[Reader-list] 'Striking AIIMS docs live in a glass house'

[Shivam]

Dear Shuddha,

Many thanks for continuing the conversation. Your views on the
limitations of caste reforms via reservations insofar as they are
driven by state policy are indeed food for thought.

You summarised the issue of media coverage; I wanted to something more about it.

Even though most of it was just a tent illegally erected on a ground
in a medical institute in Delhi, it seemed the reservations issue had
set the nation on fire. And just as quickly as it had erupted, it
seems to be dying down after that self-uncritical schoolmaster called
the Supreme Court of India whacked everyone with a stick in their
behinds: the striking doctors, the rationale debate on the issue
largely in the print media, the "conflict-hungry" coverage on TV and
the dilly-dallying UPA with its moronic minister for 'Human Resource
Development', a amuses me only a little less than the pomposity of the
'Knowledge Commission'.

Over the last two weeks, I met a lot of people all over Delhi. Leftist
doctors and rightist doctors, militant corporate types threatening to
sack all SC/ST/OBCs they had hired;, journalists and editors with
varying degrees of innocence about the one-sidedness of the coverage;
all kinds of residents of MPs' houses in central Delhi, trying to do
'something' about the hungama; the self-caricatured Comrades of JNU
who are ready to abandon class struggle lest they be left out in the
reservations din; Ambedkarite activists and academics.

Amongst all the people I met, there was this disdain for the media
that I shared wholeheartedly. Indeed, I do think the TV coverage of
the debate over the last two months has been the Indian media's hour
of shame. When a studio anchor tells a bunch of college kids to make
their 'Rang de Basanti' with Arjun Singh as the villain, you can rest
assured that TV is not even pretending objectivity.

With the sole of exception of Kancha Ilaiah, everyone else seemed to
say, 'Media to unkay saath hai hee hain. (The media is with them
anyway.)' The 'them' being anti-reservation activists.

The media bias has been related to three causes, and perhaps all three
are true in varying degrees: 1) "Manuwaadi media" - Caste inequality
within the media, as excellently articulated by Siddharth Varadarajan,
and statistically proved by a CSDS survey for those who love
statistics. 2) The middle class bias that made young reporters
internalise the anger of the students on the street. 3) It is an open
secret by now that the TV channels raised the ad spots rates; the TRPs
will soon bear this out. Thus the sensationalism.

Be that as it may, I have noticed, in each one that I met, an
unwillingness, sometimes a conscious one, to engage with the media.

The pro-reservationists - and there are many - lacked a coherent
strategy to attract the attention of the TV crew. On the contrary,
'Youth for Equality' was purely a media spectacle.

The one word about the television that the pro-reservation agitators -
be it politicians or JNU post-Marxists or the leftist doctors or the
Dalit politicians -  need to hammer into their heads, is 'VISUAL'.

Take this from a TV editor:

"But imagine the even greater power of that image, (which might have
endured for generations to come) if a burning screaming Goswami had
been captured on prime time news and played again and again, rather
than just remained frozen on a dull newspaper front page". [Link:
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/11708/prime-time-reservation.html
]

And then take this from the same editor:

The competition has also led to what some believe is the growing
'tabloidisation' of the medium. I have often chosen to take refuge in
what Sir Robin Day, the venerable BBC broadcaster once said,
'Television is a tabloid medium, at its best when there is war,
violence and disaster.' The most powerful images are often those that
have a touch of drama: a stone thrown at a bus will always be a more
dramatic visual image than an empty street during a bandh. [Link:
http://www.india-seminar.com/2006/561/561%20rajdeep%20sardesai.htm ]

When you begin to understand not just the importance but also the
means and processes of transformation from being a media consumer to
becoming a media subject, TV will begin to hear your voice. So don't
wait for the self-important TV journalist to find your phone number
and call you up. You call them up and say: this is what I think, can I
be on your show? This is the sort of story I think you should do, why
not? And if you are staging a dharna, remember that dharna happen
every day in Jantar mantar and India Gate and other well-known
Constitutionally ordained dharna sites of Delhi. How you you providing
TV with a different visual. Yes, dare I say, taking a mob into a "VIP
area" where demonstrations are not allowed, and thus incurring the
wrath of the water canons and militantly braving some tear gas might
help.

Half a dozen IIT students entered Jawahrlal Nehru University with
candles in their hands. They were allegedly drunk. It took no time for
some JNU student to say: what are you doing here? And thereafter it
took no time for a little punching and kicking to take place. The nose
of a girl started bleeding. The amazing thing was that the whole thing
was organised so well that half a dozen students entering JNU with
candles in the wind had merited the arrival in JNU of several Outdoor
Broadcast vans. Obviously, the news editors had been informed about
the pre-planned gimmick. For the pro-reservationists, their idea of
media coverage is to call up friends in The Hindu. Youth for Equality,
on the other hand, had amongst other committees, a two-member 'SMS
co-ordination committee'. The mobile numbers of hundreds of accredited
journalists in Delhi are publicly available, and that includes the top
bosses of all news channels. Can you put two and two together?

I've been telling the pro-reservation doctors to wear their lab coats
and stethoscopes. They laugh at me. But that's exactly what the Youth
for Equality protesters had been doing in their stint at martyrdom via
tear gas. The lab coat and stethoscope is the visual equivalent of the
word "merit". Are you going to reply it with your Fab India kurta?

If you have too much contempt for the tabloidised, sensational,
dumbed-down media - as you should! - to begin wearing the lab coat and
providing the cameras the visuals they lust for - fine, but you lose
the right to complain about one-sided coverage.

Once the progressives grow up to the TV age and begin representing
themselves there, they will find the media will be forced to
introspect, like, for instance, this bit from the same TV editor
quoted twice above:

"…mutually competitive 24 hour news networks are almost direct
participants in public processes: not only do they amplify the news,
they also influence it.

[…]

"For every practitioner of television, the moment of truth dawns when
you ask yourself the question, where does the cut throat competition
of TRPs end and social responsibility begin?" [Link:
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/11708/prime-time-reservation.html
]

The battle of hearts and minds, the battle of opinion-building and
public debate - it's not on the streets or the op-ed pages anymore.
The TV age is upon us. Take it or leave it.

Best,
Shivam