When it comes to star power in India, DNA mostly is destiny. Overshadowing even Raj Kapoor's gifted grandchildren - Armaan Jain follows Karisma, Kareena and Ranbir with his debut in July in Lekar Hum Deewana Dil - are the cameo appearances of Priyanka Gandhi in election season. Something about Priyanka - perhaps it really is that supposed resemblance to her grandmother - reduces the mainstream media to sycophancy worthy of film magazines and a tendency to hang a story on her every inanity. This election has offered an even more absurd twist; she is seen by many to be riding in to salvage her party's prospects. There is also the laughable speculation that she might take over the task of rebuilding the Congress.
In the past fortnight, reports of Priyanka taking the fight to the BJP appear to have been built on (a) her response to the attacks on her husband's questionable land deals; (b) the unassailable declaration that she was her father's daughter and (c) her charge that Narendra Modi indulged in "neech rajniti". Priyanka's rebuttal to newspaper articles and attacks by the BJP on Robert Vadra's deal-making was, in fact, not a rebuttal at all. Instead, she plucked at the heartstrings: "Every day I tell my children that the truth will prevail... I feel pained at the kind of politics that has come to the fore in these elections," she said. One has to be a very kind-hearted voter to be swayed by this. Vadra's land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan have blunted Rahul's skillfully targeted attack on Modi for alleged crony capitalism in the land deals between Gautam Adani and the Gujarat government at hefty discounts.
When Modi retold the story of Rajiv Gandhi's public outburst against the then Andhra chief minister, T Anjaiah in 1982, Priyanka reached for a pretty filmi dialogue: "He has insulted my martyred father on Amethi's soil. There will be a reply from each and every booth in Amethi," a front-page lead in the Indian Express quoted her saying. One of the most moving TV interviews I have seen was Priyanka talking to NDTV a few years ago about how she met her father's killers and came to forgive them. It was wise beyond her years, but there has been little of that on show in the past fortnight.
Priyanka is only campaigning in two constituencies but this does not stop the media exaggerating the effect she has on the election. A TV reporter said she had "electrified" the crowds. When one looked closely at the screen, the press almost outnumbered the public. On Monday, the Indian Express waxed poetic about the "impressive road show (that) brought Jais (in Amethi) to a halt. Priyanka too egged on the electors, saying 'Vote nahi rasgulla hai, panja ekdum khulam khulla hai.' This is not the soaring oratory for which Jawaharlal Nehru was known.
Decades ago, Salman Rushdie said of the Indian media's obsession with the Gandhis that they had become a Dallas and Dynasty soap opera rolled into one, a reference to then popular re-runs of American soap operas that were all we had to watch at the dawn of Star TV. With so much better entertainment on offer now, this partiality for billboarding Priyanka's utterances is a puzzle. As a colleague pointed out, there is a strong "People Like Us" bias to press coverage of Priyanka that smacks of the elitism of which the Indian media is all too guilty. There is also a Page 3 quality to a lot of contemporary political coverage, which is not dissimilar to the way the Daily Mail and the Sun covered the late Princess Diana. Our leaders are not challenged often enough to speak on the urgent issues of jobs, sanitation and much else because a cheap personal attack or plucking at the heartstrings is guaranteed headlines.
In case you missed the best response to Modi's phoney sense of hurt on the neech rajniti comment from Priyanka - and rest assured I am an aspiring Page 3 journalist too - it came from Mayawati. She challenged him to define which backward caste he came from and castigated him for being "nonsensical." "Which school did he (Modi) go to? His knowledge of history is anyway pitiable," she asked in her matter-of-fact tone. "Was he one of the children who had less IQ or deliberately indulged in mischief? Doesn't he understand neech rajniti refers to the kind of politics one indulges in and doesn't refer to one's caste. Modi spent all day exaggerating this phrase and deliberately connecting it to his caste, when it has nothing to do with it." Mayawati isn't telegenic or fair-skinned. So predictably, this sharp riposte - one of the very best of the election - did not seem to make it to the front page, although the Economic Times gave it good play. A country with so many problems needs a media less transfixed by celebrity.
Twitter: @RahulJJacob
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
