There is a reason why Narendra Modi does not give television interviews, except for a few “fixed” ones. Unlike high-rise podiums during election campaigns, party forums, and election rallies, where politicians can do and say whatever they want, including reading a prepared text or even regurgitating a mugged speech, or using a teleprompter, As Modi often does, television interviews demand quick, instinctive responses.
Television hates pauses or embarrassing silences. And even the best prepared interviewee can be surprised by a misleading question. Cameras focus steadily on the face, and tiny expressions can convey more than words. It is not for everyone.
Rahul [Gandhi] he had not given a formal interview to any television channel so far. He had given short snippets of sound infrequently, of course, but this was a completely different proposition. I had been at the Talkatora Stadium in Delhi when he delivered a superlative speech, full of unbridled aggression, with cold poise. He appeared to be in command as Congress sounded its rallying cry for the 2014 general election in the busy and boisterous general session of the AICC.
Expectations were high and Congress needed a monumental change in perception to catch up with the BJP, who was galloping forward, Modi looking triumphant in the saddle. Times Now began announcing Rahul’s interview with Goswami a day in advance. A reticent and reluctant Rahul Gandhi, considered a future Prime Minister of India, was to be in a conversation with the Indian celebrity television host, known for not forgiving anyone.
It promised to be great television. Gandhi was biting the bullet. Would political history suddenly take away Modi and the BJP? The promo snippets from the show made Rahul seem thoughtful, cerebral, and like a leader. But the movie itself was nothing like the trailer.
‘Important to prepare’
The rule of thumb for doing an interview well is getting your key messages across. It is important to prepare a list of frequently asked questions that takes on the most difficult, personal, or unexpected questions possible, and to be prepared with short, clear answers. Many people asked me why Congress or Rahul chose Goswami, and I had no answer for that.
Goswami’s show was easily the most popular at the time, even if it was unbearably loud and intentionally cacophonous. But again, Goswami was a rebel and could not be trusted, and furthermore, he was not a fan of the Gandhi family. The decision to go with him for the debut of Rahul’s interview left me baffled.
There were better editors who conducted tough interviews with great impetus, and they would have been far better choices: Karan Thapar, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Dr. Prannoy Roy, among them. He feverishly hoped that Rahul was confident of his ability to lead the interview. India would be watching with bated breath to hear Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s great-grandson articulate his vision of leading 16% of the world’s population to a better future.
But when the interview reached the halfway point, two things were clear: Rahul was unprepared for his most important night, and Goswami was directing the interview toward his predefined destination: Rahul’s annihilation.
When I saw that Goswami was unusually polite, I immediately became alert; Rahul was in trouble. His advisers had completely failed him. Didn’t they know that if things went wrong, and they did, horribly, it could seriously affect the public perception of both an unproven leader and a party fighting in the rear? The first factor that established the lack of preparation for the Congress was the length of the interview.
Any television editor would have happily accepted reasonable preconditions for an interview with an elusive high-profile interviewee amid an intensely contested election. The interview should have lasted a maximum of thirty minutes, which would have given Times Now the flexibility to do a one-hour capsule using promotions and fillers.
In the post-mortem interview that followed, Rahul was accused of repeating himself ad nauseam, appearing distracted, not making enough eye contact, and generally appearing unprepared; in a shorter interview, that would not have happened. Rahul would have looked good, sensitive, willing to answer questions, prioritizing the issues that he felt India needed to address, and making the decision on the 1984 dynasty and riots. Instead, as the interview progressed, it happened. exactly the opposite.
A sincere and well-meaning Rahul was ridiculed for sounding repetitive (RTI, women’s empowerment, MNREGA, systemic failures, etc.) and appearing unreliable. Goswami showed a characteristic lack of grace, of course. Shortly after the interview, he invited invited speakers to poke fun at the man who had given him, in good faith, a groundbreaking interview. It was journalistic immorality, but it was only expected, and it raised a serious question: why did the think tank closest to the highest leader of the Congress party make such an empty decision, jeopardizing his political stature?
‘His own worst enemy’
The BJP went to town calling Rahul ‘Pappu’, a label that suddenly caught on and would end up destroying Rahul’s personal brand, with cataclysmic effect on Congress. Even when I texted Rahul, telling him that I had done well, I knew that would not be the overwhelming public verdict.
Overnight, Modi had approached a thousand miles to Number 7 Race Course Road.
Congress is your worst enemy, the saying goes. Infighting is in the party’s DNA and internal disputes are exhausting. Scurvy traffickers forget that the real adversary is the BJP, the default beneficiary of Congress’s self-destruction.
The party has been in power steadily for decades, both in the Center and in various states, and this has turned it into a gigantic entity infected with lassitude and laziness. It also gave the members a sense of invulnerability as they waited and watched the BJP fold in on itself, an attitude that betrayed not only colossal arrogance but political myopia as well.
The magical charisma of the Gandhi family had made many poor politicians in Congress a national hero. Many did not even have to campaign to win the elections. And so they swore allegiance to India’s first unofficial family in a show of genuflection worthy of shame. The politics of the dynasty thus became a comprehensive political strategy, seen as divine compensation for the brutal tragedies that the Gandhis had encountered and, with prodigious force, endured.
This faith is also what blinded members of Congress to a harsh reality: the party had begun to weaken, its organizational muscle was atrophying. A toxic combination of indolence and arrogance during the UPA years had caused the rot to spread more rapidly.
Poor internal communications, large and unwieldy committees that existed only to massage the egos of top leaders, the absence of a clear direction for the future, opaque appointments, and personal aggrandizement had become the central culture of the party. .
Congress was once a well-oiled machine that ran through daily contact with grassroots workers, received public comment, delegated power down to the district level, and fought for social justice. But now it had morphed into a giant bubble, divorced from its social environment and changing times.
The party’s top leadership was told that everything was fine. Was not. All of this is also evidence of the truth that the party had become hostage to the “darbar politics of Delhi” of which it was accused, inflated with palace intrigues and shady conspirators.
Extracted with permission from The big end: India after 2014, Sanjay Jha, Context / Westland.
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