MxMIndia

Tag: Parliament

  • At a time when the Indian media is grappling with all sorts of issues and allegations, the Murdoch saga presents an interesting contrast

    [MJR] Pity the Poor Politician!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This week’s candidate for Noosemaker is our favourite whipping boy – the politician, both in India and abroad.

     

    This poor soul puts every bit of work he or she can into working for the people, but the people are ungrateful sods and show little appreciation. Take for instance, the politicians’ campaign to save the “father of the Indian Constitution” – Dr BR Ambedkar from a cartoonist. Instead of applauding politicians for this act of bravery – in the pursuit of which they even showed the courage to go against the freedom of expression which Ambedkar enshrined in the Constitution – our politicians had to face ridicule.

     

    Instead of congratulating them, people started pulling out facts about Ambedkar’s life, sense of humour, the importance of not disrupting Parliament, the Constitution and irrelevant stuff like that. What on earth, said these beleaguered politicians, have facts got to do with anything. We are saving Dr Ambedkar from a cartoon by Shankar which is part of a textbook. We don’t care if Ambedkar himself saw the cartoon when it first appeared in 1949 or not. We don’t care if Shankar was a famous cartoonist. We are only bothered that Ambedkar’s reputation has been damaged and for that, we’re willing to damage anything and anybody. Including, of course, the offices of one of the academics who decided to include the cartoon in the textbook.

     

    Meanwhile, other politicians got so bothered by the ruckus that the government just banned the textbook. This is probably a wise move as Class XI students will now have no political science textbooks, so if any of those students want to enter politics, they will be suitably ignorant about Ambedkar, the Constitution and so on. This is a necessary prerequisite for politicians.

     

    I would also advise young people to think carefully about becoming cartoonists. Dead or alive, cartoonists are public enemy number one for politicians, a dangerous breed giving to fostering humour, laughter and other subversive tendencies.

     

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    The other politicians in the spotlight are in the UK. They must now be careful when they send text messages to editors of newspaper. Because if those editors get involved in phone-hacking scandals and then get questioned by a media ethics inquiry, they can reveal damaging stuff. Now we know, for instance, that British prime minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party did not know the meaning of the short form “LOL”. He kept sending it to Rebekkah Brookes, former editor of The Sun and News of the World and boss of News Corp and now just a formidable person, thinking it meant “Lots of love”. She had to point out to him that it meant “Laugh Out Loud.”

     

    This has almost completely destroyed Cameron’s street cred and it is possible that because of his good friend and neighbour Brookes, he may lose his premiership.

    The Labour Party, by the way, cannot send anyone messages saying “ROFL” because they were well known for cosying up to News Corp as well.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and the papers, the morning after

    Print exposes Anna’s ‘barren’ truth

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    “Mumbai slow to Anna’s fast” said a front page headline in Mid-Day and that puts it succinctly. Hindustan Times, in its Mumbai edition, went with “Team Anna finds Mumbai cold, too” on page 2, nodding to both the fact that Tuesday was Mumbai’s coldest December day in 19 years as well as the reason for shifting the agitation from Delhi to Mumbai.

     

    But that wasn’t the news of the day, as it happened. First it seemed it might be Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th 100, but then he got out at 73. After that, it was all about the debate in the Lok Sabha over the passing of the Lokpal Bill. Of course, bolstered by the knowledge that the whole country was with the India Against Corruption agitation at the MMRDA grounds in Mumbai, the Ramlila grounds inDelhiand all over the country, TV channels promised us non-stop coverage.

     

    Unfortunately for all the time and money spent, not enough people showed up, either in Mumbai orDelhi. Unlike earlier times where TV cameras would concentrate on a small group and reporters would tell us that thousands had come, this time cameras ruthlessly panned empty grounds.

     

    So how many people showed up? The Times of India gave it a generous 10,000 to 15,000. Times Now and Newsx said about 10,000 at its peak, 4,000 through the day and 1,000 by the evening. The Hindustan Times quoted the police figures of about 5,000 as well as India Against Corruption figures of 30,000. The last is possibly wishful thinking and by the evening on TV, crestfallen youth were telling us that this agitation isn’t about numbers at all. This is somewhat at odds with Arvind Kejriwal’s earlier statement that the whole country was with them and if Aruna Roy could gather a group of 50,000, then she could push the government for her bill.

     

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    Of course, it is left to newspaper commentators to call Anna Hazare’s core team for their somewhat offensive language, since the cacophony on TV makes criticism very difficult. Hindustan Times has to be commended, for calling out Anna Hazare himself on his remark that “barren women cannot know the pain of childbirth”. The word “banjh” is a derogatory in most Indian languages and characterises the sort of insensitive language that is common usage in societies where sensitivity for the less unfortunate is unheard of.

     

    In an aside, it was amusing to observe the absolute silence of the Mumbaikars present when Hazare held forth on the importance of village politics in his speech. One can imagine the youth scratching their heads wondering what on earth he could mean.

     

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    The Lok Sabha debates and the confusion of whether the Constitutional amendment had been passed kept our TV anchors and studio guests busy till midnight. Luckily the Rajya Sabha was adjourned on Wednesday morning so the further passage of the bill is now delayed till tomorrow. The shortage of Constitutional experts available for TV consumption was felt very strongly on Tuesday.

     

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    Cricket was back in the spotlight and there is now also space for the apparent reconciliation between the two Ambani brothers.

     

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    For a change, the Rendezvous interviews conducted by Zainab Badawi on BBC News are quite refreshing. Guests range from Annie Lennox to Richard Dawkins to Michelle Yeoh, so the conversation is varied.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers the morning after

    How HC took the wind out of our channels’ sails

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Bombay High Court sort of took the wind out of the sails of not just the Anna Hazare movement, but also our excitable TV channels. Suddenly, their high-pitched pro-Hazare campaigns had to deal with a court questioning the motives of this save-India hysteria.

     

    The best way out was to just sidestep the issue, so Times Now went further into the reservation issue, plus an interview with Justice JS Verma who supports it, Headlines Today dwelt on the court a bit but concentrated on the now-tedious arguments between India Against Corruption activists and others, NDTV interviewed Arvind Kejriwal and so on.

     

    The newspapers, however, did not restrain themselves, except perhaps The Times of India, whose headline on Saturday was a staid: “Allowing agitation may be akin to meddling with House affairs: HC”. Compare this with Hindustan Times: “After HC snub, Anna blames team” or The Telegraph,Calcutta: “Team Anna gets a lesson in democracy” or Deccan Chronicle,Hyderabad: “Team Anna earns sharp rebuke from Bombay High Court”. Mid-Day, surprisingly, did not have it on the front page. It was, after all, a Mumbai story.

     

    The Bombay High Court indeed pointed out that it could not grant concessions to the movement as it was not convinced that this was a people’s movement and an endorsement by the court would be tantamount to the judiciary interfering with Parliamentary procedure.

     

    The judges said, “How is country’s interest involved? We are a democratic set up. We have elected a government. Wouldn’t your agitation interfere in the functioning of Parliament? The bill will be debated in Parliament where our elected representatives will plead our case.”

     

    Mani Shankar Aiyar was quick to point out that the point made by the court was too sophisticated for Anna Hazare’s followers to understand! Interestingly, Anna Hazare and his followers were sensible enough to refrain from attacking the court for being anti-people or anti-democracy.

     

    The flip-flop on accepting donations by Anna Hazare (first no and now that they need the money, yes) was also downplayed by The Times of India but not by others.

     

    Hindustan Times also carries a story about how an anti-Jan Lokpal agitation is now going on at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, with activists, celebrities and journalists taking part. Perhaps this is democracy at work? Agitations against agitations?

     

    * * *

    Three edit pages pieces were well worth reading on Saturday morning. Jay Panda, MP, argued cogently for small “tweaks” in our current Parliamentary system to make it more up-to-date, while dismissing arguments for a change to the presidential system in The Times of India.

     

    Ramchandra Guha, historian, talked about how exasperated he has been in 2011 by Anna Hazare and his followers, the BJP and the government in Hindustan Times.

     

    And the piece de resistance was by Shekhar Gupta, editor of Indian Express, on the caste dynamics in corruption cases inIndia. He makes a compelling argument for the way in which the system is loaded against lower castes and religious minorities, in corruption and criminal cases – with examples. He also points out that our upper castes and classes are the most prejudiced section of society.

     

    Thought-provoking and definitely a must-read.