MxMIndia

Tag: PA Sangma

  • In Freaking News, 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

    Ranjona Banerji: TV news viewing can be injurious to the lower jaw

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Since president-elect Pranab Mukherjee spoke to almost everyone on Tuesday, it was hard to see why news channels rushed to qualify their interviews as “first” or “better” or whatever. Exclusive, in TV parlance, is apparently when you do the same thing as everyone else, except five minutes before.

     

    Anyway, Mukherjee did not say very much about anything he was going to do as President although he talked about his childhood and his early political career. The silliest question I reckon came from Sagorika Ghose of CNN-IBN who asked whether Mukherjee’s ascension to Rashtrapati Bhavan was a “return of Bengal to the mainstream”. At this point my jaw dropped so low that it fell off and I was so busy retrieving it that I couldn’t pay attention to the rest of the interview.

     

    The best I could get from Arnab Goswami’s interview with Mukherjee on Times Now was that first Mukherjee walked round his garden 40 times, then 33 times and now 30 times and he did not know how many times he was going to walk around the Mughal Gardens. He said he heard the gardens were very large. Anyway, as President he will have ample time to work out stuff like that. Or if he asks someone they might tell him how big the Mughal Gardens are.

     

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    Sunday was all about the presidential election as well as everyone gave us live coverage. Of course, after some time they ran out of things to say because there was very little to say about a presidential election in India, at least not enough that can last a whole day even given TV’s marvellous propensity for waffling on about nothing. The highlight of the day was losing candidate PA Sangma’s losing speech. He started by congratulating Mukherjee and then went into a whine about how the Congress had used bribery, extortion and threats to ensure Mukherjee’s victory and how the North East and betrayed not just him but all tribals and themselves as well. (They didn’t vote for him.) Sangma’s entire campaign was based on pettiness, so nothing surprising here. What was surprising was Navika Kumar of Times Now stating emphatically that this was the best, most gracious and most sportsmanlike speech she has ever heard from a loser. Her guests Krishna Prasad of Outlook and commentator NN Satchidanand tried to point out otherwise, but she would have none of it. Jaw-retrieval is a common affliction for those who watch too much TV news, as I should know by now.

     

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    Rupert Murdoch has stepped down from several boards which control News Corp’s titles in the US, UK and India. The pressure to do so apparently came from investors, after the phone-hacking scandal led to the closing of The News of the World and all the arrests of News Corp staff, current and former. Murdoch’s rise saw a lot of bile but in his fall are some abject lessons for media bosses and for those journalists who decide that principles are nothing when faced with corporate pressure to perform in a particular manner or to do anything to get results. The Nuremberg trials ought to be required reading for young aspiring journalists: the fact that you got an order is not defence enough.

     

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    I was appalled yesterday and continue to be appalled today about Monday’s front page anchor in The Times of India about a group of Indian athletes that went to the 1936 Berlin Games under a saffron flag singing Vande Mataram and impressed Adolf Hitler enough to give the group a medal. The story behaved as if getting a medal from the 20th century’s most frightening dictator was a great honour. There was not a squeak in the story about Nazism and what the organiser of the group thought of that. The glorification of Nazism in India is restricted to those influenced by the religious nationalism that comes of out of Nagpur. The story, therefore, should have mentioned or questioned the RSS connections of the group. Saffron flags and Vande Mataram were clear giveaways but why not come out openly and say so? And for a journalist – and a newspaper – to ignore the Nazi angle to such a story is criminal.

     

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    Vikram Doctor’s article in The Economic Times on food and the Olympics was extremely readable and well-researched. Try it: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/onmyplate/entry/thanks-to-french-humour-here-s-best-of-british-food

     

     

     

  • The award for Noosemaker/Whiner/Tantrum Thrower of the week is divided between PA Sangma and Sharad Pawar

    Ranjona Banerji: NCP ties itself for Whiner of the Week award

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The winner of the presidential election maybe Pranab Mukherjee but the award for Noosemaker/Whiner/Tantrum Thrower of the week is divided between PA Sangma and Sharad Pawar. One is former NCP, the other current NCP and both founders of the NCP.

     

    Pawar suddenly decided that he was very upset with the sort of musical chairs being played at Cabinet meetings. I quite sympathise because I never liked musical chairs as a kid at birthday parties. Today’s children will not understand, but in the olden days birthday parties were an elaborate form of torture for children, who were forced to compete with each other and make fools of themselves in order to get a slice of cake and a few chips. Sounds a bit like today’s political parties actually.

     

    Anyway, Pawar felt that every time the music stopped, he was forced to sit in another chair. Sometimes it was the second chair (first being the prime minister) and sometimes it was chair 3 or 4. This was clearly insulting. He might have only nine MPs but why should that other chap from a much smaller state holding a job that Pawar once did get the second chair?

     

    Later we were told he was not so petty to be worried about chairs. All he wanted was a coordination committee. Whatever.

     

    PA Sangma, former Lok Sabha speaker and the country’s best known Tribal and Christian – according to him – wanted to become President of India. This is a legitimate goal, but Sangma, one might say, went about it the wrong way. He approached, of all people, Naveen Patnaik and J Jayalalitha for help. However powerful they may be in their own states, they did not have the numbers to make Sangma President.

     

    Since Sangma was part of the UPA, he could have at least spoken to someone within the coalition. Instead he chose to go out of it. After much reluctance, the BJP decided to support him. The UPA and two NDA allies supported Pranab Mukherjee. Everyone except Sangma saw Mukherjee’s victory as a foregone conclusion. Not because Mukherjee is much loved or the greatest person ever but because the UPA had the numbers. Then Sangma and the BJP said he wanted to be the loser with the highest number of votes (this is a strange award category known only to Indian politicians).

     

    Then Sangma said that he had to win for India’s Tribals and Christians. Most Tribals and Christians were silent. (As it turned out, not all of their representatives voted for Sangma.) Then Sangma said that Mukherjee had used a comma where it was not needed in his nomination form and had not used the right kind of nib in his pen. Also, he did not stand on the right side of the table when submitting the form (unlike Sangma who seems to be heading quite firmly to the right). Since Sangma was by now advised by the world’s biggest litigator Subramaniam Swamy, the plan was to go straight to the Supreme Court with 1,000 public interest litigations. The Election Commission blocked that route.

     

    So now that Sangma has not become president, he is nibbling away at sour grapes. He should not, because he is now eligible for the Best Sore Loser and Most Ungracious Defeat speech awards, with a good chance of winning both. The Congress used bribery, extortion and threats to get Mukherjee to win and the North East states (which elected Mukherjee by the biggest margins) betrayed him.

     

    Boo hoo hoo.

     

  • The Union finance minister, perhaps inspired by incumbent Pratibha Patil’s wonderful lifestyle, wants a similar retirement plan for himself

    Ranjona Banerji: Will Pranab Mukherjee be our next President?

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Do we have a President of India at last in Pranab Mukherjee? The Union finance minister, perhaps inspired by incumbent Pratibha Patil’s wonderful lifestyle, wanted a similar retirement plan for himself. Lovely house and gardens, lots of fuss and protocol and nothing to do – perfect!

     

    This is hardly surprising since Mukherjee is the most hard-working man in the Universe. Not only is he the finance minister, a bad enough job, he is also the go-to man for both the government and the party. If the prime minister’s not there, Mukherjee’s in charge. If some ally is misbehaving, off goes Mukherjee to sort it out. If anything in the government is going wrong, Mukherjee to the rescue. If Parliament needs to be taught a lesson, up pops Mukherjee. Since he is 900 years old and has been part of every Parliament as long as anyone can remember, no one can contradict him. Earlier, in the 1970s, no one could contradict him because he always had a pipe in his mouth, so no one could understand him. Now he has got rid off the pipe but comprehension is still a prerequisite to contradiction. He also has a look in Parliament and if he gives you one, you quail and sit down quietly. This puts an end to the Opposition usually.

     

    In addition to this, he is head of some 8,000 Groups of Ministers and another 8,000 Empowered Groups of Ministers. (I really don’t know what these are but they sound important.) Effectively, this means the government will come to a standstill once Mukherjee moves to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Since we in a form of paralysis anyway, the government is hoping no one will notice.

     

    The main thorn in Mukherjee side is his “sister” Mamata Banerjee, also known as “I am a simple man”. The “simple man” does not want Mukherjee in the top chair. Bengali parochialism has still not recovered. This is akin to Bengalis supporting Kolkata Knight Riders instead of Pune Warriors. Oh, right, they’ve done that anyway. The TV channels are wondering how the man who everyone (except them) knew would get the job, eventually got it in spite of all their best efforts. India demands an answer here.

     

    The two comedy acts running on the sideline are PA Sangma and Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP is wondering whether or not to join this laughter challenge.

     

    The only person laughing all the way to the Mughal Gardens is Pranab Mukherjee!

     

  • 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

    [MJR] TV journos prove Katju is right

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Journalists have evidently signed a pact to prove Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju right – 90 per cent of Indians are idiots. There seems to be no other reason for this enormous media reaction to the late night fracas between film star Shah Rukh Khan and a security guard at Wankhede stadium two nights ago.

     

    Of course, the shenanigans of film stars are exciting and when they behave badly it’s even more fun. But is there anything to justify front page headlines and TV debates for two days? What exactly is there to debate? Khan arrived last the stadium around the time Kolkata beat Mumbai, with a bunch of kids. The kids ran into the field. A security guard stopped them. Khan intervened. Words were exchanged and some apparently not very polite ones and then Khan left.

     

    For this, the world has come to an end. We are discussing politeness, propriety, banning, apologies, role models, respect for the uniform, high-handedness, diplomacy, official inefficiency, entitlement or the sense thereof, protection of children and the decibel level of whistles.

     

    If we went to war with China, I cannot imagine more being discussed on television. The journalists on TV cannot seem to distinguish between a security guard and a policeman. Rahul Kanwal almost burst a blood vessel when on Headlines Today veteran adman Prahlad Kakkar tore into the behaviour of security guards: “You have to respect the uniform”. I would really like to know how any of these TV guests react when faced with the officiousness of a security guard.

     

    Kakkad was a rare voice of sanity as was Rohan Gavaskar who said: “Banning Shah Rukh Khan from Wankhede is like banning Sachin Tendulkar from PVR”. Meaningless, in other words. Except for Arun Lal on Times Now, no one wanted to discuss whether officials of the Mumbai Cricket Association, who called for a ban on Khan entering Wankhede, were not over-reacting. Lal said it’s a question of contesting fiefdoms – with Khan as an IPL team owner against MCA officials with their hurt pride at being event managers rather than stakeholders.

     

    The levels of self-righteous on Times Now were staggering, with anchor Arnab Goswami, veteran columnist and author Shobhaa De and not-so-veteran columnist Simi Chandok leading the way. Goswami kept bringing up police action against Hollywood stars Nicholas Cage and Russell Crowe, again unable to distinguish between security guard and a policeman. (Hint: different uniform.)

     

    Former Mumbai police commissioner MN Singh tried to point out that criminal charges against Khan were not possible and this led to him being dragged over hot coals by Goswami. When the nation wants to know, let no man or woman try and douse the fire.

     

    Commentator Charu Sharma however poured cold water on Rahul Kanwal’s spectacular rage – mainly it seemed because uniforms were not being respected, apparently a prime concern in his life – by forecasting that an amicable resolution would be reached and the incident would soon be forgotten. The truth is that everyone knows that that is what will happen.

     

    As a matter of interest, after all the hot air expended over the fight which Saif Ali Khan had in a restaurant at the Taj a few months ago, can anyone remember the names of those self-righteously hurt complainants from South Africa? Hmmm.

     

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    On NDTV, I watched another somewhat circular debate over whether PA Sangma could become the next president of India. These speculative discussion with weak premises only illustrate our emptiness of thought. I greatly admire Divya Marathi editor Kumar Ketkar for his fortitude and level of tolerance as he sits through so many TV debates these days, trying to inject a little sanity into proceedings.

     

    It seems amazing to me that no TV people seem able to realise that all this political hoopla over the next president is just a diversionary tactic from all the political problems this country is facing.

     

    Goswami even wants a debate between Sangma and Vice-President Hamid Ansari, since he possibly believes that India has a presidential form of government. Contestant 1: I will plant 400 varieties of roses in the gardens. Contestant 2: I will conduct the tours of Rashtrapati Bhavan myself. Contestant 3: I will never build a large retirement home for myself. Contestant 4: I will never bore school children with my poems and ideas.

     

    Please, somebody, save us!