Who Will Bell the Cat?

Even with questions being asked about the integrity of the press based on the Radia tapes, we still don’t seem to care that the media never asks the hard questions to politicians.

Sure, we have the odd show like Devil’s Advocate by Karan Thapar, but even that gets a bit too aggressive and in-your-face at times. And even Thapar only goes after people who are obviously wrong or guilty. But nobody in the media ever asks politicians what they are doing about even the basic minimum things they are supposed to do: stuff like providing good administration and development?

No wonder then that it’s only students who ask questions the media won’t: like the student who confronted Obama about Pakistan’s terrorism. Or the student who asked Rahul Gandhi in Ahmedabad why they should vote for the Congress when Narender Modi has developed Gujarat so much more?

Rahul Gandhi’s response? He compared Modi to Chairman Mao saying while both did develop their areas, they also caused a lot of destruction. So Rahul Gandhi offers us two choices:

(1) Development with destruction (the Modi option, as per Rahul Gandhi)

(2) No development, no destruction (the Congress and Leftist option)

The Left and the Congress’s attitude seems to be this: if people can’t have development and jobs, so what? “Let them eat secularism”, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette. And it’s a strange definition of “secularism” at that. Both say the Sikh massacres of 1984 are not communal acts and got into bed after the 2004 elections…to keep the “communal forces at bay”.

Comments

  1. KumarDecember 5, 2010 at 9:58 AM

    I once read someone from Pakistan actually saying that there are times when the Pakistan press asked more pointed questions and wrote more courageously than India. I don't know if that is true in Pakistan or not. But the truth that no media person in India is really asking questions in such pointed ways that the politician faces difficulty in wriggling out of it without loss of composure.

    It is also true that plenty of government harassment occurs to the media if they act in ways that exposes the heavyweights. And, it does have effect. What to do? Nobody can be that foolish to face the mindless Hitler/Stalin threats from the politician or bureaucrats. (Incidentally, nearly all politicians desire Hitler/Stalin like power. Democracy's glory lies in its ability to check that natural tendency of rulers.)

    Apart from the media, I also wonder why some kind of people's movement cannot occur in India to fight against the public wrong doers. We need to be more participative in checking the wrong doing of our politicians and bureaucrats. Maybe we don't have the people's leadership to induce us in that direction.

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