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Vajpayee-Musharraf meet -- Media in overdrive

Menka Shivdasani

THE Vajpayee-Musharraf summit is on everybody's lips and it has not even begun. Ms Zain Verjee, CNN's new Q&A presenter, is in India for the big event, so Ms Tumi Makgabo is filling in for her and mercifully talking about something else -- sex. Mr Rajdee p Sardesai is on STAR News talking about the ``storm in the tea cup'' over the invitation that was sent out to Hurriyat representatives. Someone at BBC World, Delhi, tells me that there is only one thing the television industry is talking about right now -- how to get the best footage of the meeting.

The most watchable bit of television on the subject so far has been Mr Karan Thapar's interview with Ms Benazir Bhutto on Hard Talk Pakistan. The show is normally called Hard Talk India -- even the BBC ad preceding it referred to it that way -- but this was a special programme and had to be treated that way. (Hard Talk India, incidentally, won indiantelevision.com's Telly Award last week for the best current affairs show.)

Now Mr Karan Thapar, when he is not interviewing beautiful women like Ms Aishwarya Rai, is a very aggressive interviewer. He has the nasty habit of going for the jugular -- especially if he is talking to a politician. Ms Benazir Bhutto, however, proved m ore than a match for him. In fact, she repeatedly ticked him off as though he was a schoolboy, telling him, ``Please let me finish, Mr Thapar'', as he tried to move on to another question. At one point, she even told him, ``Yes, yes, provoke me some more ''. She also said precisely what she wanted to say, and not one word more. Mr Thapar made several attempts to ask her when she would go back to Pakistan, and she told him, ``You are trying to get a date out of me and I am declining to give it to you''. P oor man!

Still, you had to give him full marks for persistence. He kept trying to point out that it was all very well for her to talk of how she was going to lead her party to victory. But the fact was, she was not even in her country at that point. He also sugge sted that people thought she had lost her fire, and lacked the guts to face reality by choosing to remain in exile. ``I intend leading my party to victory a third time and I am going to do it on my terms,'' she insisted.

As for the Vajpayee-Musharraf meet that has got everyone into hyperdrive, Ms Bhutto was of the view it would come to very little. ``New Delhi is making a colossal mistake if you think Mr Musharraf is coming here to play the peace card,'' she said, adding that dictators lacked the mandate to represent the people, and there was bound to be a backlash if he conceded to India's demands in any significant way. It was a point that Mr Imran Khan, cricketer-turned-politician, also made on news channels during t he week.

Since stories about the summit began to get a little repetitive and tiresome as the week wore on, I turned to a show that has absolutely nothing to do with such weighty matters. Mr Suhel Seth's Ad Vantage -- on DD Metro (Tuesdays, 9 am) talks about the a dvertising world and how it impacts the average consumer. Most people, as Mr Suhel himself pointed out at the beginning of the show, ``see advertising as a business which involves temptation''. Advertisers, however, see it in a completely different light -- after all, how would you, as a consumer, know what products to opt for if you did not have advertising to show you the way? (Smart consumers, naturally, do not fall for that one!)

This week's show made no more than a mere reference to a very important issue relating to the advertising world and the television industry -- the story that the rating agencies TAM and INTAM were to merge as a single entity. Their ratings are currently the only weapon that broadcasters have to woo advertisers, but it has often been pointed out that the two systems provide widely differing results. I thought there would be a discussion on this issue as the programme moved on -- it had only been referred to in the Market Buzz, or news headline section -- but there was no further mention of the subject.

They did, however, have a rather interesting story this week, one that would have caught the attention of most viewers, whether they belong to the advertising world or not. This one was about how matrimonial advertising was getting more popular, with suc h new media as the Internet helping to spread the good word. Traditional matchmakers have given way to matrimonials in newspapers and there are more than enough Web sites on the Net that can be checked out too. Mr Kunal Sinha of McCann Erickson told Ad V antage that the trend really took off after the 1950s, and Mr Subhash Wadhawan, a marriage counsellor, pointed out that when you put an ad in the papers, it guaranteed a certain amount of privacy -- even your next door neighbour would not know that a hus band was being sought for one's daughter.

The story made an interesting observation: These days, both men and women are talking more about themselves rather than what they are looking for. The words `pretty' and `homely' are still integral parts of such ads, but now they are better qualified -- `tall' and `fair' are among the options. What is worrying, though, is that the demand for horoscopes is increasing, and caste, which is not something most people talk about openly these days, is very important. Plus, with standards of living having risen , as Mr Wadhawan pointed out, most people want working women.

Of course, that is not quite as progressive as it sounds. As the story pointed out, ``At times the ad asks for a homely bahu who is also a professional. Contradictory, is it not?'' It was a point that should have been made more strongly.