Opinion Breaking down News: Dial P for Promise
When Mr Disintermediation chose to make direct contact with the audience, with no bulletproof glass or TV journalists intervening.
The Twitterati have been complaining that the election only replaced Mauni Baba (their term of endearment for Manmohan Singh), with Maun Modi. Keen watchers of the parliamentary channels have also noted that Modi’s presence in the House has been even less substantial than a hologram after his inaugural speech, in which he had announced that he would not ram legislation through with his majority. He returned to that promise yesterday in his Independence Day speech, abjuring bahumati (majority) in favour of sahmati (consensus).
This was his third public, televised speech in a week, resoundingly breaking the silence. These were not the lively interactive sessions that our Arnab Goswamis crave, but Modi is Mr Disintermediation. He mislikes questions, but he likes to make direct contact with the audience, with no bulletproof glass or TV journalists intervening. At the Red Fort, he also undid the alarmed mirth caused by his surreal appearance in Leh, swaddled in golden silk. Was that wardrobe planning malfunction or (let’s be creative) can the look be patented as Shaolin Shimmer? No disrespect to the garment, but all prime ministers are not cut from the same cloth, and a form factor problem was painfully visible.
That embarrassment earlier in the week was erased by Modi’s appeal to parents to teach their children better values and to reject female foeticide, and by his insistence on using corporate social responsibility funds to equip schools with toilets. Our media are ever-burdened with such messages, but they acquire fresh urgency when they are articulated by a prime minister. The thread was immediately picked up by the BBC, which had followed the December 16 gangrape case very closely, and resonated all over social media.
Of course, the message was somewhat deflated by the call for a decade-long moratorium on communal violence policed by persons unknown. Liberal India had waited breathlessly to see if Prime Minister Modi would acknowledge the problematic legacy of chief minister Modi, and felt short-changed. Similarly, on the crucial issue of manufacturing, the credible invitation to multinationals to “Come, make in India,” was compromised by the mystifying slogan for exports: “Zero defect, zero effect.” Zero environmental effect, it turned out, but a slogan which needs an explanatory footnote isn’t firing on all six. And is it just me, or was the Prime Minister’s tone really a bit off? The ramparts of the Red Fort have not reverberated with so much complaining and hectoring since 1857.
Mr Disintermediation has forked the media. The ringside view appears on state-backed television, while the commentariat rants speculatively on private channels. The monsoon session of Parliament, which ended this week, has offered poor entertainment value, as the Prime Minister complained in his address at the Balayogi Auditorium. He blamed the media, which follows parliamentary debate with unhealthy curiosity and reports it in the raw.
But really, where else but on Parliament’s channels can you hear Rajnath Singh, the government’s designated baritone, defend himself for two hours after an eight-hour debate? Not quite VK Krishna Menon,who had addressed the UN Security Council for eight hours in 1957, reducing them to throbbing jelly, but it could be a domestic record.
pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
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