Andar Bahar Gujarat (13 October)

Read this piece in Gujarati here

Ahmedabad, 13 October 2012

Gujarat elections, and master of megawave

There’s no doubt that Modi’s Vivekananda Yatra has achieved a grand success.

Modi successfully raises ‘mega wave’ across the state every election season.

The main object behind creating the latest ‘mega wave’ before two and a half months of elections through Viveknanda Yatra was apparently to wash away the effect of year long pre-election propaganda of Gujarat Congress and over-hyped prospects of Keshubhai in media.

Modi is likely to build another round of even more powerful mega wave, about fifteen days or a month before elections.

I have always observed that in order to win the assembly elections Modi or say BJP follows a particular three-layer pattern in Gujarat, in which the top layer is Modi’s mega wave; the middle layer is the candidates who have got potential to win atleast ten to twenty thousand votes on their own(personal capacity). And the bottom layer is formed by hundreds of party workers who make sure that maximum people covered by upper layers cast their votes at the voting centres. It is like Modi is the engine of the car, the candidate is the model of the car, and the party workers are wheels.

Modi has effectively created mega wave against Congress party which was shelling out huge amounts of money on election promotion since long time.

And if this fresh mega wave created by Modi’s yatra becomes weaker with the passage of time, Modi has the capacity to empower it again.

Now between this mega wave and next mega wave, there’s a time to decide party candidates.

If in the selection of candidates Modi repeats the same mistake as he did when choosing Galaxy man for the Rajkot Lok Sabha seat, then not even the mega wave or the wheels will be able to save BJP on some seats.

This is because, in some areas, mega wave wouldn’t matter much but the selection of candidates would. Like in very few areas in which Keshubhai factor works even a little- especially in Saurashtra- the selection of candidates will be very crucial. In such areas the personal capacity of the candidate to attract large number of votes will be important primarily.

You must be thinking that why I am not talking about the bottom layer – or say the wheels of the BJP wagon. I would answer that by saying that BJP receives a special benefit that the common man voluntarily turns into a BJP party worker during the election season. So nothing to worry when it comes to wheels.

Too much action in Gujarati TV media world

Ahmedabad television media is all shaken up these days. The Mumbai based owner of Transmedia Mr. Shah who organizes Gujarati Film Award once a year bought the license of starting a

Gujarati news channel and built up a studio in the neighboring bungalow of Sanjiv Bhatt on Driving Road.

But because of Mr. Shah’s indecisiveness the channel couldn’t kick off. During this period, Mr. Shah met the owner of Sandesh newspaper and now Sandesh is moving forward to kick off a Gujarati news channel in joint venture with Mr. Shah.

This channel will be managed from one of the floors of multi storied building of Sandesh press situated in Vastrapur.

Sandesh has picked up Vivek Bhatt from TV9 and has managed to absorb staff members from TV9, on the other hand TV9 is planning to recruit some of the staff members of ETV Gujarati. ETV Gujarati was run by Hyderabad based Ramoji Rao but later he sold ETV Gujarati to TV18 Group. TV18 has made ex IAS officer Jagdishchandra as the chief of the channel.

The staff members of the Gujarati channel are really annoyed by the way Katil gives dictation. Even the audience can sense that the quality of the news is affected negatively by the things going on behind the screen.

On the other hand Gujarat Samachar is all set with a studio at Nilgiri press(located just next to Iskcon temple on S.G. Highway). The pre-launch functioning of this proposed channel is supervised by Narendra Modi’s former electronic media advisor Dhiren Avashia. Former Zee Gujarati and TV9 Gujarati man Jay Shukla who has worked as an input head in TV9 will work under Dhirenbhai. Dipak Antani who played key role in setting up infrastructure of Transmedia news channel is also a vital part of this team.

After the date of salary pay, channels have witnessed shifts of staff members from one channel to another. A sharp rise in these shifts can be observed after Shraddha Paksha.

It seems, at present, everyone wants to start the channel and grab the target audience before the election and they are in hurry.

In general, the typical pattern that Gujarati news channels follow is of broadcasting news related to accidents in the morning, about court in the afternoon, about politics in the evening and about crime at night. Now we have to wait and watch whether these brand new news channels bring anything new or not. Else the only difference these channels will make is cramming press conference halls with cameras. Albeit people are always benefited when the news sources are increased. The chief benefit of this competition is that media gets diluted and therefore two or three media groups cannot rule the news world. In such scenario if one channel tries to hide the truth, another channel is ready to expose it. Well, for now, the TV reporters are the ones reaping the sweetest benefits from this cut throat competition.

Our artists, and our newspapers

Recently a veteran Sugam Sangeet singer/composer Shri Rasbihari Desai passed away in Ahmedabad. The next day various news papers covered the news in good size which was fine, but did any of the newspapers cared to publish something on Rasbiharibhai when he was alive? Did they publish anything good about him in equal size, after reading which he could have felt contended when he was alive? The answer is NO.

The Congress party’s rule in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation(AMC) was almost fail and popular feeling was that the city of Ahmedabad wasted its precious five years by electing Congress. But one initiative under Congress ruled AMC was worth appreciating. Jayantilal Parmar who is presently a spokesperson of Gujarat Congress started “Sanskar Choro” to hold cultural activities under the Congress led AMC.

The BJP when came to power took Sanskar Choro activity to next level, and started felicitating the artists and dignitories from various cultural fields regularly.

Early this year, in one of the programs organized by “Sanskar Choro”, Rasbihari and Vibha Desai were honored by the city. The AMC people as usual sent press notes to the newspapers but not even a single newspaper even cared to mention the event. Same thing happened when Praful Dave, P.Kharsani etc were honored by the city of Ahmedabad. Now when they die, the newspapers publish reports on their contributions to cultural Gujarat, but when they are alive, the newspapers don’t care to publish anything in same spirit.

The attitude of Gujarati newspapers towards arts and artists is really worrisome. Recently a young man who produced a high quality Gujarati movie was expressing his rage over phone call stating that- “I spent more than a crore on the movie, the movie was houseful for months in some pockets of Gujarat and not only this, the film was also shortlisted by Indian jury for Oscar entry from India. But some leading Gujarati newspapers refused to publish anything on our film. They did not publish a single word about the film. The compilers of the film supplements of the leading news papers said that they were instructed from the editors to not to publish any news about Gujarati movies. If it was Hindi movie then they were free to publish anything. We were instructed to meet the editors because we were from Gujarati film world. When we went to meet the editors, they treated us like beggars.”

This is the condition friends!

Continuing my non-scientific political surveys

I talked about my non-scientific surveys conducted in Sabarkantha and Somnath in previous articles of Ander Bahar Gujarat. Recently I discussed about election with few upper middle class Amdavadis during the Shraddha luncheon. Let’s take a glance at what these people have to say about the elections:

Banker: Modi will win 70 seats this year.

A lady working in a government office: No, no. Modi is going to be victorious for sure. 110 percent. Though he has given nothing to government employees, we don’t have any other option but Modi.

A retired lady from AMC: Modi will 100 percent win. Didn’t you observe that under Modi’s rule Muslims haven’t committed any mischief? Not even a single riot!

A gentleman working in Laboratory: Nobody has brought as much development as much as Modi has. There is no rival. He will win the election with maximum seats in his bag.

After everyone shared their opinions, the Banker said, “See as soon as I said Modi will win 70 seats, everyone got charged up.”

All of us burst into laughter.

By the way, on the Wednesday evening I met photographer Zaverilal Mehta who has been capturing the middle and poor class of society in his camera for years now. Zaverilal Mehta shared his opinion that Modi will easily win the election. He is unrivaled. Modi is a strong leader with the skills of ruling the state and winning the elections. Though Zaverilal complained as usual that the crime rate has increased gigantically and the Police force has become weaker in past few years. Still he firmly believes that Modi will definitely win this time.

I couldn’t find a single Congress or Keshubhai supporter during my visits to Sabarkantha, Somnath or at Shraddha luncheon. But surprisingly, when I was busy looking for a Congress supporter outside, I found one supporter in my own house. Not even my home, in my kitchen! This servant belongs to Chikhli village of South Gujarat. He calls Modi as “Modi Kaka” and he is well aware of the power of Modi but he is not yet ready to trust Modi. For inflation he blames Congress and Modi equally. “Modi Kaka and Congress are one when it comes to price hike,” he says. He further says that from the times of Morarji Desai, he has been voting for Congress only. He said that local Congress men had helped him in building house in a small village with a government scheme. He says that he lives in a rental home at Jivraj Park area. And a large number of women from his vicinity went to collect forms of “Gharnu Ghar” scheme launched by Congress. He was even asking me whether those who have filled up the forms will get a house or not with the hopes in his heart that if Congress comes to rule, there are chances that people who submitted forms will get a house. My servant is illiterate and he is not even going to cast his vote during elections. Yet he is the silent, taciturn supporter of Congress. I had never imagined that I will find a Congress supporter in my own house!