If you’re not making news, it’s not good news for you. If you’re making news for the wrong reasons, that’s bad news for you. This is something the BJP may like to ponder. One way or another, it’s been missing from the top headlines — and when it does make them, it might wish it hadn’t.
From early July onwards, the BJP has been sidelined by the CJP-led protests, Opposition protests in and outside Parliament, the alleged Ram Mandir financial scam and, this week, by the bypoll results in three states it rules. It lost to Prashant Kishor in Bihar’s Bankipur, failed to wrest Datia from the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, and held on to Manjalpur in Gujarat with a reduced margin.
As leading Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar put it in pithy filmi language: ‘Ek Phool Do Kaante.’
Then there are the constant pinpricks to the TVK government in Tamil Nadu and the cabinet problems of Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, which are grabbing TV coverage and newspaper headlines.
The arrest of DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of former Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin, over alleged ‘crass’ remarks about actor Trisha, who has been linked to Vijay, occupied TV news channels for most of 4 August and was the top story in The Times of India, The Hindu and The Indian Express, to name a few leading English newspapers.
Consequently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going through a period of poor visibility in the news media. On Wednesday, 5 August, a 30-page Delhi edition of The Times of India made no mention of the PM until page 8. And that was in a brief single-column report headlined, ‘Day after PK’s victory, Modi talks to Nabin, meets Nitish’.
Also, there were no government advertisements applauding the PM’s latest project inauguration or thanking him for a scheme.
The saying goes that negative publicity is the best publicity. Well, let’s add another line to that: no publicity is the worst publicity.
Also Read: TV news showed the CJP protest live. Then it rewrote the story on primetime
Less Modi-Shah, more Rahul-Priyanka
We have seen only a few glimpses of the PM in recent weeks. After his customary address outside Parliament House at the opening of the Monsoon Session on 20 July, we’ve seen visuals of him walking purposefully in and out of Parliament – or stills of him attending meetings and meeting people.
He didn’t react publicly to Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as Education Minister on 25 July.
The only time we saw him during and after the CJP protests was in a series of Instagram videos addressed to students, the latest of which saw him “forgive” young protesters for using abusive language against him.
In other TV news, we saw his roadshow in Andhra Pradesh and him watching a dance by students on 1 August.
Home Minister Amit Shah has been seen and heard more, but not by a huge margin. Much was made on TV news of his appearance in Parliament wearing an Odia-style dhoti at the end of July.
The country’s top two leaders have been absent from the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. Other top cabinet ministers or BJP leaders are also barely in any picture frame or headlines.
The one BJP leader who has been visible and voluble is Kiren Rijiju, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, and that’s because of the constant Opposition disruptions in both Houses.
In contrast, Rahul Gandhi and other prominent leaders, including Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi, have been basking in TV news channel coverage since the 20 July Jantar Mantar protests saw police violence and some protesters stone-pelting.
The three of them are constantly giving sound bites outside Parliament – be it on the Ram Mandir money scam or BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s acquittal in the women wrestlers’ sexual harassment case.
We still recall Rahul Gandhi resisting his detention by the police outside the PM’s residence – it was the lead photograph in newspapers and made it to the front page of the Financial Times in the UK.
Speeches by Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav in the Lok Sabha debate on the examination paper leak Bill were lead stories, with live TV coverage and prominent play in online editions of the newspapers.
How many of us remember Minister Jitendra Singh’s reply — or that of any other BJP leader — on the exam Bill?
Also Read: Why Prashant Kishor’s Bankipur victory in Bihar should ring alarm bells for Modi-Shah’s BJP
Eyes on the South
There has been increased interest in the southern states across TV news, including on Hindi channels.
News channels like CNN-News18, India Today and NDTV 24×7 have daily bulletins devoted exclusively to news from the southern states.
Interest in Karnataka peaked with the seesaw battle for power between former and current chief ministers Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar before the latter’s appointment in early June.
Vijay’s victory in the May Assembly polls had the star power to catapult him into a major news story almost every day.
Perhaps this interest in the South stems from the pursuit of more viewers by English news channels. Whatever the reason, Udhayanidhi’s arrest captivated English news channels on Tuesday, with almost non-stop coverage till late into the evening.
The PK show
Giant-slayer ‘PK’, as he was referred to on TV news, was the channels’ poster boy on Monday, and newspapers gave his victory fulsome coverage too. TV news tracked Kishor’s lead from start to finish and was full of praise for his efforts.
Newspapers led with his victory, while The Indian Express and The Hindu wrote editorials on the meaning of his breach of the BJP’s bastion – bad news for the party.
The Indian Express said it was “a warning to the BJP against arrogance and complacency…”
The Hindu wrote that the results in Bankipur, Bihar, and Datia, Madhya Pradesh, “suggest some volatility among the BJP’s core social base of Hindu voters, particularly the upper caste.”
Hindi newspapers such as Dainik Jagran, Hindustan and Amar Ujala saw Prashant Kishor’s victory as a successful assault on the BJP’s “fortress”— a constituency it had held since 1995 and which had just been vacated by BJP President Nitin Nabin.
It was a “historic” win (TV9 Bharatvarsh), a “tectonic shift” (India Today) – “This one is out of the BJP’s hands,” said the India TV anchor. Across news channels, TV anchors and their guests spoke of the BJP’s “arrogance” in assuming that voters had nowhere else to go and taking them for granted.
“They always think the upper-caste urban vote is theirs,” said the anchor on Times Now Navbharat, alluding to Bankipur being an urban pocket with a high percentage of upper-caste voters.
“Why not vote for PK?” asked India TV. Why not indeed.
BBC Hindi called it a “signal” to the BJP, while the anchor on YouTube channel Lallantop said that Prashant Kishor had no “baggage”, a clean image, and that this appealed even to women voters, thought to be loyal to the BJP.
“This is PK’s shining moment,” wrote Amar Ujala. And so it was.
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)