Public Enemy No. 1

When Alka Ahuja, Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja's widow, spoke into television microphones on Monday urging the relatives of those aboard IC-8...

When Alka Ahuja, Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja8217;s widow, spoke into television microphones on Monday urging the relatives of those aboard IC-814 to remain calm, two things were re-emphasised. Kandahar was Kargil Part II and television was again allowing itself to be used by the government in manufacturing consent. If the image of two soldiers clenching their hands in a joined victory salute atop Tiger Hill remains the abiding memory from Kargil, it is the angry form of relatives storming into External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh8217;s press conference at Shastri Bhavan that will be remembered over and over again.

Kargil was India8217;s first living-room war where Pakistan was the clearly defined enemy and the Indian soldiers were unbridled heroes. Kandahar was different: with little known about the hijackers, the most recognisable villain of the piece was a slow-to-react government, elected on a mandate which was the antithesis of the soft state. That was until Jaswant Singh stood outside the Prime Minister8217;s Houseand hinted in his clipped accent that Pakistan may be involved in the hijacking. Till then the Citizen had been Chief Critic. 8220;Jaswant Singh looked a little troubled but the Prime Minister did not say much,8221; said the friend of one of the passengers trapped in Kandahar. In the absence of any pictures emanating from the actual site of the hijacking, television could not get enough of this story.

Until the not-so-invisible hand of the government intervened again. Suddenly Doordarshan8217;s lead story of Sunday morning, former president Shanker Dayal Sharma8217;s death, became Star News8217; lead story on Tuesday morning. 8220;The government is working really ha-rd,8221; said Star News8217; earnest young anchors. Before that, Prannoy Roy told the nation that the government had not sent its negotiators to Afghanistan for three days because the Taliban, a regime that India does not recognise, was deliberating in its shura, a word that has surely emblazoned itself in the national lexicon. It was the showbiz equivalent of Atal BihariVajpayee going on Doordarshan to appeal for calm.

It probably had a higher TRP in the SEC A segment. And it happened not so coincidentally after a meeting between Jaswant Singh and heads of media units. Zee News, which had till then focusing on the carelessness of the airport authorities and Indian Airlines officials, then picked up Army veterans to say that Maulvi Masood Azhar should not be released.

Pakistan TV, we have been told, is misusing the independence of the media to suggest at worse a government unresponsive to mass public anger and at best a highly clever one hoping to paint Pakistan into a corner by stage-managing the hijacking of its own citizens. Any view which even remotely echoes this can only be considered anti-national. Not surprisingly, though in the early stages of the crisis, the phalanx of varnished faces that the BJP-led government usually deploys on such occasions was missing 8212; Minister of State for Civil Aviation Chaman Lal Gupta was an inarticulate sitting duck for anchors whowere channelising the ire of angry relatives 8212; Pramod Mahajan surfaced on Monday evening to say that the Cabinet had met to condole the death of Sharma and had also discussed the hijacking. No problem. Situation tense but under control: famous words from the era of DD8217;s monopoly.

In such a situation, it wasn8217;t surprising that Minister of State Vasundhara Raje Scindia asked relatives to avoid the media because the information she would be sharing with them was extremely sensitive. It was reminiscent of the ads after Vietnam: Who betrayed those who died in Vietnam? Was it our own media?8217; The media was on its way to becoming Public Enemy No. 1.It was only in Kargil that television had looked as helpless. For a medium which prides itself on pictures, most of the information was available through the ATC controller Hyder at Kandahar an area which found itself spelt in as many as three different ways. The pictures came via Reuters.

And the analysis came thanks to some very sleepy members of the Capital8217;sentrenched think-tanks. But some of the analysis on Doordarshan was positively incendiary. Umesh Upadhyaya who has had to unfortunately park himself in the DD News studio went on about the holy month of Ramzan and the anti-Islamic act of hijacking. But then why blame DD 8212; after all, it does get budgetary support from the government. There was little we saw on other networks that did not endorse the Government8217;s point of view. Or in these nationalistic times, shall we call it the nation-state?