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Despite what an edgy Suresh Kalmadi, dressed in a snappy Commonwealth 2010 T-shirt, told Shekhar Gupta in Walk the Talk last week, the future does not look promising. In an extended interview on NDTV 24X7, the chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee kept insisting that India was fully prepared for the games taking place less than one year from now. Somehow we did not believe him. In one way, the interaction was enormously entertaining with anecdotes galore. For one, Gupta pointedly referred to the friction within the organising committee, specifically the face-off between Mike Hooper, CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation, and Kalmadi, even referring to the fact that Kalmadi disliked the way Hooper whistled in the office. You could see Kalmadi bristling as he denied the whistling allegation. Instead, he clarified that he objected to the way Hooper had thrown some keys at one of the staffers.
Later, in a typically Gupta-esque moment, Gupta recalled how many decades ago an athlete had told him that if Kalmadi even knew the distance between two hurdles, he would stop running. Last week, Gupta checked whether Kalmadi, a self-proclaimed sports aficionado, did indeed know that distance. We were disarmingly told by the official that this was a fact that "only technical people" knew. So, yes, it was entertaining and also shocking. As shocking as the live telecast of Hooper’s press conference with a mob of sports journalists. Typically, Hooper was mostly addressing questions on why Kalmadi wanted him out. Then, in the middle of the proceedings, a group led by Lalit Bhanot, secretary-general of the organising committee, swooped in and ordered Hooper to stop speaking. Unfazed, Hooper refused, and asked the media to continue. But sadly, the collected journos caved in and said they had no further questions. I wonder why they didn’t continue their queries. What ever happened to the freedom of expression? Now that the Commonwealth Games are almost upon us, perhaps, some channel will divert its resources to do some legitimate investigation on them, rather than focusing its sports energies only on cricket. The whole Commonwealth fiasco is a prime example of the sports media failing to do its duty. It seems that it is only when there is a press conference —reference to context PT Usha’s outburst last week — that the TV media is to be found. Any routine follow-up reporting is left by the way side. Way on the other side of the TV spectrum was Karan Thapar in Devil’s Advocate on CNN-IBN. This week’s episode showed Thapar at his vitriolic best/worst, depending if you are a Thapar groupie or not. I was under the impression that Thapar had toned down his trademark aggressive interruptions. But I was wrong. This time, Ambika Soni, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, was in the dock. The provocation for the slam bang wham interaction was whether the government should step up its role in determining the content of films and TV reality shows. The immediate spark were the changes asked for by the government in a film on Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru’s relationship, and a notice to Sach ka Samna and Pati, Patni aur Woh. Frankly, if the scissor- happy mandarins were doing their jobs, they should be axing programmes like Fitness Corner seen late night on Zee Caf`E9, and Making of the Kingfisher Calendar, telecast several times on NDTV Good Times, which shows women in teeny-weeny attire, obviously in a bid to entice and allure the voyeuristic male. But back to Devil’s Advocate. Really, Soni needed to have been better prepared to face the Thapar tsunami. In a space of 30 minutes, eyes glinting and teeth gnashing, Thapar first grilled, then roasted and finally skewered the minister. This actually was a pity because one needed to hear what she was trying to say on the whole issue of regulating TV. At the end of the hulla gulla, with Soni rolling her eyes, harrumphing and definitely chomping at the bit, there was a nugget with her saying that the government would not censor TV. By the time this column appears, the airwaves will be full of the results of the three state elections held on October 13. I am sure I am not being prescient when I say that the coverage that Maharashtra gets will be far greater than that accorded to Haryana, or even Arunachal Pradesh, which unfortunately is seen as being singularly unimportant in the great TV cosmic design. That is possibly the reason why, though exit polls had been conducted by news channels for Haryana and Maharashtra, Arunachal had been left out. And then you wonder why the North-East feels left out from the Indian mainstream.
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