The week-long ‘Incredible |
Those focussed on the $10 million event in
The rice at Rs.2 a kilo annoyed the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP). After all, its founder, N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), was the true author of the scheme. But the TDP leaders had to be cautious about describing this as ‘stealing our clothes.’ For, their own government had shed those clothes with alacrity in the post-NTR era. So, instead, they announced ‘nine hours of free power daily for farmers’ — the very first policy the Congress signed into effect on taking power in 2004.
The TDP also promised farmers loans at four per cent interest. Not to be left out, the “Loksatta,” a movement that decries the populist stunts of other parties and which sees itself as cleaning up politics, showed itself as a force with a difference. A one-hour difference. It offered eight hours of free power as against the more lavish nine hours of the TDP. And, of course, rice at Rs.2 a kilo. The Telangana Rashtriya Samiti closed the bidding at 12 hours of free power for farmers. The TDP topped it off with the promise of three cents of land for poor urban families to build homes.
To gain a sense of just how incredible
Suddenly, it is to cover all districts of the country. The media say this happened because the request came from Rahul Gandhi. Well, good for him. Maybe, he can even get the government to fund it better. And extend it to all seeking work, while raising the number of work days. What’s incredible, though, is the instant conversion of the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister to avid fans of a programme they cared little for and adopted under duress from their allies.
No less impressive is the sudden hike in the minimum support price for wheat, rice and other crops. Till this moment, the government was happy to import wheat from
In
Only weeks earlier, the Chief Minister was in danger of losing his job for all the opposite reasons. He had scoffed at the farmers of Vidharbha — standing right in the zone of their suffering — and mocked their “innovative” ways of cheating. The uproar over those remarks drew the usual “quoted out of context” defence.
But all that is past now. No context is greater than the poll context. And if you are Chief Minister of one of the country’s richest States, it’s not a context you want to be thrown out of.
Meanwhile, the TDP in Andhra Pradesh finds that the Congress selling rice at Rs.2 a kilo is “panic reaction.” The idea had always been a TDP original. In truth, the TDP, while in office, had done away with the move after NTR’s time. It had forced a number of other costs on its people. Utility rates were hiked massively, sparking major State-wide protests. User charges were imposed on poor patients at government hospitals. The hospitals themselves were being set up for a transfer to private control. But now the party wishes to provide “quality power supply to the farm sector.” And pledges “to halt the auction of Government land” and check the growth of “shops selling liquor.”
The crisis in Karnataka also has firm roots in Incredible (or Electoral)
On the Ramar Sethu issue, alas, Incredible India has lost its way. When mythology takes over, it’s hard to discuss more vital problems of unique marine parks or the fate of local fishermen. If countless millennia of deposits and sediment formed such a bridge, it stands to reason that process will continue. So it’s worth pondering the fortune you will spend each year on cleaning up your planned route. Instead, we’re stuck with the mythology. But for the BJP, that’s Incredible India.
Impact on media
Incredible
The politicians are in fact way ahead of the media. At least in sensing public concerns and moods. They do not rely on SMS polls with a sample size of zilch, which declare with certainty that 97 per cent of Indians think that Thursday is better than Wednesday. Media antennae are far more crippled than those of the politicians they despise. Remember those magisterial pronouncements of the mega-pundits on the eve of the 2004 polls? All those they hope no one will recall the next time around? The most famous one was this — and it came from a highly visible media personality less than a hundred hours before the results were out:
“The era of the massive election rally has long been over. People now have work to do. This election was fought more in the media than in the streets. Television is now the new electoral battleground and, as with more developed democracies, will increasingly replace public meetings and door-to-door campaigns as the mode of campaigning. A recent … opinion poll has clearly shown that a large majority of voters now make up their minds on the basis of what they learn from the media.”
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