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Aman
On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:11:27 +0000 BIHARTODAY@googlegroups.com wrote
Media's favourite pastime: Targeting political executives, condoning permanent executives
by Soroor Ahmed
What is common among Chandan Mitra, Khushwant Singh, Kuldip Nayyar, Arun Shourie, Pritish Nandy, M J Akbar, Balbir Punj, Rajeev Shukla etc. They all boast that they are journalists––and, no doubt, they are reputed names in this field. But they all have the distinction of doubling as politicians as well and served as members of Parliament at different points of time. Given the chance some of these men may once again want to enter either of the two Houses. But they are not the only ones. There is a long list of professional journalists yearning to enter the Indian Parliament. Incidentally barring M J Akbar, all those named above are the members of the Upper House, that is, Rajya Sabha. Thus they are not the direct representatives of the people. Not surprisingly, most of these gentlemen or even women are these days eager to jump to the BJP bandwagon to make the entry.
If they do not get the opportunity to enter either of the two Houses some of these gentlemen want to serve the political bigwigs in different ways, such as, media advisor to the Prime Minister. At much lesser level they want to work with other Union ministers or even the chief ministers.
Former editor of the Indian Express Suman Dubey, resigned from his post to serve late Prime Rajiv Gandhi in mid-1980s. Very few people know where is he now. Veteran columnist Bhabani Sengupta worked under the then Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral only to quit later. H K Dua, who was the editor of the Hindustan Times too worked as the advisor to a former Prime Minister. Later he became the editor of The Tribune. Columnist and another former editor of the Hindustran Times, also served one of the Prime Ministers. Former edit page editor of the Times of India, Sanjay Baru, was till recently the media advisor of Manmohan Singh. The list is too long to be mentioned here.
Yet this tribe of the pen-pushers are among the first to criticize the politicians or political class of the country as such whenever any crisis takes place. It is not that the politicians of the country are paragons of virtue. They are the source of almost all sorts of trouble plaguing the country today. Be it terrorism, rampant corruption, casteism, communalization of the society etc politicians have their own quota of contribution.
But the problem with India is that unlike in the more matured democracy of the West here all the blames are put on the politicians and nobody else by this very set of people. So when the World Trade Centre and Pentagon were attacked none of the Secretaries in the Bush administration had to quit nor was there any such demand for it. Similarly none in the Tony Blair cabinet resigned after the terrorist attack in that country. In contrast in India several heads rolled after the Mumbai mayhem of November 26-29.
No doubt heads should roll and someone should take responsibility. Shivraj Patil's disappointing performance, Maharashtra government's repeated failure in not only checking terrorism but also the goondagardi of Bal and Raj Thackerays can never be condoned. His deputy R R Patil is known for all types of stupid statements. There is absolutely no one to shed tears on their exit.
But the big question is: is that enough. In India it seems that we all are contented with the resignation of just a couple of political executives. What about the permanent executives––the bureaucracy––which keep the entire system under their tight grip? Why were the people employed for country's security seldom being questioned? What were the Navy, Coast Guard, IB and RAW people doing?
After all Vilas Rao Deshmukh and Patils at least resigned. The Congress Party had at least set an example. But what about permanent executives? The political executives are punished by the people through the ballots and the time is not far away for that. But who will punish the permanent executives? Even the media people seldom question their failure.
The Congress Party had at least sent some of their political executives packing. What about other incidents of the past? Did Lal Krishna Advani quit when Parliament or Lal Quila was attacked or when a plane was hijacked to Kandhar? No there was not so much media pressure then even when his cabinet colleague, Jaswant Singh, flew to Kandhar with the released terrorists. A few months after the attack on Parliament Advani was elevated to the post of deputy Prime Minister.
Today the media is not only soft towards the permanent executives it is creating a unique type of situation. They virtually blacked out the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus massacre on November 26 night notwithstanding the fact that highest number of casualty took place there.
Another question. Why are the mediapeople painting the entire political class with one brush? Why a hate campaign has been launched against all of them? Take the example of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's visit to the house of the ATS chief, Hemant Karkare, after he was killed on the intervening night of November 26-27. Not only the widow refused to meet him, but turned down the offer of Rs one crore. This event was grossly under-reported by the the national Press.
In contrast the media repeatedly highlighted the news on how the chief minister of Kerala was turned out by the father of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan in Bangalore. Father's anger may be natural, but chief minister V S Achuthanandan' s lost his cool only when the media made it an issue. The chief minister should never have uttered what he said in retaliation. But the fact is that Achuthanandan' s visit was not a political one but just to condole the Major who was in fact born in Kerala. The media, by unnecessarily playing the whole story up, provoked the chief minister to utter something what he later apologized.
On the other hand Modi's visit to Karkare's widow was purely political yet largely ignored. He even offered Rs one crore to her, which she rejected. Till hours before his death Karkare was a traitor in the eyes of Modi and his company. Instead of pillorying Modi the media chose to single out Achuthanandan, whose integrity and uprightness can never be compared with the Gujarat chief minister. By painting the image of the entire political class, be it good or bad, the media is creating a hell lot of problem for the country. If not political executives then who should rule us. Army or permanent executives or a group of fascist. Or should there be anarchy all over the country? There should be no doubt in the mind of any one that the current lot of political executives ruling India has more good men and women than the permanent executives. If the people are angry they are just not angry with political executives but also with the permanent executives––the lot which think that there is nothing like accountability. The media must tell the truth.
Regards,
Yakut Sultan
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