Saving DD Kisan: Farmers need many things but Amitabh Bachchan is not one of them

Mera Bharat mahaan. In a desi twist on Marie Antoinette’s if they cannot have bread, let them eat cake, ‘our farmers are finding out that if they cannot have fertilizers/seed/help against crushing debt, they can have Amitabh Bachchan. A source close to Amitabh Bachchan told the media the superstar is “personally very excited and enthusiastic about promoting Kisan”, that is Doordarshan’s new farmers channel, not a jam. Now we know why. It’s not because Bachchan himself once got himself registered as a farmer, thanks to a few bighas of prime land he acquired in Muzaffarnagar in UP during the Mulayam Singh government. That in turn allowed him to try to buy agricultural land in Pune as a farmer. In 2007 a Faizabad court clarified he was not a farmer in UP. For “Farmer Bachchan” to now crop up as the brand ambassador for DD Kisan is a rather ironic twist indeed. [caption id=“attachment_2348270” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  PTI image.[/caption] But this is not about nostalgia for his Old MacDonald days. Anuradha Raman reports in The Hindu, that Big B is endorsing DD Kisan for a year for Rs 6.31 crore after initially agreeing to Rs 4.02 crore. Lintas India bargained hard for the superstar and this might well be the most expensive endorsement by the actor to date. At a time when farmer suicide is still a reality, this is a little hard to digest. But it’s unfair to say this is Big Bad Bollywood cashing in on farmer misery either. Bachchan is a star, and as one profile called him the “Lord of Endorsements”. Let’’s give him full credit. Which other star in his seventies is so sought after as a brand? And while he might be a goodwill ambassador for polio eradication, he has no obligation to turn down good money the government is offering for a day’s shoot. The more pertinent question is why does the government want to spend crores on roping in a Bollywood star for their DD channel. The media reports that before settling on Bachchan’s star power, they toyed with other names – Ajay Devgn and Kajol and Salman Khan, all men and women of the soil. “We felt the channel required a celebrity and also found that Mr. Bachchan had a strong connect with rural India,” said Ranjan Mukherjee, Additional Director-General of Prasar Bharati. A 6.31 crore connect. Mr Bachchan’s job is to use his star power to promote the channel. Let’s face it, garnering eyeballs for a television channel does not exactly have the kind of social impact an exhortation to immunize a child against polio or build a sauchalaya at home can have. That begs the question why spend that kind of money on a celebrity brand ambassador for something as grassroots as DD Kisan? A Bachchan promoting the touristy wonders of Gujarat makes more sense. The Hindu reports that viewership peaked during the initial buzz around the launch on 26 May by Narendra Modi. A voiceover apprised all assembled about the honourable Prime Minister’s “atoot sraddha” (deep respect) for the kisan and “the sambedanshilta in his hriday” (empathy in his heart) for them. But viewership has declined even though cable and DTH operators must carry it says The Hindu. Discovery has more than 10 times the viewership despite sharing the same bandwidth. And why should that surprise anyone? Who even thought that people would watch a channel day after day merely because a superstar endorsed it? It’s not like Mr Bachchan is hosting a daily Big Kisan reality show on it, or anchoring the Help Kisan live interactive show. To think that some jingles about the show from a superstar would have everyone coming back to the channel day after day like sheep ,shows that someone out there really thinks of farmers as utterly naïve and gullible. All channels live and die by the quality of their programming, not their brand ambassadors and why should DD Kisan be any exception? Anyway, DD Kisan could have no better brand ambassador than Modi himself whose Mann ki baat reaches rural India by radio every week. DD Kisan promises live weather updates, discussion of ergonomic practices, tips on how to sell crops for higher prices from saffron in Kashmir to spices in Kerala to tea in Assam, a farmer helpline. These programs, worthy as they sound, have to be actually useful for farmers otherwise they will just shrug and change the channel to watch soap operas which are at least entertaining not dull government propaganda showing smiling farmers with twirling mustaches. Farmers have enough troubles on their hand anyway. In a country where farmer suicide is a political football and a politician says “let farmers die if they must. Those who can afford farming will do it” and then explains he did not mean to be insensitive, it seems unlikely that a DD Kisan will be anything more than another vehicle for publicity peddling shiny happy messages about the kisan as “Bharat ki shaan”. Government channels are not the place to really foster open debate about contentious government programmes like the land acquisition bill for example. According to the New York Times since 1995 more than 290,000 farmers have killed themselves for various reasons. But politicians are more interested in “debunking” those numbers than addressing the causes of despair. After the farmer suicide in front of television cameras in Delhi, Modi talked about feeling “the pain” and how “collective resolve” was needed to solve this “old, deep-rooted and widespread” problem. 24-hour Kisan is not that solution. And putting an Amitabh Bachchan on top of it like a cherry certainly does not make it one.