The panelists for this session were Deepa Kadam, Vasanthi Hariprakash, Nirupama Subramanian and Rakhee Roytalukdar. The moderator was independent journalist Jyoti Punwani. All the speakers had covered several elections and could share their experiences on election reporting. Their knowledge and understanding of Indian voters and the electoral scenario, as well as their personal experiences of election reporting, made this an information-rich session. The session was particularly timely given that general elections were scheduled for later in the year.
Deepa Kadam, senior correspondent with the Sakal group, shared her perspective of reporting on elections. She said she always tried to keep voters at the centre of her reporting, to find out what they felt about the entire process of elections. In fact, she used to write a column based on this, titled “Roving reporter’s diary”. She cherished the people she met while doing the column, the type you won’t meet if you stick to Mantralaya or Mumbai, said Kadam. She said reporting from the ground during elections shows you how wrong election analysis, usually done in the office and based on all kinds of poll arithmetic, can be.
Kadam had always felt the lack of the social perspective in political reporting. Hence, she tried to connect both the social and the political in her reports.
Commenting on the challenges of election reporting as a woman, she felt that women hardly got an opportunity to cover elections, especially in the Marathi media. But women journalists must themselves feel that urge to cover politics, she emphasised.
Bengaluru-based Vasanthi Hariprakash said she chose to report from districts not covered by other journalists. After 15 years of editorial work on the desk, she got the chance to report on elections only in the last few years. In 2018, she decided to become an independent election reporter. During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she covered five states including West Bengal.
In her reporting, said Hariprakash, she made it a point to seek out women. By doing so, she learned that rather than caste or religion, women voters were more concerned about issues like price rise and livelihood.
Also, instead of trying to predict who’s winning, she decided to focus on the socio-political aspects of the places from where she was reporting.
Above all, she said, women journalists must find the model of election reporting that works for them, and believe that you can do it.
Rajasthan-based Rakhee Roytalukdar said in Rajasthan the incumbent government is voted out every five years. Caste, she said, was the main issue in the state and every election revolved around caste. She pointed out, as an example, that in Jaipur only a Brahmin candidate has ever won. Caste mahapanchayats exert a major influence in the voting pattern.
Nirupama Subramanian, who has reported for The Hindu and Indian Express, argued that reducing democracy to elections is a problem. She raised several questions: How do you decide that this is the issue? Do people tell you the truth when you ask them about the election, or do they tell you what you are supposed to hear depending on your paper/ channel?
Subramanian also commented on the way the press covers elections. These days newspapers tend to treat elections as some sort of festive occasion, as a celebration, calling it `Dance of Democracy’. They seem to forget that elections are only one element of democracy.
The speakers navigated the intricacies of reporting elections, highlighting the enriching yet demanding nature of such reporting, and showcasing the importance of perseverance in covering the democratic process. They also addressed the challenge of reporting hate speech during election campaigns, especially today with the proliferation of such speech during election campaigns.