It is not as if it’s a big secret that NDTV has been the mouthpiece of
Congress for a long time. Still, with the brazen manipulation of debates and excessive
media coverage of one family they have now out-done even the erstwhile Russian
mouthpiece Pravda. In modern days NDTV could even come close to the national
media of North Korea. Of course, in all this all their journalistic principles
have been ground to dust long back. The latest attempt to promote Rahul Gandhi
comes in the form of a discussion moderated by Barkha Dutt (who else could it
have been?) in a programme titled “The Evolution of Rahul Gandhi”. Hmmm! If the number of times the coming of
age and evolution of RG has been talked about he would have far exceeded Darwin’s
theories and expectations. Barkha herself could claim to be a Rahul-specific Darwin!
The participants in the debate by Barkha were R.P.N. Singh (Congress),
Sudheendra Kulkarni (BJP), Neeraj Chaudary (SP) and Meghnad Desai, the floating
alien who seems to be more on Indian TV than back home in UK.
First let us state a fact. After the thrashing the Congress received in
many other states, especially Bihar, Rahul Gandhi took the Mamata route to agitate
at farmer hotspots and land related fights in UP. He has spent a good deal of
time campaigning in UP right from November 14, 2011. Has he put in strong
efforts? Sure, in terms of rallies, road-shows and meetings RG has committed
himself to the campaign whole-heartedly. What about Priyanka? She has done her
hit and run appearances. But did RG say anything substantial or outline any
real singular plan of any consequence? Other than muslim reservations (which
was dramatized more by Salman Khurshid rather than RG) and elephants eating
money RG’s utterances, as in the past, have been simply nonsensical and not one
statement or act of his have suggested that he has indeed come of age or
evolved. He has only provided more evidence in all the media coverage that Congress
still considers UP voters to be idiots. He’s not alone, he finds company in
Barkha Dutt who equally hopes TV viewers to be idiots who can be dazzled with
BS. So the agenda of NDTV is to somehow make RG look like the “Great white hope”
for UP and the nation. So let’s analyse the debate on some mere statistics
which will make interesting reading:
1. The Barkha show is for 51.16 minutes. Okay! Now, it starts with a tribute to RG and the
Gandhis and a monologue from her which lasts all of 16.40 minutes. Yes 16.40 minutes of monologue by the
supposed moderator in a programme of 51.16 minutes (and includes about a minute
of sound-bites from Akhilesh Yadav, Digvijay Singh and Swapan Dasgupta).
Prelude to a great debate, isn’t it?
2. Now what about timeshare to others in the
discussion? Here’s what each one got in total:
R.P.N.Singh (Congress) – 9.40 Mins.
Sudheendra Kulkarni (BJP) – 5.20 Mins.
Neeraj Chaudhary (SP) – 2.30 Mins.
Meghnad Desai (Nobody) – 3.00
Mins.
Audience (Questions) – 3.30 Mins.
3.
So the panelists and the audience put together got
24
minutes out of a total of 51.16 minutes (with interruptions from Barkha).
So who got the remaining 27.16 minutes?
Yeah, the supposed moderator herself! That’s
how you manipulate a debate when the moderator hogs 53% of timeshare for
discussions.
Never mind the discussion itself. It was a regular RG promo. Consider
this: Kulkarni makes a minor point of RG tearing up a piece of paper and that
being poor behaviour and who responds? It is not the Congressman or another panelist
but Barkha herself who springs to RG’s defence. She counters it with all the
chairs and mics thrown in assemblies or porn being watched by MLAs. Haha! So
why does she need panelists at all? She doubles up as both the moderator and
Congress spokesperson that even gets the most time in the supposed debate.
Anyway, the most important question in the programme came from Neeraj
Chaudhury of SP. To the nonsense of Singh, and the Congress in general, who kept
claiming they will do substantially better in UP, Chaudhury asked what exactly
is “substantial”. To that Singh claimed they will get 200 seats and once again
Barkha interrupts that even 70 could be substantial. Really? So the moderator
here gives us an idea of what the Congress mind is more than the Congress
spokesman himself. Once again, why does NDTV need a Congress spokesperson at
all? The awful truth of the matter is that the party currently has 22 seats
(5%) in a 403-member assembly. Can any
party of a national standing really sink any further? Even without the evolution or coming of age of
RG or his entire family a party has to be absolutely pathetic to be doing worse
than 22 seats. (RG did manage to do that in Bihar earlier though). However, the
sheer number of seats being much higher than Bihar and given the unhappiness
over the current UP govt it wouldn’t take much to get past 22 or even get past
50.
The final question the likes of Barkha never ask is: if not Gandhi,
who? In a party that has become the private estate of the Gandhi family who
else can really campaign for them? Digvijay? Chidambaram? Pranab? Manmohan?
Pilot? Scindia? Bansal? Ambika? Manu Singhvi? Manish Tiwari? Anyone else? At best, all of them put together
can only be sidekicks to Rahul Gandhi. Even RG himself without the Gandhi name
would be a sidekick to himself. All this talk of coming of age or evolution of
RG is merely clever propaganda by Barkha Dutt, NDTV and some more media
channels. Unfortunately for NDTV it’s not a hot-shot channel among a huge
majority of UP voters. Their manipulation of evolution may just please those
that have a mini-bar in their drawing room.
Update - February 19: Although the statistics in the post make the skullduggery of Barkha's show pretty obvious an Anonymous commenter (Feb 18) enlarges upon it. I quote the comment:
1. Even after the initial
lecture by Barkha the Congress guy gets the highest individual time 9.40 mins.
2. The opponents of RahulG, the BJP and SP, collectively get only 7.50
mins which is almost 2 mins less than RPN.
3. The nobody, Meghnad, with no stake in the campaign gets even more
time than a serious contender like SP.
4. Apart from 16.40 mins in the beginning, even during open discussions
Barkha still gets over 10mins, higher than anyone else.
I think in future all debates on TV should have an indicator showing
time consumed by each panellist that would show if the debate is fair.
