Opinion Food, scams, non-sequiturs

So just when Congressman C.R. Kesavan had got into his stride during a session on BJP general secretary Ram Madhav’s unsavoury tweets about the vice president, BJP spokesperson G.V.L. Narasimha Rao immediately interrupted him. Kesavan, black as thunder, shouted in warning, “Don’t interrupt me… I can be difficult.” Whereupon, a visibly reddening Rao rudely retorted, “That is all you can be.” Thereafter, the two of them launched into a free-for-all against each other, leaving viewers to dart their eyes from one to the other in bafflement (Times Now).

The non-sequitur: Monday, on IBN-7, when the anchor asked him if he agreed that Madhav was out of line, Rakesh Sinha, a “Sangh vicharak”, replied: “Why didn’t Sonia Gandhi do yoga at the Congress HQ?” (Answer: she was abroad!)

During To The Point (India Today), Karan Thapar asked the BJP’s Sudhanshu Mittal whether the PM or BJP president Amit Shah should apologise to Vice President Hamid Ansari for Madhav’s comments.”What did Digvijaya Singh [Congress] say?” thundered Mittal in reply, “He said, was it because he is a Muslim [Ansari]!” “You are not answering the question,” complained Thapar, in vain as it happened, for all the effect it had on Mittal. He continued to yell and make strange allegations about “premeditated conceptions”.

Panellists are not the sole offenders. On International Yoga Day, the anchor on News X asked the reporter at Delhi’s “yog path”, Rajpath, “Did you perform any asanas?” To which she replied, “The students are quite enthusiastic.”

Also, there has been a great deal of sniping between anchors on different channels, especially since the Indian Political League was exposed. Arnab Goswami referred to the India Today interview with Lalit Modi as “selfie journalism” by “selfie media” (Times Now).

Now this might be great entertainment for a public starved of good soap operas, but polite it is not. A little more decorum, please?

While all the usual suspects on TV were agitated over “Lalitgate”, they still did manage to bellyache about the prices of food in the Parliament canteen. The issue arose, Tuesday, after an RTI revealed that the menu for MPs was dirt cheap. Zee News, India Today and Times Now simply could not stomach a roti that cost one rupee. For viewers eating far more expensive rotis at home, it was hard to digest too, and we tend to agree with Rajdeep Sardesai, who “hopes the prime minister is watching” and will end the food subsidy to Parliament. Does the PM watch TV?

Finally, everything that needs to be said has been said about the TV commercial featuring Arvind Kejriwal without showing his face even once: It is awful. How about the Air India ad that has a foreigner and an Indian squabble over “my Air India-our Air India”. “It’s warmth,” claims one, “It’s care,” replies the other. Really?

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com