The Hindu : Lack of confidence in facing the media?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 23, 2002

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National

Lack of confidence in facing the media?

By K. K. Katyal

NEW DELHI JUNE 22. One day during the early `90s in the Lok Sabha, Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Leader of the Opposition, mildly chided the Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, for being too sensitive to words of criticism. "You are now in politics. Be thick-skinned (Ab aap politics mein hain, chamrhi moti kijiey),'' he told the doctor then new to the ways of politicians.

Two decades later, Mr. Vajpayee does not seem to remember that advice. Had that not been the case, a section of bureaucrats around him would not have been allowed to react harshly to an article in the Time magazine over his life style, his alleged drinking habit, his health etc. All they have succeeded is to give wide publicity to the writing, considered offensive.

The Government could have confined its disapproval to the despatch of a rejoinder (which it did and which appears in the latest issue of the magazine). The record would have been set right, without the fuss (which, certainly has not helped the Government).

Instead, the PMO and the Ministry of External Affairs reacted angrily and non-official commentators here and there saw in it a "conspiracy of the West'' or evidence of racist attitude. The writer of the article, Alex Perry, of the Time bureau in India, was summoned by the immigration authorities to explain the how and why of the two passports in his possession. The talk of his impending expulsion was in the air.

The last time foreign correspondents were subjected to aggressive interrogation was during the Emergency. Ironically, two of the correspondents who were asked to leave had earlier earned kudos from the establishment for their "sympathetic'' coverage of India's stand on Bangladesh-related developments.

Even those responsible for the Emergency excesses later felt sorry about their actions. Here is one instance — concerning V.C. Shukla, Minister for Information and Broadcasting during the Emergency. In the early `80s, after the Congress' return to power, he happened to be in London at the time of the Festival of India in the U.K. and was among the standing audience at a function at a prestigious museum, jointly addressed by the two Prime Ministers, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. He sought to pick up conversation with a familiar figure, a British correspondent based in India earlier. The scribe cold-shouldered Mr. Shukla and he, turning to me (I was there for the coverage), said: "Perhaps we rubbed him on the wrong side during the Emergency. We need not have gone that far.'' Congress leaders, by then, realised that the curbs on the press, like forced sterilisation, was a big blunder.

Now about the article. According to it, Mr. Vajpayee is given "to interminable silences, indecipherable ramblings and, not infrequently, falling asleep in meetings. Atal Behari Vajpayee, then, would be an unusual candidate to control a nuclear arsenal''. In his rejoinder, Ashok Tandon, OSD to the Prime Minister, said, "the report is in bad taste. It carries factual errors and contains observations about the Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, which are nothing but fiction.'' And that "Mr. Vajpayee has been in command for more than four years and his ability to control the country's nuclear capabilities have never been questioned.''

The write-up did contain factual errors, apart from the Prime Minister's age. It relied on gossip and unverified information. The conclusions drawn by it were alarmist, far-fetched. But this was the viewpoint of one person, carried by one journal. How does the question of "Western conspiracy'' arise? Conspiracy of the U.S.? Why? Hasn't New Delhi derived comfort from the understanding shown by the U.S. of our concerns over terrorism as also Washington's pressure on Pakistan to stop infiltration?

Those in high places have to pay the price for their greatness. Irreverential writings about the high-ups is part of the journalistic game in a democracy. Haven't the Presidents in the U.S. been lambasted for their oddities, eccentricities, apart from substantive issues? Have not they been ridiculed for their conduct in public, in most case on valid grounds and in some cases for unjustified reasons? Mr. Vajpayee is an eloquent speaker in Hindi, he can keep the audiences spellbound through imagery, pun, wit and humour. But he can also be monosyllabic in his dealings with the media, replying in one-liners, or fielding their questions haltingly. That is the experience of journalists, both Indians and foreigners. Earlier this year, The Washington Post began its editorial with these unflattering words: "Toss a question at Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's dignified-to-somnolent Prime Minister and it hangs aloft for an eternity as he dismantles each dependent clause and inspects each verb for danger or slight. Then Vajpayee begins an answer that will stretch across eons of pauses and epochs of vanilla, invariably leaving his interrogators guessing what he meant or even trying to remember what they had asked.''

There is a case for his press relations staff to brief him, even advice him in detail on how to conduct his encounters with the media, which has acquired a new profile, what with the emergence of the electronic category. They need to adopt a creative, innovative approach, discard mechanical, bureaucratic ways. They cannot escape the responsibility for the talk about the Prime Minister's perceived lack of confidence in facing the media, even in small groups. They have to tell him how to conduct himself on strategic occasions — in the presence of foreign correspondents on the occasion of multilateral conferences. Why should Mr. Vajpayee have suffered by contrast — at a joint press conference in 1998 in Colombo along with his Pakistani counterpart of the day, Nawaz Sharif? On such occasions, the country's image is involved.

At times, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra, could offer appropriate advice.

From his experience as a diplomat, he is familiar with the ways of the media and their interaction with persons in authority.

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