MAKING NEWS
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AS WE HURTLED past the turnstile on the ground floor of the India Today complex in Noida, Anjana Om Kashyap was worried about the state of television news. “The kind of things they are saying,” the executive editor of Aaj Tak said as she speed-walked to the building’s plentifully stocked and populated canteen. “You can’t say blatant things like that. It’s not journalism.”
When my taxi had stopped at the complex’s gates, in the late afternoon of 22 August, Kashyap had called, at once apologetic and warm, to say she was going to be delayed. “With all this news breaking about Chidambaram, you know how it is.”
In the lobby, a cabinet full of shining trophies stood as a testament to the craft of India Today’s journalists. At least three of them bore Kashyap’s name. As I waited, a public-relations professional seated next to me proposed one insipid story idea after another to a sullen journalist, who cheered up at the mention of a luxury junket. That journalist was soon replaced by another, who was receptive to both a gift of baby-pink Crocs and a pitch on the potential market for pre-owned luxury vehicles despite the drastic recent slowdown in car sales. The professional said her client, who happened to be involved in selling luxury cars, could contribute to any story on the topic, “with some mention of his brand, of course.” The journalist agreed to run it by her team.
Two days earlier, on 20 August, the Delhi High Court had denied anticipatory bail to P Chidambaram, the Congress leader and former minister for home affairs and finance, in connection to charges of corruption. Chidambaram had moved the Supreme Court for an urgent review of the decision, but the court listed the matter for a few days later. When the Central Bureau of Investigation arrived at his Delhi home that evening, Chidambaram was nowhere to be found. The next day, he appeared at the Congress’s headquarters to read out a statement denying all charges. CBI officials scaled the walls of his home a few hours later to finally arrest him.
The news channels had made the most of it. But, Kashyap said as we sipped tea in the canteen, Aaj Tak’s competitors had gone too far. “They are saying Chidambaram chor hai”—Chidambaram is a thief. “You can’t do that! He’s just an accused right now, you have to somehow understand. Matlab, there has to be zero dilution of facts. You can place facts, you can question him. He is an accused. You can say he is an accused two thousand times. You can’t label him a criminal. That line has faded now.” Other channels were “actually toeing the line of the government at times. They’re speaking more than the government needs.”
On Halla Bol, her debate show, Kashyap had pored over the Chidambaram episode the previous evening. Now, she agreed to let me come into the studio for the shoot of a fresh episode, again on Chidambaram—whose bail appeal was to be heard by the Supreme Court the next day.
The backdrop of Kashyap’s show that evening showed a picture of Chidambaram next to the words, “Ab toh jail jaana padega”—Now you will have to go to jail. This was an echo of a line from the children’s rhyme “Poshampa bhai Poshampa”—the story of a thief caught for stealing a watch worth a hundred rupees.
KASHYAP’S GRIM ASSESSMENT of Hindi television news may well be accurate, but to take her seriously as a critic of the industry requires a suspension of disbelief. A look at her journalistic career shows that she is no stranger to the sort of excess she was ruing. She is, instead, a deft practitioner of it, a merchant selling the new India under Narendra Modi to its citizens.
To take Kashyap seriously as a critic of the Hindi television news industry requires a suspension of disbelief. Her journalistic career shows that she is no stranger to the sort of excess she was ruing. She is, instead, a deft practitioner of it.
The new India is rife with contradiction—not least because much about it remains old. Urbanisation and the open market have brought rapid change, but society is still largely patterned on traditional prejudices and hierarchies. The Constitution proclaims democratic values, but very often those who stand up for them, especially against the rich and politically connected, cannot count on the government’s protection. The country is celebrated for the number and diversity of its media outlets, but so many of these read from the same hymn sheet.
Modi’s time in national power, since 2014, has only sharpened the contrasts—and added more contradictions to the mix. Promises of development for all stand alongside an explosion of Hindu chauvinism, and rising violence against religious minorities and oppressed castes. The country faces crippling unemployment and a looming economic crisis, yet much of it continues to praise Modi’s reign.
Kashyap, like the industry she works in, is a product and an agent of many of these contradictions. And Aaj Tak, the prize asset of the India Today Group—officially registered as Living Media India Limited—gives her a stage. Journalists reporting frankly on the current state of affairs have found themselves out of work, and sometimes dead on the streets. Kashyap, meanwhile, enjoys extraordinary popularity both on the streets and in the highest offices.
“I don’t know what popularity is, ya,” she told me when I brought up her celebrity. “It’s just a job for us, right? Just like you are doing a job, I am also doing a job, a twelve-to-nine job.” Only that what Kashyap does is a far cry from just any job.
First, Aaj Tak dominates the ratings in Hindi television news, which caters to a colossal and politically decisive Hindi-speaking demographic. The 2011 census counted a total of almost 700 million Hindi speakers—more than half of the Indian population. They make up a target demographic larger than almost any other in the world today, with a growing television audience that is already in the hundreds of millions. Aaj Tak’s YouTube channel has over 23 million subscribers. India’s most popular English news channel, Republic TV, has 1.5 million, and the US broadcasting giant CNN has under 8 million. Besides Halla Bol— translating roughly as “Raise your voice,” and aired in the early evening—Kashyap frequently anchors Aaj Tak’s coverage of breaking stories as well.
Second, Kashyap’s job is not “twelve-to-nine.” The day we met, she was up before dawn and at work by 6 am, she said, anticipating a busy news day. She admitted that the work is “bone-breaking.” Kashyap’s schedule keeps her in the public eye, and often on camera, well beyond her hours in the news studio. Earlier that week, she said, she had been busy shooting a cameo appearance on an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati, Amitabh Bachchan’s mega-hit game show.
With the ceremony of self-effacement out of the way, Kashyap became more candid. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “I don’t reach out very much. But when I go to people, it’s crazy. It is. Like, I go to Haridwar, and then this man will come up and say, ‘Maine apni beti ka naam Anjana rakha hai’”—I named my daughter Anjana.
In one of her public appearances a few years ago—filmed and uploaded to YouTube—a man in the audience sheepishly asked Kashyap to solve his conundrum: should he watch her or listen to her? Kashyap laughed, before replying firmly, “Listen to me.”
A young woman, tearing up and with her voice breaking, told Kashyap, “In the field of journalism today, whichever woman is pursuing journalism, her inspiration is you. My inspiration is you.”
“Don’t cry,” Kashyap exclaimed as she beckoned the woman forward for a hug. “God bless you,” she said in mid embrace, and then, realising the microphone she was holding had not caught her voice, said again, into the mic this time. “God bless you.”
Kashyap told me that one day, in 2016, she received a call from Prakash Javadekar—then already a minister in Modi’s cabinet, and today the minister of information and broadcasting. Javadekar told her that, in a village in Bihar, he had asked a group of children what they wanted to be when they grew up. One girl said she wanted to be a journalist, and that her role model was Anjana Om Kashyap.
“Mujhe laga tel maar raha hai,” Kashyap told me—I thought he was trying to butter me up. But, she added, Javadekar repeated the anecdote at an event hosted by India Today, “in front of the entire audience, so it can’t be a lie.”
This March, Modi, speaking from the dais at another India Today event, threw in a winking reference to Kashyap’s show—“In sawaalon par aap chaahe halla bolein, ya na bolein.” Kashyap posted a tweet, with a play on her signature on-air introduction: “Namaskar, Main hoon Anjana Om Kashyap aur aap aur pradhan mantri dekh rahe hai Halla Bol”—Namaskar, I am Anjana Om Kashyap, and you and the prime minister are watching .
