What an amazing sting! Amazing because just a few days ago Aaj Tak was pleased as punch that apna patrakaar managed to sneak into Amitabhji's hospital room.
Operation Duryodhana, executed in partnership with Aniruddha Bahal's Cobrapost , the channel gave a real and powerful example of what being 'sabse tez' can be about.
Yes, competition may have dumbed down TV but with it also comes the incentive to take risks and do something to rise above the clutter. Something like Operation Duryodhana.
It's great that Aaj Tak recognised 'we can't do everything'. No major media house would have the expertise, the patience or the balls to pull of a sting operation of this magnitude. Working 8 months on one story? Uh, 8 days is a major 'well-researched' magazine cover. 8 hours is more like it on most days.
For Cobrapost too, the Aaj Tak tie up made a lot of sense. Remember what happened with Tehelkagate? Sure it got coverage but by giving co-ownership of the Duryodhana story to the Today group, Cobrapost's sting made a huge impact. And it didn't die down easily either.
Within hours all the parties whose MPs were implicated had suspended their MPs. Excepting the RJD.
In contrast with the Tehelka scandal where those caught on camera remained defiant and instead tried to harass Tehelka. Probably thinking: woh log chhote hain, unka mooh band karva sakte hain.
Now, it ain't gonna be possible. You can attack Aniruddha Bahal and his team but can you malign the India Today group and get away with it?
Win-win
The Aaj tak tie up also made great financial sense for the Small Guy. 5 lakhs were paid in bribes to the MPs alone. There must have been thousands of other incidental expenses. And of course the cost of running the Cobrapost operations - salaries, cellphones et al.
Instead of worrying about how the office electricity bill - as well as how to create an impact with the story - Cobrapost could concentrate on its core area of expertise: conducting the sting operation.
And it looked like they invested in some really great spy cameras 'cause the picture quality was far far superior to the grainy visuals generally seen in a sting operation.
As far as Aaj Tak was concerned what was Rs 15-20 lakhs? Or even more?? Sure there was a small risk that things would not come through but with Bahal's reputation that was a risk worth taking.
The result was a story that gave Aaj Tak eyeballs worth several crores. Given that the channel had Star News nipping at its heels, this was surely just what the TRP doctor ordered.
And it went on to show that no matter how many times you change your channel graphics, the ratings will come only when you give viewers a reason to tune in for your core offering - NEWS.
Giving Credit
The issue is of such national interest that no competitor can afford to ignore it. But surprisingly, this time almost all were graceful enough to acknowledge it was a Cobrapost-Aaj Tak sting operation.
This included even the biggies like TOI and HT although curiously ET had not done so and in its online article TOI was a little more coy, only mentioned Aaj Tak.
Only NDTV appeared to be in denial and sulking. . No mention of this news at all on their homepage
In their late night bulletin the top story was 'opening of Pune International airport'.
Star News, meanwhile, took a 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' view and was airing its own series of 'look, these are your dirty politician' bulletins.
Questions
Getting politicians from across the spectrum of parties was a really smart idea. Perhaps that's what took the operation so long?
Given that 6 BJP MPs succumbed to the Dark Side one can infer that those in the party out of power had less avenues for 'income' and could be tempted more easily.
But how come there were no MPs from Left parties? Could the public conclude they have more integrity?
Secondly, did all the MPs approach/agree to take bribes? Or were there some who refused? That was interesting to know.
Some of the questions MPs agreed to raise were absolute rubbish. eg an imaginary genetically modified "Catch 22 cottonseed" . And the ROTFL :
“Is it true that while NRI firms such as India Uncut of USA, Sepia Mutiny of Britain and AnarCap Lib of Netherlands have been allowed to invest in Indian SSIs, the reputed German investment firm Desipundit has been denied permission? If so, the reasons thereof?
Was the Union Government of India planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters?”
This question was submitted with the purpose of getting a reply from the minister of Small Scale Industries. Thankfully, there were some brains functioning in Parliament house because from Cobrapost's press release it would seem that none of the faltu questions actually made it to the floor or even as questions worthy of written replies.
But yeah, they made for a great story. It was good to see the Cobrapost guys retain a sense of humour in what must have been a tense and trying time.
If you offer an individual a bribe to do something corrupt, it is but natural that most of the time they will accept it, so it's the briber who is at fault for offering it in the first place? If we lose even the ability to be shocked by this kind of thing, times really are dangerous.
Of course, nobody's claiming that the media did this with purely altruistic motives -- of course they wanted a scoop, of course they wanted greater hits and TRPs. But in the process, if they revealed something as ludicruos as this, surely that was a good thing? And when you say the media could produce such scoops to serve their own ends, what you don't realize is that the media has too many checks built into the system. Nobody works alone, too many people are in the know and it's difficult to guarentee everybody will keep their mouths shut.
Made great business sense to conduct such sting operations. Behal & team also deserved credit to make honest & investigative journalism lucrative. Hope to see more Behal's in the future. Second, the Parties immediately suspended their MLAs because they had seen the Tehlaka days & they realised that it will harm their image, even if they fought it legally. This is the beauty of our system. No, Bangaru & Jaitley (jaya) weren't treated differently beacuse they were big fish.
The parties would have played defiant had this not had the potential of rewriting their political future.
All around us know about the court clerk who takes bribes, (except the police, of course), and so the media people will also have known who to invest their 15-20 lakhs on.
With all the reactions these sting operations have created in the country, I'm surprised that no one has flipped the coin and looked at the other side. The whole operation was a publicity stunt based on the fact that somebody will definitely fall for a bait. The question is, in any country with a corruption statistics like ours, how many politicians follow these ethics strongly, because for those who follow it with little lax can happily take this bribe since its not doing any direct harm to anyone (or is it ?). I'm not taking any sides, but I do think that the way media-power is rising in country, they'll surely become a big part of the corrupt system and use their power against/for political parties, but guess what, their misuse won't be technically termed as 'corruption'.
Jaya Jaitley and Bangaru Laxman were presidents of their parties instead of a everyday MP. Also since it had names of two main political parties, the parties knew the pressure wouldn't be on a single one. So best way out was take a high moral ground.
This sting operation was indeed something to be appreciated unlike the cheezy ones conducted by India TV which were more inclined to peek a boo in the private lives of the rich n famous .... Operation Duryodhan surely had to do something with the common man ...i m sure there will be many more like this and hope all the other political whizkids learn a sabak from this ....
Anyways the crux of the matter was that Aaj Tak had definitely got the TRP"S rolling its way ..
And I love the name 'Operation Duryodhana'. Although it's not apt in the literal sense coz the operation was more of a political 'vastraharan'.
This time the Duryodhan's were the ones getting 'exposed'. And ironically, it was a woman - Cobrapost's intrepid Suhasini Raj - who was doing the exposing.
And much as I'd like to see who she is, I hope she and the rest of the sting ops team stays away from the limelight. So we can look forward to many more such Duryodhans and vastraharans!
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