TimesNow May Collapse Under ‘Arnab’ IMPACT

Update (August 12): This was originally posted on February 18, 2011. I thought sending a new QBox to Arnab to Impact the fall of Narendra Modi might help. Order placed. When the TimesNow kicking and screaming is over we will have elections soon.

Rarely a night passes without Arnab Goswami telling us how many questions he would ask. On the night of February 16, the day MMS finally broke his ‘silence’ and spoke to TV editors, Arnab gave us some interesting statistics. There were 16 editors and a total of 20 questions were asked. That is hardly a scenario that Arnab would have liked. I must mention though that it was extremely insensitive and discourteous of Harish Khare to have interrupted Arnab and tell him it was not an ‘interrogation of the PM’ and to show some ‘courtesy’. In this case it was Harish Khare who was being a jerk. After all wasn’t Harish Khare a part of the Times Group earlier? After wrongly snubbing Arnab he allowed Prannoy Roy to not only make a long-winded statement but wrap 2 or 3 questions into one to the PM. Well, Prannoy is from NDTV so that probably goes well with Harish Khare. But this is about Arnab Goswami.

For a start, let me state clearly that Arnab is not as despicable as some of his peers from other channels. He just believes he has to set a record for the number of questions and then let Times Now outrageously claim that it has ‘impacted’ all the outcomes.

TimesNow Impact: Kalmadi sacked. TimesNow Impact: Darbari suspended. TimesNow Impact: Lalli (of Prasar Bharati) suspended. TimesNow Impact: Antrix chairman to go? TimesNow Impact: SMS fraud. TimesNow Impact: Sports minister acts for national swimmers. TimesNow Impact: Isro Deal cancelled. TimesNow Impact: Hosni Mubarak resigns. Oops! The last one was a tweet from somewhere. The other channels are just cheats who are repeating the ‘Impact’ claims of TimesNow. 

So if TimesNow alone can Impact so many outcomes I have started to wonder whether we really need a CAG or CVC or PAC or JPC. Such is the power of Arnab Goswami’s constant questioning. Exactly a year ago Arnab had just about asked 702,855 questions on TimesNow according to highly reliable sources from Fakingnews. Since that report, the Guinness Book of Records organisation has been keeping a watch on Arnab and have now reported that Arnab has set a world record of 1,000,000 questions. The most ever by any TV host or journalist in the world. Watch out for the ‘Breaking News’ about the Guinness Certificate on ‘Your channel’.

The 20Q Gadget specially made for Arnab by Firebox.Com

 The current information on TimesNow’s new strategy is that they are now planning to take the number one spot in ‘Breaking News’ ahead of India’s most loved and respected channel ‘IndiaTV’. And the trick is to keep asking more questions that have no answers and all silly answers can then become ‘Breaking News’. Take that Rajat Sharma! But in all fairness since TimesNow keeps telling me that it is ‘Your channel’ I have decided to help them in asking more silly questions that have no answers. I have sent a special 20Questions Machine to Arnab Goswami that might just deliver one answer on being asked those 20Questions. This is a gadget specially designed for Arnab Goswami who can’t seem to get answers despite so many questions.

I have only one fear. With the chances of the number of questions exponentially growing because of the gadget their ‘Impact’ would also be phenomenal. And I wonder if TimesNow itself will collapse under the Impact of Arnab’s questions. Wouldn’t that be nice?

PM's Press Meet - 'Friendly Fire'

Here are two tweets from Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today. He sounds upset in both. This is following the very private meeting the Prime Minister had with five editors from the print media.

Rahul Kanwal:

“Since you don't like message, shoot messenger! Wonder if that's new media strategy of govt. Even sympathisers seem to (be) turning against UPA”

“Boy Cong incredibly angry with media. 1st PM attacks press, then spokespersons launch scathing attack on air. Case of shooting d messenger?”

I believe it’s very unfair to call it a ‘press meet’. It looked like a luncheon meet of the ‘mob’ for a friendly discussion on the state of affairs of their turf. It’s strange you would think. A Prime Minister holds a press meet with five select editors from the print media and then needs to be defended by his own spokespersons. That is precisely what Manish Tiwari and Ambika Soni were doing on  June 29.

Some of the firm assertions of Manmohan Singh at this meet were “I am not a lame duck PM” and the media is an “accuser, prosecutor and judge”. I agree with the media part though. That is their general approach to all issues. Other than that, the PM generally blamed the opposition for the lame duck tag. These statements were made when most of the ‘chosen’ editors were ones who are known to be friendly to the Congress.

It is also strange that the PMO has decided MMS will now meet the media every week. This is in stark contrast to months of silence and is clearly an excess. I wonder who devised this strategy, the PM himself or his media advisor Harish Khare. Nobody wants the PM to meet the press every week. Every week would not only be an over-kill but just as boring. And how do they pick the editors for the meeting? Do they draw lots? Do they go by circulation or viewership? Do they go by friendliness of the media outlet? And in this day and age a closed-door meeting? Because MMS is camera-shy? Weird reasoning!

If I were one of the five editors chosen for this particular meet I would have declined. In any other sensible country the PMO would have journalists who are accredited by his office for regular meetings, like the White House has. It would have been appropriate for the PM to meet those journalists all together. After all, those journalists do get to travel with him on Air India One on his official travels.

After the press meet Kumar Ketkar of Divya Marathi and Alok Mehta of Nai Duniya were almost the spokespersons for the PM themselves. They were disseminating the utterances of MMS to the rest of the media. So the rest of the media was delivering what I would term as second-hand news. Is this what the PM wants this country’s media to be? Dealing in second-hand news? And then analyse second-hand news for the vast population?

An edition of Divya Marathi was recently launched by none other than P. Chidambaram. This is the Dainik Bhaskar group. The Divya Bhaskar edition in Gujarat is a severely anti-Modi newspaper. Then there is Nai Duniya’s Alok Mehta. This newspaper is circulated in parts of MP and published from Indore. Then there is Business Standard’s T.N. Ninnan which, of course, is a business paper as its name suggests with limited circulation. There is Raj Chengappa from the Tribune. The PM is a great fan of the Tribune himself.

So Rahul Kanwal has his own fraternity to blame for the nonsense that was the press meet. The PMO cannot and should not pick and choose journalists that it wants to meet. The five wise men who met the PM should have declined and asked that the PM meet all the journalists accredited by the PMO. Lame ducks shouldn’t get to choose their crutches.

Here’s another thing. When the PM meets a bunch of five journalists next time, would the issues remain the same? Would the questions remain the same? So each time the select journalists would get to address or hear the PM on a different set of questions and issues. By itself there is nothing wrong in that. But the very crooked idea of limiting the meet to five journalists is to restrict the agenda, the questions and the issues.

So Rahul Kanwal’s lament, while justified, should only reflect on the media itself. The media which normally acts like a mafia union should not accept press meets that pick journalists at the whims of the PMO for an audience. The first bunch of journalists who met the PM were from friendly media outlets. The media first willingly allows its own manipulation and then cries foul. The drama can only be called ‘friendly fire’!

As for the Congress, in keeping with its devious policies, it might as well run a ‘Malamal Weekly’ lottery to pick the winners from the media who will get to meet the PM in future.

Barkha Dutt: Domestic Concerns Are ‘Distractions’

Barkha Dutt feels left out  in the cold. So she writes a piece called ‘When the iron’s cold’ in the Hindustan Times. HT is nearly the mouthpiece of the Congress that hosts people like Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi, Vinod Sharma and, of course, Shobana Bhartiya herself, the Congress MP. 

 Of all the questions that were asked or weren’t asked at the PM’s meet with TV editors she feels “there wasn’t a single question about Pakistan”. Oh yeah? Well, first of all this was a meet with all the TV ‘Editors’ so one has to wonder why Barkha Dutt wasn’t there. Hmmm, that would be like the tainted questioning the tainted, wouldn’t it? And the reason for the missing questions on Pakistan? Well, we are ‘distracted’ by domestic issues! Distracted? Yes, that’s what Barkha Dutt feels about national issues, a distraction where Pakistan is concerned.

NDTV sent in her boss, Prannoy Roy who is not an Editor in the working sense of it. Why didn’t she tutor Prannoy to talk about Pakistan? All that the NDTV boss managed to do at the Press Meet was to deliver a long-winded sermon on ‘incumbency’ and asked if MMS would be a candidate for PM again 2014. That’s how concerned Prannoy was for the nation. In the only chance that he got instead of asking some real and relevant question, you can trust NDTV to ask some silly hypothetical question in the face of burning issues of the day.

And Barkha thinks the absence of questions about ‘Pakistan’ is because of disinterest. First nobody, nobody in the public gives a damn about ‘Pakistan’! The only ones who give a damn and suck up to all kinds of ministers and politicians indulging in the ‘peace’ charade are members of the media. There’s the TOI with Aman Ki Asha and there is Barkha’s obsession with Pakistan. Or should I say media’s obsession with Pakistan. But most of all the suggestion that we are ‘distracted’ by domestic issues and therefore overlooked Pakistan can only come from a very narcissistic view that it was somehow an issue only ‘I could think of and none of those idiots at the press meet’ bothered to think of.  

I, for one, strongly believe Pakistan is the 'Sewer of South Asia' and doesn't merit even the attention our media bestows it. And yes, we can also do without the likes of Rahet Ali Khan, Veena Malik or Adnan Sami. We have an abundance of talent in India, but it's the media that wants these stupid Pakis. Around the time of the PM's press meet guess who Barkha was interviewing? Yes, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, and the topic? You guessed it - Pakistan!

Corruption, Black Money, Scams, Tainted judiciary, Corrupt media, near collapse of governance – if all these are ‘domestic distractions’ then the lady seriously needs some help. So, for the benefit of Barkha Dutt I have put up a self-help Narc-chart. Analyze That!

India Undone

I am an admirer of Gurcharan Das’ writings. A marketing expert, a good journalist and an insightful writer. Sometime around 2000 I read his wonderful book ‘India Unbound’ about India’s journey from political independence in 1947 to economic liberation in 1991. The book was written nine years after the economic reforms were started by the Narasimha Rao government. Of course, the Congress and the media have connived to deprive Rao of any credit and continue to tout current PM Manmohan Singh as the architect of reforms. This lie continues to be perpetrated by the media. Gurcharan Das’ book is quite a must read to understand how people of an entrepreneurial nation were shackled by communist tendencies and the licence Raj. The book is a journey of frustration, hope, inspiration and aspirations of a nation. Indians were just about turning the corner.

India Unbound

If one goes back to 1991 it was just about the time when new TV channels, newspapers and magazines started coming into the market, followed by the internet and dot com boom. Coke and Pepsi were back. Star TV, Zee TV were among the first to hog your TV. Since then we now have well over 300 channels, national, regional and local. Even the local cablewallahs ran their own channels. These are just a few examples. Hope floated for millions. IT industry opened up the global age for Indians and talk of India becoming a super-power was being touted. A few years prior to 1991 the Telecom revolution was the first to touch the lives of Indians in every corner of the country. That was a singularly great accomplishment.

Twenty years since the reforms began it now seems that the reforms haven’t dynamically changed lives for most of our common men, women and children. It is hard not to deny that the reforms have led to nothing but crony capitalism. Population explosion, farmer suicides, stock market scams and corruption are the items that make the most headlines. If not these, then it’s the obsession with Cricket and Bollywood though these aren’t harmful in anyway.

The new century is dominated by two significant traits – the sacrifice of ethics and a culture of greed. We have people in politics, business and the media who constantly claim to love India and yet do everything that is anti-Indian. The PM, the leader of the nation, is seen as a wimp who will tolerate anything to merely survive in office. We have an extra-constitutional office called ‘Chairperson of the UPA’ with enormous powers and absolutely no constitutional responsibility.  In the face of dying farmers we have had campaigns like ‘India Shining’ and now in the face of unprecedented corruption we are still running  ‘Incredible India’. The single biggest debilitating crime has to be corruption. Corruption eats away a nation, destroys patriotism, breeds terrorism and destroys the security and defence of the country. And there are media-men like Raghav Bahl who talk of ‘Superpower’ as do many others. 

The media, like Rajdeep Sardesai stated before, is under an illusion that people crave only for sensationalism, cricket and bollywood. A crumbling, deceitful and power-brokering media are sure indications of a banana republic. The number of journals or TV channels owned by politicians is on the rise, particularly in the south. Communist-style propaganda is what our media practices. And to top it all people like Rajdeep Sardesai even blame ordinary people for all the corruption.

I am reminded of a famous scene from the movie ‘The American President’, where in a crisis situation an aide tells the president how people ‘drink sand’:

Presidential aide Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism. They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

The President (Michael Douglas): Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

That’s right, a majority of Indian people don’t know the difference Mr. Sardesai and Mr. PM. If they are constantly fed a diet of scams, masala news, false promises and a blatant disregard for the law, they will be tempted to get used to it and drink the sand. Not because it quenches their thirst, but because people in the public domain have fed them nothing else.

Some statistics are daunting. Unemployment has grown from around 6% in 1995 to around 9% in 2010 in the employable workforce. From a ranking of 66/85 in the Corruption Perception Index in 1998, India is now ranked 87/178 countries in 2010. Constantly talking about the GDP growth rate or the boom in the stock markets is the kind of ‘sand in your face’ that hides everything else. Corruption has become the staple diet of all major players in the public domain. There is nowhere for the common man to turn to. This fallen complaint box says it much better than words can.

At this current state of the nation the most important reform required is not in the economic domain. It is our justice system. A revolution is required to modernise and reform our justice system and courts. Freedom and liberty mean nothing when the judiciary has crumbled. The media and those in public life should be clamouring, campaigning and shouting from the rooftops for urgent reform and modernisation of our courts and justice system. This should be the highest priority for the government.

We will now have over a month of Cricket to put everything else on a back burner. You can rest assured our media will faithfully splurge on the big bucks of Cricket. It could also well be a much desired respite for the UPA government from all the scam and corruption charges. And at the end of the tournament we can get back to where we were. It may not be long before Gurcharan Das is forced to write a sequel to his book I referred earlier. 

This time I have chosen the title for him – ‘India Undone’!

                                                                                                                                                                    

The PM’s Con-furtherance

The meet apparently started with Eid greetings. I could only laugh. This may be a different Eid, but it may be fair to call the PM an ‘Eid Ka Chand’ where his press meets or addresses to the nation are concerned. Harish Khare, the PM’s media advisor, welcomed the TV editors as “masters of the universe” and allotted ‘one question to everyone’! Take that for rationing. So effectively, once in a few years a media editor will get to ask the PM one question. Yes, we are a 'functioning democracy'!

After some mild praise for the media for taking the scam reports to people the PM mentioned that it’s a disservice to project the country as ‘scam-driven’. The PM can rest safely assured that the media hasn’t taken all the scams to the people. They themselves may be involved in many. Now why in the world would anyone get the impression that India is ‘scam-driven’? Are the ordinary people to blame? Is the media to blame? Singularly, the UPA has bestowed this inglorious reputation to India and it will be difficult to remove that tag very soon.

This video on Youtube and doing the rounds in emails is a 'scammy-image' of India that the UPA can claim much of the credit for. 

Manmohan Singh did not nothing more than refer to the enormous scams as ‘irregularities’ and offer the same worn out defences that his party and UPA have been offering all these months. Far from addressing issues of corruption his own Congress morons were busy raking up all issues of Hindu terror in their own plenary session and at every public meeting.

It is a sad comment on the state of the nation that corruption has taken such a front seat in the discussion ring. If we were free of the major scams we would have been talking about the non-performance of people like Sharad Pawar, Kamal Nath, the loot of the Aviation industry and so much more. And what do you know? If you were a TV editor given one important question to ask you would ask the PM about cricket! That’s right. Ask him about his favourite cricketer and India’s prospects at the ICC world cup.

Sometime back the Congress clown prince, Rahul Gandhi, blamed coalition politics for corruption and inflation. Now you’ve heard it from the PM himself. That coalition dharma requires comprises. Why didn’t we know that? That compromises really mean corruption and loot of the nation?  And if you were looking to really hear anything from the PM – all you got was ‘Raja said..and Isro said..’.  He said, she said and they said...and I still say nothing new.

The journalists had questions on Egypt, Telengana but nothing about defence or security issues and hardly much on black money. Only recently we had Pakistan asking for information on Samjhauta blasts etc. when that country is yet to act on anything. Our media had no questions on that at all. And, of course, you can expect Prannoy Roy to soften the blows for the PM. He asks the PM about next elections and anti-incumbency and whether he will still be a PM candidate in 2014. I guess it will take NDTV a long time to come back to the realities of today. After all didn’t they just conclude another sham award ceremony for entertainers and one politician?

The most significant thing that the PM said, according to me, was that “this time the corrupt won’t get away” ! Well, at least that is a clear admission that so far the corrupt have gotten away. Other than that, Manmohan Singh increasingly comes across as nothing more than a blundering, muttering babu. He should honourably quit and spare this nation any more embarrassment.

And if all that is not enough, you then have  Manish Tiwari telling the world that instead of appreciating the PM inviting the media and talking to them, the media and opposition are criticising him. Yeah and “India is a functioning democracy” according to the PM. Maybe in your next life. With journalists not allowed to press the PM further and limiting the questions this wasn’t a press conference. More like a Con-furtherance on behalf of the Con-gress party.