THINK of a politician. What image comes to mind? An unsmiling visage and a ponderous speech? No longer. In the India of the '90s, politics is not the "backward sector" as fashionable theorists of culture have asserted. Today Indian politics is Virtual Reality where the soundbite threatens to replace the pre-election promise and the camera angle passes for a manifesto.
From Narasimha Rao to Uma Bharati, Ram Vilas Paswan to Madhavrao Scindia, politicians have recognised the power of pictures. Khadi kurtas are freshly ironed nowadays and brevity and wit have replaced boring policy statements.
John F. Kennedy was perhaps the first tele-president of the United States. And the forthcoming elections will perhaps be the first tele-elections in India.
Yet the genesis of the telegenising of Indian politics lies in the Rajiv Gandhi years. Racing through the country on a jeep, dancing with tribals or laughing amid a crowd, the leader with the prettiest face in the Lok Sabha was the first Indian politician to harness the power of television to his campaigns. As far as Rajiv Gandhi was concerned, the tele-image was far greater than the man. And others are following in those camera-friendly footsteps. When Laloo Prasad Yadav was asked last week on a television news programme whether he would like to be prime minister, he replied in designer Indian English: "I don't want to be king when I can be king-maker."
"Laloo Yadav three years ago," says Rajat Sharma of ZEE TV, "was a different personality. He had no idea of how to appear on TV. Today, he has started to model his gestures and his speech perfectly for the camera." Indeed Yadav is rated as the number one tele-genic politician, by unanimous choice, the mukhya mantri of the air waves. Dibang, a reporter with the Hindi news programme Aaj Tak, says Laloo Yadav has a great sense of drama. Unlike Sharad Yadav, who is described as an "editor's nightmare" and N.T. Rama Rao, whose mumblings are simply not microphone-friendly.
On the other hand, the Bihar chief minister's assault on bourgeois gentility, his rather deliberate send up of "elite politics" is nothing if not extremely photogenic. After all, what's the point in milking the cows with one hand and telephoning the chief secretary with the other if the cameras are not rolling?
Sharma says there is far greater awareness among politicians in general about the needs of television. "Politicians are learning the art of providing the soundbite, of the quotable quote. Earlier they used to ramble on and on thinking that the more they spoke, themore time they would get on screen. Now they are aware of the needs of the editing table. They know that only 10 to 15 seconds can be allotted to them."
So press conferences are often arranged according to flight timings to enable videotapes to be transported to the newsrooms in time; the panchayat sami-ti meeting in the constituency is now secondpriority when it comes to takes and re-takes before a broadcast; bedroom doors and kitchen windows, gardens and terraces are thrown open to the unblinking eye of the phantom voter. Madan Lal Khurana flying like a bird, Shatrughan Sinha standing on his head, Ram Vilas Paswan cooking or playing chess or Mani Shankar Aiyar imitating Dev Anand, politics has become hightech folk art; and the politicians are eager to sell on celluloid what they are unable to in real life.
Now the medium determines the message. Before a recent interview to Newshour, Ram Vilas Paswan asked: "For how long do you want me to speak? TV reporters are always in such a hurry. " Passionate messages sound good but often do not survive the jump cut. The witty one-liner is far more difficult to edit. At the height of the Mandal agitation, V.P. Singh reportedly ordered six re-takes of his message to the suffering nation. Abhi emotions nahin aa rahe hain (the right emotions are still not coming), he had said. After all, the actor must feel the part so that the performance captures the attention of the fickle channel cruiser.
Congress spokesman V.N. Gadgil says politics is likely to be personalised and trivialised as a result of television. "The quality of public life is likely to suffer," he says, "and we will go from political education to political entertainment." But perhaps the former minister for information and broadcasting is a little too old world for the new era of war and peace on cam-era of war and peace on camera. Television images, says Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, former minister, can have a tremendous influence on politics, if not on the voter. "If the electronic media decides to push for a certain issue, the politician concerned is given a great deal of added power in his campaign."
Malvika Singh of BiTVsays that most politicians have begun to realise the importance of a lively political debate on TV. "We have two programmes, Zero Hour and Mera Man Chahe which feature political leaders. The first is a simulated debate, not necessarily along party lines as well as a quiz, and the second is about the lighter side of a public figure." Singh says she has been pleasantly surprised by the warm response the shows have received. "They really open up in front of the camera and some of the episodes have been great fun," she says.
Sheila Dixit of the Congress (Tiwari group) has participated in oneof the BiTV programmes and affirms the potency of television. "The government-controlled medium is, of course, not giving a clear picture, television must give equal opportunity to all precisely because it is so influential. It has tremedous power to influence minds." The perfect pose and made-to-order dialogue have always earnedpublic approbation in India. The kind of modern chutzpah that TV requires is often demonstrated by the most "traditional" leaders. Witness Atal Behari Vajpayee or even Mayawati. In a country where we confuse filmstars with gods, the image, rather than the reality is sometimes all that is needed to catapult a mere mortal into a technologically-induced Indraprastha.
"The use of TV by politicians," says Vinod Dua, anchor of the programme Parakh, "is nothing new. In fact, Rao's TV campaigns arerather like the commercials designed by M. Karunanidhi in the '60s in which a red curtain and a black sofa were used to suggest the colours of the DMK flag." Such images, according to Dua, work on a subliminal level. "For example, I wonder if Mr Advani is trying to model himself on R.K. Laxman's common man," he muses.
Images are value neutral and so is the camera. A punchy line and a picturesque face will score no matter what ideology is being put forward. Whereas quoting a politician in print can often include a value judgement, on television a good quote is just a good quote. Rajiv Shukla, anchor of the EL-TV programme, Rub-a-Ru, says one of the most telegenic politicians he has ever interviewed is Uma Bharati. "She doesn't hum and haw. When I asked her why she always condemned so-called 'Muslim fundamentalists' but never spoke out against the forces of Hindu communalism, she replied 'just as ice can never be hot and fire can never freeze, Hindus can never be communal.' Now that's a good soundbite."
All India BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan says that his party's leaders have learnt the art of the short sentence and the smiling countenance that the camera demands. "I forsee a sea-change in politics in the coming year. The new private channels will ensure that politicians become much more familiar." At its media workshop last month, the BJP leadership recognised the need to train its representatives to be au fait with the sudden zoom in and the 10-second interview.
When Ronald Reagan won a second term, it was more a victory for television than for the Republican party. Hardly 500 people gathered for the party rally, but millions watched from home. Reagan-on-TV rather than Reagan-in-real-life was the most popular figure in America that day.
"Television has already begun to set the agenda for politics," says Rajat Sharma. Now a mass medium in India that reaches out to over 80 per cent of the population, television has started to create its own rules of public life. The oft-used newspaper cop-out, "no comment", is not possible on camera as an intrusive lens zooms in on facial expressions and body language. In earlier times, newspaper reports could be denied. Now the microphone captures controversial statements with irrevocable finality. Television creates its own form of politics where crowds and their leaders meet somewhere in the stratosphere.
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