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Like all great strategists, from his early days as Lok Satta chief, JP has been using media, particularly television, to reach out to a larger audience. The campaign of Jayprakash Narayan of Lok Satta... | |
Posted on The Hoot on Tuesday, Apr 14 14:59:24, 2009 | |
Is he an insider or an outsider? All media houses in Andhra Pradesh are watching what he does keenly. None of them are ignoring him, but no one is proclaiming him the next CM either. This is the curious case of Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, who is the chief of Lok Satta Party in Andhra Pradesh, whose short signature has an uncanny resemblance to that of Pandit Nehru's (JN with a flourish). He is a man driven by this sense of destiny that he is meant to lead and transform. Unlike Shashi Tharoor who joined the Congress Party or Mallika Sarabhai who's taking on L K Advani as an independent, JP, as he is popularly known, has started his own political party. After chucking a job in civil services, JP, who is a medical doctor by training, began his life in civil society by starting the NGO, Lok Satta, to bring about reforms in governance. He is a fine bilingual orator and inspires a great deal of confidence. Though critics from the conventional political parties dismiss his sphere of influence as limited to the educated upper middle class that does not vote, he commands much respect in political and media circles. The extraordinary social capital built over the years as an IAS officer close to NTR and later to the then governor of Andhra Pradesh, Krishna Kant, the fact that he belongs to the rich Kamma entrepreneur community with an extensive network of goodwill spanning industrialists to film producers, has all worked in his favour. Some senior film people like Tammareddy Bharadwaja are campaigning for him. Like all great strategists, from his early days as Lok Satta chief, JP has been using media, particularly television, to reach out to a larger audience. He hosted a current affairs discussion show, Pratidhwani, on ETV2 for several years. He writes regular edit page pieces in Telugu newspapers, particularly Eenadu. When the relationship between the Eenadu management and Chandrababu Naidu was going through a bad patch towards the end of Babu's tenure, there were whispers that the Eenadu house was investing in JP as a potential future leader of Andhra Pradesh. JP converted Lok Satta, the NGO, into Lok Satta, the political party. Several months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, he began a prime time phone-in show on TV5, presumably paid for by him, to answer viewers' questions on governance issues. This is supposed to be a live show, but the channel is known to pre-record and edit the 'live shows' on which callers are also featured. Leaving the nature of the show itself aside, JP has been working steadily over the last several months on cultivating a very large presence on Telugu media. This strategy has eliminated the problem of lack of recognition for his party and what it stands for. Being a meticulous manager, he got a logo designed for Lok Satta a few years ago, but just when it has become well recognized, the Election Commission has allotted the whistle as a symbol for his party. His candidates and himself are whistling into their constituencies to let everyone know that they have arrived and their symbol is the whistle. The Lok Satta party has nominated 249 candidates for assembly against a possible 294 seats and 33 MP candidates against a possible 42 Lok Sabha seats. The cadre built during the NGO days of Lok Satta, much of it consisting of retired bureaucrats, judges, teachers and other educated people, is pitching in to campaign for the party. The communication strategy of the party (barring public rallies) however is largely similar to that of the conventional parties - road shows, door-to-door campaigning, public meetings, television, newspaper coverage and advertising on FM radio and TV. The party has fairly extensive visibility on mainstream commercial media, pop-up, scrolls and what have you. Some twenty campaign vans are doing the publicity, which also includes street plays. Most political parties in Andhra Pradesh also use publicity vans and groups who perform folk forms. Street theatre and folk troupes are in high demand this election season. Traveling by regular long distance trains across the state and addressing people on the trains and at the stations has been an innovation of Lok Satta's campaign. Lok Satta is also putting the new media to good use, a la Obama. They are working through the social networking sites like Orkut to mobilize professional groups to participate in public events. A large number of JP's appearances on TV channels are available on YouTube. For the older generation who do not frequent social sites, the campaign has created mail groups through yahoogroups and other such groups. According to the party spokespersons, Lok Satta supporters in the From its NGO days, Lok Satta has a huge support base among the NRIs. A large part of the funding also is believed to come from NRI contributions. Interestingly, it is probably the only party in the country that advocates voting rights for NRIs. The media have not picked this up though the Telugu channels have been paying much attention in their election specials to the specific issues espoused by political parties. Considering the popular belief that it is the diaspora funding that has stoked the fires of movements such as Khalistan, and the larger issue of taking the control of local politics away from the local people and opening it up for manipulation by those who have economic clout but do not even live here, is something that needs a serious debate. Specially, when the main plank of the party is to empower. Lok Satta declares in its manifesto that it will eliminate caste, and its vestiges from all governance issues within one term in office. But its web site gives a caste-based split up of the candidates it has nominated for Lok Sabha and assembly. Despite these contradictions, Lok Satta has opened up a new avenue for educated middle class to enter politics. It has influenced the media agenda also to some extent. However, the party appears to have had difficulty in finding candidates to field. In some instances, the candidates have been accepted for their 'courage' in coming forward to contest. Media reports also suggest that in cases where more than one candidate was vying for a seat, the local party units chose the candidates by a pre-poll. This strategy has led to some unusual choices. Mr CVL Narasimha Rao is the Secunderabad Lok Sabha candidate. Apart from being a small time actor in Telugu films and a lawyer, he is an office bearer in an organization, 'Bharya Badhitula Sangham' (roughly translated as 'Harassed Husband's Association'). He has been campaigning for the dilution of Section 498a of Indian Penal Code (also known as the dowry law) and introduced the celebration of International Men's Day on 19 November to The media have predictably not highlighted such issues with regard to candidates in any party in their 'fact' programming. Almost all the Telugu channels have unveiled political satire programmes in recent times, 'Evari Gola Vaaridi' on TV9, 'Pin Counter' on iNews, to name a few. Some of them are quite creative and are providing much needed relief from the contentiousness of news programming. A sign that neither Lok Satta nor JP are being taken lightly is that he is featured on these shows along with the biggies of the conventional parties, YS Rajasekhara Reddy (Congress), Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam), K Chandrasekhara Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi), and Chiranjeevi (Praja Rajyam Party). Unlike election-time media blitz, the strategy of JP has been to chip away at his constituency gradually over the months and years, through a sustained media presence, reiterating his ideas. This, with effective use of new media, has made him the most recognized face of his party and has brought his major campaign plank, cleansing the political process, centre stage. Much like the other parties, there appears to be a dearth of strong second rung leadership. Lok Satta is too closely identified with JP alone. Come May 16, the verdict will be out. The people will decide whether to reject Lok Satta as an insider much like any other political entity, or to embrace it as an outsider with a new message for a healthy democracy. | |
Sunday 6 December 2009
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