Is NDTV Committed to the Nation?

It is a well known fact that NDTV is a leftist media organisation. Prannoy Roy's relation with the Commie couple the Karats is also well known. Because of these facts, NDTV's commitment to the nation is always questioned just like the Indian Commie's commitment is questioned. NDTV also came out editorially in strong defence of the Commies when they were accused by the center-right media of being agents of Communist China.

Here is an example of NDTV's nationalism. A commander-in-chief of a north-east militant organisation drops in at NDTV's Guwahati office and NDTV instead of calling the authorities and getting these militants arrested treats them like kings and makes a news story out of their visit.

Unexpected visitors dropped by at NDTV's Guwahati office on Monday morning. It's not everyday that the commander in chief of a militant outfit walks in, and this one had an unusual request. He wanted to tell his side of a story NDTV had run last week. The Dimasa group commander asked to see a CD NDTV had aired which had visuals of two boys being tortured by kidnappers.[NDTV]

Reality Hits MSM

Has the MSM realised that their exclusive dominance of the news dissemination field is over?

When senior ministers of the government said that the “President is not elected through SMS campaign, “ they were dismissing SMS and blogs as tools of a participatory democracy... Mr Dasmunsi’s comments were made in the light of the campaign carried in the electronic media about the desirability of a second term for President Kalam. And while he was technically correct in dismissing the role that people and hence their SMS and blogs had to play in electing the President, the fact is that in being dismissive the ministers revealed a certain lack of understanding of the power of this new medium. It could be argued that internet penetration in India is low, at the end of May, there were 2.46 million broadband connections in the country. Even if all landline connections — at the end of May there were 40.26 million connections — were to be treated as potential dial up internet connections, penetration of the internet is rather low. When it comes to wireless phones, to determine the catchment area for SMS campaigns, there are 177.79 million subscribers. At the end of May, India had a teledensity of 19.26, that is for every hundred persons only 19.26 had a physical phone, which could be a cellular or a landline phone. It could be this low penetration of telephones as well as a negative growth pattern for broadband subscribers that could have made the ministers dismiss the importance of the SMS and blog campaign for President Kalam. But the power of this medium lies not in its numerical strength but in the momentum it creates. ........ .....the SMS campaign for Kalam, or the blogs on Pratibha Patil’s suitability as president help form a certain kind of opinion. The SMS campaign for President Kalam showed overwhelming support for the idea of a second term for him. The message that seemed to go out was that the government was willing to turn a deaf ear to the voice of the people. It didn’t matter that the voice of the people represented through the SMS campaign was not representative of the electorate. So when ministers dismiss the SMS polls, they reinforces the feeling of a lack of understanding of the power shift to the new media. Blogs and SMS, limited as they may be in there spread, seem to have democratised opinion making. Blogs about Pratibha Patil’s credentials or alleged lack thereof, gives rise to discussions all of which centre on the credentials of those who supported her candidature. [ET]

So, the Main Stream Media (MSM) have at last realised the power of Web 2.0 and that the days of its domination is over or soon to be over. Now we hope confrontational articles deriding Bloggers from MSM journalists will wane and a new beginning of cooperation between the MSM and Web 2.0 will start.

If the MSM and Web 2.0 can join hands, then the power of the new and old mediums can be put to better use of making our country a better place for all of us.

The BMW Case, NDTV Sting Op and Some Questions

NDTV usually doesn’t do sting on big fishes. So when NDTV does a big sting, some questions always pop up.

The BMW hit and run case dragging for eight years took a new turn after NDTV aired a previously unseen tape of the BMW car in a badly damaged condition just after the accident. The question here is how did NDTV get hold of this tape? Was this tape, which was in the custody of the police, made available to NDTV by someone in the govt or obtained by NDTV after bribing the police with moolah or other obvious means?

At that time NDTV also aired a report on a private party given by Sanjeev Nanda. In it, NDTV reporter interviewed Nanda where he talked about his business, etc. How did NDTV get access and permission – which no other channel got - to record and telecast Nanda’s private party? Doesn’t this show that NDTV and the Nandas were on good terms not so long ago? So what turned NDTV against the Nandas and what made NDTV telecast a tape that is potentially damaging to Sanjeev Nanda? Is NDTV settling old scores with the Nandas?

NDTV’s telecast of the sting tapes was only after Kulkarni testified in the court that a fat man was in the driver’s seat, which effectively could let Sanjeev Nanda off the hook. So if we take this into consideration, then NDTV timed the telecast to tarnish only IU Khan and RK Anand. After the telecast the Nandas have distanced themselves from their lawyer, RK Anand.

From Barkha Dutt’s article in the HT it is clear that Kulkarni’s motives were suspect from day one. He was doing it for money and he had approached other channels too- looking for the highest bidder obviously - about the sting. This and Kulkarni’s previous ambiguous statements clearly make him an unreliable witness. Still NDTV knowing very well about the fallout went ahead telecasting the tapes “in public interest” after consulting its legal team. Who are the members of NDTV’s legal team?

IU Khan and RK Anand according to Barkha Dutt "are ingenious, influential, notoriously aggressive and famously successful". So if NDTV is taking them on, then it must be only because people more powerful than these two are backing NDTV. Only the UPA govt. is more powerful than these two in India. Is anyone in the govt. backing them?

Why is NDTV hiding the fact that its correspondent the baby faced Poonam Aggarwal transcending the limits of journalistic ethics - so ‘dear’ to Barkha Dutt and Prannoy Roy – was indulging in blackmailing IU Khan and demanding he give her the case diary and confidential police documents pertaining to the case?

Why is NDTV hiding the fact that after Khan didn’t part with the prosecution documents, Poonam Aggarwal had threatened him that he should be prepared to face the consequence?

Why is NDTV hiding the fact that this warning by their reporter had prompted Khan to send a legal notice to NDTV on April 19, to which NDTV replied on April 26 expressing regret over the happening?

Why is NDTV hiding the fact that its reporter Poonam Aggarwal had also been hauled up repeatedly by the court of another additional sessions judge, Ravinder Kaur, for misreporting the court proceedings?

For me, this collusion between the prosecution and the defence is nothing new. Such things happen daily allover India. But in this particular case there is more to it. It is like killing two or more birds with one stone. Don’t ask me to explain.

NDTV's Deceptive Game

I loved this:

The stark disconnect of various presenters and guests, particularly on NDTV, from the dynamics, as it were, of the elections and the real people who voted was painfully palpable. ..... On NDTV, particularly, the debate anchored by Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt remained stuck in the street-smart rote of petty machinations and manipulations. With a few similarly myopic and dishonest politicians for support, they hopelessly tried to explain why their "intelligent" media representing the superior "English speaking universe" and their supposedly ultra sophisticated predictive models, totally failed not only to foresee what was coming but also to subsequently see what really happened. The only thing Barkha Dutt saw, as she wrote glibly in the HT, was that the voters were smart! I recall the exit poll results after the first phase of polling on NDTV. The image that remained glued to my mind was that of Prannoy Roy hyper-excitedly telling viewers like a schoolboy that the "Rahul Gandhi" factor was working exceptionally well, almost in the fond hope that such proclamations would influence voters to vote for the Congress. This deception continued right till the very end even when all other exit polls were not half as gung-ho about Rahul's impact and the results started coming in. Psephology had obviously taken a backseat to the political agenda of the news channel. Even, when all was lost for the Congress, Roy and Dutt simply could not go beyond the usual brain-dead reasoning and the "analysis" of how the Congress was important to the BSP, particularly because of the Taj corridor case against Mayawati! Not a word telling the viewers that Rahul Gandhi could get victory for his party in only six of the 108 or so constituencies he vigorously campaigned with virtually saturated media coverage. Such a huge investment of airtime and money wasted... they both seemed more devastated than the Congress for this loss and completely oblivious to the monumental significance of Mayawati's victory.[HT]

The Errors Committed by Psephologists

Dipankar Gupta in an article tells us about the errors committed by the so-called psephologists while trying to decode the Uttar Pradesh voters.

The first error is that psephologists either don’t realise that there are far too many castes even in an assembly constituency than there are candidates. So even a die-hard casteist voter will, in all likelihood, have to opt for someone who does not belong to the same ‘jati’. There are roughly 20-25 such castes in each constituency and not an equal number of serious contenders for power. So rural voters have to eventually decide on a candidate on matters other than the caste to which he/she belongs. There is just no other option. It is hardly as if there is one candidate for every caste in every constituency. Psephologists make their second error when they say that each caste issues a kind of whip commandeering its members to vote for one party or the other. According to them, the rural Indian cannot think independently and responds slavishly to the call of caste. This is a ridiculous idea. Anyone who is familiar with village India will know that not only is the bush telegraph more fiction than fact, but so is the idea of a bumbling rural idiot. The everyday village voter is not hopelessly tied to cultural genes. He considers other variables before approaching the ballot box. As this point is missed out by psephologists, they see no problem in churning out figures like 21 per cent Lodhs voted for the Samajwadi Party and 50 per cent Brahmins for BJP. Even if one accepts these spurious facts, the psephologists should have logically gone on to inquire into whose arms have the remaining 79 per cent Lodhs and 50 per cent Brahmins fled? Why did they vote differently? Surely, these are good follow-up questions, but psephologists never ask them. As a consequence of the first two errors, the psephologist commits the further mistake in believing that on account of the purity-pollution hierarchy, OBCs like Gujjars and Jats, or forwards like Brahmins and Baniyas, or Scheduled Castes, Harijans and Valmikis spontaneously strike a political accord. So if there is a caste correlation that appears to fit this mould even partially, no further explanation is required. The truth again is very different. Gujjars are not the natural allies of Jats just because both are clubbed as OBCs rather generously by Mandalites. Jats hate Gujjars and this sentiment is reciprocated. There are Gujjar tales of Jat opportunism and Jats have popular fables of alleged Gujjar cowardice. Similar discords exist between Baniyas, Brahmins and Rajputs as between members of different Scheduled Castes. If there is a single feature that characterises caste relations across the board it is one of ‘mutual repulsion’. Now we are ready to appreciate why the recent poll predictions were almost entirely in error. None of the psephologists predicted that the BSP would get an absolute majority simply because they fractionated voters minutely by caste. These pollsters would have done better if they had asked on what grounds members of different castes coalesce politically. As the UP election has shown, jati loyalty is not the key. The emergence of a degree of caste correlation with electoral outcome is because economic, social and structural considerations bring otherwise hostile jatis together in caste blocks or clusters. Mayawati knows only too well that caste battles are fought on shifting sands. It is much better to seek partners who have common enemies and common aspirations, and hang prior enmities. As both upper castes and scheduled castes see the OBC threatening their lives and livelihood, it makes good political sense to get these traditional polar opposites together. This is a truth that Mayawati grasped easily but it escaped the psephologist who is burdened by elitist textbook readings of caste. [......] But psephologists need to reinvent themselves in a hurry. By insisting on the pre-eminence of caste round the clock during election time they are not only wrong, but also dangerous. Incorrect though they are on every count, they succeed, however, in a somewhat devious way. They are successfully able to pander to popular prejudice by continuously harping on individual caste identities. It is in this sense that they play a negative social role that borders on the subversive.

In the rest of the article he looks at the current situation in rural India.

As Indian society is just coming out of the natural economy of a stagnant village, there is still the hangover of the past in terms of occupations and secular opportunities. Scheduled castes who were not allowed to own land or train themselves in socially valuable skills are even today at the bottom of the heap. Their aspirations are, therefore, quite different from those of the Jats, Gujjars, Kurmis and Koeris. These so-called ‘backwards’ still call the shots in rural India because they are educationally and economically better-off than the scheduled castes and, hence, better networked with state agencies and functionaries. As they have greater control over state resources, they corner a larger chunk of its largesse as well. Not surprisingly, they are also the primary sponsors of the pro-Mandal movement. It is widely known that some of the worst thugs in Uttar Pradesh come from the fold of the ‘backwards’, but what should be equally appreciated is that the village-based scheduled castes face the brunt of their violence. Brahmins and Baniyas matter little to the poor rural Dalits. These so-called ‘forwards’ are physically scarce and politically insignificant in rural India. Land reforms and sub-division of holdings drove the traditional upper castes away from the village. They left behind a vacuum that was energetically filled by the ‘backwards’. It is, therefore, easier for the so-called ‘forwards’ to link with scheduled castes, and vice-versa, today because they have no secular interests that pit them against each other. If each of these three major caste categories, the ‘forwards’, ‘backwards’ and scheduled castes, are politically significant, as in this election, it is because powerful secular interests bind them together. It is caste blocks such as these that function as political actors and not fractionated entities like Lodhs, Kurmis, Brahmins, Baniyas, etc.

The Elephant Ride

A Look at UP Elections

The people of Uttar Pradesh have spoken and thrashing all pre-poll concoctions have voted the Bahujan Samaj Party lead by the one and only Mayawati with a simple majority to lord over them for the next five years.


As the route to power in Delhi is through Lucknow - and as I have predicted earlier - with such a performance, it’s only a matter of time before Mayawati sat on the PM’s chair. Only a bullet can stop this.


Now that the verdict is out, its time to take a look at the seven-phase poll.


It is an astounding feat for the EC to have held a poll in crime infested UP without a single violent incident. This success of holding crime free election once more gives importance to Police reforms in India. The message is that if the Police are not under the control of the state govt, the better will be the law and order situation in the state.


The final voter turnout in UP was 44%. And still we have a clear result in the elections with Mayawati winning a simple majority. Due to the EC’s no-nonsense security arrangements, SP goons couldn’t work their magic and consequently lost but surprisingly increased their vote share. No wonder then Mulayam blamed the EC for SP’s defeat. This defeat doesn’t mean Mulayam is down and out. He can hope to capitalise on Mayawati’s blunders to bounce back just like the BJP has got back its urban Hindu vote bank due to the stupidities of the Congress Party led UPA govt.


BJP, which was hoping to capture Delhi in 2009 via Lucknow, will now have to find another route to Delhi. After all the alliance and caste arithmetic they conjured up for the UP yudh, the BJP alliance at the end of day ended up with just 51 seats. Something unbelievable after the same party had swept the UP urban areas consolidating the urban Hindu vote in the municipal elections a few months earlier. So why did BJP’s traditional upper-caste and OBC voters all over the state desert it this time despite its mother organisation the RSS working overtime to maximise BJP’s chances? Are they fed up with its communal politics? Are they sick of BJP’s anti-Muslim propaganda CDs and vitriolic anti-Muslim speeches? Are they not worried about national security?


The Congress Party’s performance in UP after all the high expectations from their messiah Rahul baba turned out to be a damp squib. From hoping to win about 50 seats - and play the kingmaker - the Congress party ended up with just 21 seats that is four down from last time. Surely it takes more than road shows, whining about fourteen ‘lost’ years and hogging the limelight on television to capture power in UP. If the indicators are anything, then it is only a matter of time before the Congress Party is wiped out in UP.


The way Mayawati wove her mayajaal over the voters of UP is amazing. To her solid Dalit vote base she has added this time upper-castes (chiefly Brahmins), some OBCs and some Muslims. What we are seeing is the repeat of the social engineering of the Congress party before Mandal and Mandir with the Dalits replacing the upper-castes as the dominant group. Her “Sarvajan Samaj” experiment has resulted in BSP forming a govt on its own for the first time in UP. It is definitely a sea change if the Brahmins and other upper-castes are ready to trust a Dalit with their future instead of a party for them formed by them. It remains to be seen if Mayawati is able to replicate her “Sarvajan Samaj” experiment in rest of India especially in Rajastan and Madhya Pradesh, which are going to polls in 2008. Mayawati is eyeing the Hindutva laboratory of Gujarat next. Will she be able to destroy the hate lab for once and for all?


Once again the Muslim voter of UP turned out to be far shrewder than any of the armchair political analysts ever thought. Just like in 2004 general elections this time too they voted to defeat BJP.BJP was pinning on the splintering of the Muslim vote to see them through in many seats. Even if this had happened how would the BJP have won when the upper-castes too had deserted them? No wonder the BJP bigwigs are at their wits end trying to decipher the UP verdict.


Mayawati didn’t ask for the Muslim vote openly still they voted tactically to elect the non-BJP stronger candidate. The best news is that they were clever enough not to fall for BJP’s insidious provocations and at the same time to see the futility of voting for Muslim parties that sprang up recently in order to ‘protect’ the interests of Indian Muslims. If the Muslims of UP have such intelligence then why cant they use it to enable them to stand shoulder to shoulder with rest of Indians? How long will they live in their own cocoon?


When Mayawati became the CM for the first time it was reported that she made a cool 250 crores in six months flat. Now with a mandate for five years, only god almighty can predict how much she will end up with.


Psephology and UP Elections
In the age of satellite television and the Internet, Indian psephology and psephologists are having a good time. What with professionals and wannabes having a go at it. It has become immaterial whether the ‘psephologists’ are getting it right or wrong. All that matters is getting more eyeballs and hits to ones channel or website.


Prannoy Roy called the father of Indian psephology who once upon a time used to get all his predictions right lost it completely after Mandal and Mandir made its mark in Indian elections. Fed up with getting muck on his face every time, Roy had no option but stop predicting all together. But with the proliferation of English news channels, which had no qualms in trying their hands at psephology, he had no option but to restart it. After moderate success in calling some recent state elections correctly, his big test was undoubtedly Uttar Pradesh. UP is no two-party state but a cauldron of caste and communal politics and Prannoy Roy failed miserably in this acid test. His elaborate half-hour exit poll programmes had everything to hoodwink viewers. What was amazing was the way many intelligent Internet savvy people fell hook, line and sinker for Roy’s subterfuge. At first he tom-tomed the fact that for his exit poll, he polled more voters than his nearest rival (read CNN-IBN). In other words his predictions are trustworthy than his rivals. At the start of the polls, Roy had given BJP very few seats (55-60 seats) but the moment the communal CD became news, he simply doubled BJP’s figures to 95-105 seats. Any astute mind would have seen through this and asked some tough questions but the moron the viewer is believed him. So at the end of the seventh phase, Roy gave BJP 108-118 seats, which is nowhere near the actual 51 seats BJP alliance won. So it is clear Prannoy Roy has not made any essential changes to his psephological methods so that he gets his predictions correct but is only trying to increase the TRPs of his channels with his exit poll rip off.


At the end of the day only one psephologist got anywhere near to the actual figures. Many people will have a hard time in believing how this much-mocked psephologist got anywhere near to the actual winning figures. He is the guy who called the caste-ridden state of Bihar correctly. What does that mean? Its simply means he and his team have access to some kind of data and software that can decipher the poll signals almost correctly. So next time before one cast aspersions on experts in their respective fields, it will be better to ask oneself whether he or she is qualified to take on the so-called expert or not. Armchair expertise-ing is a dangerous thing.


It is nice to see wannabe psephologists too trying their hand at psephology. But when one tries to engineer the findings to fit ones political leanings or ideology, you are bound to end up with muck egg on your face. Another thing wannabes - who are probably sitting in some nice air-conditioned cabin or cubicle - shouldn’t try is questioning the professionals who always have access to stuff wannabes can never have.

The Spin Work

The UK daily Telegraph’s India based South Asia correspondent Peter Foster in a first-hand account exposes what we all knew before. Foster who was covering Rahul Gandhi’s poll campaign in UP for an article writes:

[….] However suffice to say that his performance in Lucknow was close to terrible. First he had a 'roadshow' which involved zooming round the city with his head sticking out of the sunroof of a jeep while being showered with rose petals and serenaded by a cacophonous oompa band. This was the warm up act for a 'rally' that evening in the old city of Lucknow which was only attended by a few hundred Congress workers and faithful. Rahul was clearly furious when he saw the embarrassing turn-out, berating his team of advisers in public, on stage while wagging a finger at the rows of empty seats. And yet the next morning, as I waited to board a plain back to Delhi, I read in the local newspaper how Rahul had received a welcome the like of which had not been seen in 'living memory' except for the former Indian BJP prime minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lucknow's most famous son. It's interesting how the Indian media has jumped onto the 'son-rise' bandwagon, even though Rahul is a rotten public speaker and, compared to firebrand polulist politicians of Uttar Pradesh, like Mayawati or Mulayam Singh Yadav is about as engaging as a slap on the face with a wet fish. All of which means there are two parallel universes out there. The one in which Rahul, a product of the international educated classes, stumbles round rural India looking faintly bewildered and the world of the newspapers where he's the coming saviour of Congress. As we say in our business, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. I suppose the thinking goes that with the help of his Gandhi name and so much sycophantically positive press coverage the legend will outstrip the reality to the point where he does become PM material in the popular mind. [Peter Foster]

As Foster cant read Hindi, I suspect it must be the Congress mouthpiece Hindustan Times that published those ‘glowing’ reports.

A Reality Check for the Media

The news channel revolution that has taken this country by storm in this decade is showing no signs of abating. Today India has the most number of ‘national’ (read: Hindi) news channels in the world. Add to this the various regional and English news channels. The increase in the channels has made the news editors of these channels to come up with hair-raising stuff to keep the TRPs shooting north. So much so that even trivial matters are played 24x7 with myriad interpretations by the experts and viewers via phone-ins to keep the viewers enraptured. One has a hard time to find a decent channel among the multitude.


Fed up with the trash dished out by the Indian media - both print and electronic – CNN-IBN’s investigative journalist VK Shashi Kumar does some plain speaking and asks some hard questions to fellow journalists. Here, I publish some excerpts from his a little bit old hard-hitting blog post.

[…..] The point I am making is simply this. News is not trivia. News is not trivial. But News channels have made it their business to be both trivia-communicators and trivial-titillates. Also a large section of the media in this country has taken to crass commercialisation to justify its editorial policies. Most editorial questions are answered with 'will it sell'? Or 'Will it bring in the TRPs'? By degrading content, by excessively dumbing down, by becoming hostage to easy market economics, by failing to realize the truism of content being king and the market being its courtier, the media in India has erased the credibility of the pursuit of journalism. More often than not it is seen as taking sides, it is seen as a tool of political expediency and easy money. The 1990s has been the decade in which the media has fallen from its hallowed glory. And in the 2000s instead of arresting its slide, the media has further slipped from the Imagination of India, into some other kind of disconnectedness. … […] And so while we look within and protest loudly against the attack on the press and so on, can we also look at what we have done to the business of news itself? Fact is that media MUST be commercial because it exists, breathes and lives within the market economy. But since its commercial qualities are completely and wholly dependent on an extremely hypersensitive quality-CREDIBILITY-products in news genres, like newspapers, magazines and TV news channels, are not like any other product. There are rules of the game. And these rules have an ethical resonance…. a news product has to be responsible, factual and ethical. But news television is hardly any of these nowadays. …. […] Media, especially, news television is focusing on the trivia. It is stressing more on information and not on being informative. It has no grand purpose in India. It simply meanders in mediocrity. It is voyeuristic and simply oriented to commerce. It is not oriented as an ethical, profit making enterprise that is in the business of being on the top of the information chain and cutting edge news delivery. Every single day hundreds of journalists across the country from low-paid-barely-surviving media entities to the well paid-huge networks go out into the world in which they live in the pursuit of truth. Risking their lives and putting themselves in harm's way to inform the nation, hold political leaders, bureaucracy, police and the captains of industry accountable to the citizens of this country. Nothing can be more invigorating than being a participant in a functioning democracy. Yet, editors, the guardians of the Fourth Pillar, fail to live up to expectations of either the viewers or their professional compatriots. Therefore, it is the proprietors and editors of media organizations who are responsible for the manner in which journalists and media organizations are being targetted systematically. No wonder Hindu fundamentalist goons with saffron flags can walk in and smash a news channel's office in Bombay. Tomorrow it will be some other kind of thugs in some other city. […] Media is increasingly losing its adversarial position. It is no longer the harbinger of progressive and democratic values. It is no longer a defender of the rights of the citizenry It is no longer a staunch advocate of the underdog and a champion of everyday heroes. Across media organizations it is time for the real editors to stand up and be counted. It is time for them to stare down a story and say NO. The market and the citizens who make that market function will be very unforgiving. That market is expanding and so is the appetite for engaging news, views and information. The challenge is not only about delivery, but also of effective, quality delivery. This is the reason why the news television space continues to be competitive despite a plethora of news channels because the market (of which a large constituency is that of more than 500 million young Indians) is waiting for a QUALITY, CREDIBLE, PASSIONATE, ENERGETIC channel that engages with a rising, impatient, discerning and young India. And, therefore, those who take their TRP ordained places for granted may just wake up to a new reality. [ibnblogs]

Read the full post for a better understanding. Paisa vasool guaranteed!

Was Bob Woolmer Murdered?

Too bad if this is true.

Senior sources in Jamaican police have confirmed to TIMES NOW that Pakistan team coach Bob Woolmer did not die a natural death but was murdered. The murder angle which was first reported by TIMES NOW on Tuesday (March 21), has not been explicitly confirmed by Jamaican police, who have taken a guarded line merely stating that there is a “bit of suspicion” in the circumstances of Woolmer’s death. In a presser today (March 21), the Deputy Commissioner of the Jamaican Police, Mark Shields, said that the initial post-mortem results confirm that his death was “under suspicious circumstances” and that it merited a “full scale investigation”. He also said that apart from the murder angle the police is looking into the motive behind the suspected murder. Woolmer's death has been linked to Pakistan's shock defeat against Ireland. The late Pakistan coach was reported to have been depressed after Pakistan's loss and had reportedly said that it had been “one of the worst days” of his life. Pak team to stay on Shields also said that each and every member of the Pakistan team was questioned on their whereabouts at the time of Woolmer's death. As of now Pakistan will play their last league game against Zimbabwe; however they will stay back in Jamaica after that till the Jamaican police are satisfied that all questions have been answered. The announcement on the investigation effectively removes the PCB from the whole affair, as Woolmer’s death is now a criminal case with his wife now directly involved with the Jamaica police and in contact with them. “Strong indications of murder” The police and PCB team in Jamaica today confirmed off the record to TIMES NOW, outside the theatre where the autopsy took place, that there were “strong indications” that it was murder, prompting authorities to announce that the results had been inconclusive. Reports of the toxicology and histology tests are still awaited. Sources have told TIMES NOW that the PCB is upset over the news of the suspected Woolmer homicide being splashed all over the media, saying it was against Jamaican law to give out this information before Jamaican authorities did. The fact that one of the world’s most renowned cricket coaches was possibly murdered 36 hours after his team exited from the World Cup, would not only be a source of deep embarrassment for the PCB, but also have very serious implications on international cricket. Additionally, the homicide conclusion opens the door to a host of possibilities as - not the least of which is that the alleged player-bookie nexus in Pakistan, which would have been dealt a heavy blow from the team’s exit from the World Cup, had a hand in his death. Match fixing ghost is back Also, following allegations by former PCB chief Sarfaraz Nawaz on Tuesday, sources say the PCB is really worried at this point that the direction of the investigation seems to have changed subtly from just an enquiry into the death of Bob Woolmer and why he died, to include the betting issue. Nawaz yesterday alleged that the bookie mafia was involved in Woolmer’s death and that the Pakistan-West Indies match had been fixed. The match fixing ghost never really left the Pakistan team, and with these grey areas now still evident, the PCB will be under pressure now to take some measures to clean up the team’s tarnished reputation. Meanwhile the ICC will also now have to get their anti-corruption unit officers to work to find out if there was any match fixing or betting angle to this suspected murder. The betting angle also assumes significance in the context of a book that Bob Woolmer was writing in which he may have planned to blow the lid off the player-bookie nexus in Pakistan. “Suspicious” circumstances Bob Woolmer was found on Sunday night (March 18, India time) in his hotel room unconscious and in a pool of vomit. He was pronounced dead on reaching the hospital. TIMES NOW sports editor Faisal Shariff spoke to the Pakistan team’s assistant manager Asad Mustafa, who commented that the circumstances in which Woolmer was discovered were “suspicious” from the start – not only was there vomit found, there were also indications that the coach had suffered from diarrhea, his blood sugar testing machine was found on the floor in the bathroom and there was blood on his cheek and eyes.[Times Now]

Too Drunk to Fight Back

The Sorry State of Chhattisgarh Police Force


If what “Times Now” is reporting on the recent massacre of 55 Chhattisgarh policemen by about 400 Maoists is to be believed, then the Chhattisgarh police have only themselves to blame for the large casualties.

The [internal] report [prepared by paramilitary officials] makes clear that the policemen at the Rani Bodli camp were too drunk to fight back. More than that, the report says that no one at the camp undertook night patrols and that a majority of the guards were sleeping when the lethal attack took place. They were so unprepared for the Naxal attack, that a majority of them were not even properly armed. ….investigations into the attack on Rani Bodli camp have revealed that almost the entire force in the camp was drunk. Also, most of the policemen were not on duty, while those on duty were not even properly armed. […] The report says that intelligence inputs about an impending attack were completely ignored and that there was no night patrolling in and around the camp. The report further said that the guards manning the Light Machine Guns had very little or almost no ammunition on them. It also said that the guards on duty were not alert and they noticed the Naxals only after they opened firing. In the attack that took place on the morning of March 15, Naxals also took away more than 37 weapons. According to the report, which is to be submitted to the Union Home Ministry, almost all the guards of the camp were sleeping at the time of the attack.[Times Now]

If this is the way Chhattisgarh policemen are taking on the Naxalites, then why blame anyone else? Of the 55 killed 38 were Special Police Officers (SPOs) who are recruited from the local tribal youths. These SPO are poorly trained and armed. And getting drunk is one of the favourite activities of tribals.


Today Chhattisgarh accounts for a majority of incidents and casualties when it comes to Naxal violence. Last year, Chhattisgarh witnessed 715 incidents of Maoist violence that left around 304 civilians, 84 security personnel and 74 Naxalites dead - a strike rate worse than in Pakistan backed terror–ridden Jammu & Kashmir. To assist the state govt in anti-Naxal operations, the Center has deployed 13 battalions of Central paramilitary forces including CRPF in Chhattisgarh.


There can be no dispute that the major blame for the turning Chhattisgarh into a Naxal haven squarely lies on the state govt headed by BJP. Even after so many deaths the brazen and callous BJP state govt is continuing in office. Will this state govt - where the state DGP is busy composing a lullaby to motivate his hapless police force - ever wake up?

After every Naxal death dance all that the state and central govts do is issue those customary lackadaisical condolence statements and then forget all about the Naxal scourge till the next outrage. For the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar as long as these tribals remain tribals its fine but once soul harvesters arrive among these tribals, then these very sacrificial tribals become as precious as caste Hindus are for the Sanghis. Unfortunately for even the soul harvesters there is no guarantee that they can carry on their trade in the Naxal infested jungles without their souls being ‘harvested’ by the Naxals. Hence they too don’t want these tribals.

In Andhra Pradesh the Congress govt - despite getting severe flak from many quarters - tried to hold talks with the Naxals and during this period operations against the Naxals were suspended. The Naxals used this opportunity to replenish their supplies and recruit new cadres. The talks eventually failed - as predicted - and the large-scale attacks feared of however haven’t occurred till now. This “success” credited to the vigilant state police especially the elite greyhound commandos. There shouldn’t be any room for complacency to set in because the recent successes of Maoists in Chhattisgarh and elsewhere would embolden them to move on to bigger targets in urban areas. Andhra Pradesh being one of the economic powerhouses of India becomes a marked target in this regard.

The callousness of the so-called vibrant and vigilant Indian press is appalling. They were demanding the head of Narendra Modi when he let the rioters played Holi with blood on the streets of Gujarat. But are blind to see what sorry state CM Raman Singh has brought Chhattisgarh to because the blood of the poor tribals is worthless to the bloody racists that we are.

You Grilled the Minister and Now Pay the Price

The Crime:

The UPA government's economic policies seem to be aimed at slowing down the economy and taking us back to the dark socialist days of price-control where "profit" was a bad word. It is good to see a TV journalist [Udayan Mukherjee]putting the Commerce Minister Kamal Nath in a spot of bother by grilling him on his absurd policies which are moving towards price control. This journalist (whose name I forget) shows a good grasp of economics and I hope we see more such intelligent interviews rather than the quasi-scripted farces that parade as interviews on Indian news channels.[Vantage Point]

The Price:

Angry minister Can a minister target a media house just because he didn't like the line of questioning adopted by one of its journalists? Cut up with the aggressive questioning on cement prices by an CNBC anchor [Udayan Mukherjee]during a programme, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath decided to bar the channel from his press conferences. He held a press conference and asked his officials to ask the channel's reporters to leave. A woman reporter from Awaz and her cameramen were quietly taken aside by one of Nath's personal staff and told as much. The rest of the media corps present watched without protest.[The Hoot]

On Punjab State Election, Exit Polls and the News Channels

The Punjab assembly election with 72% turnout is over and the news channels have put out their versions of exit polls. Exit polls of ‘Star News’ and ‘NDTV’ show the Akali-BJP combine winning a narrow victory with 60 plus seats while HT-CNN-IBN exit poll first gave the Congress 53-63 seats and the Akali-BJP combine 47-57 seats and later made it 50-60 seats each. ‘Times Now’ is predicting 53-61 seats for the Congress and 51-59 seats for Akali-BJP front. ‘CNN-IBN’ and ‘Time Now’ are saying it is too close to call.

During the day when polling was on, NDTV was telecasting what they called “Insta Poll” where they were giving up-to-date information on which political front was leading. The election commission has filed a FIR against NDTV for allegedly violating the electoral law.

The Punjabis have been like the Keralites till now – that is chucking out the incumbent government in every poll. If the ‘Star News’ and ‘NDTV’ exit polls - based on sample size of 13,000 and 47,000 respectively - are to be believed then this state election is really no surprise. On the other hand the HT-CNN-IBN exit poll based on a sample size of just 5217 respondents tells us that the incumbent government has defeated anti-incumbency and won a victory based on performance.

For NDTV getting this exit poll is very important. Infact their reputation is on the line. For some time now they have been getting egg on their face and had to eat crow every time they tried to forecast state or national elections and had to actually stop doing it to save further embarrassment. So much so that the father of Indian Psephology Dr. Prannoy Roy was reduced to calculating the averages of seats predicted by other channels! In the just concluded BMC polls, NDTV had - after a very long time tried their hand in predicting elections once again and - correctly predicted Shiv Sena-BJP combine coming back to power. Getting this right must have emboldened them to start forecasting polls again.

I don’t understand why the people who got the exit poll for the caste-ridden Bihar state election absolutely right had to modify their figures as mentioned above. CNN-IBN has been on cloud nine ever since they got the Bihar state exit poll right. Could this be the beginning of the end of CNN-IBN’s exit poll predicting programmes?

What is surprising is that no one has predicted anything significant for BSP in a state where 30 percent of the population is Dalit and when the BSP is the fastest growing political party in India.

As for me I am looking forward to see Navjot Singh Sidhu defeating Singla and create history by being the first convict to be ‘duly’ elected to the Indian Parliament by the public.

Here is something we all can predict. If the Congress wins then the credit will automatically go to Sonia Gandhi and in case they are chucked out then Arminder Singh will be made the fall guy automatically.

BJP’s Arun Jaitly has been very lucky in winning most of the states he has managed till now. Will he be lucky here too?

On February 27 we will know who will have the last laugh in Punjab.

Getting Away With Murder?

As expected the Professor Sabharwal murder case is going the Jessica Lal way. Witness after witness is turning hostile even when the hostile witnesses in the Jessica Lal case are doing the rounds of the courts for turning hostile.

It is very clear from the developments that the witnesses have been bought off and if justice has to prevail, this case should be handed over to the CBI and transferred out of MP. For the late professor’s son the Supreme Court is the last ray of hope. But I don’t think he will get justice there too if the recent SC ruling in the Navjot Singh Sidhu case is any indicator.

The Prof. Sabharwal murder case has some similarities with the road rage death case involving cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu and his friend. The victims in these cases died because of severe trashing inflicted by the accused. Prof. Sabharwal died almost instantly whereas Gurnam Singh died later in the hospital.

While staying Sidhu’s conviction the Supreme Court made the following observations:

One, the FIR was unclear as to who dealt the killer blow to the victim, Gurnam Singh and two, the medical report was not categorical on the cause of death whether it was caused by heart attack or brain hemorrhage.

Now even a schoolboy would tell you these reasons are at its stupidest best. It remains to be seen whether the SC will ultimately set Sidhu and his friend free on this basis or not. If yes, then the killers of Prof. Sabharwal can argue on this basis and easily go scot-free.

Soon after the Professor’s murder, the state govt. was determined to shield the culprits who belonged to the ABVP, the youth wing of the ruling BJP. It was only because of media pressure the real culprits were arrested. Now it remains to be seen whether the media will still play the same role it played in the Jessica Lal case or stay neutral.

Indications till now are not that good. If how the media handled the Sanjay Joshi sex CD case is any indicator then Himanshu Sabharwal will be fighting a lone battle with the media being there only to report and not to take up a crusade on his behalf. It is said that only because of intense pressure from the RSS, the media organisations stayed away from exploiting the sex CD for TRPs.

Shameless!

PM Manmohan Singh’s speech at the National Development Commission meeting has been twisted out of context and given a politically volatile color by the media and sensing the electoral gains this controversy could give them the BJP has predictably and gleefully latched on to it. This is what the PM said:

"I believe our collective priorities are clear: agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the uplift of SCs/STs, other backward classes, minorities and women and children. The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalised. "We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability."

And this is what the media twisted it into:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh courted controversy in his address at the National Development Council on Saturday by saying that Muslims should have the first claim on the country's resources. There's a split down the middle over the Sachar panel's report. Muslims are in such a miserable state that the Prime Minister wants top priority for minority development schemes. At the National Development Council meeting attended by most chief ministers, Manmohan Singh was emphatic. “We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources,” Singh said.

Most of the headlines screamed like this:

Muslims must have first claim on resources: PM

As a consequence of this unnecessary controversy about Rs 1.23 crores of the taxpayers’ money have gone up in smoke because BJP decided to disrupt the Parliament today for political dividends and both houses had to be adjourned for the day.

The whole development is condemnable. In this first place the PM himself had no right to make such a statement. One of the fundamental rights of the citizens guaranteed by the Constitution is the right to equality. The PM’s statement completely violates this right of the citizen. Every citizen of this country has equal right on the resourses of this country and not just the underprivileged or the minorities.

It was very clear to anyone who heard the PM speak yesterday. Whichever journalist wrote that news report clearly wasn’t a logical person. Either he/she was unable to follow what the PM said due to his/her poor command over the language or the devil in him/her decided to twist the speech to give it a political colour.

This was all that the BJP was waiting for. The word “Muslim” simply rejuvenates them. With elections in politically important Uttar Pradesh and other states nearing, this twisted statement was something if stirred up could polarise the society on communal lines and consolidate the Hindu vote bank behind BJP. It is important for BJP to win the majority of the states that are going to poll next year if they want to mount any worthwhile challenge to the UPA in the next general elections. BJP already has a good chance of winning in Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Punjab and Gujarat.

It is Uttar Pradesh that is still a gamble. It is here the BJP vote bank has to be consolidated by communal issues, as anti-incumbency in this state will not benefit BJP because the Hindu vote in this state is already divided on caste lines. At present UP’s Muslim vote stands divided because the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are vying for their votes. If the Muslim vote splinters, then it is advantage BJP in many UP constituencies. If Mayawati and the Congress gang up, then the Muslim vote will consolidate behind this alliance. On the other hand if Mayawati and BJP gang up then the Muslim vote will split with major chunks coming to the Congress and SP. If status quo is maintained or Congress and BSP gang up, then BJP has no option but to polarise the UP vote bank if they want to win in UP. It is in this context the BJP is hoping to cash in on the distorted speech of the PM by the media by keeping the fire burning till it ultimately turns into an inferno.

As for the Congress it is better not to mention the word Muslim anywhere/anytime till the state elections are over. But I don't think it is possible for them to do so. After all some old habits die hard.

The Chinese Government of India

Earlier this year the Congress-led UPA government tried to ban 18 blogs and websites that it claimed was inimical to India. But on scrutiny it was revealed that the blogs and websites were actually inimical to the Congress Party! At that time as ISPs did not possess the technology needed block the sites, the ISPs implemented the ban at the domain level. This resulted in a public outcry and the govt was severely criticised as users were unable to access even other websites and blogs.

Now the govt has come up with a devious and hidden plan where it will be able to ban whatever it want on the internet and no one will know. In other words the Indian government - like their Chinese counterparts - will be censoring the World Wide Web and no more public outcry will it face.

Errant websites won’t be able to escape this net. The Centre is putting in place an advance screening system at the bandwidth landing stations to block individual websites and blogs perceived as threats to national security. The technology to be put in place at the eight landing stations — which bring international bandwidth into the country — will be capable of blocking websites at a sub-domain level, thus saving internet service providers (ISPs) from a sweeping shutdown. “GoI has realised that the most effective way to keep out such sites is through URL-based blocking solutions installed at international gateways,” a highly placed source told ET. After the system is in place, the department of telecommunications (DoT) can direct international long distance (ILD) players who own the landing stations to block a particular URL at the sub-domain level. [….] Sources also confirmed that DoT has circulated a draft report on Monday on ‘technical measurers for blocking of websites’ to key ministries, security agencies, leading ISPs and the three ILD players who own landing stations. …ILD operators would be mandated to install equipment specified by DoT. …The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPA), the body representing all ISPs, has already welcomed the DoT move.[Economic Times]

A Joke or A Plant?

....After losing more than 19,000 fighters, Kashmir’s armed terrorism has run into a series of problems, forcing them to drastically change their strategy. Pakistan, from the accounts of officials and terrorists, has clamped down on armed training camps on its territory. Guides for terrorists, who lead them through mountains, are becoming hard to get. Infiltration is down and local recruitment is a trickle, bringing the number of terrorists in Kashmir down to between 600 and 700, the police say. If true, that would be their lowest number ever in the insurgency.[HT]

Is this the work of an illinformed journalist or a carefully crafted plant when you consider this:

Musharraf's latest proposals for solving the Kashmir problem: Kashmir will have the same borders but people will be allowed to move freely back and forth in the region The region will have self-governance or autonomy, but not independence Troops will be withdrawn from the region in a staggered manner A joint supervision mechanism will be set up, with India, Pakistan and Kashmir represented

A Feel Good Story on Community Radio

Community radios are one of the most effective tools to broadcast human developmental issues targeted at local audience. The GoM has approved the draft Community Radio policy. It will allow advertising on CR stations, and make non-profit organizations eligible to start them. This should get more people interested in starting Community Radios, since the initial response was lukewarm.


Television has always been a powerful medium of change in human beings. In Andhra Pradesh when Doordarshan started statewide local language telecast, it was noticed that social messages, on health, hygiene, development, etc brought significant changes in the lifestyle of the people – mainly among the not so educated and the uneducated.

Here is a feel good story on Community Radio.

Every Sunday, from 8.30 am to 9.30 am, in villages across Nizamabad district of Andhra Pradesh, radios and transistors are set to AIR's FM station. Most families gather in the village centre to listen to the Telugu community radio programme, 'Allari Muchchatlu', which is written and produced by village children. The programme name was chosen by the children, and means 'mischievous chatter'. The programme has jokes, songs, skits and talks on historical figures, but everyone's favourite segment is the success stories told by children who are determined to transform their communities. Most of the children are from Dalit families, all members of the Balaseva Sanghas (children's groups) set up by the local NGO Samskar in 76 villages, in the five mandals of Nizamabad district. "The community radio project was sponsored by Samskar and Plan International (an INGO), as a positive social action programme for children," says Project Director K H S S Sundar. Now non-Dalit children are eager to join in the sangha activities, and their parents don't mind, either. Shaken up by the allari muchchatlu of children, village after village has taken up self-help projects: to make toilets in homes; to plant trees and stop cutting trees for firewood; and to delay the marriage of daughters until they are 18. Take the children of Chikarpally village, who witnessed a villager die of stomach cancer caused by gutka (locally manufactured tobacco product). Mehboob, 14, says: "We protested in front of shops selling gutka, organised rallies and burned packets. We wrote 6,000 letters against gutka to the President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister and the District Collector. They did not write back to us, but the radio people showed interest. Never mind, we will send another 200 letters." The Andhra Pradesh government banned the sale of gutka in 2002. "When the ban was lifted [by the Supreme Court two years later], the sarpanch told the shopkeeper to shift his shop outside the village. The shopkeeper still does not dare sell gutka openly, but under the counter," says Mehboob. In a society where children are never consulted, mothers and fathers are looking at their children with new respect. Mothers say, "Sunday to Sunday we listen to the programme"; "These children are not working only for themselves but for others too. We never thought of the village, only about ourselves. Now we want to be proud of our village"; "Children are an important part of our village." Farm labourer Ramulu of Ghazapur village says: "Now we are listening not only to our children, but to the children of other villages, too. They are doing what is good for us." Uneducated himself, Ramulu is determined to educate his five children. During holidays, his children work in the fields and earn Rs 40 a day, like their mother. "Earlier, we would have married off Sujata (his young daughter) by now," he says. "Now we realise how her life will be affected if she marries before she is physically and mentally mature. Childhood marriages also lead to divorces and second marriages. There are fewer second marriages in our village now." Allari muchchatlu began when a child asked, "Don't we have a right to be heard in our village? We also have something to say." Started in 2000 with the participation of nearly 300 children in 68 of the 76 villages, the programme is entirely the work of children. The children meet in their village community room to plan a radio episode, discussing the content, who will do what, and what campaign initiative to take up. Typically, each programmes include two or three songs - no film songs, but folk or their own compositions. The skits are on what the children perceive as a "big" problem in the village: child marriage, child labour, consumption of gutka and arrack, gambling, illiteracy. When all the written contributions are in, one child neatly writes out the one-hour script, and sends it to the Samskar field office in Varni. V Shanti Prabodha, Samskar Sponsorship Manager, reads each script, weeding out a couple of "inappropriate" words, and decides which one will be aired next. She tries to make sure that each village Sangha gets a chance. Then the children meet to record the programme, usually in their village community room, on a simple pocket tape-recorder. "Samskar bought the recorders, the AIR people gave us audio cassettes - we convert them to CDs," says Shanti. "Samskar staff were trained to use Sound Forge. We send the CDs to the AIR people." [Sound Forge is software to analyse, record and edit audio recordings.] At the AIR station, communications engineer P Sampath Kumar cleans the background noise on the CDs. The title song, also called Allari muchchatlu, was recorded by children at the AIR studio, says the Programme Executive Bal Rajyasekhar. The AIR staff is supportive and enthusiastic, and they get plenty of feedback on the programme. Since the FM range is only 65 kilometres, there are demands from other districts for recordings of allari muchchatlu for children in their villages. Given the popularity of the programme, last year AIR gave training in voice modulation, speaking and reading to the children. What are the children planning for their next campaign in Chikerpally? "A campaign against people who say 'I am god' but actually cheat people." [The Hoot]

Made to Order Protests for TV...

....and Related Musings.

Amit Varma directs readers to a post by the NDTV’s Madras Chennai correspondent Alaphia Zoheb on her blog about staged protests by IIT Madras students against Arjun Singh for sheer publicity value. The students who were protesting against reservations just wanted it to be made to order for TV. So they ‘innocently’ asked Ms. Zoheb for instructions. This annoyed the reporter because she had rushed to the IIT to cover the protests thinking they were genuine protests. Here is how these publicity hungry students were asking for instructions:

Then when we reached the venue of the "protest", much to my chagrin, the students started asking me what to do. "Should we sit or should we stand? Should we march or should we stay here? Should we call more students or is this enough? Should we burn the banner or shouldnt we?" [Reporter's Diary]

The proliferation of TV news channels has given ordinary people wild ideas to get noticed by the world for the heck of it or to get their grievances addressed.

Recently a contractor in Gaya protesting against non-payment of his bills, immolated himself in front of TV camera crews who were furiously shooting the act with some of them even instructing and helping - for better effects - the hapless man commit suicide. The man died and the FIR named some of the camera crewmembers as accused for abetting the crime. Now almost every news channel worth its weight had the footage of the immolation and aired them with various degrees of visible gore. For some reason (probably they didn’t have the tapes of the immolation) the Star News Channel suddenly took the moral high ground and started playing the moral police. They castigated the TV crew present there for egging and abetting the suicide and started pontificating on moral values. Now this - coming from a news channel, which has tabloidised TV journalism and taken it to nauseating depths - is too much for a hapless viewer to comprehend.

The news channels especially the English ones sometimes get into crusader mode. In the recent instances of miscarriage of justice in the Jessica Lal, Priyadharshini Mattoo and Nitish Katara murder cases, news channels like NDTV and CNN-IBN are in the forefront - and rightly so - demanding justice for them. Now to the aforementioned names they have also included Late Professor Sabharwal’s name after the outrageous attempt by the Madhya Pradesh BJP government to subvert the law in this case. If it were not for the electronic media, today Himanshu Sabharwal the late Professor’s son would have been running from pillar to post trying to get justice. If it were not for the electronic media - very easily - innocent people would have been implicated in the murder case.

NDTV organised candlelit vigils in support of retrial in the Lal, Mattoo and Katara cases. People were invited to attend these vigils. This perhaps encouraged ordinary public to stage their own rallies in support of the retrials. One got to see bunches of 30 to 50 persons holding placards demanding retrial. It was very obvious from the pictures that the demonstrations were staged solely to get their faces on TV and not out of any genuine concern. All that was needed was to get the people – intended on getting their faces on TV - together and then call up the TV offices and presto you were on TV!

Sometimes in their crusader zeal they lose all senses. Even interviews with the victims’ family members have “exclusive” stamped all over it as if they are on exclusive contracts with the news channels. The viewers are invited to send SMS messages in support of retrial. At each new development in these cases panel discussions are held and the family members of these victims are on the panel. Frankly this was getting too much for me and now I simply give such discussions a miss. This doesn’t mean I don’t want justice to be done to the victims but I think let the law take its own course and its time to have less of these particular cases on TV coz they have been flogged enough.

Another one of NDTV’s crusade is to fight terrorism. All that they are asking the viewer is to light a candle at 9.00pm every night and to resolve to keep communal harmony! Now should I weep or laugh!? How can people be so naïve and stupid?


Now the latest crusade of these news channels is to get the socialite Bina Ramani who has been charged with illegally serving liquor, destroying evidence, etc in the Jessica Lal murder case declared innocent. The viewers are kept up-to-date on an hourly basis on her. I know there is cutthroat competition among the news channels for TRPs but that doesn’t mean they lose their senses. Majority of the viewers are from simple middle-class families and are hardly interested in the ‘travails’ of socialites like Bina Ramani.


In our villages caste-system is very much alive and kicking. From time to time in the mainstream media we hear reports from villages of dalit women being paraded naked by upper-caste men obviously to settle scores or just to intimidate the dalits so they always remember who the real bosses are. This is all that is reported in the mainstream press and follow-ups are hardly done. Seldom cases get registered and hardly or never any convictions take place because most of the time the victims are bought off by money or coerced into silence.

I have a question for these urban centric news channels. Are these dalits Indians too? Don’t they have any human rights? Are they the children of a lesser god? If these news channels can devote at least half the crusader time on their channels for focusing on the plight of the violated dalit women and try to get them some justice, then India will be a better place for these people too to live in.

During the anti-reservation agitations in Delhi the TV cameras showing up at the demonstration venues or going live from there, only helped to rejuvenate the agitators greatly. They would raise slogans at top of their voice in favour of abolishing quotas, the caste-system, etc. Unfortunately the very people who were calling for abolishing caste-system then are today busy perpetrating it.

I am of the firm opinion that equitable development of India can only happen if the wretched caste-system in all its manifestations is completely rooted out. The Mahatma said India lives in its villages. He knew if our villages are to prosper, firstly the caste-system had to be eradicated and after that everything would fall into place. Unfortunately even after 59 years of independence, castism is alive and kicking in 21st century India.

Tribal Shining

A fast changing India doesn't leave anyone behind - the tribals including!

Cinema theatres or dish antennas to TV sets are no more entertainment to tribals in East Godavari agency area. Modern trends and life styles have already entered the huts of tribals even in interior forest areas like Maredumilli, Addateegala and Rampachodavaram. Recent introduction of Direct-to-Home dishes by Dooradarshan started gaining popularity in these Maoist-affected areas as laying of cables by private cable operators is not only costly, but also difficult in forest.
"Paying Rs.200 to Rs.250 per month is so expensive. So, three to four families who are mostly relatives bought DTH dishes from Rajahmundry and getting more than 40 channels through it," said Kunjam Pentannadora of Chinabarangi village of Rampachodavaram mandal.
During last 15 years some of the tribal houses have got portable black and white TVs in villages like I. Polavaram, Musurumilli, Seethapalli and Devipatnam areas. "First it was black and white TV in my house and we bought colour TV two years ago.
But, the programmes in Doordarshan or some times one or two Telugu channels with dots started coming with antennas," said Goragapudi Chandrarao, who passed SSC and is running a petty shop in Addateegala mandal headquarters.
When a few of the literates in the agency heard about DTH last year, they bought DTH dishes on monthly instalment basis and started enjoying almost all the Telugu, Hindi and other TV channels. "We are relaxing after we got DTH system this January. We are following Telugu TV serials regularly," said Kalum Singaramma, who works in Girijana Cooperative Corporation minor forest produce procurement centre on daily wage.
The TV channels also brought changes in tribal youth, who started wearing modern dresses in a few villages near to Rampachodavaram, Gokavaram and Korukonda.[The Hindu]

Islamic Fundamentalism & Political Correctness

The English press in India always prided in being secular (read pro-minority). Now at least the secular right among them have started to see and understand the message on the wall that was there for a long time now. Dilip Padgaonkar has captured this 'enlightenment' of the secular press in the following article.

Most editors and columnists writing in the English-language press have seldom missed a chance to assert their liberal and secular credentials. (I should know; I’m one of them.) For decades they berated Hindu belligerence but chose to remain coy when they had to contend with Muslim fanaticism. Out of a heightened sense of political correctness, they reckoned that the extremism of the majority community was far more pernicious than the extremism of the minorities. The reason? It would spell the advent of Hindu fascism.
In the past fortnight however more and more liberal voices have begun to denounce Muslim hot-heads, and their ‘secular’ friends in the political establishment, with unabashed vigour. The former are seen to pursue an ummah-driven agenda while the latter are believed to engage in a cynical exercise to build their vote banks. And both are accused of neglecting the genuine problems plaguing the Muslim community: education, acquisition of skills, job opportunities, gender equality…
This shift in the attitude of liberals began in earnest after the 9/11 outrage in the United States and continued to gather momentum after every successive terrorist attack in the world. Willy-nilly a link was established between the suffering heaped on innocents abroad and the depredations of the terrorists in India. At stake in both cases was the internationalisation of jehadism.
It therefore stood to reason that the US-led ‘war on terror’ would find favourable echoes in India. And this, over and beyond the confines of the Sangh Parivar. That the US tied itself up in knots in the war did serve to dampen India’s initial response. One evidence of this was the country’s refusal to be associated with the emergence of Islamophobia in the West.
What seems to have got the goat of the liberals were the reactions of Muslim hot-heads and of their ‘secular’ mentors on three issues: the controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad, India’s stance on Iran’s nuclear designs and the Bush visit. On the first count, they argued in substance, India had nothing to do with the cartoons. Indeed, no public figure and no newspaper had endorsed the view that the controversy was all about free speech.
Against this background, the statement of a minor Muslim minister in Uttar Pradesh publicly offering a hefty reward to anyone who beheaded the Danish cartoonist came as a rude shock. Could there have been any doubt at all that this was incitement to murder? The minister received no reprimand, let alone marching orders, from Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The conjunction of ummah-driven politics and vote bank-driven politics became all the more apparent on the Iran issue. Until now our foreign policy has by and large not fallen prey to domestic political battles. But now a section of the citizenry, guided by religious considerations, thought it fit to challenge India’s policy on Tehran’s obduracy on nuclear inspections.
Matters reached a head when the same considerations were brought into play to protest against the Bush visit. Liberal opinion regarded the angry demonstrations staged during the presidential visit as a flagrant attempt to give pan-Islamic solidarity precedence over the national interest.
Against this backdrop, the terrorist attacks in Varanasi proved to be the proverbial last straw. Liberal opinion was convinced that the upsurge of Muslim radicalism, loudly claiming its affinity with the ummah, and the cachet of respectability it received from certain ‘secular’ political formations, had created an altogether novel situation for the country. It portended an eruption of communal tensions which would slow down economic growth and damage the nation’s security interests.
But here is the rub. Sensing the shift in the national mood, the BJP was quick to galvanise public opinion in favour of minorityism. Lal Krishna Advani’s sees his proposed rath yatra as the effective stratagem to precipitate his party’s return to power. This could well be his last chance to fulfil his prime ministerial ambitions.
Given the mood in the country, the stratagem might work. But at what cost? Should the rath yatra raise the communal fever, should it lead to riots and more terrorist attacks, you can as well bid good-bye to sustaining the GDP growth rate of recent years. And you can also say farewell to the fund of good will India enjoys in the international community, including in many Muslim countries.
The liberal hope now is that India will reject Hindu bigotry and Muslim fanaticism alike. Both threaten the idea of India which the world now celebrates with such gusto. But political correctness has well and truly run out of steam.[DNA]