Trivialising the lingerie issue
A panel discussion on NDTV brushed aside a Mumbai corporator's concerns about lingerie displays.
PRIVAT GIRI says media should realise that the elite view is often at variance with conservative India.
On 28th May, when other English news channels were busy discoursing the most happening issues of the day like the IPL spot-fixing scam and Maoist assault at Chhattisgarh, one discovered NDTV debating the proposed ban on lingerie display on mannequins on the streets of Mumbai mooted by Ritu Tawade, BJP corporator at Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Apart from the unexpected choice of subject, the treatment of the issue must have bewildered viewers. The divide between the ‘people of India’ and the ‘people of Bharat’ was manifest distinctly and the manner in which NDTV addressed the problem once more testified that the English media in India is on the side of elite India and often fails to empathise with the concerns of the ‘people of Bharat’.
For the debate, Rita Tawade herself was present along with five other co-panelists. Unlike Arnab Goswami from Times Now who always comes with his own position and makes every effort to steer the discussion along his line of reasoning, the anchor of NDTV did not explicitly dictate terms. Still, the panel implicitly and subtly managed to sing the song of the ‘people of India’ or elite India.
Throughout the programme, a statement that the proposal is indecent was scrolling at the bottom of the screen. More importantly, if we critically examine the composition of the panel, the five members excluding Rita Tawade were a communication expert, a fashion designer, a fashion guru, CEO and editor of Lace and Lingerie and a model. Their western orientation and mindset does not perhaps provide them the scope to believe that lingerie display on mannequins is harmful or silently promotes a surge of sex crimes. Instead, they may feel it to be a conservative attitude. The first question the anchor asks Tawade is whether she has statistics to support her hypothesis. Of course, there are no statistics to either reject or support it. One panelist did speak in support of Tawade but she was given the least amount of air time.
Tawade, on the other hand, throughout the debate spoke in Hindi and it seems doubtful that she was able to wholly follow the discussion in English. But whom is Tawade representing? Tawade was provoked to place the proposal with the BMC to ban lingerie display on mannequins on the streets of Mumbai after she received complaints from two college students. The duo alleged that the boys in the streets eve-tease girls by pointing at the lingerie. Aren’t such concerns important enough for the media to focus on? Instead, NDTV went on to establish the issue as a political gimmick. Ad guru Alyque Padamsee, one of the panelists, reminded Tawade as well as the viewers that this is 2013 and not 1913. However, he fails to understand that not everyone moves along with the times. 2013 for the son of a rich businessman in Delhi may be 1990 for the son of a farmer in rural India.
The media in India, particularly the English media, has failed to detect cultural dichotomies within society and undervalues the play of culture in the framing of issues. It unconsciously and sometimes consciously supports and speaks the mind of one particular culture, the dominant culture. The manner in which the panel for debating the lingerie issue was composed overtly indicates over-representation and under-representation to ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’ respectively. The manner in which the pro-ban arguers were given less time to express their opinions in comparison with anti-ban arguers indicates the same. Media’s role should be to bridge the existing gaps and not to legitimise one over the other or pronounce judgement on who is right and who is wrong. This not only restricts understanding, it undermines information, knowledge, objectivity and neutrality which are fundamental to any news media.
Privat Giri is a research scholar at Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, Sikkim University
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