`ALICE  IN  WONDERLAND’   

JOURNALISM!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

Like Alice in Wonderland, Times Now’s Navika Kumar (name changed) landed in Switzerland (place changed to protect identity). We are shown pictures of Alice walking up to a mansion and ringing up some lady, who refuses to meet her and directs her to meet her husband’s lawyer. The mobile phones Alice holds in her hand and the costumes she wears could be up for endorsement next time. The focus of the story thus shifts from the story itself to Alice in Wonderland!

And what follows, most of the time, is a mahem in the studio where carefully chosen gorillas beat about the bush which is mistakenly called debate. That there is neither rhetoric nor intelligence is the tragedy of our civilisation. The purpose of the mahem is to discredit the family, silence ruthlessly any voice showing some sympathy and encourage all the muck rackers. (Switch over to BBC to get an idea of the quantum of news we miss every day and the games our channels play).

Aptly called Bofors II, the scandal will mysteriously disappear after  2014: governments will come and governments will go, but Bofors will boom only at election time. The best thing that could happen, perhaps,  is for the government to eliminate the middlemen by the government itself becoming the middlemen, collecting the kick-backs and subsidising the petroleum prices so that the people don’t feel the pinch.   

I can never stop admiring CBI’s style of functioning – ever investigating and never revealing. Not to be outdone by Alice, a high-power investigating team went on a picnic to Italy and must have presumably come back by now because there is nothing much to investigate, except what we already know.  

Abhishek Verma, the Big Daddy of all Defence scams, is better kept in Tihar Jail and interrogated in camera. All political big wigs irrespective of ideology, and bureaucratic top brass and the most decorated of men in uniform, have all enjoyed his hospitality. Picking someone and leaving out certain others conveniently is an unfair game the media is fond of playing.

After the so-called mountain of evidence against them, Win Chadha and Ottavio Quattrocchi went scot-free. To expect Abhishek verma, the wheeler-dealer of international networking, to be nailed because of a few scrap of papers shown on television studios is to squander our faith in the system that did nobody any good.  

The shooting of the 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, the son of the slain LTTE chief, has sent a wave of hysteria across the nation. But to send an army to Sri Lanka to protect the Tamils is foolhardy even to talk about. In the age of terrorism, to talk of trade blockade or the passing UN resolutions is taking the highway to emotional nirvana, or diplomatic impotency.    

To be sure, there was no intelligence failure to be blamed for the Hyderabad blasts. When there was no intelligence to speak of, there can be no intelligence failure, either.

Things have not changed since the 2008 terror strike in Mumbai. The US foiled 40 terror attempts since 9/11 but we almost none. That’s hardly surprising when we can’t even agree on who’s a terrorist, only someone from Kashmir, or anyone resorting to violence? Are Maoists defenders of tribal people, or hardcore terrorists? Are people who vandalise places of worship terrorists? Are people who call a bandh at the drop of a hat and disrupt life terrorists? Are political leaders who sit in honourable chairs, against whom gang-rape cases are re-opened, terrorists? Unless we are clear of our goals, we will eternally be at the receiving end, while home ministers may come and go.

It was difficult to believe that the man who addressed the media as Union home minister was indeed the home minister of India. He looked like a man going for a picnic, with no trace of sadness on his face, as though the victims are mere statistics. If hanging convicts were the only job of the home minister, Shinde would have emerged as India’s best home minister after Sardar Patel.

The only answer to such criminal apathy of our rulers is to defeat en mass the sitting MPs (with honourable exception), and elect a new Parliament. The first thing the new Parliament should do is to erect a larger-than-life statue of Dr Manmohan Singh for his monumental insensitivity, which none of his successors should copy – be it Sushma, Nitish or Rahul!   

(Courtesy: globalmediaschool.com)  

  

DADDY, DON’T  BITE!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

A savage bit his daughter to death. In a culture where fathers rape and teachers molest, it shouldn’t really bother us. Our newspapers gave it a decent  burial, without even a line of editorial comment on the rotten state of the amoral society. Not even Arnab Goswami, the Angry Anchor whose anger is becoming Trendy Journalism, thought it not worthwhile wasting human emotions when you have the hanging of Afzal Guru before you to blow hot and blow cold.

Going by newspaper reports, even the Guru did not expect a snooze for his crime! Perhaps, even Ajmal Kasab would have expected a negotiated deal on his life. After all, this is the country that failed to bring to book the mastermind of the Mumbai blasts, Hafeez Syed, sending the message to the world that India is a soft state.  

Do people who kill others in cold blood have the right to live? Some pseudo-intellectuals call capital punishment `barbaric’ , but no less barbaric than their crime. When the crime is barbaric, should the punishment be less barbaric? Many people who commit crime entertain the hope that they can escape through legal jugglery. Often, a life-term turns out to be a life in 5-star comfort, if you have the means to bribe. The argument that hanging is irreversible is an argument for argument’s sake, citing examples from primitive times. Today the trial goes through several stages and appeals can be made even against the death sentence once it is awarded.   

It is true that anything done in 2013 could be interpreted as a pre-election stunt. Be that as it may, but give the President and the Home Minister the credit for doing what they were duty-bound to do.  Judges wearing the gown do not always understand the ground reality and political compulsions behind government decisions. If that were not so, we could have been governed entirely by the judiciary. Admittedly, governance is a much complicated process than delivering judgments.   

The sad thing about the Guru is that he led a life of self-destruction, shattering many dreams and lives of people whom he had never met. Taking pride in destroying lives is the tragedy of faith without reason, and the tragedy of the state itself.  Money flows from across the border where terrorism has become a cottage industry. The argument that the family members did not get an opportunity to say farewell  to the one who did not give the victims’ families the same opportunity reeks with hypocrisy.

  

Only we Indians are capable of believing one of the largest conclaves of humanity needs no security arrangements. Mercifully, the police at the Allahabad railway station were armed with only lathis, not rifles. Otherwise, the casualty would have been in hundreds.  

   

Our television channels have already made Narendra Modi the prime minister.  Dr Manmohan Singh is only the lame duck, and Rahul Gandhi, the reluctant villain. Understandably, the media wants to create a Frankenstein’s monster of speculative story to play its own game.  But the plain truth is Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley enjoy far greater support across the political spectrum than Modi. 

Imagine, Narendra Modi taking a Rath Yatra, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari! It will not start from Srinagar or from any part of the Valley. It won’t pass through Haryana, for sure; passing through Mulayam’s UP is doubtful. Didi’s Bengal, it has to skip. Telangana or Andhra is not well suited for the Yatra. In Jaya-land, Modi might get a red-carpet welcome; but Kerala will be hostile. 

Be pretty certain, 2014 will be the graveyard of political politics: such is the scepticism of voters that half of the existing MPs will lose their deposits; and only very few will manage to scrape through. Parties without leaders and leaders without MPs  will be the comedy of 2014. It would be as if a whole generation of politicians have been wiped out in the revolt of the ballot!

New faces everywhere in Parliament, and no one would be stupid enough to ask, `Where is Modi or where is Rahul?’ Someone might still look for Nitish Kumar!