Goof-up of the year

Prime ministers do not visit TV studios for panel discussions.  They also stay away from the contests that these TV channels organise to elect the 'Indian of the year' as they are supposed to know what these heavily rigged polls are all about: channel owners use them to curry favour with the prime minister and other government bigwigs. Also, prime ministers do not need these synthetic polls to prove their popularity as the real forum to do that are parliamentary elections.

 So why did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agree to grace the function organised by NDTV to award the 'Indian of the year'? What is really intriguing is that the PM sent his media advisor to collect a similar award last year from a competing channel. The big question is why did he discriminate this time? According to informed sources, NDTV's big boss, Prannoy Roy, used his Delhi School of Economics connect with the economist prime minister and convinced him to come for the programme. A gentleman that Singh is, he acceded to the request.

Armed with a speech, he turned up for the programme little realising that the organisers had other ideas. Apparently, the PM was not kept in the loop about the format of the programme. So an award was indeed given to him by Roy, but he did not get a chance to deliver his acceptance speech. At best, he could slip in a few answers to the questions asked by him. His speech remained unopened in his pocket. Sources revealed to Hardnews that the PM was quite livid over the shabby treatment and his reservations were conveyed to the organisers. The Special Protection Group (SPG) is also unhappy with the conduct of the channel.

There are also some reservations about why the channel chose Singh as the 'Indian of the year'. Did he do anything exciting and path-breaking this year? No one is really sure. Sources claim that maximum votes were reportedly garnered by the likes of Narendra Modi and Mayawati, who had justifiably a greater claim on the award. A poll by CNN-IBN, another competing channel, threw a similar result, but they chose to award their trophy to Finance Minister P Chidambaram as one of the judges in the panel refused to give his imprimatur to someone whose hands were soiled in blood or a crorepati Dalit leader who had cases of corruption against her.

The political class is pretty upset with the way these channels routinely manipulate them and feel that the acceptance of the award by a person of the stature of the prime minister has devalued the status of the prime minister's office. They also feel that many of the top leaders, who have no mass base, do not want to antagonise the TV channels, as they need them to further their politics.