Dear Lutyens Media, Please Stop The Scaremongering

The mainstream news channels know it well that they are creating a communal tension in the country by giving air-time to fringe elements and in the process making India appear like a doomed nation.

If I am not using this space to articulate how “secular fabric of India” or  the “idea of India” or “freedom of expression” is under dire threat, I must be:

• Sanghi
• BJP Member
• Bhakt
• Internet Hindu

Surprisingly, the answer is “None of the above”. Of course, these days, anybody speaking in support of the PM is labeled all of the above. Nevertheless, I believe that we must move on from the doomsday scenarios painted by the intellectuals, authors and others who are shouting from roof-tops about how everything in India is gloomy and dark. It is time for them to smell the coffee and for us to break our silence.

In terms of political inclinations, I strongly support Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan of the Loksatta party and wish parties such as Loksatta succeed in their endeavor to change the politics of India. I have not come across a politician who is as clear-thinking as Dr. JP in modern India yet. I just hope people like him were electable and were representing us in the Parliament today. I wish a party with right-of-center economic policies and a truly liberal outlook had a stronger role to play in the national political discourse. Alas, its time has not yet come and we do not have the luxury to wait for another 5-10 years for political parties such as Loksatta to take centre stage.

And it is in that context that I support our PM wholeheartedly. Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan made an interesting argument in days leading to the Loksabha elections of 2014. He argued that by this time (sixty years after independence) we should have had leaders who spoke only about job creation, development, infrastructure, and economic progress; unfortunately we had only one. The only person that spoke about these things back then was Narendra Modi and he continues to do that even today.

“Slow moving government” is a curse that has plagued India for decades. The present government appears to move faster than any government before; but in the changed world order it is still not fast enough according to the critics. The critics are blaming Modi for not doing enough or not moving fast enough. And that is perfectly valid. None of these people have said that the government policies are wrong. But what’s inexcusable is that there is hardly any discussion around these topics.

I happened to watch an “exclusive” interview of Mr. Nitin Gadkari on a mainstream news channel about 4-5 months back. I was interested to see how he answers questions around turn-around of ports, ambitious road-building projects, how the NDA government will tackle land acquisition problems, how will they move to e-toll, and so on.

However the first question was about the Shiv Sena, the second about controversial comments made by some leader and so it continued. Not a single question related to his ministry was asked! The interviewer probably thought viewers may not pay attention if only such questions are asked. Maybe, the interviewer watches too many Bollywood movies and believes in a sensational worldview.

Hardly any space is left to cover real issues after stories on unverified instances of rising communal tensions (remember the church attack hysteria a few months back?). It would have been helpful if our media did the following –

• Invite the Railway Minister Mr. Suresh Prabhu and ask him questions on his vision for Indian Railways. Ask how soon we can travel from Mumbai to Delhi in an overnight 8-10 hours journey or Mumbai – Bangalore in 12-15 hours instead of 24 hours.
• Ask Mr. Jaitley hard-hitting questions on black-money, on GST, on promised reforms, on how he plans to balance his budgets;
• Ask Smriti Irani about the new education policy, about RTE, about dismal conditions of education;
• Ask Uma Bharti about status of river cleaning;
• Ask Piyush Goyal about renewable energy and energy security in general.
• Invite the PM himself and ask him about hard-nosed facts and metrics on the progress he has made so far on ease-of-doing-business; on trade; on land acquisition, on foreign policy and so on.

But that did not happen. For the first time, it appears that the government and the ministries are interested in talking about these things but the media is not interested in listening. We all know that if the PM grants an interview to any mainstream news channel, he will be asked questions only about the “secular fabric”.

When people like me watch this babble going on, I feel a sense of deep despair. Yes, there are loose cannons in BJP and fringe elements on both sides. But they were always around, were they not? Were there not incidences of violence before? Were there not attacks on minority institutions before?

It is argued that now right-wing elements feel empowered and emboldened and it is somehow suggested that the government is egging them on. But I think what is really happening is that the media persons, and an eminent group of scholars who enjoyed state patronage are now feeling insecure since their business that thrives on poverty and “always-developing” India may come to an end.

Now, the Prime Minister and his team cannot change the country overnight. But they are certainly changing the political discourse. What is happening now is that the traditional vote-banks realize that their poverty and helplessness was a ticket to prosperity for many people, and now they want a piece of the action too. And that’s unacceptable for the motley crew that is always visible in TV studios or fancy-looking seminars.

So how do you derail this dissolution of the traditionally safe vote-banks? You scare them. You scare them silly. Unfortunately (for this nation), there are enough motor-mouths around to facilitate that. The moment someone (even an unknown leader) says something stupid, it finds its way on the front-page and prime-time news without fail. The empty rhetoric does not remain empty anymore. The “debate” rages on and then erupts in a Dadri-like tragedy. It is made to sound as if the statements are coming directly from the PMO. Looking at the air-time these comments get, more motor mouths (rather gutter mouths) spring up, and there’s a race to the bottom now.

The media knows it all too well that they are creating communal tension in the country by giving importance and air-time to such fringe elements. They know very well that these random comments by some eccentric people do not deserve even a mention in the news, forget prime-time. Aren’t these media-persons supposed to be the guiding lights for the nation?

Even for a complete outsider like me, it is evident that this behavior from the media and a section of the “intellectuals” is a result of disruption of the ‘apple-cart’ and unbridled access to power that they are used to. We can clearly see the frustration they are feeling as the main business (poverty) may be taken away from them. With economic progress, a whole bunch of sectors (including tons of NGOs) will be laid off and there’s just too much at stake for these people to let that happen.

There are many like me who are thoroughly confused by this doomsday scenario being painted. And that’s why, we must break our silence. We must let the media know that poverty and civil unrest may have been a ticket to fame and fortune for them till now, but that is not going to continue. Let the government do their job – and do grill them pitilessly if they don’t. Keep track of what the government is or isn’t doing on the policy front and please stop this “idea of India” under threat twaddle.