[Reader-list] 'The Blitzerization of Indian TV' by Trevor Selvam

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

Here is an excellent, breezy, hugely enjoyable commentary by Trevor  
Selvam on the ongoing televised hysteria surrounding 'Operation  
Greenhunt' and the conflict with Maoists in Central India. I haven't  
read something as enjoyable on this about Indian television in a long  
time, so had to pass it on.

best,



Shuddha



Your Mama! Or The Blitzerization Of Indian TV
By Trevor Selvam (Trevor Selvam is a free lance journalist)

29 October, 2009 - > Countercurrents.org

In the past two weeks, I have viewed three shows on NDTV 24/7 and one  
on CNN-IBN live. On one NDTV show, the moderator was Mr. Vikram  
Chandra and the other one had the ubiquitous Ms. Barkha Dutt. The CNN- 
IBN show was moderated by Ms Sagarika Ghose. All three of the shows  
had to do with Naxalites or Maoists. The NDTV shows had the  
emblematic war-drum like sound effects and graphic interplay that  
aped the “War on Terror” style of the Fox/CNN networks. The lead  
caption of the “Maoist Muddle”, the talk show hosted by Ms. Dutt, had  
an old Western badlands style letter font in use, which would swish  
back and forth, when Ms. Dutt took a break. (No! they did not play  
the theme tune from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Appaloosa).


Ms. Ghosh’s moderation was subdued in comparison and I would say,  
more interested in extracting a minimum possible new thought process  
in this discussion. However, the two guests on this show, Mr. Gautam  
Navlakha of the EPW and Mr. Swapan Dasgupta of trash-the-left-any- 
which-way-you-can fame, took off their gloves in no time and while  
Mr. Navlakha could have restrained himself a wee bit, I could  
understand the anger he felt with the asinine, Rush Limbaugh-esque  
harangue of Mr. Dasgupta. A third guest, Mr. Sudipta Chackravarti,  
writer of the book Red Sun, attempted to steer a safer line between  
the absurdly nonsensical right wing cant of Dasgupta and the enraged  
decency of Navlakha and got nowhere in terms of contributing to the  
discussion. While this particular show did make an attempt at clean  
lines and decency in terms of format, the NDTV show, as usual, was  
like a Vegas-style slot machine/ video game box circus with Ms. Dutt  
rushing around town-hall


style, impatient as hell, and making shallow summaries from time to  
time. Mr Vikram Chandra used his stationary command centre approach  
to parse everyone’s unfinished thoughts, by interrupting them and  
making sweeping summaries and essentially telling off those who  
wanted to raise larger issues. Barkha Dutt’s pancake makeup and potty- 
designer clothes added further vacuous glitter and frenzy to the  
otherwise polyvinyl theatre that she now stages frequently. I think  
Ms. Dutt has run out of the chutzpah that characterized her initial  
foray into cable news and live reporting. She has bought into the  
ethos that employs her i.e be true to the status quo definition of  
the nation, no matter what, uphold some sanctimonious interpretations  
of “terror, violence and democracy” and mendaciously ignore the  
institutionalized violence that characterizes the Indian state and  
all its institutions, especially the police. I am sure the fact that  
there are at least
one hundred criminals sitting in the Indian Parliament, does not seem  
to have any impact whatsoever on all these apologists in her show,  
regarding the greatness of “the world’s largest democracy.” One of  
the goofy guests in the show, named Tavleen Singh, gave an “Arey  
Baba!” style shpeel on how great it is to be part of Indian democracy  
and not be part of Pakistan or China. No jingoism there! And these  
are experts on “the greatest threat to Indian democracy”?
What is wrong with these shows?


They all pander to a sensationalist, alarmist and finally a  
fabricated version of the facts on the ground to start with. In their  
rush to compete with each other they also use melodramatic  
terminology to describe events. During a Chukka Bundh or a Rail Roko  
(stopping trains during a general strike in an area, for example West  
Mednipur) , some channels in no time started referring to it as a  
“Train Hijack”. Chukka Bandh has been going on for ages. In fact in  
India it happens almost every day. People vent their anger by  
stopping trains. A hijack is something else and as a result in no  
time people are talking about the Taleban and prisoner swaps etc.  
Arnab Goswami’s Foxy network (Times Now) goes over the deep edge with  
Goswami almost leaking sputum from the sides of his mouth, calling  
the Lalgarh PCPA, a “ terrorist” outfit repeatedly during his so- 
called moderation of events. He invites people to speak and then  
trashes them continuously, hogging
the limelight himself and repeatedly changing his “one basic  
question” several times. Santhals and tribals with traditional  
weaponry are called “armed Maoists and terrorists.” Even the CNN and  
BBC prefer to use words like militants, referring to these same  
incidents. Goswami, of course, is universally recognized in India as  
the yellowest of all TV moderators.
The primary problem, as I had stated elsewhere in a previous essay,  
is that these Indian TV channels have not gone through the stage of  
development that American radio and TV shows had gone through—of  
nuanced, thoughtful interdictions---that preceded the Wolf- 
Blitzerization of Cable news. The Bill Moyers and the Amy Goodmans of  
PBS, NPR and Democracy Now! have for a long period of time upheld  
decent, selfless, incisive, conclusive interviews and glamour, glitz  
and circus acts have not been their bag. A tradition exists in  
American radio and to a certain extent in Public TV that preceded  
Time-Warner’s onslaught on the mind waves.

India’s Doordarshan, staid and unexciting as it often may seem, does  
not follow this bombastic TV style that Barkha Dutt and Vikram  
Chandra espouse. But, Indian TV has missed out on the tradition of  
the thoughtful radio show. It has taken a leap into the nightmare  
Vegas style, as far as intellectual cadence goes. Pretty much like  
the fact that India also skipped over (for the most part) the laying  
down of optical fibre-glass high speed lines and jumped into the wi- 
fi data card and satellite disc technology, at least in some regions.  
Convenient, but unnatural, in some respects. There is thus a missing  
link in India’s media development. It is not a matter of quickly leap- 
frogging into the newest technology; it is very simply a question of  
missing out on a stage of incipient intellectual development. And  
that stage requires some genuflection on what it is to be a real  
democracy. Having elections every five years or having law courts and  
elected officials (even without criminal records) amounts to drawing  
lane markers on Indian city roads. Nobody takes it seriously or  
avails of it with pride. It is like an attempt at showcasing the  
trappings of democracy. As simple as that. When Mr. Chidambaran  
cajoles the country’s intellectuals and so does the West Bengal  
government officials, suggesting that any sympathy for the Naxalites  
amounts to seditious behaviour, it is the beginning of a McCarthyite  
era of “Un-Indian” activities. In that sense the Americanization of  
the Indian polity has been seamless since the fall of the Berlin wall  
and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is no wonder that the Indian  
state, once a champion of non-alignment and independent post-colonial  
political direction, has done a fantastic somersault into the lap of  
the United States. It is unthinkable that the same forces that have  
just decided to “phase out ”of Iraq, have now arrived in India and  
are engaging in what a US commander described, only a few hours ago  
on NDTV, “the most advanced counter-insurgency operations” with  
Stryker tanks and various elements of the US Army, Airborne and  
Cavalry divisions and paratrooper wings, right next to New Delhi!  
Does Barkha Dutt care? Does Vikram Chandra give two hoots that  
American boots that were kicked out of Vietnam and are being kicked  
out elsewhere and especially out of Latin America, are now stomping  
around in this country? When Barkha Dutt and Vikram Chandra and  
others invite Indian intellectuals, historians, economists and  
political scientists who wish to raise some fundamental issues about  
Indian democracy, they are swept away by the undignified hollerings  
of the loafers they also invite. So first rule: Do not invite more  
than three people, at a time. Let them speak to a very specific and  
elevated concept about the actual workings of Indian democracy. Let  
them conclude and do not bust them up, half way, with your own  
impatient and argumentative vox populi style journalism. If you need  
to invite other people, arrange for a Part 2 of the same debate, with  
others.

What are some other reasons?
Aside from the two or three people at a time that PBS and National  
Public Radio invite, the calibre of the people invited also happen to  
be those with extraordinary historical acumen and analytical skills.
Mr. Chandra, amongst the hordes he invites, brings in loafer-type MPs  
from the BJP and CPM to trot out their standard rhetoric on behalf of  
“Indian parliamentary democracy, law and order, national security and  
non-violence”. The BJP fellow keeps ranting hysterically about how  
“criminal” the Maoists are with their barrel of the gun power  
politics and the wily CPI(M) fellow (typical of the Bengal CPIM)  
snidely jibes away, with a crooked smile on his lips, at the Maoists  
for not “following the example of the Nepali Maoists.” Also invited  
are a Maoist sympathizing poet, a Gandhian activist, another EPW  
editor, a retired police officer (who turns out to be quite sane,  
decent and at least logical, despite his law and order leanings).  
Surprisingly, there is also a young Congress MP from Andhra, who is  
quite lucid that the Naxalite problem cannot be a resolved by guns  
and choppers, when for sixty two years the State has been absent in  
the lives of
the Adivasis. Anyone who is decent (and the Congress MP who seems  
very much like one) and waits his turn, does not get the chance to  
lay down the facts. He or she is either shouted down or stopped short  
by Chandra or Dutt. Such a procession of flag bearers and party hacks  
and straight laced law and order folks can never provide education to  
the masses, who expect to imbibe something from these shows. It ends  
up being a five-a-side indoor football mêlée and opinions, ideas are  
never developed. People go home, convinced that India is a  
flourishing but troubled democracy, Naxalites are violent idealists  
backed by foreigners and terrorists, that wealth will trickle down  
someday to the poor if law and order is maintained and the ultimate  
profanity ---that if Maoists participated in the democratic process  
(as some other Naxalites seem to be) then they could also have their  
day under the sun! All these sacred Indian cows are then chewed  
vociferously and thenspat out like pan-masala on the walls of Indian  
media, for the next half hour in rapid-fire mode. By the time we are  
two minutes into these so-called forums, not a single assertion is  
made about the actual facts. There is no discussion on what  
constitutes “development”, no discussion on institutionalized  
violence, no discussion the existing statutes of the Indian  
constitution and how they remain unfulfilled after 60 years, no  
discussion on the role of the Indian Police force, dubbed as the  
world’s worst law-breaking and human rights violating outfit, no  
discussion on the charter rights of the aboriginal people of India,  
no discussion on the megalomaniac plans of P. Chidambaran to relocate  
85% of India’s population into urban centres, no discussion on the  
devastating and stultifying environmental impact of damming India’s  
rivers and attempting to join them up (another Chidambaran hair- 
brained plan) and no discussion on the twenty five years of  
systematic development work in the Dandakaranya, which the Naxalites  
have engaged in from using shifting crop agriculture, innovative  
irrigation, land distribution, mobile educational projects, health  
clinics, where for 62 years the GOI has done zip. Mr. Chandra  
demonstrates clearly that he is not a moderator, not a listener, that  
he has come made up his mind and injects silly conclusions each time  
the bell rings for an ad and Barkha Dutt does the same with a proto  
yank mannerism-- “Don’t go away.” In reality, it is time to switch  
off. But I keep my patience till the end and until the swishing  
militarist/western sound effects that keep happening every few  
seconds, come to a final end.


When I sat down to write this essay, I was reminded of a time, in the  
early seventies when I was in the US and the Watergate scandal had  
broken out and Nixon was about to be indicted. I was sitting in a  
room with African American friends, when one of the TV commentators,  
mostly white at that time, declared that American Democracy would  
weather this storm and the rebels in US campuses were nothing but  
agents of foreign left-wing governments. My buddy, who sat next to  
me, spat out two words-- “Your mama”!



Trevor Selvam is a free lance journalist


Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net