teleprompt
Swamis, sports stars and eco-saviours
Mannika Chopra

As television showed us clearly this week, Baba Ramdev was going to be overtly problematic for the UPA camp. How much of a problem this yoga guru was going to be was only clear on Sunday, when the authorities tried to whoosh, past midnight, the fasting swami from Delhi’s Ram Lila grounds in full glare of the TV cameras on to Hardwar, even as he tried to hide, disguised badly in what looked like a badly fitting salwar kameez.

At first, when the whole event started mid-week it seemed nothing bad was going to happen. After all, would the authorities have dared to react irresponsibly when all the spiritual leader was asking, perhaps in an illegitimate fashion, was for the government to bring back the ill-gotten gains that many Indians apparently have stashed away in financial havens. The whole affair played out in a very predictable and systematic fashion. During his fast swamiji even thanked the media profusely, enumerating the number of pages, broadcast time they had devoted to ‘his cause,’ helping him in spreading the word.

We must give credit to Baba Ramdev for getting both what he and the news channels wanted — pre-campaign publicity and TRPs, respectively Photo: AFP

Despite all the massive preparations at Ram Lila grounds, it seemed that the fast might end tamely, with a mandatory give and take by the government. It was the rivetting TV alerts that warned Mr and Mrs Public that the government was acting in a manner that would have won Hitler’s approval and by next morning it was all over the public domain. Suddenly, the whole fast thingy, which was always an important element in Baba Ramdev’s potential election campaign, had now snowballed, thanks to the clumsy official handling and TV’s wall-to-wall coverage, into a political lighting rod. All news channels ran with the story, giving it more than its news due. We saw Ramdev in tears, literally, as he recalled at his press conference his near-death experience; we heard sound bytes of women allegedly beaten brutally by a police lathi charge — one grab on India TV showed crumpled women wrapped in suspiciously pristine white bandages with nary a blood spot. Such reportage was proof-positive that part of the media remains hopelessly biased.

But I digress. We must credit Baba Ramdev for getting both what he and the news channels wanted. He got his pre-campaign publicity and news channels got their TRPs.`A0 Unfortunately, Baba Ramdev’s extra-curricular activities completely put NDTV’s — also known as how green is my channel — massive around-the-clock Greenathon, or 3G, into the shade — pun intended. Timed with the World Environment Day, this was NDTV’s effort, third year running, to make India and Indians, more green conscious but in the light of the current events it was minimised to a small window on NDTV 24x7. But how does having celeb-comedian Cyrus Barocha, stars Priyanka Chopra and Shahrukh Khan —positioned strategically against a huge poster of his latest film — make us more environmentally conscious?

And in case you, dear viewer, missed the message, you could not have`A0 missed the colour green, which was splashed across the studio and on the green T-shirts won by anchor Vikram Chandra and Barocha. In fact, correct me if I am wrong, the only person not in some shade of green was Dr Prannoy Roy, NDTV’s boss. Even co-sponsors TERI’s Dr Pachauri had a green kerchief nattily peeping out of his sherwani. It was a pedigreed panel all right, but the conviction was not there.

With a galaxy of sponsors the whole telecast seemed more of a marketing event, even though Khan agreed to adopt 11 villages, whatever that means. Why not develop some solid environmental reporting like the series aired by the channel on India’s coasts done by the very impressive Sarah Jacob.

If you were hoping that the greatest tennis player in the world, Roger Federer, was going win the French Open you were in for a disappointment. It looked like 29-year-old Fedex was in for a fighting chance when he was ahead at 5-2 in the first set, but after that it was downhill. Sure, there were some flickers of a redemptive spirit but the little Spanish bull, hopping from foot to foot, possessor of a butt that can give some worthy competition to J Lo, indulging in superior backhands and lobs, was clearly in form. It was a rollercoaster of a match but that was not the only reason why the men’s finals completely overshadowed that of the women’s event, even the women’s doubles finals that had our very own Sania Mirza.

`A0I think the reason why the men’s Grand Slam finals gets so many more eyeballs is that these days there are just so many new faces in the women’s circuit. In the men’s face-offs, the world’s top three,`A0 Nadal, Federer and Novak Djokovic, are dominating the Grand Slams the world over. The same continuity is not there in the women’s line-up: Venus and Serena Williams are injured, Justine Henin has retired and so on.

Of course, that does not take away from the victory of the first Asian to have won a major Grand Slam title. Shots of Na Li’s adoring husband, her bouncy after-match victory speech and sheer vivaciousness completely destroyed the American myth that all Chinese sport stars are robots created by the Chinese state.