To Deny Our Nothingness:A Response to Contemporary Images of India in the Media

        To Deny Our Nothingness: A Response to Contemporary Images of India in the Media.

Readers will look askance at my temerity to write this article- a daring attempt to release India from the current humiliating images that the media- in particular, the electronic media -had assiduously created in the last couple of years. While the ostensible whipping boy is the Congress, followed by politicians of all hues, the images flashed on our screens are only about us, We, the Indians.

One cannot miss the overt glee in the news anchors’ almost daily litany that they have accessed new CAG reports on one scam or the other causing a loss of many lakh crores of rupees to the exchequer that would make all the preceding losses seem trifler than a peanut. Almost every Channel (barring the Government owned Doordarshan) loudly trumpets its claim for being the first to break the scam news. Indian media seems not only ubiquitous; its detective wing outperforms the investigations of the celebrated trio in CID- (the longest running crime detective series on Sony TV Channel), Pradhuyman, Abhijeet and Daya.  Nobody seems to wonder (and worry) how Media gets access to reports right under the nose of the CAG before they are tabled in the Parliament? Why such leakages- and that too- from the office of the chief Auditor of India go undetected and those who perpetrate them go scot free? Are there no CID stars in the Government to look into this open secret of quotidian leakage? No one dares to question whether it is ethical for the media to red flag reports in advance that are primarily the parliament’s privileged documents. Today’s Media has appropriated to itself the roles of CAG, CVC, CBI and the Judiciary to go hammer and tongs at all the dramatis personae of its daily soap opera SCAM. But the truth is it cannot claim credit for exposing the scams as that belongs to the CAG. Media’s scam news is by no stretch of imagination investigative journalism. It is intrusive journalism- intruding into Government offices and using underhand means to get the reports leaked to the Media. 

The term ‘scam’ is misleading as CAG reports cannot be called scams until they are examined and accepted by the PAC after it is tabled in the Parliament. CAG assists the committee during the course of investigation. None of the 22 members of the PAC is a minister in the government and conventionally PAC is headed by a member belonging to the opposition party.  The reports become scams once the findings of the CAG are endorsed by the PAC and recommended for criminal investigation. The Media clearly jumps the gun when it flashes in the Breaking News that another scam has broken. The old adage that no one is pronounced guilty unless s/he is proved to be so, is now reversed as the Media pronounces person(s) guilty till the ‘guilty’ prove their innocence. The media ups the ante on alleged scams to the extent that India has come to be seen as one huge cauldron of corruption. The government remains paralyzed as all its efforts are towards countering the damning propaganda that goes on in the Media. This is neither  to question the CAG reports –whether they are absolutely true or had erred on the side of exaggeration- nor to question the need for Government to prove its accountability. Media’s responsibility is to make public the outcome of Government’s response to the PAC and to the Parliament but not to be judgmental, leave aside jumping the gun to allege that Government is a monstrous scamster.

For the last two years this theatre of decadence has been on our news channels. Behind rampant ethical correctness, the media has launched a blitzkrieg against Indian government, politicians and businessmen alleging corruption here, there, everywhere except in its sacred space. First it was the run up to the CWG games that was marred  by rains, dengue, delay, corruption, dug up roads, dirt and filth strewn all over the city. The foreign press taking the cue from the Indian media wrote off the CWG citing Indian inefficiency to host a major sporting event. The dirty pictures flashed on the BBC website were gleefully reprinted by the Indian media to show that India lives only in her toilets. No one questioned whether this filthy reporting was the erstwhile Empire’s way of striking back! For nearly six weeks we ground our noses in muck and filth and looked gleefully at CWG as Corruption Wealth Games played in a Hall of Shame. Passively we accepted the sobriquet ‘corrupt’ for ourselves and painted our shame in all its stains!  India stinking had reached incredible proportion.

It was left to our athletes to lift India stinking into India shining during the CWG games. But even before the victory bugle sounded the Last Post, the First Post was heard to mark the start of the investigations. The euphoria of a nation’s sporting success did not last even 24 hours as reports about Games scam to the staggering sum of Rs.8000 crores started coming in. India shaming eclipsed India’s momentary hours of shining. Media went berserk with the scam story to make a Kalmadi out of every Indian.

The 2G scam was the next that dragged the UPAII into deep mire with the Media relishing the scam story to make a Raja out of both the PM and the then FM- Mr Manmohan Singh and Mr. Chidambaram as the co-architects of the spectrum allocations scam. The discussions ad nauseam in the TV studio painted the entire UPAII as corrupt, in particular Mr.Chidambaram, till the Supreme Court gave him a clean chit. Enough mudslinging had taken place inside the TV studios and in the print media to leave Chidambaram wonder if the great Indian Ocean can wash this alleged stain off his hands? Anna came and Media raised the furore beyond perceived noise decibels to tar all the PM’s men with the same brush. The Adarsh scam-milder in comparison -was followed by the Coalgate that came as a relief for the Media suffering a brief scam-free interregnum. The Media gleefully latched onto the leaked CAG reports to affirm that Indian government is for the swindlers, by the swindlers and of the swindlers. The news is coming in that the media has accessed yet another scam report by the CAG on the Indian multi-national Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.

Is this the whole truth about We, the Indians?  Media says that as a watchdog, its duty is to expose. But this is not exposition as that is the work of the CAG. Media preens itself with the prosecutor’s robe and comes out displaying leaked papers with fluorescent marking of the alleged misdeeds of the Government. The bias in reporting is too authentic not to be missed. Every scam becomes ‘the mother of all scams’ (I do not know why the feminists are not up in arms) and the present government headed by an honest PM and consisting of quite a few men of known integrity is dubbed as the government of scamsters. For the media, this is the truth and nothing but the truth. But as far as it is concerned, it is above board, even if it makes moles out of the government employees with cakes and ale. Can the media honestly own that the fourth estate is absolutely honest and all such ‘scams’ are not paid news and bought news!

The truth is corruption is not just a UPAII phenomenon. It is a global phenomenon that has ballooned up with crony capitalism. It is there in all walks of life. Even the mosquito sprayer who visits your house waits for a wad of notes before issuing a chalan that your house is the breeding place for mosquitoes. It is not a UPAII phenomenon; it was there during the NDA regime and very much before that. What is new is the electronic eye that with the sanctioned democratic latitude can see wolves everywhere with absolute impunity. Media has become the Big Brother where everyone is under its complete surveillance abusing the freedom of expression to malign everyone in the establishment. An eerie atmosphere of fear and angst pervades the government and the bureaucracy resulting in inordinate delays to formulate and implement policies without inviting the Big Brother’s bash. The current scenario is ‘if you do, you are damned; if you don’t do, you are paralyzed’. The 1990s had seen bold steps taken by Manmohan Singh to liberate economy when the Big brother had not become too big for his boots. Not that there was no corruption then, but the BB chose to turn the Nelson’s eye in the larger interest of freeing the moribund economy from the clutches of Permit-license Raj. The government was then not hamstrung by coalition compulsions and could go ahead with its reforms. No such luxury is available to Manmohan Singh today and the government has been stopped from accelerating the gains of the last decade. The UPA government of the last eight years is credited with bringing in major reforms like the RTI and RTE.  But it could not push through other reforms such as FDI in retail, insurance, aviation etc, GST,GARR etc partly due to coalition compulsion and largely due to the opposition not allowing the Parliament to function. The Coalgate has recently paralyzed the Parliament but the Media by trial goes on where media functions within the precincts of the TV studios as the defacto opposition part. The truth is one Kalamadi or one Rajah does not make the entire cabinet. No doubt, the summer of discontent of 2010-12 is too true to be washed away. But Media has revelled in presenting a theatre of the Absurd that has made every Indian ashamed of his lineage and democratic inheritance. As a citizen of India, I feel angst and humiliation when newspapers and the electronic media in the name of freedom of expression indulge in vilification of the state without any sense of proportion. For all their self righteous talk that ‘no one shall rein us, we will ourselves rein in,’ the anti-establishment tirade the media resorts to make me wonder if we are deceptive recipients of paid news.

We have also seen how Indian Media felt highly vindicated when the NYT and Washington Post joined the media chorus in flaying the PM as an underachiever and a tragic figure. The irony is that the Media does not understand the meaning of Tragedy. Tragedy is defined as a colossal waste of the human potential. The tragic figure at the end rises up in the esteem of the audience when against all tragic catastrophes, he walks high, morally and spiritually triumphant. If Manmohan Singh is a tragic figure, let us salute him. Time will tell who were responsible in hampering the PM from his honest efforts to deny us, Indians, our nothingness and the role of media in denying us our dignity and worth as democratic citizens of India.

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