Thirteen Years and Counting........(Part -12)

Elections in India are mega festivals as national,colourful,bright and sweet & sour as are Holi,Diwali and Eid.Right from first general elections they are organised and conducted with the effort of all officially involved and unofficially participating people at such a wide scale that observers from outside India come to see this political fest.

You can see a wave of enthusiasm and energy among all who are part of this largest democracy in the world. Children,young and old see it as opportunity to use their might through the people who have right to vote and elect their respective leaders. And this festival is celeberated and conducted in a different mood in India.

I remember when I was a kid we all were very enthusistic about the banners and posters circulated during elections. Few of them we used as cover pages of our books and some to show our affection for our candidate from the area. Poster and banners have changed the mood of election at times. And if I am not wrong ,one incident I remember when the posters of last speech of Indira Gandhi in 1984 General Elections changed the fortune of candidates.

But I am talking about the elections of 1999. It has been seven years to the demolition of Babri Mosque and India's nationalist hinduist party has been able to create a wave of nationalism and hindu mass movement across India and has managed to gain partial succes in terms of number of seats it had improved. Congress was suffering a big setback in previous elections and India has just entered in coalition politics era where no party was untouchable for the other. Coaltion politics has already been practised at center level and we were heading towards another phase of it in elections 1999.

Our team at Zee News was working very hard to prepare itself for election coverage feeling the heat of Hinduistic nationalistic feeling and slightly less option for congress the channel designed a optimistic program called 'Campaign Trail'.

But I was feeling a different way. I am not talking about election results.It may or may not be in favor of any particular political party,but the base on which this Hindu mass movement was created was having a vaccume. And these kind of vaccumes play a disasterous role in creating a strong base of a secular democracy. But the vaccume was there and no one was trying to realise it. And I too became part of this program of Zee News which was later became USP of general elections on Indian Television.

The idea behind the program was that a team of reporters and producers would spent 24 hours with a respective political candidate and will picturise it as one single episode. It was a huge excercise and two different centers were created for it in which a dozen of producers,reporters and script writers had to work together to design the program.

It was the second phase of my internship and also a chance to see the people to whom I respected. I was in team A and second week of my internship when I noticed that a fresh lot of interns has just arrived from Symbiosis Institute. Three interns were put in team A.

We worked very hard in that team and was detached from the main news team for a period of one month. In a span of one month we prepared total 13 episodes,out ofwhich all thirteen candidates picturises by us won the elections.The three interns from symbiosis really did a fabulous effort and we all were appreciated for our efforts put together........................................................................................

To be continued.......... Out of Job, My ouster from Zee News and Story after 1999.