`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)