2024 Lok Sabha Elections: Shekhar Gupta in conversation with Yogendra Yadav

[Music] I I sort of broke into this conversation about Kashmir uh because we found a minute with yogendra yendra first of all congratulations uh you are the star of the show but you also you also played you also took a humongous amount of risk uh because you did not do any kintu parantu or ifs and buts or on the one hand on the other hand you were quite you had a lot of Cl CL it uh I mean Clarity that we journalists are not used to so Cong congratulations uh this is Vindication and I know that's a very satisfied smile uh you think you think especially coming from uh Someone Like You someone you know I've known now for what more than two decades and uh I I really hope I didn't cause too much of difficulty for the print because I know you were attacked sely for what I was saying when when any publication or editor uh decides to publish some from somebody uh that uh the full responsibility liability accountability uh the blame God forbid if things go wrong and credit also if things go right to some extent primary credit belongs to the person who's done it that's you so uh thank you very much for doing this for choosing the print for writing the series of Articles and yes allow me also to mention and my two other colleagues who are here but who don't want to appear on camera I don't know forai and my friend Rahul shastri uh they don't think they need to be but you know two things one they accompanied me to all the TRS uh and that is what gave us the confidence traveling on the road uh and second of course they helped me analyze it and then we wrote in we wrote a series of seven articles for the pr one article for each phase which kept saying BJP is losing more theyve lost this much they are losing a little more and so on and so forth uh which I I I know the satisfaction is that we did not mislead the readers because you know people have this suspicion sh that if you are in politics you're bound to lie neutral and to use a neutral media platform for party propaganda is the last thing I want to do the trouble is that we have lost that generation of people in public life who think speaking truth was possible and desirable this is become such a qu and also also the fact that if you spoke the truth with some people or some side didn't like maybe maybe the editors didn't like it didn't mean that you came with a motive uh you came with a belief and if you have credibility and experience and we think that look maybe you I mean any editor would say that in India any professional editor that if yogendra is saying this yogendra is traveling with his with his colleagues they are smart people they are saying this they must be more to it than politics because reputational risk is shared by everybody so uh so but that's part of growing up you know yra one thing that this has also done your success at this this is if I may say so we have a common vested interest in this because we are more or less contemporaries uh we are about the same age and we've been at the same thing for a long time very often arguing disagreeing and also publishing disagreements with each other right that's a spirit of debate uh but having said that this a common benefit to us is that we can now say that we can see some some benefit in experience otherwise people think experience Decades of experience means you are F [Laughter] duddies I've always wondered that as journalist as journalist when we travel people don't easily come and tell you this is my cast I will vote for so and so or I voted for so and so it's a skill it takes your time to do that and I I Marvel at uh pollsters who say that I conducted so many lacks of polls and I knocked at people's doors and they told me the truth about who they are what their cost is what their income is and who they voted for so uh so that is where I think the touchy Fey uh aspect of Journalism in my case and in your case in your case academic rigor I think that comes in and that that gets better with experience and that is what you you've proved this time so I think you've struck a blow for all the rest of us Buddhas as well on a lighter note Shea you see what happens to me these days is something like this someone would walk to me uh who has uh who's clearly has very little hair left so clearly someone at least in his 50 and who says please don't say that so that's about experience but on a more serious note I think uh you know I I I I I say this to my colleagues that look there are two kinds of doctors there are new kind of doctors and they are oldfashioned doctors the new style doctors look at your report look at this thing and so on and start writing prescription they're not even looking at you they don't touch you they've started writing a prescription and the old style doctor the kind of doctors I prefer they would sit you down they would look at your they would check your pulse they would do this they would ask you about what's been you know happening Etc and then look at the reports so while I have done this report business for the last 35 years that is to say doing polls and so on and so forth but as you would know whenever I conducted a poll I always hit the street as well absolutely go around ask Ordinary People and come back and tell my colleagues please don't look just at the table don't do just regressions please speak to Ordinary People and then come back and look at regressions and cross steps and that has stayed with me I simply cannot for example this time I travel but Delhi the city where I live where I'm sitting I had not spoken to uh even 50 people and therefore I kept M about Delhi I said I live in Delhi City but I have actually very little understanding of Delhi City because I not spoken to Ordinary People but the idea of just speaking to very ordinary people in their ordinary context a it's enlightening B I've also found Shaker this is for me almost a therapeutic thing uh in the middle of March I was very depressed elections had been called everyone said Charo part and for me it was an emotional ethical question I didn't want this to happen in my country anymore uh and that is what Drew to me drew me to this I mean I've said again and again I I had honestly no interest interest in syy I do not intend to do it anymore I did not want to do it I said goodbye to it in 2012 but when I saw this being misused and presenting a picture which I thought I knew to be false then it was my duty to go out and speak uh which is what I did uh and uh uh unlad it uh it was not an incorrect picture it at least brought people back and my suggestion to have and then the ennobling part you know when I actually traveled and spoke to very Ordinary People I came back not just wiser but I also came back more assured all right democracy has life in this country Ordinary People are wise public even those who are voting for BP would say those who are voting for BJP would say that so that gives me sense of assurance and that's one thing I've done and that's the only thing from my tazba I can recommend both of us now are very T people so we can recommend it hit the street go to the road speak to Ordinary People and that's how like you I also feel more reassured with a doctor who pokes me in my belly uses a stethoscope although people say it doesn't matter so much or or or or or feels my liver and feels your pulse right uh absolutely Al these days as you said there's a modern School doctor looks at your report starts explaining your your diagnosis and treatment and the patient starts Googling uh side effects right uh so the touchy feing side is side to this is what we spoke about and what you did now in conclusion we have to let you go but in conclusion since you use the example of doctors and then you talk theology do you think just as in medicine a lot of faith healing uh Google medicine uh and and and and quackery is coming do you would you say that some quackery is coming to siology as well because siology is a science and very challenging science yeah uh you know sha the easiest thing in the world is to kick someone who's down and it's one of the worst things to do so I saw a bit of that happening on television today I just play dis uh I have G polls and I have got polls wrong as well and I know ABS absolutely and what it feels to get it wrong you know uh uh and the trouble as you say in India no one stops before questioning your motives criticism that's the nature of our public discourse so I wouldn't do that uh yes I would simply raise two or three professional questions you know what has happened is that while the polling industry has EXP spend it maybe 100 times in the last 10 15 years uh Professional Standards have not kept up with it uh what we need is just two or three things number one just transparency and Shea you are senior enough and probably you know you have waited to be able to exert these things can all the editors simply say I shall not publish an opinion po until you give me a methodology note that spells out your sampling technique your sample size the profile of your sample in terms of age gender Class cast I will not publish any poll that does not disclose this number one number two if there is a conflict of interest which is to say if I'm running a polling agency which is principally working for the Congress or for the BJP it should be made known to the public this cannot be hidden uh and uh number three everyone who does this uh should be able to put the data in a repository where it can be checked 10 years from now 5 years from now so that fakery is abolished uh I do not think the polls that went wrong today were fake uh remember pradep gupta's record has been quite good he does not do fake Fs in fact 6 65% is said which is very good uh it's I mean to my memory it's actually better than 65% his record has been good he got some un I me harana last time was Nightmare for a theologist he got it right today is the day to remember all these things uh you see it's just that I need more transparency better disclosures and the one thing that I found odd Sher I should put it on record that almost every poll said the same thing day before yesterday which is very very OD opinion polls tend to differ that's the whole point of having multip opinion folks how come everyone was saying the same thing and how come some of them stretch their figures to 401 45 yugra I think you and I will now discuss this further over a drink which will be a glass each or maybe a couple of glasses of mat orad large parts of the country because the because the real trick is getting pulling data is one thing converting into seats is the craft and the science and the Art of siology and it's very inexact and it's very risky so we'll talk about that at leure once this action pack day is over thank you very much once again thank you thank you for giving the platform the differences also show pardon me H I said thanks for giving me the platform form thanks for accepting my differences thanks for allowing me to write allow you to write that on their own platform so viewers will will share that article with you and you know you know differences actually enhance mutual respect differences should never undermine mutual respect so thank you for being there thank you thank you [Music]

Channel: ThePrint

Views: 195,439

Keywords: theprint, shekhar gupta, ThePrint, ThePrint news, ThePrint videos, ThePrint Hindi

Id: MDH3tiiAki0

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024