As Anna Hazare readies for his third and final fast of the year and his inauguration of 2012 with a ‘jail bharo’ agitation, there are questions about whether he will be as successful as he was in April and August 2011, when the public rallied behind him. Will the media — particularly news television channels — and the middle-classes be fixated on him as they were on the earlier occasions? Has the ardour died down? Is there a fatigue with the Lok Pal issue, even if disgust with corruption as a phenomenon remains strong?
The key question is will the media remain loyal to Mr Hazare and his India Against Corruption team as it had in the summer, when some channels and newspapers had become almost auxiliaries to the Anna cause? In Parliament this week MPs openly called Mr Hazare a creation of the media. While that may be an exaggeration, the fact remains the IAC activists adroitly used the media, tweaked their processes to optimise media coverage and generally saw the media — especially news television — as a force multiplier.
As a result some journalists got carried away. In the summer, there were news anchors who were identifying with Mr Hazare while looking at their teleprompters, becoming me-too crusaders themselves, urging people to not pay bribes — which is a good thing to do, of course — and getting swayed by the crowds and heady fervour of the hour.
The media’s response — overstated or otherwise — certainly gave the IAC movement a momentum it did not autonomously have. Nevertheless the media did not manufacture the popular anger against corruption. Following the 2G Spectrum and Commonwealth Games scandals, it was building up. Rising prices, economic drift — which turned into a full-blown crisis as the year concluded — and a seeming paralysis in Government added to the misgivings vis-à-vis the UPA administration. Mr Hazare became the trigger.
The sight of a frail, old man, borrowing Gandhian symbolism and going on a fast, almost requesting burly policemen to take him to prison, was too compelling. It was impossible to fight this imagery or even remain sceptical without inviting public hostility. It was a black-and-white situation — hero Anna and villainous politicians/Ministers. The media just jumped in, taking the easiest option.
The IAC brains trust planned its moves well. News television is an agnostic technology; it fears some but respects none. Most important, it is a slave to TRP drivers, no questions asked. In both April and August, Mr Hazare walked right into a fallow season. His first fast occurred after the cricket world cup and before the Indian Premier League. His second fast became a made-for-television event when the Government displayed supreme ham-handedness and decided to arrest him even before he could begin his hunger-strike.
Does this still hold true? What happens if Mr Hazare begins his fast on December 27 and Sachin Tendulkar hits his 100th international hundred in Melbourne the same day? Will the media deprioritise the third fast for the only 100th century? What if the Government does not make a song and dance and does not go over the top in curbing Mr Hazare’s liberties? Will that still interest the media and the television-watching classes?
It is not just a matter of alternative news hooks — such as the India-Australia test match or, to a lesser extent, the announcement of the Uttar Pradesh election schedule. In April and August, the IAC team members were largely unknown to media audiences. They were the proverbial ‘good guys’, the outsiders taking on the establishment, the voice of India/Bharat coming to the distorted, power-drunk metropolis of New Delhi and appealing for an end to corruption. When they took on veteran Ministers and hardboiled pundits in television debates, they had been pronounced winners even before they started speaking.
Today, that black-and-white equation has given way to a mass of grey. The straightforward business of ‘Is corruption bad?’ — a question that can have only one answer, unless you’re an oddball like A Raja — has been replaced by the intricacies of the Lok Pal Bill: Who should select the CBI chief; whether caste and religious reservations in the nine-member Lok Pal panel are justified or not; whether the CBI should report to the executive, the Lok Pal, an ad hoc parliamentary grouping or some other contrivance; whether the Lok Pal offices in the districts will constitute a massive bureaucracy or have a real-life impact; whether it is appropriate to club the Citizens’ Charter Bill with the Lok Pal proposal or otherwise.
At such a juncture, there are no obvious heroes or villains. There are only different points of view. Team Anna is one of several competing interests — there is the UPA Government, the Congress and its president, the BJP, the Yadav brotherhood, the Communists, and there is also IAC. Mr Arvind Kejriwal is just another talking head and screaming voice on television — along with Mr Kapil Sibal, Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad, Mr Manish Tewari, Ms Brinda Karat and a dozen others. The IAC has lost its virginal appeal.
Why has this happened? To some degree it was natural. The emotions of a multitude cannot be put on a high flame again and again for the same reason. There is a catharsis that takes place the first time (or the first two times), and vast energies are expended. Even the Mahatma, the greatest mass mobiliser in Indian history, recognised this. His mammoth all-India movements didn’t come within months of each other but years. There was a gap of a decade between the Non-Cooperation Movement and the Salt Satyagraha, and a further decade between the Salt Satyagraha and the Quit India call.
It can be argued a partnership with the media, whether formal or unstated, shortens this time-frame. This is true, but media coverage and exposure is a decidedly double-edged sword. Team Anna is suffering the consequences of overexposure. Controversies relating to individuals, loud statements, Mr Hazare’s own eccentricities — supporting Mr Sharad Pawar being slapped and wanting to flog those who drink alcohol — can as easily become media fodder and invite prime time ridicule as the actions of a beleaguered Government.
What is the fundamental lesson in this? The best, most efficacious media campaigns are kept short and specific, before collateral controversies and the ability of the political class to tire out the campaigners can come into play. Team Anna is learning this the hard way. If MPs reduce the Lok Pal debate next week to a brawl on secularism and backward caste empowerment, shed crocodile tears for the weakening of executive privilege, and exchange instances of misuse of the CBI by all Indian Governments, the Bill itself will be easily obscured. At this stage, Mr Hazare would be in danger of becoming last year’s story.
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