‘Kya lagta hai, kaun aayega iss baar?’ (What do you think, who will come to power this time?) A journalist who has freshly landed in an election-bound state asks her local driver. This question is the surest icebreaker in India during elections.
The experienced driver is likely expecting this. He looks at his overhead rear-view mirror, searching for giveaways of political persuasions, if any, from the journalist’s appearance — to calibrate his response. He represents the voice of the people of the state. He is the ground report. He is the mandate and will be duly quoted at 8:30 am on the results day, when the trends of the first 15 postal ballots appear on-screen. Who cares? It is too hot outdoors to go around asking people.
Two days before the results, news channels release the exit poll numbers, partnering with one research firm or the other. Exit polls are like horoscopes, you believe them only when they predict good results for you. Two bored party spokespersons are sent for the show. The guy from the losing party dismisses the numbers as statistical quackery.
Statistical principles get murdered in news studios with every exit poll result. Pollsters want to play it safe, so they give absurd seat ranges: “The ruling party may get 30-60 seats out of 100.” Sure.
Meanwhile, the channels that couldn’t afford a research firm put out a “poll-of-all-polls” kind of aggregate cop-out. Nevertheless, this boosts TRP and that’s what matters, the new journalist-turned-CEO will tell you repeatedly.
The counting day arrives. There are at least seven number-1 news channels, fighting tooth and nail to stay number-1. The anchors are in the studio early in the morning, hair neatly parted — chatting calmly at 7:59 am. But, at 8:01, it’s war.
“The trends are in!” Each anchor vociferously insists.
The trends are not in. The people who are counting have just ordered tea. They are untying the red tape of the postal ballot stack, at a governmental pace. But, in the studio, the enthusiastic anchor has already crowned the new chief minister. The other journalist quickly quotes the driver she met. Now, the driver’s words are the summation of what “hundreds of people said across 13 districts”. This groundbreaking ground report merits a fresh appraisal.
Suddenly, a siren screeches. Everything stops in the studio — a PhD in political science with 37 years of experience, who was breaking down the local caste dynamics, has been cut short to announce “breaking news”: The home minister has reached the party office. As opposed to, one supposes, visiting a planetarium.
The sirens are relentless. If there were an enemy air raid targeting the news-buildings of Noida, the people in the studio would still assume the sirens are to draw attention to a ruling-party candidate trailing by 1,000 votes.
There is also a battery of panelists in the studio — a serious-looking psephologist with a laptop, a non-serious-looking psephologist who has joined politics, and three other political analysts who want to start a monetisable YouTube channel. And then there is our exit poll guy, ready to swallow numerical setbacks.
The channel has invested a lot in mammoth screens this time. They have given it some fancy name —“thermonuclear data intelligence”, if you will. It’s actually a humble spreadsheet on a laptop connected to a TV screen. Nevertheless, the anchor loves to stand in front of this digital wall, tapping it in a struggle to show one constituency or the other. He refused to do any recce before the show, and is now trying to pinch-zoom a static screen. Every time a screen refuses to load, the backend data guy starts updating his CV.
Newer trends are in. It seems it is a wave, says one anchor. Nope, it’s a tsunami, quips another. The party offering more free-money has won. “It’s not about the promise, it’s about the trust that you will deliver the promise,” a party spokesperson disguised as a political analyst clarifies.
The cameraman shows firecrackers being burst in front of a party office. The party supported by the environmentalists has won, so it’s fine. The senior anchor has switched to his correspondent, who’s stationed at the party headquarters specifically to track the order of laddus and jalebis.
Meanwhile, netaji has come to meet the media. The TV anchor raises his voice, amid firecrackers and dhol beats, to make himself audible to the garland-laden winning leader. The leader remembers his grilling 10 years ago and delivers a stinging response. The anchor is left with a wry smile. “But we got our TRPs.” At the end of the day, democracy is the real winner, along with seven number-1 news channels.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur, and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal
