And it is over.

A show couldn’t have asked for a better season finale. Last night Parliament didn’t vote … Arnab gasped like a fish out of water ‘but, but, but.. they were supposed to vote‘ .

Vote they didn’t. instead they thumped the tables in unison to give a sense of the house. The demands of team Anna, along with views from across the spectrum will be considered in the formulation of a strong Jan Lok Pal. What will be the shape and form of the bill, the extent of its powers, its constituents, – whether it will be a Constitutional Body or not …will all be decided later.

This morning Anna Hazare broke his fast by taking a ritual sip of lemon juice from two girls. A Dalit and a Muslim proclaimed the channels. In a way keeping in tone with the excellent packaging that had been in place through out this made for media event.

Starting from the ‘prayer’ at Rajghat to the end on a slow news day, the Anna Hazare story has had the airwaves buzzing with ‘what will happen next’.

Anna Hazare at Rajghat on the 15th of August – seen anyone else sit by themselves with people all around them

. The visuals denote the lone hero fighting corruption. The slogans in Ram Lila a week later echoed that – Anna tum Aage Chalo, Hum tumhare saath hai (Anna you take the lead, we are behind you).

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So, who won ?

The News Media won. Revenue. Eyeballs. Lots of eyeballs and lots of revenue. I am still not sure of the rest, the Congress and the BJP had some very visible flip flops. Civil society is not a unified front. the more you saw of Kejriwal and Bedi, the less one trusted them. So the only outright winner is the Media.

Anna’s movement against corruption hogged the limelight, occupying 88.5 per cent of primetime content on news channels for the period between 16-24 August, according to data from Centre For Media Studies’ TV news monitoring division CMS Media Lab.
The data consists of total per day news average of four channels – NDTV 24X7, CNN-IBN, Star News and Aaj Tak.       Among these channels, Star News gave maximum footage to Anna’s fast –97.1 per cent or 1,310 minutes in the week; its focus on other news was just 2.9 per cent.
On Aaj Tak, news coverage on Anna was as high as 92.2 per cent, while 7.8 per cent was other news. NDTV 24X7 and CNN-IBN gave 85 and 81 per cent of their primetime to Anna’s cause.

Interestingly, on 24 August all the four channels aired news related to Anna only and no other news was covered, CMS Media Lab’s data revealed.

The whole news genre, which is under tremendous revenue stress, has seen a dramatic rise in viewership, thanks to Anna. As per TAM data for the week ended 20 August, the genre share of Hindi news channels has seen an 87 per cent jump in the viewership, while the English news genre saw a boost of 74 per cent.

In the Hindi speaking market (HSM), the share of Hindi news genre grew to 11.02 per cent compared to 5.9 per cent in the preceding week.
The genre share of English news channels stood at 0.54 per cent, as against 0.31 per cent in the trailing week.

TAM data also suggests that not just more people viewed the news channels but they watched it longer. The average daily time spent on Hindi news channels increased to 16.9 minutes from 8.5 minutes in the HSM. The time spent on English news channels rose to 0.72 minute (from 0.30 minute earlier) at a pan India level.

according to a Media Monitor, the April figures were – 5657 clips of Anna that ran for 655 minutes, and earned channels 17586 lakh rupees.

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Symbolism

In a way it was desinged like a soap opera or a reality show. Lots of emotion, lots of drama, and nightly break points — what will happen tomorrow – keep watching.

The government, of course, messed  up beyond measure in not just  arresting Anna Hazare but also  not knowing what to do with him after the arrest. it was a ridiculous situation where you tell a 70 year old -you are free to leave prison, and the fasting person turns around and says no….Obviously, those too made for great entertainment, and great  visuals.

 

And, of course when a deal was finally struck – it was the symbolic Ram Lila Ground that was the venue for the protest. The release happened last friday – a weekend, and a time when there is very little original programming on TV. So last weekend was also prime viewing time for news TV. There were great sound bytes like Kiran Bedi going “Anna is India and India is Anna” – while most people, I know, denoucnced the echoes of Emergency “India is Indira, and Indira is India” kind of sloganeering – the tone was set. “We – those gathered in Ram Lila Maidan, our agenda, our way, our demands represent India. The rest don’t. The waving of the flag, made all utternaces all acceptable.

The speeches had nothing to do with reality – they had more do to with great sound bytes and rousing the audience. I heard Anna Speak – Jai Hind, Vande Mataram, Inqalaab Zindabad. While I am okay with the first two, on the third my automatic response was “excuse me, which era do you think we are living in, and are you calling for revolution” .

The simple law of propaganda is to keep a message simple, and bring into play all symbols, icons, slogans and imagery that will create a meta symbolism. there is no greater symbol than India, and the moment you began portraying a 70+ year old as the next Gandhi, the cause as India, and the civil society IAC’s actions as the ‘war against corruption’, and used the flag, Bharat Mata and patriotic songs to rouse the crowds – everyone who opposed it became anti India, and anti the war of corruption.  The issues of the fast for the passing of the IAC”s Jan Lok Pal Bill was not discussed, what was imposed was an Agenda – that Civil society has the right to dictate a bill that will be passed by a mute Parliament, within a given time frame. India wants this bill, they roared. Well, I am an Indian and I didn’t want this bill – and that is because I have read the bill. But, how do you argue with a movement that claims to be India?

But the trouble with the media is that it is a insatiable beast, or as one senior lectured us when we first joined the media – the media is like fire. You have to keep feeding it, more and more. Each day a wee bit higher pitched, every day that a new conspiracy came to light. So you had the day when the talks broke down Kejriwal coming out and saying he doesn’t know and that he could only speculate. And went to speculate that senior ministers were against the deal. He named the ministers. Ms.Bedi on the same day accused the Governemnt of planning an early morning arrest – which too didn’t happen.

The trouble with having a campaign that relies more on imagery and on packaging than on substance, is that it sooner or later runs out of steam. You are left with wearing ghoongats, and getting character actors like Om Puri to spew vitriol. The moment that happens, and people start laughing at you, you stop being a cause and start becoming a vaudeville. Its a good job that a deal was struck.

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Parliament

On the other side, Parliament which had hitherto been behaving like an unruly  kindergarten class, began getting its act in place. Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Pranab Mukherji, Dr.Manmohan Singh, all made their speeches. All impressed in different ways. With the Parliament in session, for the first time that I can remember have there been such fantastic speeches. Each speaker talked about the issue of corruption and its pervasiveness in society -including, ironically, MP’s like Mulayam Singh Yadav – at the same time MP’s talked about Constitutionalism, about Parliament being supreme.

Kejriwal pointed out that people are supreme. Of course they are, but the people have elected Parliament to bring in legislation. It is good that Team Anna, as they are popularly called, have reminded Parliament the need to legislate and conduct themselves like grownups ..

And after the final debate, at least I can say – the Parliament speaks for me.

I wish they continue this level of debate and discourse. Parliament needs to  get back into the act of debating issues, finding solutions and passing legislation. Government and Opposition. Parties and their interests exist outside Parliament, the Parliament exists for us, the people. Go work.

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Parties & their Personalities

The government which looked like a bumbling country feudal lord – when they arrested Anna Hazare, ended up looking not as bad by the end of the fast. Maybe the fact that they had relegated the lawyer brigade in their party to the back rooms helped. There is an obvious Party v/s Governemnt tussle going on here. It seems like the Government has the upper hand. for now.

Rahul Gandhi had an interesting speech to read out. I kind of agree with the Constitutional Body. However, like the time he talked about the Mumbai blasts and said that the police cannot stop all blasts, I thought his timing was terrible. Also, in a media world, he needs to mug up his speech and practise in front of the mirror…

The BJP too seems to have its own Party v/s Opposition issues. Gadkari and the Delhi 4 seem to be working at cross purposes. Also, they are in far more danger than the Congress, because the IAC lot have usurped the symbols & symbolism that he BJP uses most. Bharat Mata, Vande Mataram, the Flag. They really need to rebuild and rethink their strategy for 2014.

People who impressed me the most were Nitish Kumar, Mayawat, Modi, Prithviraj Chavan  & Jayalalitha – and that’s possibly because they were not involved at all.

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And they will be back

Anna has spoken of the right to recall, and the right to reject. I do agree with both of them in principle. However, they need to be rejected or recalled by a majority of voters in a constituency, not the minority who can hold an assembly to ransom

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And finally

A few weeks ago I tweeted that this is the Government’s Kandahaar moment. It was. And they performed in a way where they haven’t set a bad precedent. They bungled, bullied, blew hot and cold. However, in the end they didn’t capitulate to ‘popular’ sentiment (howevermanufactured it was) well done.