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Magazine
Kashmir votes
SEVANTI NINAN
KASHMIRIS are fated to live and die by the media. A chunk of the population has developed reflexes for it, as every reporter visiting the Valley knows. You get the whole range of stories between the Internet, television and print: all black, all white, or nuanced and trying to tell it with the complexities included. After the first round of polling, Amy Waldman writing in the New York Times said that the day's defining image was that there was not one. "In many villages, particularly where there were credible alternatives to the ruling party, the turnout was healthy, and voluntary. In many towns, the boycott was almost total — sometimes because of anti-Indian sentiment, sometimes because of threats issued by anti-Indian militants."
The one news source that does yeoman service when there is a major news event spread over a period of time is Rediff.com. A single link (http://www.rediff.com/election/jk2002.htm) gives you access to a whole bank of stories and specials over a fortnight or so, and just each day's headlines is enough to show how poignantly mixed the picture is. If someone analysing the elections in Kashmir in some part of the world wanted a fairly objective bank of reportage to scan, they would find it here.
The Internet lends itself equally effectively to propaganda. A Google search on Kashmir news throws up within the first page, several links to the Kashmir Media Service which calls itself the "The best and free News Agency for Kashmir". It said, "The polling drama was staged in Baramulla, Kupwara, Rajouri, Poonch and Kargil districts. In Leh district, there was no contest at all as two candidates were officially manipulated declared unopposed. According to the observers in Srinagar, the over all turn out, remained below one per cent."
Its long, negative diatribe specialised in selectively quoting mainstream news sources: CNN, BBC, Star News, Associated Press and Sify News. It wound up by quoting a "reputed journalist of Jammu" who said that the polls boycott was unprecedented.
The search engines are less likely to throw up the comprehensive Rediff link in the first few search results. But they do lead you to the Kashmir Media Relations (KMR) Forum, which has a Kashmir Electronic Activist's Toolbox that shows you how to "spin the media". You also run into the Kashmir Council for Human Rights without much effort.
Is India's information battle on Kashmir being lost on the Internet?
(This column is being written before the second round of polling in J&K has taken place.)
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The Internet complements television as much as it does print. As a comprehensive Indian website for TV buffs www.hansazone.com is not doing badly at all. If you miss an episode of whichever convoluted serial you watch — be it on Star or Sony or Vijay or Sun — you can find an update here, which fills you in on who did what to whom on that particular day. It has TV schedules for various cities, a movie search which tells you what is playing in the theatres if you specify the city and theatre, and a searchable database on people in the entertainment world, both on screen and off screen.
Want the address and phone number of a particular TV actress or actor, including those on Southern channels? Search here. No e-mails though. And if you have time for that sort of thing, you can join discussion boards on topics like are women being exploited in Hindi films, do saas-bahu serials fuel violence against women, and so on. It also features quick chats with actors, and finds space for a tribute to B.V. Karanth.
The site covers Star World and the odd BBC and Channel V programme, but not Zee English. It currently has a special focus on Sun TV, which fills you in on serials such as "Mugangal", "Metti Oli", "Annamalai", and "Alaigal". There are reviews and features, and there is news from the entertainment world. Would love to know which parts of the site are sponsored, and who pays for it all, but one simply could not find an "about us" link.
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National Geographic's live exploration of a secret chamber in one of the pyramids in Egypt went on for about two hours, liberally interspersed with Saffola and mummy-ka-magic ads for Whirlpool washing machine. The closer it got to the robot finding its way to the sealed door in the secret shaft, the more the ad breaks. May be it says something positive for our times if a programme on a live archaeological exploration can generate market support on the scale of a movie. What's more, its rather striking website at http://www.nationalgeographic.co.in/egypt_chambers/egyptchambers.shtml has an array of ads for Moov, Air Tel, Bazee.com, etc., etc. flashing away distractingly at the bottom of the page.
There was lots of hype from the National Geographic team on the site. Its history in the making, its live archaeology, it's the first time a robot is being used in archaeology, they would assert from time to time. "This is incredibly exciting!" the woman presenter would beam. Meanwhile, Dr. Zahi Hawass, who was variously described as Egypt's chief of antiquities and as a National Geographic explorer in residence, showed what it takes to be an archaeologist for television. He would hold a smoothened rock in his hand and say, "I feel the hand of the workman who actually used it 4,000 years ago," or touch something on the site and say, "I can feel the finger of my ancestor."
The programme was a combination of staged-for-the-camera exploration, and recreation, using actors, to show what life was like on the Giza plateau at the time that the pyramid was being constructed. Much of it was fascinating enough without the hype.
Two parallel uncoverings were going on, a tomb hitherto unopened was being unsealed on camera for the first time. It revealed, hold your breath, a skeleton. And a robot with a camera mounted on it was being sent up a narrow shaft to discover what was behind a sealed door. There was lots of excited speculation in the run up to its discovery. In the end the camera showed that there was another sealed door behind the one they had drilled through. Wow. Grist, doubtless, for another hyped up two-hour programme, some other time.
E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com
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