In the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, Anand Vasu (Managing Editor, Wisden India) committed sacrilege this Wednesday (May 29, 2013) – first, in writing an article and then as a panelist on a news channel . The blasphemous act somehow reassured the news media about the moral urgency of fighting sceptical and disturbing demons, and in turn the news media made people feel happy about our pious country’s moral universe. But, the dampener was that Vasu exposed some glaring fault-lines in the media narrative and blurred the moral certitudes of black-and-white view with which more-hurt-than-you moralist crusaders are demanding the BCCI President N Srinivasan’s resignation.

The evening patriots of this saintly land make sure that the country is outraged every evening. If you are an ordinary mortal with a weak sense of moral indignation or strong resistance to shock, be prepared to be an outcaste. You can go unrepresented in the television news narrative – which of course is run in the name of “public interest” and even “public opinion”. Your membership of the “public” is decided by the degree of moralist rage you have against the punching bag of the evening.  Scepticism, public reasoning and any attempt to dwell on grey areas (worse, indifference) are punished with disqualification. That’s no revelation, didn’t Ayn Rand say decades ago that the “individual is the biggest minority”? Some punching bags, like N Srinivasan, serve for more than one evening. And some voices of public reasoning, like  that of Anand Vasu, trying to understand and put in perspective different aspects of the demand for Srinivasan’s ouster can be showcased one evening on mute mode  after a few sentences  – as if to tell viewers how  morally dangerous the  measured voices of analysis and the exercise of journalistic scepticism can be. However, Vasu’s  article in Wisden India, perhaps the only no-nonsense take on the issue, and the few sentences he was somehow allowed to finish on Times Now’s Newshour ( May 29, 2013) tell us how skewed and self-righteously fallacious the media narrative has been on the issue.

The Façade of Public Opinion and the Hysteria of Kolkatan “Booing” at Eden Gardens

As if enough rubbish has not been hidden behind an abstract and mysterious entity called public opinion (more often than not, it’s too exclusive to be “public”) and as if demanding the resignation of office-bearers of even non-representative bodies in the country were a democratic entitlement, Arnab Goswami and Boria Majumdar ( the face of hawkish jingoism in India’s sports journalism) tried to mock Anand Vasu’s reasonable doubts about the message behind the booing of N Srinivasan by the crowd at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. Self-appointing themselves as scholars of crowd psychology, they even gave a free tutorial by explaining what they think is the only message booing can have – “go”( get out). They were attacking a part of Vasu’s article where he writes: “But what does a boo actually mean?… Were they registering a general protest at how the fortnight had panned out, confirming the worst fears people had about the game? Or, and wait for this, did booooooooo somehow translate to ‘Mr Srinivasan, you should resign’?”

If I am part of the “public” at all, I would definitely want to ask the question which Vasu asked in his article. And Goswami-Majumdar duo’s  divine powers of deciphering the only meaning  would not work for me. Neither Vasu, nor I, want news channels telling us how and what we are feeling. As Vasu tersely puts it: “For days now, 24-hour news channels have told us that the nation wants Srinivasan to resign. Given just how often these channels tell me what I am supposedly feeling, without once having the courtesy to ask, I’m a bit sceptical about their daily attempts to speak on my behalf”.

In fact, the current sympathy with the Kolkata crowd’s hysterical act at Eden Gardens last Sunday is quite selective. As the crowd’s target coincides with the media’s target, it would be relevant to remember that similar hysterical acts at the same venue (Eden Gardens) have a dubious past. In earlier instances (which invited media scrutiny) too, crowd behaviour was guided by hysteria and explained in terms of public sentiment when it took forms of bottle-throwing, abuses hurled at home as well as foreign teams . It could also be explained in terms of Kolkata’s penchant for competitive shouting which swings between extremes of outrage and adulation (just keep an eye on how the city’s chatterati would exaggerate Rituparno Ghosh’s contribution to films). Was the media advocating the public mood in Kolkata’s earlier spells of hysteria, for instance, when the India-Sri Lanka semi-final  match in 1996  World Cup had to be abruptly called off because of crowd trouble triggered by India’s batting collapse? Or when in 1999, the India-Pakistan test at Eden Gardens had to be played in an empty stadium after spectators were evicted following crowd violence (triggered by the controversial way in which Sachin Tendulkar was run out)? The crowd’s response could be as hysterical then as it is now. Why assign serious meaning to it?

Perspectives needed, not blinkers – Anand Vasu’s dissection of the resignation demand and the clamour for sacking

Vasu has sought to dissect the so-called “public” demand for Srinivasan’s resignation with reference to three different aspects. Before doing so, he has been candid enough in stating his general approach to such issues. As he writes: “In the interest of fairness, I should disclose right here that I am not a fan of telling people what they should do. Resignation, like retirement, is a personal choice, and once that choice has been extended, maturity demands that you accept whatever the person in question decides. I don’t believe it is any more my place to tell Srinivasan he should resign than it is to ask Sachin Tendulkar to retire. And, believe me, applying this on a daily basis can be difficult, as there’s only so much negotiation you can do with a toddler, as I have to on a daily basis, since I don’t believe in telling him what he should do and expect it to be followed without reservation.”

Vasu has based his examination of the question about sacking Srinivasan  on three broad premises: (1) Does Srinivasan need to go merely because he is M Gurunath’s father-in-law? (2) Here, in his own words, Vasu questions: “As the driving force behind India Cements, the company that owns the Chennai team, is ignorance of the illegality of a key member of the set-up a valid defence? To draw an approximate parallel, if a relative of Srinivasan’s who was in the management of India Cements committed some kind of fraud, would the company stop at removing the offender or go to the extent of removing Srinivasan?” (3) Should he be sacked in response to the perception that recent developments have tarnished the reputation of the Board he heads? Is it legitimate to concentrate moral culpability on the head of the institution?

And so in context of the talk about the BCCI constitution and procedural hurdles and possibilities of removing Srinivasan, Vasu presents his case with remarkable public reasoning, as he writes: “The (BCCI) constitution is an instrument of governance, and is tone deaf. It does not aim to understand nuance, and ethics and morality are not its business, simply because these words mean different things to different people. Constitutionally, it may be impossible to remove Srinivasan, and this I can live with, because it was not me who put him in the president’s chair in the first place. For those that did, there will be an opportunity at the September Annual General Meeting of the BCCI, and if they are willing to walk the talk, they can speak through the ballot box.”

The Farce of TV News Debates: Seeking Unanimity, Pretending Studio Democracy

The marginalisation and indignant muzzling of Vasu’s voice in the Newshour panel discussion is a routine reminder of a farce enacted everyday on Indian news channels. I had mentioned it in my previous piece, and I am reiterating it here. Something which  has almost become a farcical trend in television news shows is this: the swing from “disputable” to “incontrovertible” takes place in a matter of minutes, and in the outrage-driven zeal for having a consensus (or unanimity) anyone with a different (or contrarian) view is presented with the farce of a fait accompli – is there anything left to argue?  Vasu could understand the farcical setting and told his host that he could not see things in black-and-white and can state only what he observes as a cricket journalist.

Interestingly, there is one more side of hypocrisy in media debates on the BCCI issue which was briefly expressed yesterday in a tweet by journalist Sucheta Dalal (Managing Editor, Moneylife). She tweeted: “How many TV anchors/editors willing to sacrifice jobs by speaking abt (sic) their owners. Hounding of Dhoni disgusting double standards!”. This is a separate issue which would show media professionals in poor light. It needs to be analysed independently. Perhaps some other time.

The binary of polarised pro/anti-narratives or the lure of black-and-white shades in the media discourse in general, and TV news in particular, have constricted the possibilities for addressing the multiple dimensions of an issue and exploring grey areas. Orchestrated anger is a spectacle – something news television relishes. In such sanctimonious cacophony, it’s important that Anand Vasu is audible too. His readability has never been in doubt for people tracking cricket journalism.  He represents a very alien sense of “public” in this country. Sometimes listen to this segment of public too. Not hold its lack of anger against it.