Opinion Ranking the NTPs on NT
Politicians on the panel....
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The Congress’s continued election victories are good for the Congress; they are,to the extent the verdicts make the Congress a little more courageous in policymaking,good for the country; they are good for the BJP,on the assumption that at some point of time it will wake up; but they aren’t too good for news TV. Election happens,exit polls say the Congress is ahead,results show the Congress is ahead,and this keeps happening — duh. Where’s the drama? The BJP doing badly is no drama; actually it’s even more boring than the Congress doing well. Haryana is a great state and Om Prakash Chautala is no doubt a politician with many excellent qualities. But there’s only so much drama a surprise Chautala performance in Haryana can produce for national news TV.
So,on Thursday,as masses of panelists led by grimly determined anchors soldiered on,my attention drifted from politics on TV to politicians on TV,who were,of course,flitting in and out of studios or letting various camera crews flit in and out of their living rooms or gardens.
NTPs,we will call them: news TV politicians. Here’s my verdict on NTPs.
The cosiest cross-party pairing: Chandan Mitra and Jayanti Natarajan. I don’t know why,but whenever Mitra and Natarajan are on the same news TV panel,there are a lot more smiles than,say,when Prakash Javadekar and Renuka Chowdhury appear together. Javadekar,it can be said,has a free-form approach to articulation; not necessarily constrained by traditional rules. Chowdhury is one of the few NTPs who can appear even more combative than NT (news TV,that is) likes.
If you have heard BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad in his NTP avatar,you will know the whole world is his friend. Prasad addresses everyone as “my good friend” — everyone. If you are on a news TV panel with him and Prasad met you for the first time in the studio,there’s a good chance he will call you “my good friend”. The Congress’s Manish Tiwari most certainly needs to make friends with whole words; they run away from him sometimes. He will say “a quarter of a century template for Congress”. You are supposed to be impressed. On NT,few NTPs use words like template. But template means an identifiable,fixed pattern. Tiwari doesn’t mean things haven’t changed for the Congress in 25 years. He just likes words like template. Unsurprisingly,this is the NTP who had caused both Pakistan and Somalia immense hurt by comparing one to the other.
Sudheendra Kulkarni,who’s now called political observer on NT,is an NTP in whose case the ‘P’ may as well stand for philosopher. Kulkarni’s TV chats signal “I am above it all; I will give you the wisdom from the very big picture”. Philosophical in two-minute conversational turns — tough but,I suppose,someone’s go to do it.
I will single out Sitaram Yechury from among the Marxist NTPs,because he’s the only one among them who doesn’t look apoplectic whenever America is mentioned. Tell Yechury,D Raja or Nilotpal Basu,don’t you think the US foreign policy is just great,Yechury will give you a critique,the other two will give you 30 seconds of pure entertainment.
Do I have a favourite? Not really. They can all,despite their serious resolve,entertain. But I am a bit partial to the CPM’s Prasenjit Bose. He looks so earnest. When he angrily says financial capitalism is a menace,I don’t feel like arguing.
saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com
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