Why Was Hazare Such a Media Hit?

By Margherita Stancati and Krishna Pokharel

As the drama of Anna Hazare’s anticorruption hunger strike unfolded, India was glued to its television screens.

In the two weeks that surrounded his fast, the viewership of news channels skyrocketed: Around 2.5 million more people a week turned to news channels during the Hazare agitation than in earlier weeks. The figures were measured for the weeks starting Aug. 14 and Aug. 21.

In the week through Aug. 27, a day before Mr. Hazare’s fast-breaking ceremony, news channels had 15% of television share, up from an average of roughly 9%, according to latest available data provided by News Content Track, a tool of media research firm TAM. In this period, reports on the Lokpal bill dominated India’s 24-hour news cycle, accounting for 83.4% of viewed news stories.

So what is it that made Mr. Hazare’s fast such a media hit? There was, of course, the appeal of their cause: to press the government to pass their own, tougher version of their anticorruption bill. And many among the throngs that showed up at the Ramlila grounds hailed from the aspirational middle classes that are a television network’s dream audience.

But Team Anna also deserves a lot of PR cred. This contrasts sharply with the government’s handling of the crisis, which could have been worse, but not much worse.

Here are a few things that we felt Mr. Hazare and his team – led by former policewoman Kiran Bedi, India Against Corruption founder Arvind Kejriwal and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan – got right:

Timing. Team Anna’s decisions have been consistently well-timed to maximize effectiveness and media exposure. Look at the timing of Mr. Hazare’s first fast: it started right after the cricket World Cup and ended before the Indian Premier League was in full swing. Overlapping with either sporting event would’ve stolen some of the limelight from his anticorruption protest.

Ahead of the second fast that began in mid-August, Anna’s camp refused to comply with a police order that it should not last more than three days. This led to Mr. Hazare’s brief stint at Delhi’s Tihar Jail, an episode that backfired spectacularly against the government. Not only did support for the 73-year old activist swell, his refusal to leave prison unless he could stage a hunger strike on his own terms was one of his team’s best-played hands.

Associated Press

Baba Ramdev wearing women’s clothes: not a great PR move.

(One can’t help wonder what yoga guru Baba Ramdev, whose anticorruption fast earlier this summer ended rather unglamorously, would’ve done had he been in Mr. Hazare’s place – perhaps attempted to escape from prison in a police uniform?)

Mr. Hazare’s decision to break his fast on Sunday morning – rather than Saturday evening, when a deal with Parliament that laid the ground for the fast’s end was reached – allowed for a full day of coverage on the issue. (Announcing Mr. Hazare’s decision to end his hunger strike, Ms. Bedi tweeted that “Anna is known to have never broken his fast after sunset…This is his decision again.”)

Personality politics. Mr. Hazare’s movement would never had garnered the support it did had it not been for Mr. Hazare’s Gandhian reputation and for Team Anna’s other high-profile leaders. For many, they epitomized honesty at a time when a string of corruption allegations marred the political class. Mr. Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi both have a proud record of their time working in the public sector, as an income-tax officer and a senior policewoman, respectively.

Although the reputation of Mr. Bhushan and his father Shanti, both senior lawyers, have been tarnished after Bhushan senior was accused of attempting to fix a judge, allegations he denies, both are well-known for vociferously championing public causes in court. Mr. Hazare also attracted a celebrity following: Aamir Khan, Anupam Kher  and Om Puri were just some of the big-name stars that rallied behind them. Yoga gurus including Art of Living Founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Baba Ramdev also made their appearance at Ramlila’s fasting stage. All this gave the media plenty of fodder.

Patriotic symbolism. Team Anna styled their anticorruption campaign after India’s freedom struggle, inciting popular mobilization through symbols borrowed from a historical narrative most Indians are familiar with.

The second fast started a day after India’s Independence Day on Aug. 16, making calls for a “second Independence struggle,” ring especially familiar.

Mr. Hazare, who models his social activism on Mahatma Gandhi, even made a stop to the Independence leader’s memorial in New Delhi en route from Tihar to Ramlila grounds, the site of his public fast. There, a black-and-white picture of Gandhi towered over the stage for the whole 13 days.

When he broke the fast, the ceremony was made even more theatrical by the presence of two young girls, a Muslim and a Dalit who handed a glass of coconut water to the septuagenarian activist. This also helped counter earlier criticism that in his movement there was little space for Muslims and Dalits, a community traditionally at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy.

His supporters’ patriotic chants, tricolor-striped cheeks, and ubiquitous Gandhi-style caps are likely to leave a lasting imprint on the popular imagination – and was media gold.

A well-oiled PR machine. Team Anna’s PR team regularly called press briefings and kept journalists up-to-date through text messages and their campaign’s main Web site. Mr. Hazare’s media volunteers, led by Aswathi Muralidharan, a member of Mr. Kejriwal’s NGO, were consistently responsive to media requests, even late at night. They were even good about picking up the phone, something government spokesmen are known to avoid. In the two-week period, Messrs. Bhushan and Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi frequently lent themselves to interviews and talk show appearances, which helped keep the momentum alive.

The Anna Camp also embraced social media. During the crisis Ms. Bedi was a prolific microblogger, tweeting breaking news including Mr. Hazare’s video appeal from Tihar jail and his decision to end the hunger strike.

Throughout the standoff, Team Anna spoke pretty much with one voice, an impressive feat considering the strong and outspoken personalities Mr. Hazare’s top aides are known to be.

Marketing the bigger picture. Marketing their campaign in favor of a specific piece of legislation – the Jan Lokpal Bill – as a broader movement against corruption was the movement’s key achievement.

They did this by tapping into people’s widespread revulsion against graft, through a rhetoric that focused more on opposing corruption in general than on the nitty-gritty of their proposed bill, which would’ve been a tougher premise for a mass movement.

This also meant their success could be measured on the mass support they rallied, not just on the concessions they got from the government. Let’s not forget that Mr. Hazare’s camp got little of what it originally hoped for: Parliament’s adoption, in full, of the Jan Lokpal Bill by the end of August. They settled instead for a non-binding resolution that includes some of their key demands but leaves other out, most notably that the Lokpal should have jurisdiction over the judiciary. It is unclear when the bill will finally be ready.

Garnering support for their version of the bill and saying no to corruption are two different things – yet Team Anna successfully blurred the lines.