Anchor Boycott: INDI Alliance Making A Big Mistake

On 14 September, the INDI Alliance of the opposition released a list of 14 television presenters whose shows will be boycotted by the alliance's media representatives.

The journalists they will stay away from are Ashok Shrivastav of DD News, Aditi Tyagi of Bharat Express, Aman Chopra, Amish Devgan and Anand Narasimhan of News 18, Arnab Goswami of Republic TV, Chitra Tripathi, Gaurav Sawant and Sudhir Chaudhary of Aaj Tak, Navika Kumar and Sushant Sinha of Times Now Nav Bharat, Prachi Parashar of India News, Rubika Liaquat of Bharat 24 and Shiv Aroor of India Today.

The decision was taken reportedly by the coordination committee of the 26 party-bloc in its first meeting, a day after which it released a joint statement, making the announcement.

This decision to boycott inconvenient electronic media journalists is a politically stupid and suicidal. Precedents of such a strategy have rarely succeeded in contemporary history.

While the people never saw live telecasts of parliamentary proceedings until the 1990s, veterans recall that members of parliament of the Indian National Congress (INC) under Rajiv Gandhi used to be the most abusive lot. With a brute majority of 404 seats in the Lok Sabha, the government of the time bulldozed its way in the central legislature. 

Fed up with the attitude of the treasury benches, a fledgeling opposition alliance held a meeting where Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP) NT Rama Rao, a stalwart of Indian politics of the time, appealed for a boycott of the parliament. This incident may be counted as a case of exceptional success, as the INC lost the next election of 1989 to the Janata Dal-led National Front. 

But one is not sure the abstention alone led to the victory. The greatest electoral factors were three: One, revolt by Gandhi’s Defence Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh on the issue of alleged kickbacks the government or its lackeys had received from arms dealers for the Bofors howitzer gun deal with Sweden. Two, a successful Bharat Bandh called by the opposition pre-poll, which brought the whole country to a standstill, creating a public perception that this opposition was formidable. Three, perhaps the most important, the big coalition under Singh’s leadership that brought together ideological adversaries Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)].

Thereafter, the game of boycotting by any government or opposition never paid off even partially.

Closer in history, the BJP had twice made similar decisions — only to regret them in hindsight. Grapevines in the power corridors in 2004 had it that a certain dubious astrologer had advised Lal Krishna Advani that the newly formed government of the INC-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had a high chance of collapsing before the Diwali of that year! The BJP abstained from parliamentary proceedings at a stretch at this point. To no avail.

Seizing the opportunity, left parties led by the CPI(M), which had 60 MPs back then, turned into a virtual opposition within the establishment, enjoying the best of both worlds — relishing the fruits of power but also retaining the right to protest to score brownie points. 

The BJP repeated the folly in 2012 but with less harm done unto itself than in 2004, thanks to the substantially reduced strength of communists in the parliament during UPA II and anti-corruption movements on the street that was increasingly making the regime unpopular.

The second example, a mistake of the INC, was closer to the kind of blunder the INDI Alliance is making now. Towards the end of UPA II, INC spokespersons, besieged by allegations of a plethora of scams, stopped appearing on panels of television debates. 

Seizing the opportunity this time, Sanjay Jha, who used to run the website HamaraCongress[dot]com, filled the void. It hardly mattered whether he performed to the satisfaction of the party, which was why he was designated subsequently. It is a compelling thought that the free reign the INC gave to the BJP on air added to the heft of the latter's campaign in 2013-14.

If the INDI Alliance does not appear on shows with the anchors, would it try to compensate for the absence by pleading with the likes of BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera to offer them airtime?

Will they appear on Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar's YouTube channels instead?

In print, will they hog the web pages of The Wire? Never mind that Siddharth Varadarajan may not want his partisan journalism to be so barefaced. The boycott of 'hostile' TV presenters and switch to 'friendly' journalists will only end up bolstering the perception that the opposition is in cahoots with 'anti-India' forces, both foreign and domestic. This is a self-goal.