Opinion Anna is news and news is Anna
TV is kept busy drafting the future of India.
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It was an English August in London and Anna ka August in Delhi (Aaj Tak). The (mis)fortunes of the Indian cricket team and the Indian government were so disastrously alike as they played out before our horrified eyes,that perhaps their fates are linked?
Or blame it on Anna ki topi,visible at both the Ramlila Maidan and at the Oval on Monday evening,as India lost the fourth test. Certainly,each time they were on TV,Indias cricket captain looked as lost as Indias PM. And what former cricketer Madan Lal said of Dhoni was surprisingly apt for Dr Manmohan Singh: He is waiting for things to happen… his captaincy was missing. Or,in Kapil Devs words,when things are going wrong,troubles come from every direction… Dhonis inability to cope with them has been exposed. In both cases,we saw one Indian take centrestage and refuse to bow down: even as Anna Hazare fasted to fight corruption,Rahul Dravid had a lean and hungry look about him as he fought unsuccessfully to save India from another defeat.
But while there was nothing to celebrate at the Oval,the atmosphere at the Ramlila Maidan,where TV spent the last six days,has been almost jubilant. It was like any other festive occasion Janmashtami was celebrated on Monday a festival of India with the flag held high. And with each wave of the flag,TV anchors and reporters got increasingly carried away with the mood and joined the tide of people. The lines between the public and the media blurred,putting you in mind of the latest TV ad anthem: har ek friend zaroori hota hai.
Certainly,the media had befriended Anna H,his cause,and those who gathered there to support him. All their descriptions were hyperbolic: hundreds of people became thousands,and thousands multiplied into tens of thousands on every channel. TV news was done with objectivity,so finding fault with their arithmetic might be declared unpatriotic.
Like Hazares fast,the coverage has been relentless,24×7. For nine days we have had no other news,not from the rebel advance in Tripoli,nor of the Naxal attack on policemen in Bijapur. It has been Hazare all the way,with everything else relegated to the bottom of the screen,like a footnote to history. We can debate whether or not Anna is India and India is Anna, but Anna is news and news is Anna at least on TV.
This has bothered some channels enough for them to introspect: NDTV 24×7 and CNN-IBN both asked,in a self-referential navel-gazing exercise,whether the Anna movement was media-propelled. In the last few days CNN-IBN has been counselling against confrontation, and asking for a compromise: Let us put the nation above individuals, advised Rajdeep Sardesai,after a CNN-IBN journalist was attacked,reportedly by men in Anna caps.
In the TV studios,English news channels have been drafting different versions of the Lokpal bill,and the future of India along with it,while Hindi news channels have been preoccupied with Hazares health: Anna ke khoon mein bimari hai Anna ki jaan ja sakti hai, warned India TV on Monday. 152 ghante bina khana kisi ko Anna ki parvah hai? demanded Star News. The most pithy line came from the Zee News anchor on Monday night,when the UPA government first reached out to Hazare: as Annas pulse rate falls,he remarked,the governments pulse rate goes up. (But the media had its finger on the pulse of the people,right?)
DD News has behaved as though the protests were taking place in Antarctica and it couldnt reach there in time to bring us the latest news. On Monday night,it gave extensive coverage to the PMs speech on corruption at IIM-Calcutta,followed by Congress MP Abhishek Singhvis views on the standing committee and the Lokpal bill,before getting to the reason both were in the news Annas fast and that too in the form of a medical bulletin: doctors say Anna is fine,Team Hazare says he is not.
Why does DD News even bother to pretend? Why not simply call itself DD Government?
shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
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