ET and its Budget pinks

BY Lalitha Sridhar| IN Media Practice | 17/03/2003

Good ol’ (it was really better when it was old) ET has been constantly trying to prove that times are changing for economic reporting. Whether that is true or otherwise, the paper does end up looking Extra Terrestrial in the process. First they blushed rosy pink, then went ‘international’ with their compacted broadsheet width and then came the saucy pictures and blurbs/headlines to complement finance-related reports, statistics, analyses, surveys and such other presumably boring details which had made them the largest circulated business paper in the country (or was it world?).

The budget being the biggest thing that ever happens to financial reporting, for the last couple of years ET has set out with the difficult task of surpassing itself on an annual basis. Last year, with the Lagaan Oscar nomination hype peaking around the time Yashwant Sinha came out with his now infamous Finance Bill and proposals, ET reinvented a flamboyant Bollywood-cricket connection to the strangest of fish - the annual Union Budget and Finance Bill. Its masthead sported the Lagaan Eleven and the text was supported by ample wordplay, analogy, puns, double entendres, mixing and matching to pull off quite (if dubious) a coup. Movies, sport and finance? It must have taken some ingenuity to connect the three - increasing evidence that reporters often have to double up as copywriters in ET’s ‘fun’ scheme of things.

This year’s Union Budget issue (March 1st, 2003) went a step (er, strip) further. It had the Honourable Jaswant Singh, him of the stiff safari suits (even the generally admired minister cannot seem to bring them back into fashion) and measured (in long minutes) speech, looking distinctly unlike himself. Wearing (half of) the Indian team’s famous blues and tricolour cricket togs, he was in such a state of excitement that he had taken his shirt off, only to hold it aloft, flag-like, as he ran bare-chested, goodness knows where.

For extra measure, he had on a red chain with a large 1 rupee coin for a pendant, glinting over his previously - or since - unseen and un-photographed thoracic anatomy. Since it is unlikely that even his maiden budget presentation could have inspired him to go so completely crazy, one had to give total credit for this amazingly tasteless attention-grabbing antic to the chap in the small print - someone called ‘Santan’ who did the ‘Imaging’.

Keeping the elder statesman panting company on the lead page was the masthead ‘image’ (surely) of the cricket team ogling, in various states of drool, at Kareena Kapoor, wearing something even she might prefer not to be seen in - a little red thing with so much cut away in its rear that even her much-jiggled derriere wasn’t spared.

The other first page visuals were full of ‘bottom’-lines too : "Cup of Cheer" had a girl with a navel showing nicely over her hotpants, "Turned Back" had the three pairs of endless legs and a pert tush of some sporting women (does it matter what game? - it couldn’t be figured out) and "Life’s a Beach" had a couple of men playing cricket in swimming trunks. Which brings us to ET’s other grand obsession of the season - cricket. Picture(s) these : Sachin getting "pampered" by Kapil Dev, a couple of umpires discussing a ball in "Does This Look Good To You?" and, among other things, the photo of an electrifying catch (the zigzag lines of a heartbeat splayed over the visual) under "Markets Still Reading Wicket..." and "Short of a Super Six".

The text was a study in linguistic acrobatics. "Jas Called To Say I Love You" shrieked the unbelievable headline, followed by "Bares His Heart, But Bull Maange More" in Team ET’s effort which "helps you pad up and take guard" while Swaminathan S.Anklesaria Aiyar "picks out the cracks in the pitch". A surfeit of cheeky semantics ended up being an exercise in testing the reader’s patience. Examples : "Yes, minister, we do buy your line", "Jaswant bowls a yorker : hikes service tax by 3%", "A smooth sixer : Fill it, file I-T and forget it". "Good score, but try to get into Super Seven", "Papa Jas gets softies for blue-eyed techies", "Gifts for Mummy, Papa and Chintu", "Desi Kick : even playing field with Videshi", "Others meddle, FM cooks his own broth", "Hollywood, Bollywood, political ishtyle", "Required RunRate for Sell-off Gets Higher", "Hot Bods Cry For More" and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Quirky titles and gung-ho language work beautifully in leisure reading but when copy goes berserk notwithstanding the context, it ends up failing in its primary task : communicating.

For extra variety, there was the "womanly" touch in "Kitchen Cabinet" which had comments from Sudha Murthy, Tina Ambani, Neerja Birla, Rohini Nilekani, Anuradha Mahindra, Smita Parekh and Tanya Godrej. Clearly, the common denominator here was not business acumen - had that been the case, we would have heard from a Naina Lal Kidwai or a Lalita Gupte or a Camillia Panjabi. Instead, under "Grass on the Grey Side", Tina Ambani waxed eloquent on the new LIC Varisht Bima Yojana, the acceptance of a self-declaration IT return form and reduced duties on hearing aids, wheelchairs and life-saving drugs - was I seeing a ghost or ghost writing?

Somewhere along the way, more than a point was lost. The Union Budget, anyone?

Contact: sridhars@md4.vsnl.net.in