Modi’s stratagem: Abuse media to use it But image make-over is a hurdle race
By R K Misra
MEDIA is both the handmaiden and the
guinea pig in the laboratory of the ambitious. Some use it to become rulers of
the day. Others misuse it to lord over the times. Both nevertheless ride a
tiger. Both live by the clock, ultimately devoured on their way down by the very
genie that they harnessed to go up. Public adulation is a fickle phenomenon. It
lasts for just that long and no more.
Late Prime Minister VP Singh in Delhi and
former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel in Gujarat remain eloquent examples. Both
came to power, carried aloft a popularity wave.
Both fell by the wayside in course of time. The media was badgered for crafting
their rise and fall. Did it? The poor, inevitable fall guy! Agreed news is all
about todays. In fact after the advent of television it is all about this minute,
or at best this hour. For the yesterdays there are the archives. But then
should it remain the favourite whipping boy perennially?
Science can be harnessed to deliver both
by the honest genius and the devious evil. In 2002, Gujarat was the crucible
for a fascinating media experiment conducted by a then unfancied professor.
Like a military commander Narendra Modi was given charge of Gujarat by a
desperate Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in October 2001 with the single
objective of winning back a virtually lost state under severe time constraints.
He achieved the objective, setting new parameters even in victory. The
procedure adopted, the strategies worked out and the results achieved should
keep serious media students preoccupied for long.
For starters, he whipped the media, he
walloped the media. Yet, like a nymphomaniac, it kept clamouring for more —
Paying back in full measure, abuse for abuse by the simple stratagem of
reporting it in obscene detail. Each abuse heightened the passion of the other.
Until, both fell back exhausted. One vanquished, the other a victor! Media flat
on its back, Modi grinning ear to ear. How did the commentator become the rival
team? Who changed the rules of the game? It is the genius of one man. He
roundly abused the media and in doing so squarely used the media. His objective
was all that mattered to him. And he achieved it through the media!
For him, the end always justified the
means. Modi gave adequate advance warning of his desires when he told his party
legislators at his very first meeting that he was here to play one day cricket.
Not the patience of a dreary, five day long test for him.
Ironically one of the reasons for Chief
Minister Keshubhai Patel's removal and replacement with Modi was the cleverly
channelised perception of popular dissatisfaction over the earthquake relief
and rehabilitation effort in Gujarat .
Modi took over in October 2001 and
immediately went about mounting a splendidly planned, well spread, advertisingly
oiled media blitz that showcased the massive work done by the government in
earthquake rehabilitation and reconstruction. When local journalists aware of
the facts proved less obliging, hordes of them were flown in from various parts
of the country, principally Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai into Kutch to sing
paeans of praise. And lo and behold in a mere two months, Kutch stood
transformed! Eighty thousand houses had been Built or repaired. Wonderful
'paperwork'. The fact was that the information department of the Modi
government which commissioned numerous CDs and documentaries of the stupendous
work done by him , had to spend days and nights to locate a single picture of
the new Chief Minister to prove that he had been around in the immediate
aftermath of the calamity!
Meanwhile Modi's big opportunity came on
February 27, 2002 when two coaches of the Sabarmati express were incendiarised
at Godhra railway station by a Muslims
mob leading to 59 people mostly karsevaks returning from Ayodhya being burnt
alive.
The state supported the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad call for a statewide bandh and the government supported move to bring
the mortal remains of the dead(there weren't any except some ash) by road
disregarding all advice, saw pent up majority anger overflow in minority
targeted, horrendous statewide communal riots. Societal fabric in Gujarat stood
clearly fractured with the majority turning hostile against the minority.
The Chief Minister's statewide Gaurav
Yatra fanned the divide further. With the regional press clearly going
alongside and the national media including TV channels virtually stalking him
through cities, towns and villages, Modi hammered into the wedge with his
oratory turning it into a yawning chasm. Modi did not disappoint the media.
Sonia Gandhi was 'Italy ki beti', Miya Musharaf was abused to denote the
Muslims community in a clearly intended double entendre talk. The chief
election commissioner's name was pronounced with an extended drawl-J-a-a-mes Michael
Lyngdoh -- to rub in his Christian religious credentials to denote religious
affinity with Sonia Gandhi. His Yatra speeches emphasized "hum panch, hamare
paachis" and repeated "hum paanch,hamare paachis aur paachis ke
chhesau pachis". The hint was to denote a threat from a rapidly multiplying
religion that would overwhelm the majority. Examples from the speeches of the
times could easily fill a book.
All through the Yatra , the Chief Minister
painted the English press and TV channels as a hate campaign directed against
the five crore Gujaratis. The demonized media dutifully kept on reporting his
speeches and beaming visuals. The relationship between Modi and the media was clearly
nymphomaniacal. He abused the media at
every one of his Yatra meetings and continued to do so until a few months ago.
The result was a steamroller majority for Modi's government in the 2002 Vidhan
Sabha elections.
The Gujarat Chief Minister has worked out
endless permutations and combinations of this hate-love relationship with the
media which is put to use to project all opposed to him as anti-Gujarat, the
media included. The simple dictum is that if you are not with me then you are
against me. And it has worked so far bringing him rich dividends in elections
after elections.
Aware of the fact that the reach of the
print media remains limited at the best of times, and there were
few Gujarati channels till recently, the
information department of the state government worked to put an alternate
structure in place. Propaganda CDs showcasing the Chief Minister in particular
and the good work of the government were prepared and routinely distributed to cable
operators in rural areas to show twice a day, once in the afternoon and once at
night. No need to coax and cajole newspaper big-wigs, a head constable was
enough to take care of the local cable operator.
However as the cable business got more
organized, things became a lot easier for the establishment. The increase in Gujarati TV channels ensured that
time slots could also be purchased by the government before the key news hours
to telecast it's own programmes.
A strategist who both defines new tactics
even as he refines the old ones, Modi has a loyal band of devoted people handling
key areas both inside and outside the government. All manner of media, whether
print, electronic or internet based is monitored and dealt with. Hostile media
is combated, even bombarded. It is an extremely intricate and elaborate
operation executed from various independent points in a manner where one hand
does not know what the other is up to. All
operations converge on one point - building the persona of Modi.
However as the Gujarat Chief Minister seeks
to re-align himself for a newer goal and trudges in a grey zone, his media
managers including the technical arm are floundering for want of clearer
guidelines.
The longest serving Chief Minister in the
history of Gujarat, Modi recently completed ten years in the saddle. Starting
off on a rabid anti-Muslims platform to consolidate power in 2002, he has
gradually veered to a development plank over the years. However the legacy of
the communal era continues to sully his political afterlife. A phalanx of cases
in various courts of the country keep shoveling dirt, making the shit hit the
ceiling at regular intervals. His autocratic I-me myself style of governance
and aggressive political personality which specializes in making enemies out of
admirers is bedeviling his existence at a time when he plans to make a foray into
national politics. In this context, the three day Sadbhavana mission fast from
September 17 at Ahmedabad is a media exercise gone totally haywire.
Modi desperately needs a change of image
to a modern, forward thinking development oriented liberal leader to enter
prime ministerial sweep stakes. As usual he hoped to kill two birds with one
stone through the fast. Pre-empt his mentor L.K.Advani who had announced his anti-corruption
Yatra as well as reach out to the Muslims. He lost on both counts. He upset
Advani and the 'skullcap' issue where he refused to wear one offered by a
Maulana sent exactly the opposite message from the heavily televised event.
"Na khuda hi mila na visale sanam, na idhar ke rahe na udhar ke
rahe". He further compounded problems for himself by not attending the BJP
national executive meeting getting him negative publicity.
Contributing in no small measure to the
mounting pile of odds, is the hostility of the mainline Gujarati dailies. Their
criticism of Modi and his government is mounting by the day. The irony is that
all along in the aftermath of the Godhra train carnage, past the communal riots
and into the state Assembly elections that first both Modi to power on his own
steam after steamrolling the Congress, the Gujarati newspapers have chosen to go
along with him, even at the cost of taking on their own English brethren
and news channels.
It was this support which helped Modi up
the ante, charging the media (implying English media and 'outside' news
channels) with being part of the anti-Gujarat
conspiracy. He played favourites exploiting the differences to widen the chasm
within the media at will, gifting with largesse from the heavily enhanced
publicity blitzkrieg budgets of the government. In fact his image of a clean,
aggressive, forward looking Chief Minister within Gujarat owes much to the
Gujarati media .
The reporting of the abundance of court
cases, the targeting of senior IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt, the fulminations of
Jagruti Pandya, the wife of former BJP home minister, Haren Pandya who was
murdered in broad daylight, theLokayukta issue and the railing of the government on the issue of cow slaughter has
seen the Modi establishment face a sustained battering. Damage control efforts
have been mounted by key confidantes of the Chief Minister but don't seem to
have cut much ice so far. The English press in comparison has been considerably
restrained.
His political problem is mirrored in the
dilemma being faced by his media planners. A fanatically loyal support base of
the Hindu hriday samrat is unable to come to terms with his overtures towards
the minority community. And if this is reflected in reverses in the vidhan sabha
elections next year, it is bound to have
a cascading effect on his plans to move to Delhi to throw his hat in the ring
for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. And this is where things rest for the moment.
How to turn around without spilling water from the political pot perched
precariously on the head, is the million rupee question. The accompanying media
strategy to aid the turnaround, is a ten million rupee one.
(The
writer is a Gandhinagar-based senior journalist)
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