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.

Meeting Notes: Anna Hazare and Sharmila Irom

By Chitra Ahanthem

It was 1997, the year India was marking her 50th year of Independence. There would have been many celebrations of this momentous occasion but only one unique observation of this historical timeline stays on with me: a NGO based in Mumbai was taking about 250 young people from India and across the world to places of India’s history and future in a train specially reserved for the purpose! The announcement was made on a popular cultural TV program (which we don’t see the likes of now) called Surabhi beamed on Doordarshan and various other newspapers. It was a happy moment when I got confirmation that I was to be one of the said young people on the train that would ultimately travel for 11 days across the country facilitating interactions with people who were inspiring: Mark Tully, Abdul Kalam (then with ISRO and who talked us then of the possibility of an Indian moon mission which did become a reality!), Bunker Roy of Tillonia (married to Aruna Roy and behind hugely successful rural enterprises, water harvesting, adult literacy among others in Tillonia in Rajashthan), Kiran Bedi (much before her controversial stint in Mizoram) and Anna Hazare who was known at that point of time mostly for his pioneering work in Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra.

The said rail yatra was mainly organized to instill in young people the essence of leadership, innovation and social development. The routine was that we would be traveling in the train non-stop till we reached the places we were meant to be and then getting back to the train for the night. So, there was an air of curiosity when we were told that we would have an overnight stay at Ralegan Siddhi to meet a Gandhian who had taken up rural conservation and community work. The villagers took us around the place and we were told how small canals had been dug up to generate water flow. But it was two things that impressed me greatly: a school for juvenile children and the practice of Shramdaan or volunteer work as a form of social charity. The school had classrooms but if the children so wanted, classes would be held under the shade of trees in the open. There were yoga classes for “anger management” while most constructions in the village: the small dams, solar panels, wells, places of worship were all built through Shramdaan.

In the evening, we sat in a community hall and then, in walked Anna who spoke of his “second life” (he was the lone survivor during an enemy attack during an India-Pakistan war). We talked then mostly of philosophy and working for social upliftment. Like many of my fellow yatris, we thought nothing much about questioning his rigid stand against alcoholics (they were beaten up, period) and I even piped in my two bit and told him how Nishabandi women in Manipur were also doing the same! It would take me some years to understand the concept of public health and harm reduction and see that the greater crime of punitive measures on substance abusers only marginalizes them and do nothing about addressing the dependency. Anna Hazare’s activism against corruption started later and one cannot say much of what happened in between. But personally, the posturing Anna that one sees on TV (wagging fingers and dictating terms) is a very different person from the Anna I met all those years ago. The Anna then actually asked us young people on what we thought he should incorporate more into his work in his village in terms of forest and water conservation etc. The Anna one gets to see now refuses any kind of disagreement with his thoughts and beliefs.

November 2000 and a young woman called Irom Sharmila decided to fast to protest after 10 civillians were gunned down at Malom. My first reaction then (and I am/ not ashamed to own up to this now) was that it would be some token fast. Some days later, there was the “fast against AFSPA till the act is taken off” context and I thought that hers was an illogical/irrational and totally crazy stand to take. I also shrugged it off as “some group must be behind her” motive. I totally bought the “AFSPA is necessary till there are insurgents” theory for quite a long time till my own readings on militarism and armed conflicts around the world and conflict resolution/reconciliation processes made me sit up and engage in some serious questioning.

The first meeting happened in March 2009 during her customary yearly release. It was total chaos: there was a meeting of over 50 odd woman journalists from all over the country happening in Imphal and they all wanted to meet her. And then, there was the usual local media attention too. The first meeting was more of a brief sighting especially since I did not believe I needed to add my own questions to the many that were being addressed to her.

The second meeting happened in a unique setting: something that I have only shared with a few friends but one that can be let out in the public domain now. January 2010 saw me with very high fever after a trip to Bangkok and my Uncle, a doctor asked me to get a swine flu test done. Since he was with Jawarlal Nehru hospital then, I went there. Those who follow news would be aware that I was tested positive for swine flu but much before that news broke, I was raising hell over the state of the isolation ward at the hospital. What I did not want to call attention to the media then was that while I was standing outside the isolation ward with the face mask on, waiting for hospital staff to find the keys to the room (they took about an hour and a half!) I saw a familiar figure some 10 metres away from me. It was Sharmila Irom! My heart plummeted inside me: here was this one person I wanted to talk with and I was supposedly at risk of an infection that I could pass on to her. I have a small face and the mask covered most of it and I saw Iche Sharmila looking quizzically at me. I rolled my eyes at her and hoped that she would not come near (I did not want to be responsible for her health!). When eventually, my test results came in positive, I wasn’t too worried about my own health (I did not take Tamiflu medication) or my family (they did not have any fever) but I obsessively kept an ear open for any news on Sharmila’s health!

In May 2010, I got third time lucky and I had a long meeting with Iche Sharmila. I was going along as a sort of translator for a journalist and writer. We talked mostly of non-political issues: of her books and poetry we talked at great length. And then she took both my hands and said solemnly, “remember when you were at this hospital with your mask on?” And then she laughed and told me, “you don’t know the amount of activity and consternation that happened here after you left!” There was no air of moral superiority following the status of icon-hood that has settled on her: I was face to face with a unique person yes but also a normal human being, a young woman kept in isolation but very aware of the world around her.

End-point:
Many people have pitched Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption and Sharmila Irom’s stand against AFSPA. But their stands are different and the battlefield totally apart from each other. My own interaction with both of them happened at different times and stages of their journey. But what stays on following my interactions with Iche Sharmila are the little ways in which she is so much a person than an icon. It is something that one does not get to see in other people who take on the mantle of greatness.