Late night on December 29 when Chandan Mitra was speaking in the Rajya
Sabha he was interrupted quite a number of times. He couldn’t finish his say
and was cut off by the Chairman of the house. Following which Kripal Yadav
talked for quite a while. And when SoreThroat Narayanasamy started his
prolonged reply it was pretty clear to observers where events were heading. The
drama that followed was predicted by some TV news channels and they were in the
know. A couple of minutes past midnight when Hamid Ansari got up from his chair
it was clear he was about to adjourn the house. Since that act he has been defending
his action in the media, even stating he “was helpless as govt wanted house adjourned”. Doesn’t matter! One way or other
the government’s Lokpal Bill didn’t deserve to be passed for many reasons. What
happened is just power triumphing conscience and justice. It is
usually a situation that comes about when there is absence of leadership.
Leadership? We’ll get to that a bit later.
On the morning or afternoon of December 30, Barkha Dutt had even
hurriedly recorded another debate on the lines of her ‘We The Poodles’ to
discuss the drama in the Rajya Sabha. Yes, the general idea with such useless
debates is ‘make brownies while darkness abounds’. And Rajdeep Sardesai and
Arnab Goswami were well into their panel debates too. Political parties will
blame each other but why should news channels indulge in blame games?
Especially when all these three channels claimed to have known RS would be
disrupted in a pre-planned drama? So instead of lambasting the govt for cheap
games our news keepers were busy finding ways to confuse viewers. It’s their
job! They’re paid for it!
While the Congress keeps complaining about the media they’re actually
deluded because this is the most govt-friendly media anywhere in any democracy
in the world. A few days ago they were busy tarnishing Anna Hazare, the main
cause of all this Lokpal drama in parliament. If P. Chidambaram attempted to
spread the lie that the opposition wanted 187 amendments, the media should have
pointed out that many of these were by the govt allies and not opposition. And
in propaganda for the govt reaches heights that can give you vertigo the media,
although claiming prior knowledge of the choreographed drama, turned it all
into ‘theatre’ instead of putting the govt on the mat. It is indeed dangerous
to have a media that has its sympathies firmly with the govt.
Let’s take another program that aired on NDTV late night on December 31:
NDTV Special; 2011 People Power (Video). This was Prannoy Roy with his guests
N.R. Narayanamurthy, Shekhar Gupta and Arvind Kejriwal. The topic? Lokpal and
the fight against corruption! If you watch the video closely it’s the three
wise men sermonising Kejriwal on tempering the IAC’s movement against
corruption. Some lines are interesting to say the least:
Prannoy Roy ( @ 9.40) Shekhar Gupta – Perhaps the most respected journalist in India today and hard hitting.. and
Arvind Kejriwal – ‘the brain beind Anna’ and personally, I have the greatest
respect for him.
Right, the same Shekhar Gupta who has more or less been a mouthpiece
for the govt. and dealing dirt against Kiran Bedi through his newspaper
(perhaps fed by the govt itself) and the very same Shekhar Gupta whose newspaper
has called the Team Anna “fascists and anarchists”. The very same Shekhar Gupta
who quotes fake twitter accounts in his editorials in a losing newspaper – the
most respected journalist in India today.
Shekhar Gupta (@ 22.00): The Radia tapes had been a big reality check for
all of us..now some of us got caught..Only 5 journalists got caught in
different degrees of indiscretion…It was also a source of a satisfaction for
many of us who were on the phone with her all the time..but she was calling
hundreds of journalists...only five journalists got caught in varying degrees of
indiscretion..3 of the 5 could not be accused of any quid pro quo..but
at least a hundred were honest..
Prannoy Roy (Interrupting Gupta @22.28): And then media was unfair in
tarring them with the same brush…
Once again, you have Shekhar Gupta dismissing the conduct of Radiagate
participants as ‘indiscretion’. Well, that’s what lack of leadership and
clinging to power does to everyone. Not one corrupt media celeb involved in Radiagate
has been fired. Where does this inspiration to retain corrupt people come from?
Then you have the venerable
Narayanamurthy sermonising Kejriwal on the good, bad and evil and what
statements are right or wrong. Gupta goes on to say “three of the five could
not be accused of any quid pro quo”. Oh yeah, which are those three and which
are the others? And since when is every quid pro quo written out in cheques?
The tone and language used by journalists to defend wrong doings is not very
different from politicians and the govt. When the media is busy defending its
own wrong doings it gives abundant ammunition to corrupt politicians to whack
them with. If the govt has possibly fed the media with dirt on Kiran Bedi and
others you can imagine how much dirt they must have in the closet against the
media.
As for Narayanamurthy who gently chastised Kejriwal, this little buzz
by Nora Chopra in The Sunday Guardian sounds interesting: “Anna Hazare was not
the first choice of Arvind Kejriwal and company as the man to lead the
anti-corruption movement. They had approached former President A.P.J. Abdul
Kalam and when he refused, N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys fame. It was after
Murthy refused to accept the offer, they approached Hazare”. So, this little
blast tells us that it is easier for celebs and anchors to poke holes into the Anna movement than it
is to actually lead the movement against corruption. It is right for former
president Kalam to not get involved in agitations but I have to wonder what
stopped Narayanamurthy.
Men and women in power do not always act according to their conscience. If that were to happen, at least some in the media and political class would be fighting corruption. The media would have been so militant like in criticising the govt. that it would have, at the very least, prosecuted and punished the corrupt quickly instead of dragging its feet. None exemplifies this malaise of defending the corrupt more than our prime minister. Which is the reason his speeches, made with an inborn lack of oratory, do not inspire anyone. The excerpts below (in random order) come from his latest New Year’s eve speech:
“First, there is the urgent challenge of eradicating poverty, hunger
and illiteracy and providing gainful employment to all. I call this the
challenge of Livelihood Security…. Elimination of corruption is critical to
support genuine entrepreneurship. It is also the demand of the ordinary citizen
who encounters corruption all too often in everyday transactions with those in
authority”. Garibi Hatao! Indeed! Forty years ago Indira Gandhi made it an
election slogan, her grandson is using the same slogan in his UP election
campaigns today and the PM uses it as a punchline in his speeches.
I want to assure you all on this New Year’s day that I personally will
work to provide an honest and more efficient government, a more productive,
competitive and robust economy and a more equitable and just social and
political order….
It will take an extraordinarily gullible person to believe what the PM
says. Certainly, his conduct in the Rajya Sabha doesn’t lend credibility.
Whoever thought clinging wives are a pain must only watch the corrupt in the
media and politics clinging on to their jobs with no moral justification. It was
quite apt for the irrepressible Ram Jethmalani to have reminded Abhishek
Singhvi and others during the drama in Rajya Sabha that “the amended proverb;
that power corrupts but the prospect of losing power corrupts absolutely”.
Naturally, power triumphs conscience!
