Sunetra Choudhury: Clueless in Congress land

I now have the perfect excuse for missing any story in the Congress. Whenever my editors try to pull me up, I’ll simply say, “Well, what do you expect? If the man appointed in charge of the party, is not aware of the whereabouts of his party president, who am I to know what’s going on in the Congress party?”

But I really needn’t worry about this excuse. Because honestly speaking, the Congress publicity machinery is so good at its job, it make sure that no one gets any big exclusives. Or they make sure that when they do want to reward you with some exclusive information, it is so inane, no one actually wants it. Or worse still, you’ve been brainwashed by Congress managers to think that knowing the time of an unscheduled press conference is also an exclusive story.

Let me just illustrate by the coverage of Sonia Gandhi’s unfortunate illness and surgery. Now, I don’t want to seem like an insensitive, story-crazed reporter but by any standards, this is a story any reporter would chase. She’s UPA chairperson, chooses our ministers and virtually runs the country, of course we want to know about the state of her health and who’ll run the show in her absence. But tell that to congressmen.

When reporters like me started sniffing the news out, the people that were in the know, decided that they were going to run for cover. Fair enough, you don’t want to be the source of a story like this. But what’s unacceptable perhaps is lying when you’re asked a direct question. Rahul Gandhi’s aides, even minutes before the official confirmation, insisted that he was in India. ‘Why isn’t he coming to parliament?’ ‘He’s busy, but he’s around.’ ‘He’s definitely not abroad’’. Why couldn’t they just say ‘No comment’?

Because they think they’re doing their job by sending us in the opposite direction and because we are too chicken to name those aides and risk losing the mirage of an ‘exclusive’ some day.

The reason why I don’t feel that much anger towards these lackeys is because as a Congress reporter, you realise that they are as helpless as you are. Just as we are scurrying around for information, getting tiny tidbits of information, only to hurry across in front of the camera and sweatily say it out, they too are getting bits of information, and left to, not just make sense of it, but defend it in front of the entire country. `What is the medical condition?’ I and many other reporters kept asking. I was later taken aside by the kind gent of a Congressman and told, “In our culture, we don’t talk about the medical condition of women. These are delicate topics.” Really? Pardon me for thinking of her as UPA head and not a woman. And also for giving me and others new ideas about what kind of problem she may be having.

If we resented the Congress for not letting us in on developments, most of it evaporated as one leader after another confessed to having little information. No wonder, the official statement first said her surgery had been successful and then said, it hadn’t taken place at all. At the official briefing, we all went armed with hundreds of questions which we were flooded with. What did the formation of the caretaker team say about the position of Rahul Gandhi? And why weren’t many senior leaders made part of the team? And to all that the Congress and its leaders said only one thing — it’s serious, but we have no idea.

In the coming days, I hope Mrs Gandhi gets better and I hope for her sake at least, her party gets its act together too. How can they forget a basic tenet of public communication — honesty is the very best policy.   

— Sunetra Choudhury is an anchor/reporter for NDTV and is author of the election travelogue Braking News