Media Newsletter
GujaratGlobal
Issue 24
August 28, 2008
Greetings!

This Newsletter from the GujaratGlobal  brings to you the latest happening in the media particularly in Gujarat, whats hot and whats not , who's in and who's out , you want it and you get it here !This newsletter is about people who craft voice and image of others. It is about the real newsmakers.
 
 

                             Editor.....The Dangs 

 
This week I had gone to the Dangs, the tribal district bordering Maharashtra. I had first visited the district in 1980 as Indian Express Reporter to cover the famous Dang darbar. It is held around Holi. Since then, I have visited the place quite infrequently and visits were just event specific. However, this time I decided to have a free flow unstructured visit of the two days, Saturday and Sunday on August 23 and 24. But I roamed around this southern most district of Gujarat for four days exploring it with the spirit of my IE days. I feel that despite very visible  development , the district is still a neglected region of 311 villages. Its rich forest with the tales of period of exile of Lord Rama, Pandavas stay and Indian teak wood politics of Britishers makes it quite enchanting . It is one of the hotspots from the point of view of bio diversity with more than 400 medicinal plants.India has over 1200 species of medicinal plants. Its bhagats , illiterate herbal healers, are moving encyclopedia of medicinal plants in their own way. This rich natural pharmacy is becoming target of the bio piracy.  Through the newsletter , I wish to tell my media friends about the Dangs, its herbal healers called Bhagats and the efforts that are being made to conserve this great knowledge of medicinal plants, these bhagats have. Guardian secretary of the District S K Nanda is in love with the district from the day he was first posted here in 1982 as a young DDO. His great love affair with the tribal culture and its people is still blossoming. He is pioneering efforts to bring these bhagats to a common platform. I plan to write some articles about the Dangs in coming issues. Following Lewis Carroll's popular phrase "let's begin at the beginning" this issue has a story on the difficulties of reaching the Dangs. Carroll used this phrase in his popular novel Alice's adventure in wonderland. The novel written in 1865 is now known as Alice in wonderland.You can call the article something like Yogesh Sharma's adventures in the Dangs. In the next issues, there will be articles on herbal healers of the Dangs, rich depository of medicinal plants and Nanda. No story about the Dangs and its people can be complete without the story of passion of Nanda for Dangs and its people which has made him probably the most popular bureaucrat among tribal. Nanda has done his doctoral thesis on tribal migration. The Dangs has indellible prints of the vision of this IAS. This issue has write ups about Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhwadia and Government spokesperson Jai Narayan Vyas. If Vyas is high profile minister with a very clear penchant for individual identity, Modhwadia is low profile political leader trying to create his own identity gradually coming out of the  shadow of his political mentor Ahmed Patel, all powerful political advisor to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Despite these opposite traits both share skills of innovative ways of striking right chord with media and disarming smiles.


Have A Happy Reading.
 
With love  

Yogesh Sharma

Gujarat Global

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Modhwadia a man with killer phrases 
 
Congress has appointed former leader of Opposition Arjun Modhwadia as its Chief Spokesperson for the Gujarat unit. Appointment of Modhwadia as a spokesperson is not a casual appointment. The state Congress never had a leader of such a stature as spokesperson. 
Party men and journalists have ignored this development.Probably because Modhwadia is regarded as Ahmed Patel's man. He started his career as a student leader of Saurashtra University and is one of the rare politicians in the state congress who became Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly and held the office of the State President in the first term. Though he got both the positions by default, he crafted a place for himself in the state politics by his diligence and skills of networking. He became Leader of Opposition because of the death of Amarsinh Chadhary and he got the assignment of PCC Chief as a stop gap arrangement.
An excellent orator, Modhwadia is known for his killer phrases he used against Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a politician with unmatched skill of verbal acrobatics of rhymes. It clicked. He countered Modi's oft repeated slogan of paanch karod Gujaratio kee sarkaar by his amendment that it is the sarkar of paanch karodpati. (this government is not of five crore Gujaratis, but five billionaire Gujarati industrialists )  It is a known fact that during election time these karodpatis became conspicuous by their absence in government functions. 
This was the slogan that every Congressman used in election meetings. He coined many lethal phrases, but this became the most popular. Another catchy and hard hitting phrase against Modi was that Modi is Nakli Deshbhakt (Modi is a fake patriot). He, however, does not want to disclose his art and craft of coining killer phrases and avoids question about it with his characteristic disarming smile. 
Coming from Porbandar, the land of Mahatma Gandhi which is also known for its mafia and god mother Santokben Jadeja, 52 year old Modhwadia is a qualified mechanical engineer and he slogged for 20 years before he got an entry in the Assembly. Modhwadia did not want to take up the present assignment. It is obvious from the fact that spokespersons generally have a limited job of holding the brief of the party. 
He admits about his initial reluctance, but does not want to discuss it treating it as a closed chapter.I know that I am spokesperson and I wll do the job with all sincereity and honesty, he says. He will take the charge next week. This is his first exclusive interview after the appointment.He has rolled out his plan. His first priority, he says, is the coming Lok Sabha elections. He is all set to revive the Congress magazine which is closed for past several years. 
He says that he will strengthen media network of the party by opening regional offices. These new places are Baroda, Rajkot and Bhuj. I want to develop vertical communication network where party leaders are briefed about major issues like Amarnath problem. He points out that people are not aware that J&K government is now handling facilities through its own Tourism Board which will be of great advantage to the pilgrims. On the other hand NDA did nothing during its rule, he says. 
He has an ambitious plan to have media committees up to block level. It appears that media unit in his leadership will be a kind of independent parallel structure in the state. But Modhwadia says that it will be an integral part of the State Congress with more autonomy and more power. To a question about his objective, he says , even if it sounds a lofty ideal, my objective is to make every congressman a spokesman of the party. He has plans to meet press in the party headquarters in Ahmedabad at least twice a week.
Lets see what new phrases he works out for the Lok Sabha elections.
 
An appeal

 
Friends as I told earlier, the newsletter has a subscriber base of 2100 plus. There are many more who are reading it either directly from the website or through forwards. I request you all friends to mobilize more subscriptions to the newsletter by enrolling your friends in media. This is your platform. Help it grow.
 
 
(MIS) -Adventure Journey To Saputara   

Saputara, Gujarat's own hill station has great potential for adventure sports. Its eco tourism circuits offer adventure to nature loving tourists. But for me going to Saputara itself turned out to be a great adventure. Stay at the hill station added to my thrill as every moment was filled by adventure. These man made challenges were at times more tough than what nature has created in Saputara and around.

I decided to go on August 15, holiday, to fully experience the charm of the hill station. There were three holidays in a series and some creative brains had turned it into a mini vacation of five days by taking one leave on the fourth day. Fifth day was a holiday. So it was a full crowd holiday. Trains were running late because of monsoon fury and I thought that bus was a better option.

Only State Transport buses go to Ahwa and Saputara. No one seems to know why no private luxury bus goes to Saputara, Gujarat's own hill station.

I checked bus timings from the internet as I could not make anyone lift phone in the inquiry. It appears that IT savvy staff of the State Transport wants people not to use outdated telephone system. There is no number of inquiry on the website. You keep on trying the inquiry telephone number, it can be a good pass time if you have patience. In the timetable on the website it is quite interesting to find that Vadodara -Saputara route shows more buses coming from Ahmedabad as compared to Ahmedabad - Saputara route. Inquiry at the window shows much less!

Ahmedabad- Saputara shows four buses while Vadodara-Saputara shows 11 buses of which nine are through Ahmedabad ! If you want to find out timings of Saputara-Ahmedabad buses from the internet, you can't. Saputara does not exist in the from column of the chart!!

I reached at the bus stop at 5.45 as there were two buses for Ahwa at 6 am. (Ahwa is the district headquarters) One can go to Saputara via Ahwa or by changing buses on the way. There were some other passengers also. After 6.30, I made an inquiry at the booth. I was told that bus will go. Others were also waiting. They had the coolness of the Saputara simplicity of trust of tribal in their approach and I also followed them. At 7.40 a bus Ahmedabad-Saputara came. Before I could reach there, it was full. It had come from Nehrunagar, part of Ahmedabad.

Fellow passengers kept on reassuring me that bus would come. Same was the positive attitude of the controller at the booth. I really took it as a patience building personality development exercise. By 9.45, I lost all hopes even as others continued to reassure me. I must say that we Indians have great patience. All continued to chase every coming bus to find out whether it was bus to Ahwa, But no one disturbed the authorities .I resolved to develop some foolproof method next time and made way back to home.
I am also an Indian with great faith in positive powers. Next day(August 16)when police announced success in serial bomb blast case, I felt that probably it was because of this that I could not go to the Dangs.I could easily send my stories to different publication for which I write. Finally, I decided to go by train on August 23. I inquired with many, but did not get a definite route of train to make my trip least time consuming. Ultimately, I got into Gujarat queen and reached Valsad past midnight. Somehow I managed to get a bed to sleep in the government Vishramgruh (rest house).

Next morning, it was another series of experiments, when people gave me strange look at Valsad ST stand on my query for bus to Saputara. Interestingly, Saputara is just 130 kilometers from Valsad. The man in the inquiry told me that there was only one bust at 9 am. At that time, it was 5.45 am. It was difficult for me to convince him that I had seen more than one bus to the Dangs in the morning on the website. There are six buses on the web timetable on Valsad- Saputara route. Most interesting is the fact, that the 9 am bus mentioned by the Controller is not shown in web time table.
I had some sense of direction and some names in my mind as I had done lot of homework for coming to Saputara.I got into a bus going to Ahmedabad for Chikhli . I met principal of school of Motivalzar, Anupsinji Parmar who had been going to Vansda for the last 28 years. Vansda is on the way to Ahwa and Saputara both. He became my guide. We got down at Chikhli. He said that there were some long distance buses. He continued to tell me that he was a Rajput and his village Kukeri and Chapaldhara had maximum number of teachers in the Dangs. Every house had three four teachers in these villages dominated by Rajputs. For a journalist it was a good story.

In the meantime, he drew my attention to a local Bilimora- Saputara bus and said that I should get into that bus without waiting for the express. Journalist in me said that like a good student I should have experience of traveling in local bus and learn about local people. By now, I had told Anupsinhji that I was a writer. This saved me of suspicious looks the word media invites from people. Now people can tell you how media works and what it should do. They say all this in quite a patronizing way.

He showed me pucca houses of tribal and gave me brief about his views of selective benefits of reservation policy to make sure that all people got benefit. He said that half of the tribal who got benefit and raised their standard of living were the enemies of the other half. These haves should not get benefits until the have-nots also got the fruits of reservation policy. All along the 101 km route I saw boys in jeans and girls in dresses. It was really difficult to say that adivasis were backward. The story of the eastern part of the Dangs is different, as I realised on the third day of my adventure trip.

The local bus which had started from Bilimora, 10 kilometers from Chikli, was late by an hour. There were no rains. Long buses were also late. I do not know in what conditions the web timetable and GPS systems work. Any how, I reached Saputara around noon. It took four hours for 101 kilometers. Enough to make someone boil. But, cool breeze of Saputara had a  soothing effect.
The bus stop was bus stop because bus stopped there and passengers offloaded themselves. No fencing. Dilapidated building. Holy cows with their dung all around was the great sign of our Indian culture. Two huge hordings of Chief Minister Narendra Modi with a smiling face were the welcome signs.Someone in the Inquiry office was cleaning plates.
I asked about the circuit house. Canteen boy showed me the way up the hills. I looked around for a vehicle. People stared into my eyes when I asked them. I thanked God that I was still a proverbial able bodied man and climbed the steep rise with my bags. I wonder what handicapped people do without their own car or taxi . 

 
  Managing media crisis Jai Narayan   style
 
 
This Wednesday there was a bitter encounter between media and police at the main gate of the Secretariat in Gandhinagar. Issue was not new. In his over enthusiasm, a police inspector asked all journalists to show their accreditation cards. This could be a smooth affairs, had the inspector not shown his brazen attitude. Within minutes, there was a chakka jam. Bus load journalists came out and stopped all other vehicles.
A Dy SP tried his skills of crowd management but without success. He was trying to push journalists into the bus back without saying even a word to the police. No one buzzed. Obviously, it was a flop show of the Dy SP. In the meantime message came that the spokesperson Health and Tourism Minister Jay Narayan Vyas wanted journalists to meet him about the problem. Even otherwise journalists were to go to meet Vyas for the weekly cabinet briefing.
Vyas promised journalists that henceforth there would be an officer of the Information Department to deal with the police problem of the press bus. The assurance did not please many as they knew well that no one heard officers of the Information department. There are number of examples to prove this.
Sensing the reliability factor problem of his statement, Vyas immediately said that president of Gandhinagar Press Club Ashwin Cooker can stand at the gate to have trouble free entry of fellow journalist.Ashwin is called cooker because he has cooker selling business!  It was quite a joking statement. A murmur of smile filled the room.
Ashwin agreed to this.Vyas looked around and said that trouble took place the day the club president Cooker came to the secretrait and thus suggested some kind of mischevious role of Cooker in the trouble. The murmur turned into a laugh. Vyas fired another laughter salvo. He said that there was another journalist who had come after a long time. It is Ananjwala from Surat. Both share the same zodiac sign, Aries, Vyas further added.
While Ashwin and Anajwala both grinned, all bitterness vanished in the roar of laughter centric remarks of Vyas and he poured out his entire brief very smoothly. Vyas has his smile riding sideway look to pacify agitated journalists and if it does not work then he has a powerful antibiotic dose of a series of witty remark.
Vyas has his own way of dealing with the media and he succeeds. That is because of his insight into the media world. Recently, Vyas invited columnists for dinner. They were more than 100.  He finds columnists like Taj brand cigarette. The beauty of the cigarette is that it burns very slowly. He says columnists slowly and steadily use the material in the columns for long time. In marketing language this is called higher shelf life of the product-the message- in this case.
He often describes his role of a spokesperson in cricket parlance. And friends, he plays back foot and front foot with equal ease .He knows that no media friend is going to miss his loose shot!

 
 
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land. 
 
~G.K. Chesterton

With Love,
 
Yogesh Sharma
GujaratGlobal.com