Warning Belles

WHEN The Times of India Group, turned down an offer to bring the Miss World and Miss Universe contests to India, it couldn’t have made sounder business sense. Several months down the line, ABCL is learning just why the business of beauty has many ugly sides to it. "The need was to get active government participation and to sell India as a tourist destination irrespective of the fact that Bangalore was hosting the event. It doesn’t seem as though they managed that," opines Pradeep Guha, executive director, Bennett and Coleman. Government support was garnered but what nobody really expected was the littering of the landscape with protests, threats of immolations, burnt effigies and parallel pageants. Now with the possibility of dwindling profits, patience has begun wearing thin.

In the beginning, business had taken a backseat. "We’re not really looking at it (the pageant) as a commercial venture. We want to bring in an international event and use it as a window to the world. It is an opportunity to tell the world that India is not just fakirs and snake charmers," Amitabh Bachchan had told Outlook in end-August after announcing Bangalore as the venue for Miss World 1996. Ditto Sanjeev Gupta, CEO, ABCL: "We’re not here for the money. It is the mileage that will accrue to ABCL for organising a major event such as this is what is significant."

 But going by the kind of mileage the pageant is getting from the daily protests in Bangalore and other parts of Karnataka and India, the CEO of the Rs 70-crore ‘media conglomerate’ could well be eating his words. As for the world outside India, scepticism seems to have crept in among a section of participants following the threats to the event. Last fortnight, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha’s (KRRS) rabid president, Prof. M.D. Nanjundaswamy, gave a call to burn Chinnaswamy Stadium—the venue for the pageant final—to stop the event. And the Reuters news agency office in London was flooded with calls from participants all over Europe: "Is it safe to go to Bangalore?"

 ABCL was confident Bangalore was indeed safe, especially after Karnataka Chief Minister J.H. Patel repeatedly went out of his way to promise that all protection would be provided to the pageant. But consequent to this, the Minister of State for Home, Roshan Baig, announced a few days back, that Karnataka would charge ABCL Rs 10 lakh a day to provide security for the 15 days the pageant would be in Bangalore. "We’ll not provide them security if they don’t pay up," Baig told Outlook in response to a statement by ABCL’s general manager Manohar Arcot that they would not pay Karnataka anything. "It is nothing unprecedented. The police, for instance, charge a cinema hall for posting a constable to maintain law and order," Baig said. According to him, the Karnataka Police would provide security for the contestants in Bangalore, escorts during their trips outside the city, and at the stadium. "If they can’t pay and want to make their own security arrangements from Bombay, it’s fine by us," the minister added. Strangely enough, a highly placed official of ABCL, said the group had not received any communication directly from the government. "All the figures quoted in the press seem to be inflated. We have not had any discussion about the kind or the size of the security going to be deployed. So how can the Rs 10 lakh figure be arrived at?"

Meanwhile, other regions of the country have added fuel to the fire. As Manohar Arcot addressed the press in Mumbai, ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) activists stormed the corporation office at Juhu, Mumbai. Chandrakant Waghmare, ABVP secretary, Mumbai contends: "The very fact that the organisers have decided not to hold the swimming-costume round in India is evidence of the growing popularity of the movement." At Delhi, Shiv Sena spouted the prescribed spiel on the debasement of Indian womanhood.

Back in Bangalore, plans are afoot to host a parallel pageant to coincide with the finals of the contest. "When the 90-odd contestants will parade their bodies on November 23, we will donate sarees to the have-nots," threatened advocate and BJP MLA Pramila Nesargi. For over a month now, Bangalore has been the headquarters of dozens of protests against the holding of the pageant. Left and Right wing students organisations, women’s organisations as well as cultural bodies have gone to town holding demonstrations, staging marches and sit-ins and burning effigies of Amitabh Bachchan and J.H. Patel to stop the event. While Bangalore’s BJP MP Anant Kumar joined hands with Nanjundaswamy last week to become a part of the newly formed ‘Forum of Miss World Opponents’, a host of eminent personalities came together to lambast the pageant. And the list is long and weighty: former Supreme Court chief justices M.N. Venkata-chalaiah and E.S.Venkataramaiah; Ramon Magsaysay Award winners, stage personality K.V. Subbanna and supercop Kiran Bedi; former justices V.R. Krishna Iyer and N. Srinivasa Rao; pontiff of the Dharmasthala temple Veerendra Heggade, head seer of the Pejawar Mutt, and several prominent Kannada writers. Jumping on to the bandwagon are CEOs of the Hosur Road Action Group who plan to protest during the pageant to draw the attention of the world media to the pathetic condition of the road leading to their industries. What has further incensed the CEOs is that the Karnataka government has released Rs 5 crore to the Bangalore City Corporation to beautify the city for the pageant.

ON its part, ABCL refuses to join issue, referring instead to a Times-MODE survey, an IIM study and the fact that the proceeds from the pageant would go towards the Bangalore Spastics Society. Critics have shot down the claims on the basis that the student survey had a mass base of 450 respondents and the Spastics Society would only benefit from the proceeds of the charity ball.

Furthermore, the corporation takes refuge behind a verdict of the Karnataka High Court delivered last month in response to a public interest petition to stop the pageant. Says Arcot: "When the courts have dismissed the petition, we have nothing more to add." The petition was filed by the Karnataka Mahila Jaga-ran—whose president K.N. Shashikala had threatened to immolate herself along with 15 others in protest—and the court dismissed it as not maintainable.

Undeterred by the verdict, Nesargi—who first objected to the pageant in the state assembly a day after it was announced—plans to file an appeal before a bench of the high court on October 23 after the court resumes following a vacation. Says Nesargi: "I shall attach the comments of former justices who have spoken against the pageant to convince the bench."

Though clearly outnumbered by the opponents, the pageant does have a band of prominent personalities ardently supporting it. The state’s spirited chief minister does not lose any opportunity to come to the rescue of the pageant. "Nobody is forcing these opponents to watch the event. Those who appreciate beauty are free to go and watch it. Some of these prominent opponents are old people with failing eyesight," Patel said to the outrage of the pageant’s opponents. Adds Leeladevi R. Prasad, Patel’s minister of state for Kannada, Culture and Tourism: "The pageant is not a nude parade. If people have a dirty mind everything appears vulgar. It is natural to take a second look at a beautiful flower or a charming girl." Adds Bangalore-based dancer Vani Ganapathy, a former Miss India: "I have been a beauty queen myself and don’t find anything demeaning in it. Indian women are intellectuals and the world will realise this, as the pageant is not just a beauty contest." Former Bolly-wood queen Waheeda Rahman, now settled in Bangalore, wrote to a local daily questioning the credentials of the pageant’s opponents and their service to other feminist causes.

Not surprisingly, Arcot admits that ABCL seriously considered shifting the venue from Bangalore. Says he: "As a business organisation and in the interest of the business, we had to look at all options." While ABCL considered Delhi as an alternative to Bangalore, the chief minister of Goa extended a blanket invitation to move the event to the coastal state. New waters are being tested abroad too—that might claim its own share of casualties. A tentative stand has already been taken by main sponsors Godrej. Says Tanya Godrej, director, Godrej Soaps: "We have no commitment for the 1997 pageant, but I’m not so sure we would be interested if the event is held abroad next year. This is because Godrej is essentially a large diversified Indian company." In an effort to cool frayed tempers, ABCL has shifted the swimsuit contest of the pageant to Seychelles in the Indian Ocean while it is still considering an invitation from Dubai to hold the Miss Personality contest there. And a month before the pageant finals, ABCL has already decided the venue for Miss World 1997: noncontroversial Seychelles. n