MxMIndia

Tag: amartya sen

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Bandh a ‘partial success’, no effect on petrol prices

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Tracking Thursday’s Bharat Bandh protesting against the petrol price hike on TV led to a bit of confusion – was it a success or not. As it turned out, the Opposition-led bandh was what is known as a “partial success” so if you’re a half-glass pessimist, that’s the same as a “partial failure”. For Mumbai, TV showed us a bus in Mulund being attacked by a man in a BJP T-shirt – who either did not have the good sense or was just to brazen to hide his face from the camera. But social networking sites seemed to suggest that people did go to work. The morning papers said 60 per cent turn out in private offices and slightly more in government offices (really!). The commercial loss, said The Times of India, was Rs1,000 crore while Mid-Day pegged it at a more conservative Rs300 crore. Of course maybe with current rupee-dollar rate, both figures mean the same thing?

     

    There is also the other question about the loss caused by damage to property by “bandh” enforcers which as every newspaper painstakingly informed us, we the people would have to pay for.

     

    Across the country, the bandh fared better in some parts than others and apparently had no effect in Kerala at all.

     

    Petrol prices, by the way, had not come down by Friday morning at least.

     

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    As the TV news day progressed however, the bandh was sidelined first by BJP veteran LK Advani who announced in his blog that the BJP had made too many bad decisions recently and used the party’s favourite word “introspection”. This kind of took the wind out of the BJP’s sails as the main “bandh” caller. Immediate speculation began about a rift in the party – something political commentators have long known about. http://blog.lkadvani.in/blog-in-english/bjp-a-hub-of-hope

     

    Arnab Goswami interviewed Ram Jethamalani who had said similar things in a letter to Nitin Gadkari and Jethamalani was a hoot as always, even as he lost his ear pieces for a while and Goswami watched precious air time and money dribbling away.

     

    Jethamalani told Goswami he was a clever man who was trying to get Jethmalani round to Goswami’s opinion. Goswami said he had no opinion.

     

    No comment from me either.

     

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    The other big bandh spoiler was the Indian economy and the fall in GDP growth to 5.3 per cent, the lowest in nine years. Our TV newswallahs who usually shy away from the economy – possibly because they know so little about it – were forced to sit up and take notice and so gave us some uninformed guff, interspersed with a lot of dramatic music and stuff.

     

    Since the economic recession in the West in 2008, international TV newswallahs have become experts at this economy stuff and our TV people could learn from them how to use jargon effectively and impressively. Or, they could hire some journalists with a background in business and the economy. This would be particularly useful for the Sensex channels.

     

    Amartya Sen on NDTV sort of turned the argument on its head by saying that this obsession with GDP was misplaced. He started talking about inclusive growth and stuff which usually makes business people and economists turn faint from boredom as they cannot understand what that means.

     

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    At prime time, Headlines Today was still worried about cricket and Rahul Kanwal was in “hot pursuit” of Gautam Gambhir. Arnab Goswami asked why we need such bandhs at all and then proceeded to have a quarrel with Ravi Shankar Prasad about the NDA’s petrol policies.

     

    Mohandas Pai formerly of Infosys came up with a novel solution to bandhs – he said all bandh-callers should sit around statues of Mahatma Gandhi and hold hunger strikes. BJP people looked bewildered having never heard of this man nor seen statues of him anywhere in India.

     

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    Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi in Thursday’s Indian Express said, “Serious thought needs to be given to the ‘paid news’ that is threatening to erode the value and pride of the press and is starting to shake the foundations of democracy. A voluntary code would be the effective answer”.

     

    He was speaking at the annual convocation of the Express Institute of Media Studies.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    Much ado as Sen does a Katju

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Amartya Sen has done a Markandey Katju on the Indian media, but unlike the outspoken Press Council chief, the Nobel Prize winning economist has piled on some flattery first – free, fair, objective, pillar of democracy and so on.

     

    (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2781128.ece?homepage=true)

     

    But his basic grouses are lack of grievance redressal protocols and a somewhat ambivalent approach towards accuracy. Do these problems sound a bit like from someone who has been at the receiving end? Well, yes. He explains his personal problems in great detail anyway, mainly to do with being misquoted.

     

    The other issue is one of having some sort of ombudsman (person?). Not too many newspapers bother and I am not sure of what happens in the world of TV.

     

    But what was intriguing was the whining and moaning by journalists on social media sites. No one ever talks about consumers, said one (the implication being that readers are to blame for the rubbish that goes into papers and on TV) or that Sen was just saying the same old thing. The comments under the article, of course, praised it wholesale – media bashing is such fun!

     

    Like Katju, Sen also pointed out that the media largely ignores the concerns of Unfortunate India, while concentrating on celebs, moneybags, film stars and the middle class.

     

    Still, one would imagine that journalists, being so used to dishing it out, should also learn to suck it up. Sen is not the Press Council chairman telling us what to do with a toothless threat hanging over our heads nor does he harp on about our inability to quote Ghalib couplets at the drop of a hat. It’s just a point of view.

     

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    Katju has come to the defence of Bigg Boss occupant (I think the latest edition is over) and porn actress Sunny Leone, saying that she’s not done any of those not-yet-respectable things in India so no one should target her. It’s an interesting way of getting round our moral policing hounds. Will it work for Salman Rushdie too, do you think?

     

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    Arnab Goswami tried to hold a discussion on the Deoband request to deny a visa to writer Salman Rushdie. However the guests were such that it would never have made for a fair or even constructive debate – Asaduddin Owaisi, MP, All India Majlis-e-Ittihad al-Muslimin; Alka Raghuvanshi, curator, India Habitat Centre; Sheebha Aslam Fehmi, Islamic feminist writer  and journalist and Zafaryab Jilani, Convener, Babri Masjid Action Committee. Jilani looked tired (been there, done that), Raghuvanshi hardly managed to say anything, Fehmi put up a lone defence for the liberal voice and Owaise shouted louder than everything else. Goswami pointed out that he could not single-handedly solve the problems of the nation, on being baited by Owaisi.

     

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    Now that Tuesday morning’s papers have told us that some prospective medical students were caught cheating in an entrance exam, there is hysteria in TV land over the fact that merit is being murdered. Please.

  • A man of several parts would perhaps be an appropriate descriptor of Bal Mundkur, founder of Ulka Advertising, who passed away on Saturday

    Mediaah!: RIP, Bal Mundkur

    By Pradyuman Maheshwari

     

    I was sad to learn of Bal Mundkur’s passing on Saturday. I got in touch with Mundkur thanks to my colleague Vidya Heble (her tribute @).

    We were doing a cover feature on 50 years of Ulka for Impact, and while we had interviewed the new captains, we couldn’t have done the story without speaking to the man who started it all: Bal Mundkur.

     

    Vidya and Rishi Vora met him for the story and since we didn’t get him photographed here in Mumbai, I asked former colleague and editor of O Herald O in Goa Sujay Gupta to do a quid pro quo. We would give him the story and he gets us the pictures. Mundkur wasn’t too happy with the story appearing in the Herald, I figured later.

     

    He had wanted to speak to me about the book project that he had undertaken. He also wanted to subscribe to Impact, and sent in a cheque for the subscription as well as wanted some 20 copies of the issue that carried the article.

     

    We would’ve done it without the cheque, but Mundkur insisted.

    Speaking to him on phone meant investing at least half an hour, because you had to hear him out and convince him about what your point of view.

     

    I met him on a Saturday morning at the Orchid. He gave me his room number a week in advance, and the first question I asked him when I met him was how did he know which room he was going to be in. “Because, young man, this is my room,” he said. And he then regaled with me with a countless stories, each of which threw light on a different facet of his personality.

     

    On how we was a naval officer, an aviator, a music enthusiast… how he got into advertising, his pet peeves and the projects back in Goa. I spent some three hours with him. Possibly three-and-a-half. I could’ve spent an entire day soaking in the old stories. But there was a lunch to be at and Mundkur too had a meeting to head to.

     

    The room at Orchid (near the domestic terminal of Mumbai airport) was given to him by hotelier Vithal Kamat who Mundkur said he had helped financially ages ago (note: info not verified).

     

    He spoke about his book, and how it was meant to be a volume on Ulka. But he firmly believed that no such historical account could go without talking of the other greats of the time (note: info not verified). He insisted on it and chose to get on to the Ad Katha project and finally succeeded in launching it at Ad Asia.

     

    I didn’t really stay in touch with him, though tried calling him after his book Ad Katha’s release. I also wanted to speak to him about MxM and seek his blessings.

     

    I also wanted a personally autographed copy of the book. I guess I’ll never get that. I am happy of course that I could spend some time with him.

    Perhaps we should request Vidya to write a biography on the great man. Am sure it will be an uputdownable account.

     

    Amartya Sen on what’s wrong with the Indian media

    Nobel laureate and Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen writes a loooong 2000-plus-word review of the Indian media and what’s wrong with it (@http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2781128.ece).

     

    The last para of the piece sums up his argument:

    If the first problem I referred to, that of accuracy, is one of improving the performance of the news media through better quality control, the second, transcending class bias, concerns the media’s role in reporting and discussing the problems of the country in a balanced way. The media can greatly help in the functioning of Indian democracy and the search for a better route to progress including all the people – and not just the more fortunate part of Indian society. What is central to the functioning of the news media in Indian democracy is the combination of accuracy with the avoidance of bias. The two problems, thus, complement each other.

     

    It took me a second read to get a grip on what he was trying to say.

    While being told about the inaccurate reportage is embarrassing, I don’t agree with his second view on class bias. More on that some other day… you don’t want another 2000 words on the issue, do you?

     

    Vij is back at afaqs

    Guess we know why only afaqs carries the story about Sandeep Vij, co-founder of afaqs.com, quitting DDB Mudra. He is all set to do so, the story informs. And where’s he going? Well, to get back to Banyan Netfaqs! Private Limited (BNPL) which runs! and The Mobile Indian. “He plans to help usher BNPL into its next phase of growth in the online media space,” the report says.

     

    Should we be getting worried?

     

    Buzz me if you have a story to tell and gossip to share. Confidentiality assured. Andar ki baat will stay under. There are various ways you can reach me: pradyumanm[at]mxmindia.com, BBM @ 23050B5D, Whatsapp/Gtalk pradyumanm[at]gmail.com, @pmahesh, 98338 76278.

     

    Disclaimer: Although Pradyuman Maheshwari is CEO of MxMIndia other than being editor-in-chief, he chucks those hats while writing Mediaah! So, the views expressed here are entirely his own and not those of the website and the team that runs it (especially the National Sales Head!).