Category Archives: Media politics

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Images, Media politics, Right watch, Sex, Violence/Conflict

A Modest Proposal to End All Controversies on Freedom of Expression in India

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(apologies for cross posting on Commons Law and Reader List)

As we know well by now from the freedom loving sentiments (that are expressed loudly and frequently) by all sections of the guardians of social order in India, (that is Bharat, that is Hindustan), the real reason why certain insignificant documentary independent and student films, contemporary art exhibitions in university campuses and performances are banned, and their heinous perpetrators arrested has to do with the general populations right to sleep undisturbed each night and not to see anything other than cricket matches, news about cricket matches, election analyses, kaun banega crorepati, Abhishek Bacchan’s wedding, and yoga on TV.

Why should anyone in their right mind want to see, read, listen to or even think about anything else?

Consider the folly that some students in Kottayam have recently contemplated, making a film on of all things ‘Homosexuality’ .

Or, of the students in the Fine Arts Department of M.S.University in Baroda who went ahead and organized an exhibition of student work that contained offensive erotic imagery.

Both of these moves have been met with swift and timely responses. The offending students in Kerala have been expelled by the Christian educational institutition where they were enrolled, and the offending art student in Vadodara, one Chandramohanm has been arrested by the local police at the urging of Hindutva minded citizens.

There are only two things we need to learn from incidents of this nature. The first is as follows –

Actually, all that people need to do is to insist that only the self appointed guardians of public morality (of all stripes and shades) have the right to appear in any broadcast, exhibition, film or other forms of mediated communication. We need every channel to broadcast morally cleansed reality TV all the time. How else will this nation boldly venture where none other has gone before – into that heaven of bliss and freedom known as ennui for the billions.

Continue reading A Modest Proposal to End All Controversies on Freedom of Expression in India →

Media politics, Scams, Violence/Conflict

Vanzara’s Parable

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Economy of language, as we know, is vital in an era marked by the proliferation of too many words. So my plea is that we stop using the phrase ‘fake encounter’ because encounter will suffice. Fake encounters somehow seems to posit a difference between a real encounter (that’s the one in which the police go on an investigation and the assailants open fire and the police gun them down in self defense) and a fake one (that’s the one in which the police go on an investigation and the assailants open fire and the police gun them down in self defense). A difference, which has clearly escaped my comprehension. In India we have got used to accommodating words that don’t really serve a purpose, or where their meaning has been displaced, and they serve almost as empty pronouns. The names of shops like Zevar Jewelry, Chitra Pictures serve as good examples. Fake encounter is a good addition to the list. Continue reading Vanzara’s Parable →

Government, Law, Media politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Gujarat Fake Encounters: The Spin Doctoring has Begun

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The Gujarat Fake Encounter Story is rapidly being scripted along the familiar lines of the ‘Corrupt Policeman-Corrupt Politician-Underworld Links’ nexus. While this may be true, (and I do not doubt that Narendra Modi, who holds the ‘Home’ portfolio in Gujarat, must not be entirely un-involved in this matter) it would be unfortunate if the Gujarat ‘fake encounter killings’ , like ‘fake encounter’ stories in Kashmir, Delhi or elsewhere are now spun into ‘systemic aberrations’. Rather, they should be seen as evidence of how the system actually works, and how efficient it is.

Continue reading Gujarat Fake Encounters: The Spin Doctoring has Begun →

Bad ideas, Media politics

Sangharsh Hamara Nara Hai

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Protest is a form of speech that a society employs to communicate with itself.

You do not protest in public, shout and scream, chant slogans and hold placards on an ordinary day. You do it but rarely. You do it when you are outraged.

And when you do protest, you want to be heard.

I have been interested lately in protest, though I must say there’s a lot more to say about Jantar Mantar.

I wonder why those who protest are no longer being heard, leading them, sometimes, to wonder if they are being pushed to the wall, a wall they’ll have to break down with a gun.

But I wonder, equally, if the protestors are listening only to themslves. Communication, after all, is not about one-way speaking. Communication is also about listening. Continue reading Sangharsh Hamara Nara Hai →

Countryside, Identities, Images, Media politics

Orientalism

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Media politics

The Relief of Blogistan

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For those of you who read Hindi, there is a feast waiting to be devoured. Over the last couple of years, the world of Hindi blogs has witnessed a mini revolution. The quality of writing, the variety of fare and the freshness of the style has left the world of traditional Hindi letters far behind. This page lists a total of over 300 blogs and it is by no means exhaustive.

Many of these blogs are run by television journalists. Those of us who have ranted endlessly about the degeneration of Hindi TV news would be surprised by this. While TV news seems to have left no space for serious analysis or comment, the world of Hindi blogs is awash with biting pieces about news as well as the production of news. The viewers loss has been the readers’ gain. Continue reading The Relief of Blogistan →

Media politics

The Indian blogosphere and the Indian media

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Since they didn’t find Bush or bin Laden newsworthy enough to put on their year-end cover, Time magazine decided to name “You” the person of the year. “You” is anyone using Web 2.0 technologies – web platforms that allow for ordinary individuals to be both creators and consumers of media, thus empowering anyone and everyone. The Indian media jumped on this bandwagon, including “You” in a number of their own year-end lists. This could have been an opportunity to look into issues such as the digital divide, Jurassic-era e-governance in the time of Web 2.0, or even what Web 3.0 would entail. But the overarching concern in the mainstream papers and online was that “bloggers can write anything they want without fear of law”. Also ubiquitous were reminders of cases such as that of the social networking site Orkut, which has been getting in trouble for its ‘Dawood Ibrahim fan club’.

Some of this bitterness against new media, especially on news channels, perhaps came from the experience of being at the receiving end of unflattering if not sometimes slanderous comments on a blog called War for News. This blog is almost dead now, as the journalist who runs it is rumoured to have been found out and threatened into a retreat. War for News would pronounce regular judgements on the coverage of events on TV news and make comments about the capabilities of a reporter or the pronunciation of an anchor that were not taken kindly. What was worse, the blog would refuse to censor objectionable anonymous comments on its posts that often had to do with who was sleeping with whom. The blog claimed to be committed to free speech, but it left a bad taste in the mouths of those at the receiving end. Continue reading The Indian blogosphere and the Indian media →

Bad ideas, Media politics, Theory

A cruel and unusual punishment

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(Or how I came to love the Press)
As I stepped out of B.’s house last night, I pulled my jacket close to ward of the cold and veered vaguely to the right as I looked for my car. I felt in the pocket for the car’s central-locking remote, and on finding it, pressed the un-lock button on the device. I heard my sister’s trusty Wagon-R tick-tock in recognition out on the left. On the left course! I had parked the car on left. I usually parked on the right under the streetlight, but this time my space had been taken. So I had parked on the left. I corrected course and lurched decisively to the left – the source of the sound, and the site of the parked car.

My ear it seems, had picked up the sound – measured it in terms of intensity – and my brain had decoded it and accorded it a positional characteristic. So this car was approximately 20 degrees behind my left ear. I looked – there it was, I walked up to it and drove home.

“ Continue reading A cruel and unusual punishment →

Debates, Media politics

In search of the Dalit journalist redux

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“Sensation prevailed after four persons of a family were murdered over illicit relations at Khairlanji village…” read the blatantly false lead of the article of a Nagpur based paper a few days after the Khairlanji atrocity. “School, colleges and shops shut down in Nagpur on Friday during a day-long bandh,” read another. As the national media slowly took cognizance of the Khairlanji atrocity, weeks after an entire family was humiliated, raped and killed, the tenor and limits of media discourse on Dalits became apparent once more.

While expressing shock and disbelief at the sheer brutality of the incident, media pundits bemoaned the damage to public property (in this case, the Deccan Queen), the losses to the exchequer, and the savagery of the Dalit “other”. “Citizen activism takes on the textures and shades of citizens, after all,” noted a well-meaning reporter in leading weekly, before concluding that “Upper middle class India lit candles, whether at India Gate or on news websites; young Dalit India torched trains.” The simplistic and stereotypical media coverage of the month-long Dalit protests has re-ignited a debate that first gained prominence in 1996. Continue reading In search of the Dalit journalist redux →

Images, Language, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

The Ghost of the Middle Ground

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Uncertainty, Ambiguity and the Media Response to Efforts to Secure a Commutation of the Death Penalty for Mohammad Afzal Guru and An Enquiry into the Events of December 13

Shuddhabrata Sengupta, January 1, 2007 (posted earlier on the Sarai-Reader List)
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‘Now is the Winter of Our Discontent made Summer by the Pleasing Light of Television’

At the beginning of each new year, it is customary to take stock of what has happened in the last 365 days, and reflect on options for the future. I don’t want to speak for the entire year (let’s leave the year end newspaper and magazine supplements and the TV round-ups to do that). But I do want to look at this bleak now, the ongoing “winter of our discontent”, especially as it has played out on that hallowed and late, lamented entity called the ‘middle ground’.

This ‘middle ground’ is a territory currently under the occupation of large bastions of the mainstream media in India. It was on the parched soil of the ‘middle ground’ that the beast called public opinion was so eagerly sought to be beaten into shape (or pulp, depending on your point of view) in a daily gladiatorial during the course of the last few months. While this has always been the case, it did come into especially sharp focus ever since the question of the execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru came back on to what is sometimes called the ‘national agenda’ in late September – early October 2006. What began during our brief autumn rapidly gathered momentum as winter set in.

The thick fog that descends on Delhi with the onset of deep winter is a time where plots are laid ‘in deadly hate’, and ‘dangerous inductions, drunken prophecies, libels and dreams’ are aired by means of strategems that have every reason to be called ‘subtle, false, and treacherous’. Had William Shakespeare been writing a draft of Richard the Third in Delhi during an early twenty first century winter, he might have set the bleak iambs of the opening soliloquy in a television studio, and made the actor speaking them wear the pressed suits of a certain variety of senior journalist or news anchor, or the uniform or distinguished plain-clothes attire usually to be found adorning the person of an operative of the special cell of the Delhi police, or the Intelligence Bureau. Perhaps there might even be some actors who could essay both roles (a certain kind of journalist and intelligence operative) with practised ease, because there is so little left nowadays, to distinguish between the two functions. Call it what you will, embodied intelligence, or embedded journalism.

Continue reading The Ghost of the Middle Ground →

Media politics

TRP: Television Rallying Point

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Is Afzal now just a rallying point for intellectuals?

A day before the fifth anniversary of Parliament attack, some of country’s renowned journalists, activists and writers – led by Booker Prize-winner Arundhati Roy – came together to release a book that raises 13 “damning” questions about the attack. But is Afzal simply an intra-elite debate among India’s Left liberals or do the intellectuals actually have a public constituency outside the seminar halls of Delhi and Mumbai? [CNN-IBN]

A rallying point, says the dictionary, is “a point or principle on which scattered or opposing groups can come together.” So the question suggests that ‘intellectuals’ are merely exploiting Afzal to ‘come together’; the act of ‘coming together’ is the sole motive of the exercise. Continue reading TRP: Television Rallying Point →

Everyday Life, Media politics

Playing Cops and Reporters

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This article was published in The Telegraph, Kolkata, December 5, 2006.

Here’s an amusing little story. According to reports in a leading daily, (August 26 and September 4), Hoshangabad police charged a couple with the murder of their twelve year-old son. Their son was indeed missing, and a body was found near the railway track. The parents confessed to the crime, and spent over 45 days in jail. Six months after his murder, young Gabbar turned up in town. He had fallen asleep while selling peanuts on trains, and woke up in Jalgaon. There he was put into a correctional institution, and later, sent to Bhopal. Finally he managed to convince someone to send him back home. Present in court, he listened to the government pleader arguing that the parents had confessed to the murder, so he could not be Gabbar; that the body found near the railway track was not Kallu alias Tufan, as claimed; and that neighbours had identified the dead body as that of Gabbar. The neighbours meanwhile, told the reporter they had never identified the dead body as his, and that this boy was indeed Gabbar. “We know him since he was born”, said one of them simply, “how could we make such a mistake?” Continue reading Playing Cops and Reporters →

Media politics, Scams

Heard that one about the Newspaper and the Sealing Squad?

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Yes, yes, yes! The rumour that you have all heard, or haven’t but wished you had, or would have heard except that you read about it first, is true! The MCD sealing squad did visit the offices of our friendly neighbourhood, pro-sealing newspaper – The Indian Express. And, till recently, my friends at the IE were filing their stories from nearby cybercafes – possibly the same cyber cafes that night be sealed soon if they are too close to “posh category A and B South Delhi houses.”

The most recent editorial that I read in the Express (titled Bullets, Bulldozers) was soon after the Seelampur shootings and observed that “We would, therefore, urge the court to stay the course. Not just for the rule of law but for Delhi’s future. The time has also come throw out the anachronistic rent control law which has contributed immensely to skewing the property market. One of the great incentives for traders to remain where they are, is the ridiculously low rents they pay. The court should now start asking some tough questions about why Delhi has proved to be so impervious to rent reform.” Continue reading Heard that one about the Newspaper and the Sealing Squad? →

Identities, Language, Media politics, Politics

The Dalit ‘Betrayal’ of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan

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Karan Thapar of CNBC -TV18 recently presented a half-hour debate on whether Dalits have a better future adopting English rather than one of the so many Indian languages. Some of us followed it keenly because we knew where it was comig from and also the dramatis personae – Chandrabhan Prasad(CP), Yogendra Yadav(YY) and Alok Rai(AR) – all very dear friends, and people who have been deeply engaged with the politics and practice of languages in North India. It was a one-sided debate from the moment it started: clear victory to Chandrabhan Prasad from the word go, first of all, because he had managed to pitchfork his provocative stance into a full scale discussion in the national press and the big media. Think about it: it has taken him just three consecutive annual Macaulay’s birthday parties to friends, to bring it to the attention of a much wider number of intellectuals and a larger public. It was a victory for his own brand of Gandhigiri – that you could very much debate and advance your cause while having fun: ‘chicken, mutton, daaru and daliton ki kuchh samasyayein’ is his style, in his own inimitable words. This is not to say that he does not believe in agitational politics. He does that as well.The debate was also one-sided because CP’s interlocutors did not have convincing answers to his extremist views on language and religion and the coupling of the two, which had to inevitably sneak into the discussion, considering en mass dalit conversions were fresh in media memory. For example, when Karan Thapar probed CP on why he suggested Dalits take flight from Hindi and Hinduism; was it because he hated Hinduism? CP had perhaps an obvious but pithy answer: I did not choose to hate Hinduism, Hinduism never loved me!YY and AR looked aghast and betrayed at the idea of rejecting Indian languages, for Dalits, after all, were communicatively, politically and experientially rooted in these languages, beginning with Marathi, most of the(autobiographical) dalit literature was written in indian languages. They went on, the NRI example of turning away from one’s language is not a healthy one: look how they have all become Hindutva supporters, etc. etc. CP of course rubbished this secular middle class sentimentalism by citing Ambedkar’s example, that he always wrote in English and he did so knowing very well that it is not the Dalits who would read him!

Continue reading The Dalit ‘Betrayal’ of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan →

Media politics

Manoj Mishra gets his TV spot.

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“In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false,” wrote Guy Debord in “The Society of the Spectacle”, his ground-breaking situationist text on mass-media and reality. Forty years after the text was published, on 15 August 2006, Manoj Mishra, a transport contractor in Gaya, Bihar, died in an attempt to generate the ultimate visual image of protest against the non-payment of his dues. Goaded on by a battery of television news cameras, Mishra doused himself with diesel and set himself on fire as the cameras recorded his death. Reports in national newspapers suggest that camera-persons went to the extent of handing him a diesel-soaked rag, and assuring him of rescue once their footage was complete. In the event, private security guards came to his rescue and rushed him to the Patna Medical College Hospital, but by then it was too late. He succumbed to his burns en-route. Continue reading Manoj Mishra gets his TV spot. →

Law, Media politics

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

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Sometimes only a good old cliché can capture the essence of certain things.

How many times in the past few years, while watching television have we wanted to strangle the anchor (“aap ke saath itna na-insaafi hui hai, aapko is waqt kaisa lag raha hai” or “There has been a gruesome terrorist attack at the IISC in Bangalore, dont go away, we will return to the story immediately after out reporter updates you on Aamir Khan’s wedding which is taking place in the same city). And yet while watching what is perhaps the closest televised strangling of a reporter, it was with a strange sense of pleasure and fear.

The interview that I am referring to is Sagarika Ghose’s of Ram Jethmalani on his decision to defend Manu Sharma. Here is a small sampling

Sagarika Ghose: But as a criminal lawyer, don’t you believe there is a lakshman rekha that even all criminal lawyers have to work under?

Ram Jethmalani: I am sorry. Please don’t talk of this bullshit to me. I know what my lakshman rekha’s are. I have read my rules of the conduct of a lawyer. It will be the saddest day when a lawyer refuses to stand between the state and the final verdict.

Ram Jethmalani: I have told you it’s none of your business—the courts will decide. And for God’s sake, stop becoming judges and Gods. You are over stepping the limits of your duty

Sagarika Ghose: But why don’t you search your own conscience. A young girl was shot in the presence of a hundred people.

Ram Jethmalani: I am searching my own conscience. All this bullshit won’t convince me at all. My conscience is mine and you are not responsible for it. And I don’t sell my conscience either to you or to anybody else nor will I change my professional etiquette because some chit of a girl comes and tells me that something is wrong.

An absolute demolition and indictment of the media, if ever there was one. I guess the fact that the case deals with Manu Sharma of the Jessica Lal case makes us all a little less enthusiastic about this slap in the media’ s face.

But what is really scary however in the interview is the way that the devil of the day-a lustful and loathsome corporate media is pitted against its other- the Courts, the sea of wisdom in which the rule of law sails. So the illegitimacy of the media happens only via the further strengthening of judicial sovereignty; For Jethmalani, the battle for the truth is a battle between the media and the judiciary. Someone has rightly said it is almost impossible to think of battles in the contemporary without being bewildered about where lines are drawn, and what they mean. Stewart Motha for instance accurately describes the battle between Islam and Democracy as a battle between two monotheisms. In India, the battle between the judiciary and the media for the truth takes place at the site of citizenship and the casualties of this battle and its lies are borne by the denizen.

So on the one hand, we have Sagarika Ghosh (self righteous indignance dripping with every syllable) asking “Why me? I am just a voice of the people” and on the other we have Jethmalani’s tirade “You don’t know the rule of the law, you don’t know democracy; you don’t know anything”.

Those who neither have any Faustian contracts, nor can swim very well are in a lot of trouble.

Media politics

Watchdogs of Another Kind?

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Media is presented as a ‘watchdog of democracy’ in today’s times.

But it was really shocking to see a story on IBN 7 ( Friday, 3 rd Nov 2006 around 3-4 p.m.) which rather communicated that in today’s Corporatized times it is metamorphosing into ‘Watchdog against Democracy’. It is time that friends also know about the manner in which media is appealing (instigating would be a better word) to the powers that be that ‘too much’ democracy will be a disaster.

Punjab as everybody knows has a rich tradition of cultural festivals/ gatherings where people/groups from all over the state come together and hold day long/ nightlong programmes where dramas are staged, action songs are staged, book exhibition is organised etc. Anyone who has attended these programmes can come back replenished with energy. One such cultural festival is held in memory of the Ghadarite martyrs which is called ‘Gadari baba ka Mela’.

I do not remember exactly how it was framed but the IBN story did focus on the recently held festival in memory of these martyrs only. Interestingly, the aim of the story was not to give details of the Mela or the rich tradition which is still alive in Punjab but rather to caution the government about the literature/CDs being sold. It also interviewed one of the activists who was managing the stall. Thereafter, the unbelieving presenter proceeded to ask ” How can one allow public distribution of such literature/CDs which help arouse the masses against the state”. There was even a small byte with the local SSP also where the presenter/reporter asked him “How can you allow such things to happen in your vicinity”. The hardened Policeman was cool enough and just said we will enquire.

Media politics

Exiles from the Republic of Numbers

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I was watching news television a few nights ago – it was a programme on the Afzal death penalty. As the CNN-IBN anchor aggressively postured on screen, the viewers were invited to SMS their vote on the hanging, which was updated constantly on screen. This seemed the most natural thing to do – people are asked to vote instantly on TV contests, social issues, sports etc. Telephone companies make massive profits in this system, which is shared with TV networks. That seems obvious. There is another story here, behind the obscenity of like sending in your votes on the issue of the death penalty. Never mind that many of these polls in news television are often carefully staged, a friend of mine who works at a network told me that when ‘voting’ is low, staffers are asked to reach for their phones or call their friends… Continue reading Exiles from the Republic of Numbers →

Media politics

Azad Media ki Ajeeb Dastaan

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Strange tales of the independent media

Tale #1

Recently, after endless rants against the NBA our favourite paper, The Indian Express, finally gave some space to Medha Patkar to set the record straight (November 4 2006). Her blunt and effective challenge to Indian Express common-sense concluded with some record-straightening by the Express Kolkata office.

The supposed response from the newspaper to Medha’s pointed questions, consists SOLELY of information from government sources: “according to the Addl District Magistrate”; “We have verified this from Singur’s block development officer”; and “land compensation rates reported by us are all official figures.” The best part is where they triumphantly say – the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is the law of the land, much though Ms Patkar may view it as a one-sided process.

Hello – have you missed the point? She and thousands of others all over the country, insist it is an anti-democratic and draconian law and it must be radically changed. So you simply reiterate that it is the law of the land? THIS is a debate? Here are some other Laws of the Land: the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that keeps the North-East under the military jack boot; Section 377 that says if you have sex that the judge thinks is against the order of nature, you’re a criminal; rape laws that say it is not rape but a much lesser crime if someone shoves a finger up an infant’s vagina…

Who ARE these people who get hired to write this stuff? They’d fail a decent BA degree.

Continue reading Azad Media ki Ajeeb Dastaan →

Media politics

Dam the Media – Give Them Land in New Harsud!

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Before the ‘Battle for Truth’, Reveal Your Assets, Honourable Men and Women of the Media

Today’s Indian Express carries Medha Patkar’s response to a long continuing rant by the paper on a series of issues ranging from compensation for the displaced of Narmada valley to the whole issue of SEZs. She has thrown the gauntlet – a challenge to the newspaper to join her in a ‘Battle for Truth’. The Express has of course joined it right away in the most unbecoming way that has by now become a hallmark of its ranting style: It barely lets Medha conclude and puts in a rejoinder from its “Kolkata Bureau” – they could barely wait for her to finish and if the form did not impose the limitations, one could imagine them jumping up and down and shouting her down, booing her in the middle of her speech…

So gentlemen and women of the media, before you really join the Battle for Truth, the time has come for you, especially senior media persons – Editors and senior Commentators, the custodians of public opinion (or Truth, should we say?) – to declare your assets and their sources. You have been very vociferous about maintaining public standards and have campaigned tirelessly to see that politicians are forced to declare their incomes. Since the functions that you honourable people perform are no less public – you too must lay yourself open to public scrutiny. When the CEO of Xphatic or some secretary-general of a Corporate Association or a Chamber of Commerce writes, we know exactly where they speak from and for whom. But when “journalists”, “Editors” and political commentators  – in this and other papers and news channels – write or talk, they supposedly talk from the “objective” position of truth. Everybody in the trade of course knows that there are crores of rupees of ill-begotten wealth circulating in the media that shapes the Truth. The defence campaign of the takeover of farmers’ land for a leading corporation by most of the English media is not unrelated to the circulation of this strange thing. This is not an insinuation against any specific person/s but surely a declaration of assets should become the voluntary practice of all those who desire and fight tirelessly for probity in public life. What say you gentlemen and gentlewomen?

But what of those really innocent ones who may not be otherwise part of corrupt corporate power nexuses? Their naïveté  is so truly astonishing that it would make you gasp. These really innocent ones are products of the New Age who have taken in the new theology hook, line and sinker. Immediately after deaths in police firing on protests against takeover of tribal land in Kalinganagar by the government for a private company, a well known TV journalist demanded of the hapless tribals  – “But why are you against industrialization?” Holy shit! You are against Industrialization! Next you will turn against your own Self – Don’t you see that it is the messiah who has come to redeem you and deliver you from your hellish existence! One can hardly respond to such innocence except by saying Dam the Media for starters – and give them – all the displaced journalists some Cash Compensation. Oops! That is one thing they are not short of – How about some land in barren New Harsud town.