The bahu with the broom

With the trademark vermilion on her forehead and her bright handloom saris, she is at home in the I&B ministry — that last bastion of middle-class morality which spells out the finer details on entertainment, as we know it.

She did not disappoint her partywallahs when she announced her plans for the Indian media on her first day in office, this time as well. “Entertainment should be for everyone and with an average Indian household possessing just one television set, it is only proper that entertainment should not be inappropriate,” she said. The fine print will, of course, follow.

Although she held forth on other issues — problems concerning her ministry, and so on — it was her views on “proper” versus “improper entertainment” that caused widespread consternation. Coming from Sushma, this was nothing new. During her 13-day stint at the same ministry four years ago, Sushma rapped the knuckles of newsreaders who were inappropriately dressed. “No reading news in blouses with plunging necklines and slipping pallus,” she had thundered, ordering her flock to come back properly dressed.

They came back fully clothed. In her attempts to lend some dignity to newsreading, she managed to ruffle a few feathers. But no one complained. Before she could initiate further changes in the newsroom or implement her media policies, her government collapsed. The rest is history. Sushma had to wait for two years, before she got into the Cabinet again.

As Information and Broadcasting minister in her earlier avatar, she had came down hard on liquor and tobacco commercials and adult programming. The disciplined soldier that she was, she was concerned about the impact of such programmes on young impressionable minds. Fortunately, she was democratic enough to allow private broadcasters to evolve their own moral code after appealing to their conscience. But conscience tends to fly out of the window when it clashes with commerce! Before Sushma could implement a code of governance, she was shunted out of her ministry to head the Delhi government.

Overnight, chameleon-like, she was a woman transformed. Her sophisticated outbursts on morality television, conversations on broadcast bill, and assurances on cable television, gave way to more down-to-earth assurances. Vote for me and I will give you onions, she thundered. For Dilliwallahs, who had forsaken their onions for their potatoes, this seemed like a cruel joke. Reeling under a oil hike, bludgeoned senseless by a deteriorating law-and-order situation in the Capital, Sushma, sent in by her party colleagues to bolster the party’s image for the elections, could not work up her charm with the electorate. Although she patrolled the streets of Delhi and caught drunken cops “with their pants down”, she could not get the people’s votes. A red-eyed Sushma had to admit defeat as her party was voted out of power in all the seven assembly segments of Delhi.

If she felt her party would oblige her by taking her back into the Cabinet, she was mistaken. Instead, she was offered an assortment of posts within the party, all of which she declined. Choosing to remain a party worker, she was once again summoned at the crack of dawn and airlifted to Bellary to arm-wrestle. It was videshi bahu versus swadeshi bahu. While Sushma wooed Bellary natives with her Bellarigale routine number and freshly ironed Mysore silk saris, it was the cotton-clad videshi bahu who romped home with the trophy. Sushma had lost by a mere 50,000 votes but it was a defeat that she would never forget. All this and the party’s shabby treatment of her must have rankled. This was the phase when she earned a well-deserved reputation for being the “sulking Sushma”. At the Nagpur convention last month, she hit the headlines for being a little too critical of her party’s economic policies. But she meant business and her partymen could not ignore her for long.

For the 48-year old former socialist, who became the youngest minister at 25 from her chosen state of Haryana, a third brush with a Cabinet berth was inevitable. Even her harshest critics could not keep her away from taking the oath of secrecy.

In the coming days, it will be her ministry’s prerogative to decide what the Indian TV watcher gets to see. If Sushma thinks Fashion Television is bad for the palate, then there can be no two views on that. If adult programming with liquor and cigarette commercials cause acidity, then they cannot be good. If a bahu and a father-in-law or daughter and father cannot enjoy watching certain programmes together without squirming, they should not be aired at all. Simple solutions to keep the house in order. Sushma bahu knows how to wield the broom — on a familiar turf.