Spokesperson

Medium is Message No More

2009-06-09T21:39:00.000-07:00

SPOKESPERSON

-anectdotes from recent Indian political history

“Medium is the Message” No More

S.Narendra

2009 Lok Sabha elections are over in India.. The focus inevitably has shifted to post poll politics and agenda for the new government. However, for future elections of both state and parliament elections, the one that has just passed into history holds a notable lesson. It over -turned a 50 year old canon of communication enunciated by Marshal McLuhan..The most quoted and mostly misunderstood insight into the human behaviour conditioning power of the media offered by this American scholar was:’ ‘medium is the message’. Anything that came out of the Television as the dominant media exercised an unmatched power on the audience and mediates human experience of reality in myriad ways. The message acquired a new meaning and influence when delivered through this new presence in people’s lives. Americans spent half of their waking time watching and reliving TV .Marketers and advertising industry fell in love with this insight, and for their own good, persuaded any one with a message to send to spend big moolah on this medium. So called idiot box became the message on its own.

In India, ’ Medium is the message’, took a different meaning when the ruling party at the center monopolized the electronic media and also used its advertising power through the government owned companies and its advertising agency DAVP. Parties in opposition decried this misuse for election purposes but had no qualms in deploying the full array of government media system and its power when in office .In 2004, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by BJP started a 24x7 news channels on the official Doordarshan on election eve to counter independent private news channels and reportedly spent about Rs150 crore on party publicity blitz to drive home its urban oriented “India Shining’ Campaign. Crafted by late Pramod Mahajan, BJP pre-poll campaign embraced every available media, particularly the digital space and the mobile network. It was not unusual for mobile phone subscribers to suddenly receive a recorded message from prime minister Vajpeyee himself.

The media scene had substantially changed in the new millennium with the opening up of the electronic media for private and international business .BJP tried to influence the private air waves as well. The media was consumed by the appeal of the India Shining message of which it was an important beneficiary. Being in opposition, the Congress, according to media reports, lacked the money power and spent less than half the amount spent by BJP. The latter’s staunch ally,Chandrababu naidu of Telugu Desam Party carried on more than a year long publicity avalanche announcing his own programmes to make Andhra Pradesh shine. The Congress party came up with its simple question:” Aam Admi Ko Kya Mila” or what did the common man receive ( out of India Shining) ? This was conscientization message at its political best. It was similar to Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao’ campaign in 1970-71 elections. The question posed then was” way kahate hai Indira hatao.Indiraji kahati hai garibi hatao.Ab Aap hey Soochiye?’ (They say remove Indira. Indira says: remove poverty. Now you decide).She trumped the opposition. Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 elections, however while dominating the media because the opposition had no media but a overpowering message. This was similar to the way Gandhiji was able to communicate the message of ‘Quit india’, even when the British owned most of the media and tried to gag the others .In fact,Gandhiji was both the medium and the message creating a virtual and unstoppable viral marketing network. In a similar manner in 2004, the ‘Aam Admi’ message of the Congress resonated with the voters and BJP and Naidu, dominating the media, lost power to the Congress party.

2009 elections once again saw BJP wanting to gain a head start. Its campaign was begun with the release of its leader L.K.Advani’s autobiography and announcing him as its priministerial candidate long before the poll announcement. The Mumbai terrorist attack in November last year was another opportunity used to show case its leader in contrast to the serving prime minister. Not only the latter was repeatedly taunted as “weak and ineffective” but also Rahul Gandhi leading the Congress youth brigade was juxtaposed as inexperienced in state -craft , unlike Advani. Once again there was an attempt to occupy prime media space with glitzy spots. BJP’s was also very active on the web, with an impressive site that was always alive and a variety of BJP friendly blogs. The ruling Congress party circles seem to have been rattled initially by BJP’s early start; especially its attack on the prime minister and the government’s handling of terrorist threat. But the Congress had been consistent in communicating its core message of ‘inclusive growth’ and was not apologetic about using its vast official media system including the electronic media for breaking down this message into audience specific messages in India’s hinterland reached mostly by Doordarshan. The ‘inclusive growth’ message also stood in stark contrast to BJP’s ‘Hindutva’ divisive message alienating the minorities. Another scoring point was the Congress party’s clever play on youth vs undying ambition of the old guard. The Congress was also able to mask prime minister’s own old age and health infirmities by keeping the limelight on party president Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka, the real powers behind the throne. The fielding of Rahul’s cousin, Varun Gandhi as a BJP candidate and the latter’s controversial attack on the minorities in his election rally seems to have strengthened the Congress image as a secular party. This certainly appears to have alienated the mainline news media that kept the controversy alive for a long time. It is noteworthy that Advani’s qualified criticism of the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots came too late, raised more questions about his own role as the then Home Minister of the country. All in all BJP came up with an elaborate media and PR effort; but a rallying message was missing.

It was astonishing that BJP did not tap from the experience of winning the Gujarat Assembly elections under Narendra Modi. He mastered the medium by plastering it with a powerful message of all round prosperous Gujarat. He had also walked the talk and won. He was unequivocal on ‘Hindutva’ and unapologetic about 2002 riots. In the case of Gujarat polls, the Congress party was ambivalent on 2002 riots and could not come up with an alternative to the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ message of Modi.Singnificantly, the Delhi based TV news channels and other media were not disposed in favour of Modi and tried to revive 2002 riots controversy. But the media made no difference to the poll outcome.

The Left wing parties which always were associated with the under privileged partnered with the Congress in 2004 and perhaps had burnished the Congress party’s message of ‘inclusive growth’, but lost the power of their message in 2009 by joining with regional parties. The latter had no message of their own except as sectarian gangs or pure power operators. Interestingly, the left, parties and some regional party satraps had acquired media channels as political vehicles.

In this digital age where the definition of media, messenger, and audience are changing daily and the audience has come to exercise enormous power over the message and the medium. The communication is witnessing tectonic shifts, not just paradigm shifts. It is difficult in this new media scene to define where one media ends and another starts and merges with several others. No doubt the morphing media and its proliferation open immense communication opportunities but the medium itself has become less and less important. In the ever evolving Web-based democracy, new players constantly enter and change the communication game. The advent of social networking media, for example, is shaking up established web exchange platforms like Google, Yahoo, MSN, giving greater space for netizens. Kindle by Amazon.com is poised to change the way we read the books. The conventional media are going online, after loosing audiences in the physical world. Is it not time to revisit McLuhan? Are political parties and their media advisers ready?

The Revolving Door at Prime Minister’s Office-1996

2009-05-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

It was another May summer like the one we are passing through now. The seasonal heat was getting eclipsed by the political heat generated by the 1996 elections to Parliament (Lok sabha) that was getting over. It was generally speculated that the poll would produce a hung Lok Sabha, meaning that no political party would get a decisive majority in the house. Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who was campaigning to get re-elected, had wryly observed that every political leader and party was vying to get elected only to sit in the opposition, and not to provide a stable, responsible government.

Rao was not in the least assured by the assessment of his sycophants and the government’s Intelligence bureau that he would romp home with 200+ Lok Sabha seats. His own Congress party was a divided house and opposition parties were also splintering. In early May, I was in Bangalore and called on the then Karnataka Chief Minister, Deve Gowda. During our conversation mostly centered on the poll and the fate of the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, the chief minister was emphatic that he would camp in Delhi from May 11th for garnering support for Rao in forming the new central government. His own Janata Dal had emerged as political force in Karnataka and Bihar, where Lalu Prasad Yadav was a leading Dal leader.

The election results however, did not favour Rao’s Indian National Congress party. In fact, his party got less than 150 Lok Sabha seats and as the party president, Rao made the important political declaration that his party would extend outside support to any coalition government formed by non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secular combine. A splinter group of parties claiming to be secular led by Janata Dal, championed by the redoubtable chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, had begun the coalition parleys with left and other non-BJP parties in Bihar Bhavan in New Delhi.

According to media reports, more than one political leader from different parties had staked claim to the Prime Minister’s post. While consensus was emerging around the name of the Communist party (Marxist) leader and chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, his own party decided not to be part of the government. It is interesting to recall that the Indian democracy had already had seen an elected communist party leader as the chief minister of Kerala state way back in 1957 in the person of Namboodaripad. And Jyoti Basu had set a record of sorts as the longest serving chief minister of a state. But the Marxist party, by turning its back on the prime minister’s post available to it on a platter, lost perhaps a unique and historic opportunity of capturing the national power citadel.

What was very interesting at this stage of political developments was that Devegowda was totally outside the reckoning among the candidates for the top slot. The newspapers photograph records show that on the 13th of May 1996 when leaders of various political parties were huddled in a room in Bihar Bhavan and searching for an acceptable person to head the coalition, Devegowda was occupying a seat almost near the door of this room. Due to a quirk of fate, by the evening of next day his name emerged as the most acceptable one for the Prime Ministership and he came to occupy the central seat.

Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had asked me, in my capacity as his spokesman, to keep ready a draft statement to be issued by the Congress party (extending its support) soon after the coalition of parties selected a person to lead the coalition. On his instructions I had also prepared a draft resolution on the lines of the earlier statement to be adopted by the party working committee scheduled to meet on 15th of May. Even while the working committee meeting in the morning was in progress, Rao had sought an appointment with the president of India. The party’s plan was to formally present the working committee resolution to the president, declaring unconditional support to the non-BJP secular combine that would be staking claim to form the government. The working committee concluded its meeting a little before lunch and Prime Minister rang me up informing me that the party General secretary V.Narayanaswamy would call on the president at 4.30 pm, as instructed by the Rastrapati Bhavan ( president’s house).

When I told him that the President had already invited the leader of the BJP Atal Bihari Vajpayee to meet him before lunch, Rao was totally taken aback because his own request for an appointment with the President had been received and the meeting was scheduled to take place in the evening. There is no doubt that the President of India can meet anyone at his will, but the circumstances under which an outgoing PM’s appointment request, that too one belonging to the President’s own political party, got lower precedence than the one coming from the opposition, was somewhat unusual and intriguing. Also Rao had apprised the President of the party’s likely stand soon after the election results were announced, while tendering his own and the government’s resignation.

In the meanwhile, the news agencies broadcast the story that the BJP leader was already at the President’s house and likely to be invited to form the government. On learning about this piece of news, a very upset Devegowda told the media assembled at Karnataka Bhavan that the Congress had back-stabbed him. I got in touch with the PM and informed him of the blast from Devegowda. The reaction that came was typical of Rao, “He is entitled to think so; please inform him on my behalf that BJP government would be a eight day wonder and he will have his rare chance soon, if he stops from making statements to the media”. He also instructed me to hunt for the party General Secretary Narayanaswamy, authorized to carry the party resolution to the president. My enquiries revealed that the party emissary, giving precedence to his midday meal, had gone somewhere, unaware of the urgency attached to his political mission and the brewing crisis for his party. Mobile phones were not widely in use then and he could not be traced.

In the meanwhile, I rushed to Karnataka Bhavan to meet the Prime Ministerial aspirant Devegowda to explain the unexpected developments and Prime Minister Rao’s sage words. I found him less hopeful of realizing his dream of becoming the Prime Minister than the outgoing PM. Events later proved that the latter was right. After 13 days in office, unable to attract any political allies to support it, the all-BJP cabinet of Atal Bihari Vajpayee bowed out of office. Around the 50th year of Independence, India saw five persons moving in and out of Prime Minister’s office (between May 1996 and May 1998).

The 2009 elections were predicted by many political pundits to produce an outcome similar to the one in 1996.We must thank the Indian voter for proving wrong such predictions. If they had come true, the revolving door would have reappeared at PMO.

Failed Attempt to Gag Poll Results-1977

2009-05-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

The last round of Lok Sabha elections are getting completed today in India.This brought to mind an incident that happened in 1977 elections held amidst the Indira Gandhi imposed internal emergency.Unlike now, the main source for all official election news was the government's Press Information Bureau located in New Delhi. Under the Representation of Peoples' Act, PIB was the official communcation agency of the Election Commission and was responsible for disseminating information about the election processes. Elaborate arrangements had to be made for gathering information on the progress of counting of votes, their display on huge bill boards and hourly analysis of election results. The wire agencies and the newspapers were mostly dependent upon PIB for offcial versions of the results. The communication networks were ancient, mostly travelling on teleprinters and dedicated landline telephones from different state capitals. Police wireless machinery had special instructions to rush the election results to the PIB control room in Delhi.

In 1977,PIB had made the usual arrangements for collecting information about counting of votes in different state capitals and district headquuarters. A special arrangement had been made to display the election results in the Prime Minister's house.A s the official working closely with the top brass of the then very powerful Information & Broodcast ministry I was overseeing most of the arrangements. I was under special instructions to rush priority information about progress of counting of votes and and other poll results related stuff to the PM's house and to not disclose such information to media before obtaining prime minsiter office clearance.

On D-Day when the information started flowing in from different counting centers, it was becoming clear that the Prime Minister's party, the Indian National Congress ( I) was trailing the opposition Bharatiya Jan Sangh( later BJP),Congress (Jagjivanram or CFD), all precursors of the Janata Party that had sprung up against the emergency rule. The senior officials of the Ministry handpicked by the then Minister for Information Mr Vidya Charan Shukla were under strict orders that the bad news should be contained. My boss who was doubling up as the Additonal secretary and the Principal Information Officer to the Government Of India called me up to reiterate the Minsiters order, communicated to him by the Minister's personal ecretary Mr.Tripathi and asked me to await instructions. This official and another more powerful colleague in the Ministry had both been drawn from the Ministry of Defence.

When the senior asked me to withhold the cascade of bad news for the ruling regime, with my relative inexperience I asked him whether the PM was planning to impose a military emergency.The officer was taken aback and said he was not aware of any such thing.Then I told him that whether PIB gave out the information or not, agency reports indicated that people in different parts of India were coming on to the streets celebrating the defeat of the ruling party. If we continued to withhold the information, any new regime coming in could view this adversely and he could be held responsible for suppressing the elction results.This worked.

After a short while he called me on phone and instructed me to ask the officials manning the information counters to release the election results.The moment I announced this in the PIB election room, the whole crowd of PIB officials and the media erupted into a roar. None of us were enthusiastic supporters of the emergency and the media censorship.Most of us were finding it difficult to bottle up our resentment against it and using whatever openings we had within the official constraints to bail out 'errant media reports' that seemed to violate the censorhip orders.The election results put an end to our and the coutrty's agony.Till today we do not know whether it was Mrs Indira Gandhi, the PM who was behind the gag order on the poll outcome or it was the courtiers' wish.