DTN News - INDIA NEWS: Indian Television's Relationship With Its Political Class Is Changing: Arnab Goswami

Asian Defense News: DTN News - INDIA NEWS: Indian Television's Relationship With Its Political Class Is Changing: Arnab Goswami

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - June 9, 2014: In an exclusive conversation with exchange4media, Times Now Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami talks about significant changes in the mindset of political parties towards media, sustaining the channel’s momentum in the post-election period and more. Excerpts…

Do you think the objectivity in the poll coverage was lost once it became clear that BJP and NaMo were gaining the upper hand?

No, I don’t think so. If you examine the number of times a news channel went to Rahul Gandhi, it was more if not equal to the number of times it went to Narendra Modi. In terms of coverage on ground, we covered Congress, BJP and regional parties fairly. The number of rallies Modi did far outstrips the number of rallies Rahul Gandhi did, so there was more to cover. But if we were taking a live feed of a Modi rally, we would also take a live Gandhi rally. When Rahul Gandhi said something that set the news agenda, it was debated with as much enthusiasm as Modi’s speeches. For example, Rahul Gandhi made the controversial remark on what happened in 1984 - it was debated for a week not only on Times Now that did the interview, but on all channels. Similarly, if you see the number of times his interview was replayed and the promotion it was given, it is possibly the same as the treatment given to Narendra Modi’s interview. Both the interviews got talked about. So, I would argue with all the force at my command that the media did a very objective job till the very end.

Do you think this was truly a media election?
I think it was certainly a television news election - the quality and depth was far ahead of the poll coverage in 2009 and 2004, and I have seen all elections from 1996. This time, we actually put people who were fighting the elections on the backfoot, defending the subjects they raised. The media had an aggressive questioning approach. Of course, there were many other channels and much more competition, and competition begets quality, broadly speaking.

In a recent interview with IMPACT, NDTV’s Prannoy Roy said, ‘You can’t win elections in India any more unless you are an acceptable face of television’. Do you agree?
Prannoy is a leader and I have had the pleasure of working under him at the beginning of my career. I am sure what he says is said after great thought and I generally would not like to add anything to what Prannoy says, but only because you ask, I think political parties have started acknowledging the fact that their message needs to go out, in as clear a way as possible. The people who carry those messages don’t make mistakes, and therefore, the search for people who can represent the party’s view aggressively on TV. If you follow the career profiles of some of the party spokespersons, they go on to do very well in the party later. The party understands the need for effective people articulating their view. If you have the wrong person communicating on behalf of your party, a completely wrong message can go out, and ruin the reputation of the party. So, to a large extent I would agree with what Prannoy said.

What are the changes you saw among political parties during the recent elections as far as approach to media was concerned?
The election campaigns were drastically different from the previous years - there were media cells in each party. In fact, they would call and ask us about the subject for that night’s Newshour. They would try to find out who was there from the other side, try to match each other every evening on prime time. They would actually come to us with their best spokesperson.

Political parties have woken up to media. They will try to do everything possible to ensure their point of view goes across more prominently, but journalists like us will have to be on our guard to see that we are driven by our own judgement and not that of political parties.

What worked for you during Elections 2014? What was the approach you adopted while covering the elections?

Television news is an interesting confluence of graphics, production, news, promos, look and feel, editorial line, logistics, reporter placement, optimisation of available infrastructure and editorial angularity. Now why did we win by such a massive margin? The gap between us and the nearest competitor, which is CNN-IBN, in the male TG 25+ was over 20 per cent. I think it is because we got the mix right. We were able to create an editorial product that gave a completely different viewing experience, beyond comparison with any other channel in the vicinity.

Secondly, we were covering the elections with greater force. For almost three months, there was nothing but politics on Times Now, to be able to sustain that over a 100-day period with the same team means you need to get commonality of purpose within every member of your team. I am so delighted today that this group of people worked double shift, triple shift, non- stop... I had people who worked days on end, some who did not go home for weeks to put this product out. While I may be the most prominent face of the channel, it is this team that made it happen - they have done a phenomenal job. Our guest coordinators did a great job, we had over 1,000 guests and around 50 guests a day.

What also gives me most satisfaction is we were the only channel not based out of New Delhi or the national capital region that was covering this election. Our studios were in Delhi, our servers were in Mumbai, our anchoring was in Delhi, our graphics were in Mumbai, to bring technologies in two cities together on a pipe with limited infrastructure is a marvel of election broadcasting. I can share with you today that till the very end, we were very nervous whether it would all come together. It worked like clockwork. This coverage is one of the high points of the eight-plus years of broadcasting of Times Now. Wherever we went this time, people said they were watching the election completely on Times Now. On an average, they would say they spent 10 minutes on Times Now and not more than 1 minute on any other channel. We gained because of our production quality; we were breaking all the news first, and had a great quality of panelists.

What is the ideal mix for a television story?
There is no ideal mix... it is ‘the mix of the moment’ you think of right ingredients of the story of the moment. The team is tested on its ability to respond to the changing news flow. I have often said that TV is like the permanent first page of a newspaper, where the front page changes every five minutes.

Times Now also scored on the social media front in poll coverage. How did you plan your social media strategy?
We had a deal with Twitter, and Rishi Jaitley was very responsive to it. There was an exclusive arrangement, where we could get a real-time analysis - positive and negative feedback, link Twitter with the Newshour debate, understand how many people were feeling positively and negatively towards it. Did it lead to an increase in ratings of Times Now? I am not sure. But it did involve people on social media further with Times Now. In the last four to five months, we have grown perhaps at four or five times the speed of any of the other channels such as CNN-IBN or NDTV on social media. From being less than half their size on social media, we have crossed the gap in four months.

What are you doing to sustain the momentum?
We are far faster than any other channel on social media, with our updates and we have high involvement products like ‘Newshour’ and ‘Frankly Speaking’ which are integrated with social media. Two out of every three days, the top trending subjects are Newshour hashtags or TimesNow hashtags. This proves that in terms of talking points and mindspace, we are streets ahead of competition. This election gave us the opportunity to display our editorial muscle, in terms of social media, we are going to take it forward now and we are going to be twice the size of any other channel on social media. It is going to be a great area of focus. The quality of news broadcasting is going to gain from our coverage of the elections. The challenge is to sustain this level of interest in the post-election period. A politician asked me ‘What are you people going to do now?’ and I replied, ‘We are not as dependent on you as you would like to think!’ Yes, we are making the political class accountable every day. Our coverage of Uttar Pradesh is not political coverage, it is social coverage. We are not in the business of politician-bashing, we are in the business of making elected and unelected (it does not end with an election) politicians feel accountable.

What is the gameplan for Times Now going forward?
On a scale of 1 to 10, if our closest competitor is 1 or 2, we are 9 or 10 in terms of engagement of the viewer. I believe no other channel comes close to us in the matter of engaging the viewer; so I believe it has to have a natural follow-up. It is very interesting that on days of great performance on the IPL, we are more talked about, in terms of the subjects we speak about. We have given even sports channels a serious run for their money in terms of audience engagement. It is an area which I am excited about; I enjoy myself when I know I am learning something and social media is teaching me a lot, and I have a fantastic young team.

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources 
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*Photograph: IPF (International Pool of Friends) + DTN News / otherwise source stated
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS

DTN News - INDIA NEWS: The Future of India's National Congress Dynastic Party Is In Doubt

Asian Defense News: DTN News - INDIA NEWS: The Future of India's National Congress Dynastic Party Is In Doubt
*Descendants of Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi have had trouble governing a changing India
*Some see the end of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty in the Indian National Congress' huge election loss

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Shashank Bengali
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - June 1, 2014: It is one of the most storied names in political history, a party synonymous with modern India and an inspiration for revolutionary movements led by the likes of South Africa's Nelson Mandela and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.

But a disastrous performance in the recent national elections has many wondering whether this is the end for the Indian National Congress party.

The party that has led India for most of its 67 years as an independent nation was thumped out of power, winning a paltry 44 of 543 parliamentary seats — its lowest tally by far — and prompting serious questions about the leadership of the Gandhis, the first family of Indian politics.

Related story: Pakistanis in disputed Kashmir worry about rise of Indian nationalist
Aoun Sahi, Shashank Bengali

The descendants of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's erudite first prime minister, and his strong-willed daughter, Indira Gandhi, have proved less adept at governing a fast-changing India. With the party's last several years in power subsumed by corruption scandals and economic calamities, the once-revered family name increasingly reeks of a stale dynasty that has even longtime supporters clamoring for the Gandhis to step aside.

An editorial in the Hindustan Times, a national newspaper run by former Congress party lawmaker Shobhana Bhartia, said the party is "seemingly in terminal decline" and needs to find a new generation of leaders.

"It has to undergo a drastic mind-set change and reevaluate many of its core principles, among them the relevance of dynastic rule," the newspaper said.

Some critics are writing the party's obituary. "They are not going to come back," said Mohan Guruswamy, a prominent economist who has advised Congress' rival, the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party.

The party faithful counter that Congress has lost before and come back strong. "Congress has always fought back, and there is no reason it can't fight back again," said Eknath Gaikwad, a Congress lawmaker from south-central Mumbai.

Congress' decline represents an epochal change for a fractious nation long held together by the party's big-tent liberalism. It comes as India appears to be turning rightward after overwhelmingly electing the BJP, whose leader, new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, rails against Congress' signature welfare and affirmative action programs aimed at historically disadvantaged lower castes and the rural poor.

Gandhi allies criticize the BJP as Hindu chauvinists, noting that none of its 282 Parliament members are from the Muslim community, which accounts for about 14% of India's 1.2 billion people. But as much as it sees pluralism as a founding principle, Congress has not embraced that ethos at the very top of its hierarchy, which is strictly a family affair.

Related story: From tea-seller to India's top job: The rise of Narendra Modi
Parth M.N.
Days after the election embarrassment, the mother-son team that leads Congress, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, met with advisors in New Delhi and reportedly offered their resignations. According to Indian news accounts in Indian media, the advisors spent more than half of the three-hour meeting imploring them not to go. The meeting ended with a unanimous statement of faith in the Gandhis' leadership.

"Not much time was left for any introspection," the Times of India reported dryly.

Longtime party officials say they have failed in campaigning, not in governing. Beginning in 2004, the party ushered in near-universal education, expanded food subsidies and introduced a landmark government transparency law. It also embarked on one of the largest welfare programs of its kind in the world, a rural employment system that guaranteed every household 100 days of wage-earning work a year. Officials say it has provided jobs to about 50 million of the poorest Indian households.

But after Congress won reelection in 2009, a parade of corruption scandals came to light. The welfare programs and economic liberalization increased incomes, which in turn pushed up prices of basic goods and contributed to inflation, one of the main complaints among working-class voters.

Scholarly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was seen as a puppet of Sonia Gandhi and too weak to confront errant party bosses.

"The accomplishments were not well articulated, and they got lost in the hullabaloo of the election campaign," lawmaker Gaikwad said.

A 75-year-old party stalwart who joined Congress because he was inspired by Nehru, Gaikwad rejects any suggestion that the Gandhis find new blood to lead the party. Referring to the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Sonia Gandhi's husband, Rajiv, in 1991, he said that no family has sacrificed as much for India's democracy.

India's young voters look to Narendra Modi for change
Shashank Bengali
"It's because of the Gandhi family that I am in Congress," Gaikwad said. "They're the glue that keeps the Congress together, and Congress has laid the foundations of this country."

A younger group of party officials has begun to show hints of frustration with the family's stewardship, particularly that of the 43-year-old party vice president, Rahul. Square-jawed and Cambridge-educated, he had been billed as the party's leader of the future, but his diffident and distracted performances on the campaign trail have made him a national punch line., He eked out a narrow victory for his parliamentary seat in Amethi, a Gandhi family bastion for decades.

Some party insiders are said to want a bigger role for Rahul's sister, Priyanka, a political neophyte who nevertheless drew enthusiastic crowds in her few appearances on the campaign trail. The spitting image of her grandmother Indira, she carries political baggage: Her real-estate tycoon husband, Robert Vadra, is a fixture in Indian newspapers amid allegations of corrupt land deals.

"Everyone in India makes money the way the son-in-law makes money — it's the crony capitalist system — but the family is expected to be above all this," Guruswamy said.

Analysts see real danger for Congress because it suffered major election setbacks in its longtime strongholds in the so-called Hindi heartland of north and central India. With more Indians living in urban areas, Congress' rural base has softened. So, too, has its appeal as India's founding party, with a growing number of young voters more interested in private sector jobs and clean government.

Party stalwarts point out that Congress has been down before: in 1977, when it was drubbed at the polls after Indira Gandhi instituted emergency rule, and in 2004, when a BJP-led government swept into power for the first time. Both times, the party recovered to win the next national election.

"People have written our obituary before," Gaikwad said. "In five years the people will be disillusioned by Mr. Modi and they will come back to us."

Special correspondent Parth M.N. contributed to this report.

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Shashank Bengali
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*Photograph: IPF (International Pool of Friends) + DTN News / otherwise source stated
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS

DTN News - INDIA ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2013 RESULTS: BJP Wins Congress Routed

Asian Defense News: DTN News - INDIA ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2013 RESULTS: BJP Wins Congress Routed
**Factors of Congress debacle - Foremost corruption, public's lack of trust in the UPA government, bar on  dynasty rule, Congress contrived cases via CBI on oppositoin and  protect tainted supporters / politicians

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Defence News

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 8, 2013: Congress party's 0-4 mauling and BJP's triumph in three states in what was billed as the "semifinal" for the 2014 elections was the big headline, but the central takeaway on super Sunday was Aam Aadmi Party's stunning debut in Delhi, prising open space in national politics for an outsider.

Congress's debacle exposed its sliding popularity as well as Rahul Gandhi's failure to connect with the voters. It has also fortified the perception of Narendra Modi-led BJP being the frontrunner for 2014. For all practical purposes, the UPA government will now be a lame duck one.

The BJP won a three-fourth majority in Rajasthan, scored a two-third victory in Madhya Pradesh and beat back Congress in Chhattisgarh after a ding-dong battle. In Delhi, only AAP prevented BJP from a clear victory, but its tally of 31 still underscored its advantage over Congress which crumbled to a measly eight seats.

The clear man of the match was AAP's Arvind Kejriwal. He not only beat Sheila Dikshit by a margin of over 25,000 votes, his party fed off a deep disillusionment with the political class, boosting hopes of a new brand of politics, perhaps a desi version of the Arab Spring.

As a result, the spunky rookie subverted traditional assumptions about vote banks by drawing support from diverse socio-economic strata. AAP finished second to the BJP, but the victory of its greenhorn candidates over heavyweights belonging to Congress and BJP was reminiscent of the waves of 1977 and 1984, a feat that would encourage it to go beyond Delhi in 2014.

Predictably, there was a debate over how much the Modi factor impacted the BJP landslides in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and in Chhattisgarh. Party insiders insisted Modi was a strong force multiplier and that in Delhi, he helped it emerge as the single-largest party.

Whatever the case, the result can only add to Modi's aura and provide BJP tailwind as it heads for the LS challenge. The fact that Congress succumbed to incumbency and crashed to humiliating defeats in Rajasthan and Delhi whereas BJP held its own in MP and Chhattisgarh would be cited to argue that something beyond "local issues" was in play here.

Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi acknowledged the role of larger factors in Congress defeats. But they said Gehlot's and Dikshit's losses were baffling, given their good governance records.

Sonia spoke of inflation, one of the many issues that Modi will exploit in 2014 when he, with his tantalizing promise of a decisive leader and much-trumpeted Gujarat model of development, will be in the fray himself, seeking to tap into the same yearning for change which helped Kejriwal in Delhi.

Rahul Gandhi acknowledged that there was a lesson in AAP's dramatic debut and said "aggressive changes" would now be carried out in the Congress to "embed" the common man in Congress programmes.

Related Images;

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Defense News
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*Photograph: IPF (International Pool of Friends) + DTN News / otherwise source stated
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS