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Tag: Dorab Sopariwalla

  • On NDTV 24×7 on Thursday night, the NDTV elections expert said: Women vote for the Congress because it is "wishy-washy" and lower income groups also prefer the "wishy-washy"

    Ranjona Banerji: How irresponsible! Dorab Sopariwalla makes a ‘wishy-washy’ remark on women & lower income groups on NDTV 24×7

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Patriarchy raises its head in the unlikeliest places. Like on Thursday night on NDTV during a discussion on gender vote shares this election. Statistics have shown that more men vote for the BJP and more women vote for the Congress – this is not news, it has been mentioned before. Election analyst Dorab Sopariwala – normally very astute in these matters – made a remarkable assertion on the vote share in Bihar in this election where in the third phase more women than men voted which could be bad news for the BJP. Men vote for the BJP, said Sopariwala, because it is seen as muscular and therefore masculine. Women vote for the Congress because it is “wishy-washy”. Oh yes, before I restrict this to a feminist rant, he added for good measure that lower income groups also prefer the “wishy-washy”. Talk about putting your foot in it.

     

    Whether the Congress is wishy-washy or not, is not my concern. But this idea that women prefer the “wishy-washy” and men the “muscular” is not just gender stereotyping, it also puts many other gender assumptions on their heads. For one, it could be wishful thinking that women like the wishy-washy – many claim that Indian men are wishy-washy anyway and that is what Indian women are used to. Or it could be that wishy-washy Indian naturally look with awe at the “muscular” and “masculine” BJP and therefore gravitate towards it. Or it could insidiously imply that women are by nature wishy-washy and cannot make “masculine” choices – perhaps Sopariwala has based his psychobabble observations on the amount of time some women take to decide which pair of shoes to buy. I joke perhaps, but I do not laugh.

     

    And as for the lower income groups, my what a travesty of democracy they are: consistently heading towards the wishy-washy when they could easily be like big, strong, masculine men and pick the muscular BJP. I would have thought that lower income men were more muscular than soft pudgy higher income men but it could be that I am also stereotyping. Perhaps muscular men would naturally pick the wishy-washy since that apparently denotes the feminine – satisfied perhaps in their own masculine muscularity.

     

    The mind boggles. But whatever the interpretations, the underlying implications are unacceptable. Those who appear in responsible positions on large media platforms need to be careful about what they say and how they say it.

     

    **

     

    The revelations about Congress leader Digvijay Singh’s relationship with a TV anchor have thrown the media in a quandary. So far, the personal lives of politicians have been tiptoed around. There may have been plenty of gossip but not the sort of media hysterics that happens in the US or the UK for instance. But since his political rivals and therefore the media made so much of Narendra Modi’s lately acknowledged wife, Singh’s l’affaire de coeur could hardly been ignored.

     

    So where do we go from here? Is everyone fair game? In the case of Amrita Rai, the journalist with whom Singh is involved, she claims that her email was hacked into and personal pictures posted on social media. The trouble is, once you are in the public eye – and a love affair with a public personality is that much – then all gloves are off. The dirty tricks departments of rivals will be doing what they can to mess up your game. C’est la vie.

     

    Still, even within the media, there are questions being asked. Has the Indian media bridged that last gap? Are we going to get into everyone’s personal lives now? Also, has there been a difference between the way TV and print have covered the story? Rai is after all a TV journalist and there is a tendency to look out for your own.

     

    Pradyuman Maheshwari has some ideas on the issue in his column for Mid-Day: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/is-news-tv-soft-on-diggy-raja/15267088

     

    If I would add anything it is this: I am no fan of Narendra Modi but the story of his ignored wife is an old one and of little relevance to his brand of “masculine, muscular” politics. Had his political rivals not made so much of it, Singh could have cooed his way into bliss in blessed silence. And most importantly, Singh’s wife has passed away. Rai is separated from her husband and in the middle of a divorce. So there is no impropriety here to create a massive story.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear 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

    Freaking News: SP goes UP, Times Now went down

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    What a mouth-watering cornucopia of choice, you think, as you settle down to watch the election results unfolding at 8 am on Tuesday morning, what with so many TV channels to choose from. In a couple of hours of course, you’re weeping at the cacophony, the grand, sweeping statements and the sheer confusion caused by so many channels.

     

    For once, the loser is perhaps Times Now. The channel, which so often knows what India wants to know, appears to have overplayed its hand. Its bizarre desire to clock 100 hours of election coverage meant that it started long before the results day and created unnecessary boredom for the viewer. Plus an enormous range of “guests” some of whom were colour-coordinated (Vinod Mehta and Meghnad Desai on Monday night and Meghnad Desai and Neerja Chowdhury on Tuesday morning) and too much on-screen graphic hysteria made Times Now distracting and the remote more appealing.

     

    CNNIBN made large generalisations even as early trends were being reported and then hopped back and forth to little avail. If Times Now had too much, CNNIBN did not have enough.

     

    In the English news segment, the battle seemed to be between NDTV and Headlines Today. NDTV had Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwalla, the old and trusted team, bolstered by words of wisdom from Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta. Headlines Today had Mani Shankar Aiyar to add his considerable wit to the mix apart from a very eager energetic Rahul Kanwal.

     

    I have to be honest here – I preferred NDTV until Barkha Dutt arrived, which is when I switched to Headlines Today – which by the way also claimed that only its exit polls were correct (more on that in a bit).

     

    Of the Hindi channels, Aaj Tak was professional and easy to watch – although they all have a better ground presence in terms of reporters than the English channels. The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha channels both had serious debates and less fluff than all the others combined.

     

    Mid-morning, the confusion between the channels reached its climax as each of them showed different trends, some almost at odds with each other. At which point, I switched everything off and went for a walk!

     

    **

     

    It’s now 12.55 pm and we have no results yet but some very strong trends. Most exit polls had decided that the Samajwadi Party would win UP, but the feeling was for a hung assembly where the permutations and alliances would be paramount. Right now, it seems like a clear win for the SP. The BJP has not done as well as it must have expected and nor has the Congress – but it has done better than before. Most channels have been debating this “failure” of Rahul Gandhi in UP although the numbers show a Congress gain.

     

    Punjab was tagged as a clear Congress win but instead the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance has retained power – although the BJP’s losses have been the Congress’s gains.Uttarakhand is still too close to call – but again, it was seen as a Congress win.

     

    Manipur has gone to the Congress – as expected and Goa seems to be heading to the BJP, again as expected.

     

    **

     

    Which means once more, the Indian voter has done her own thing and flummoxed everyone.