Monstering

Sukumar Ranganathan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:06:00 GMT

Posted under News, Cult Fiction

What India and Indians need now is a healthy does of Monstering.
Pity the country doesn't have its Spider Jerusalem to do this.

Spider, for those who came in late, is the Gonzo journalist hero (created by Warren Ellis) of a dysfunctional and dystopian future America who dares to take on the president of the country.
He does so through his column called I hate it here for a paper called The Word. His writings are defamatory and scatological but they do make a point.
I was reminded of a style of journalism Spider calls Monstering when I saw the kind of response Mint's interview with Barkha Dutt evoked.
Dutt, for those who came in late, is a senior journalist at NDTV 24X7 and she has sort of become a sort of symbol for all that's wrong with India's television channels and the way they covered the terror attacks in Mumbai.
I thought the interview was mild (but we decided to carry it anyway since it would be of interest -- and judging from the response, it was). Maybe we should have Monstered her.
Still, I'm not sure mainstream print media is suited to Monstering (and vice versa) -- at least not in the news pages.
Monstering works better on television as two proponents of the interview-form, Tim Sebastian and Karan Thapar have shown.
It also probably works in the online medium, especially blogs.
But I'm not so sure that you can do what Spider does in the real world and be immune from anti-defamation lawsuits.
The closest the Indian blogosphere has to Spider -- in terms of rant-quotient, let me clarify, not writing style -- is K. In one of his recent posts he used a part of the female anatomy to describe India's national security advisor.
K used to work with me and I met his father, a well-known editor at a recent party. It was the first time I was meeting him. He said he had warned K to be careful about what he blogged about. Clearly, K hasn't followed that advice.
Still, it does make for interesting reading and while it isn't exactly Monstering, it's marginally Spiderish.
And that's high praise, believe me.

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How to channelise the anger

Sukumar Ranganathan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:46:00 GMT

Under Rants

When Mint asked people to offer concrete suggestions on what they would do to tackle terror if they were the country's Prime Minister, the paper was deluged with responses.
A Mint report in this morning's paper says "Mumbai swells with good intentions" and asks, "will actions follow?"
If the past is any indication, they will not.
The anger will fade over time and life will overwhelm whatever fiery core of it remains.
Still, it shouldn't be too difficult to use what has happened in Mumbai and the ensuing anger as a lever to change things that need changing (and I don't just mean chief ministers or home ministers; to digress a bit here, I have been wondering why everyone's favourite pink paper hasn't used the term Home PC even once to describe the new Home Minister P Chidambaram -- it's the kind of thing that paper is famous for doing).
Here's a plan.
India's Lok Sabha has around 70 representatives from urban areas. A recent exercise by the Election Commission to make the Lok Sabha more representative has resulted in an increase in the number of representatives cities send to the house -- to around 100.
I would suggest the formation of a political platform (not a party) that will select candidates who will contest as independents for these seats. The platform should solicit and accept contributions and publish monthly statements of account. This money will be used to simply fund the campaigns of the 100 candidates, all of whom will fight on a clean-governance, anti-terror, make-our-city-safe platform.
That, by itself will be a radical difference from what mainstream parties do because in India's political lexicon urban has come to mean suicide.
Even if the new urban-centric political platform manages to win 10 of these seats, it would constitute a force.
Remember, that in this Lok Sabha, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, with 16 seats exerts far more influence than it legitimately should with those numbers just like in the last Lok Sabha, the Telugu Desam with 29 seats did.
Everyone is angry and with reason. The elections are due to be held in April or May. The cities matter more in the next Lok Sabha elections than they ever have.
Clearly, there's an opportunity in all this.

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A Daily Download : Mumbai terror attacks

Monstering

How to channelise the anger