The Party Pokesperson

 
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The Party ‘Pokesperson’ as Spectator Sportsman

We have our television channels to thank for a new form of spectator sport, the ‘panel discussion.’ Political parties realized early enough that participation in these no-holds-barred slugfests could end up in bruises to their image – of both, the participating individual and of the party. And yet, for obvious reasons they could not afford to stay out of the medium. They had to find a way out of their dilemma.

They found it in CocaCola!

In those days of the sparkling cola wars, some may remember the excitement of those fizzfights between CocaCola and Pepsi, now all but forgotten. In this fight however, there was only one visible fighter, Pepsi, the challenger who did all the sparring. CocaCola just stood on that Hilltop and sang, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”.

Both had a good reason for doing what they were doing. They were conscious of their genetic heritage. Coca-Cola was the universal nice guy, the Pause that refreshes. The Everyone Everywhere Everytime drink. Middle of the road, the golden mean and all that. Pepsi was the excitable, exciting challenger, the young one, Choice of a new generation, the fighter. Their  public behaviour was true to their character. Coca-Cola could never behave like Pepsi and Pepsi could never be a Coke.

There was a short period in India, when Coca-Cola attempted fighting back in reaction to Pepsi’s barbs – and had only bruises to show for its bravado. And then, in an inspired moment, Coca-Cola decided to acquire the popular Indian cola, Thums Up. With a purpose. While Coca-Cola did its nice guy thing on stage, it sent Thums Up into the ring to do all the punching. Great strategy. Thums Up became the flanker brand.

Political parties now have their flankers, their spokespersons, who go and slug it out in that unruly, everyday street fight that our channels have now become. The rough and tumble of TV panel ‘discussions’, led by ill-bred, eyeball-hungry anchors have compelled these spokespersons to bring out the slings and arrows of language and argument. They have become pokespersons indeed!

The Congress, the BJP, the Left and all the other parties have their spokespersons, individuals picked for their mediagenic qualities. They guard the vulnerable image frontiers while the party bigwigs are engaged in doing whatever it is that party bigwigs are supposed to do.

The BJP is something else. One could say they do not need any pokespeople. Their senior leaders can stand and deliver, Pepsi style, the desired sting with panache, without the need for any flankers. As a party they have the people to whom the role of political pugilist comes naturally. Challenge is in the genes of the party. One cannot find a better pokesman than NaMo with his memorable one-liners and the spicy utterances that sizzle off his tongue and reverberate in your earwax long after they have been delivered. No less telling are the political speeches and interviews of Mr. Jaitley or Yashwant Sinha and many of the senior leaders of the party. They are all very sharp, fluent and clever with their punches. What’s more, they come out at the end of it all with their images unscathed.

Take a look at the Congress on the other hand. Genetically and in present composition the party does not have what it takes to go out there onto the street and fight. Barring a few who are capable of some attractive verbal and political jousting, but who will only do it in forums of their choice and not in those media-sponsored brawls, the Congress partyman, by and large seems ill-fitted for the present brand of public exposure. He needs those flankers, their (s)pokepersons who by and large are doing a competent job. They are the Thums Up to their political Coke. Fighting the political Pepsi. We have been witness to a Manish Tewari, a Digvijay Singh and Abhishek Manu Singhvi carry their arguments with aplomb and even deliver punches with grace and effectiveness at least in the more decorous channels.

What the political flanker does well to keep in mind, however is that the pokesmanship, or the fight if there has to be one, has to have a certain character. The fight between CocaCola and Pepsi was fun because it was not a fight to kill, both sides knowing that neither could eliminate the other. It was not even a fight to give the other a bloody nose because they both knew that most often it was the bloodied nose, not the victor that got public sympathy. It was a fight to win friends, the joust to win that fair damsel, the consumer; it was ringside entertainment. It was goodwill fighting, where style was applauded more than brute force, smiles were more precious than blood. It was Jackie Chan not Sylvester Stallone or Swarzenegger; Danny Kaye’s funny fencing, not the blood and gore of the war movie.

All these niceties are thrown out into the gutters of those one or two rowdy channels, where the spokesperson is pushed into a brawl, fighting off not just the opposing panelist but most often the anchor himself. It is a bloody skirmish, which ends in no meaningful conclusion, wounding the topic, the participant and I dare say, the image of the channel itself. Be that as it may, it makes it hard for these flankers to do their thing in style or at least with some decorum. And so we see pokesmen of all parties trying bravely to curl their lips into a smile while they bare their knuckledusters -- something that a one-time smiling pokeswoman succeeded in doing when first she was enlisted for the job, but of late, has been finding the fang-exposing downward lipcurl coming more naturally to her than the other thing. Smiles and bile don’t mix. It is not easy to fight without a scowl. But it is possible.

Just one example: those swashbuckling sessions between Mani Shankar Aiyar and Swapan Das Gupta, the Politically Incorrect series of debates, which has now been discontinued. Here was debate where, as spectator, one was willing to suspend one’s own personal political leanings in order to savour the flavour of chaste phrase and argument. These were worth watching indeed; spectator sport of some intellectual standard, where every thrust and parry evoked deserved applause for linguistic and syllogistic finesse. Give us more of these. It is possible, if only channels and their anchors stop trying to attract the bloodshot eyeballs of a vulgar rabble. Even if it is a fight they want to stage, could they please give up the dishoom-dishoom for a more respectable fencing, jujitsu or even maybe kalaripittu?  


And edited version of the article appeared in Goa's O Heraldo