217;ve slumped.During the hijack crisis and its aftermath, their shoulders have drooped. We witnessed a tired, distant Prime Minister during his meetings with hostages8217; relatives and his television speech on New Year8217;s Eve; a stony Foreign Minister throughout, a slightly hysterical Home Minister now pointing a finger at Pakistan, a Parliamentary Affairs Minister stumbling through explanations and a Minister of Iamp;B who routinely doubled as the party/government spokesman, frequently missing to say nothing of a minister of state for civil aviation who couldn8217;t contain his mirth while boasting to everyone watching Question Time India BBC World that Indian Airlines had been hijacked many times 25, think he said.

Maybe it8217;s as Advani said: the hijack has cost BJP more dearly than the country. They8217;re not robust, combative or sharp as they were. They seem to be floundering. As though they are wandering in the plains of Kandahar, lost. In reality they may have everything nicely under control, know precisely what they8217;redoing. But they don8217;t look like they do.

A perfect opportunity for the Congress, you would have thought to improve its public posture. Instead, you have Mr.K.Natwar Singh, unforgettably, repeating every sentence of a pre-prepared written statement on the Opposition8217;s point view during the crisis. Like he was giving dictation to his P.A. Terrible television. Then there8217;s Ajit Jogi, neat in his bhandh gala coats but rather tongued-tied; Scindia is cool and urbane but insubstantial, Pranab Mukherjee is missing8230; Not a good showing.

As for Sonia Gandhi, she8217;s either camera-coy or her media managers if she has any, should return to kindergarten. If it8217;s about appearances then hers is rather prettier than the men8217;s. And she8217;s had her opportunities, opportunities which require her to be seen8217; in action not heard. One example should suffice. After the Orissa cyclone, Sonia made fleeting visits to the state. She should have stayed, set up camp in Bhubaneswar, not throughout but at the beginning and then nowand again; shown the entire world that she, as Congress President, spearheaded the Congress state government8217;s relief efforts. Can you not imagine the photo opportunities, the television footage? Sonia, hugging bereft survivors, Sonia distributing food, Sonia holding a destitute baby, Sonia surveying the damage.

Had Priyanka accompanied her.. wow! Sonia would have been seen as a politician who acts because words fail her, a politician who doesn8217;t mind wading into the deep end.Good public posture. Partly the name of the game.