At last, gender equality?
Amita Malik

IT used to be said in the early days of All India Radio, and later Doordarshan, that one could not see the men for the women. There were good reasons for this. While a career for women from middle-class families in the cinema was looked on as not quite respectable, papas and mamas and later even mothers-in-law allowed their young women inside the studios of radio stations because radio was a sarkari daftar, so not only respectable but something of a status symbol.

Besides, announcers, newscasters and other jobs of presentation were mostly part-time jobs and let women pamper their husbands and look after their children in between. Those who joined the staff as executives got equal pay but not always equal treatment. There is the classic case of Mehra Masani, AIR’s first woman Deputy Director-General, a product of the London School of Economics and from a highly distinguished Parsi family. She was so professional and competent, apart from being charming and much admired for her style and dignified personality, that at one stage she could also have been described as "the only man at headquarters". But it was well-known that when it came to becoming Director-General, she was by-passed simply because she was a woman. Ironically, with the vast expansion of the media, women DDGs are a dime a dozen, but one is still waiting for a woman DG.

The same sort of discrimination also prevails even now on most channels when it comes to challenging programmes like panel discussions. When it is a panel of four, the ratio is usually one woman to three men, which compares favourably perhaps only with the ratio in Parliament. Which is why I almost dropped down when last week Question Time India, an NDTV production telecast on BBC World, reversed the ratio and made it three women to one man. I tried to find explanations. Perhaps they were going to confine the questions to women’s topics like babies, nappies, food, cookery or embroidery — which used to be the favourite beats allotted to women reporters when they first entered the print media, until intrepid reporters like Prabha Dutt broke loose and covered a war on their own steam. But no, the questions were good general questions and the spirited threesome of Margaret Alva, Brinda Karat and Arati Jerath not only dominated the discussion with confidence, but mostly reduced the lone man, former Health Minister Thakur, to weak smiles or sheepish submission. Whether this innovation is due to NDTV, the producer of the programme, or the BBC (its weekend programme on world affairs in London usually has a good balance of men and women), I hope this will be a forerunner for future programmes where women are treated as full-fledged panelists and not given one out of four seats as a consolation prize to prove that there is no gender bias in the media.

Also in line for being given equality, and in this case professional credit, I watched with interest Tavleen Singh’s programme Indianama on NDTV India, the Hindi channel, where she did one of her usual competent programmes on the Jodhpur royal family. Tavleen can certainly take on royalty and much else in her stride and in this programme both her clothes and her make-up had an elegance to match that of the maharanis. Apart from that, the programme was a sensitive job of production, a judicious mix of people and landscape, cleverly edited and shot. But while most channels, and certainly NDTV, now give credit to their camera-persons and editors, for some reason they leave out the producers. In this case I had to find out the producer’s name to give due credit and was pleasantly surprised to find it is Kismet Singh, more familiar to viewers as a weather forecaster. Well done, Kismet.

Incidentally, for years DD has given credit to all its crew for news bulletins. Unfortunately, DD’s sarkari-style bulletins are only watched by those who have no alternative. Fortunately, I do and when I do watch, the names change so often that I am afraid I can’t name a single one of them. And they are faceless anyway. Sorry, DD.

Astitva on Zee is a serial I never miss, as it is an adult contemporary view of credible domestic and professional situations, is well scripted, shot, edited and has excellent dialogue. Both Dr Simran and Dr Manas give top-rate performances and the supporting cast is one of the best I have seen on Indian screens in a long while. But I find two unforgivable distractions in it. The endless advertisements might indicate the financial success of the film but they seriously hold up the continuity, already held up for half the week. I find the only weak link in the acting line-up is Abhimanyu himself, I refuse to call him a hero. The many crises which have dogged him in the last few episodes have found him sorely lackingfin histrionic range.

All that he can rustle up is a constantly pop-eyed, open-mouth image which shows up all the more against the emotional range of every other character in the serial. He simply cannot rise to the same heights and is the only drag on an otherwise impeccable cast in an impeccable serial.