De-Weeding Season

In the past week, we have read in the papers about how sleazy and pathetic the really popular TV journalists are. They’ve shown that, well, they’re not really journalists but vandals to put it mildly. Further, on the lighter side, they’ve reasserted my claim that, truth in news can only be in the Sports section.

The media people who were exposed have been long known to do a lot of unwarranted Narendra Modi-bashing by constantly focussing on a few deaths during the unfortunate rioting incident. Since those events, there has been no let up whatsoever on their part. Uniformly they reached a consensus that Modi was a villain, and they were unforgiving about it. They got a lot of support for their claim by organizing (or should I say ‘fixing’) debates on the tele, harnessing and taking advantage of the people’s humanitarian side. It is unfortunate that it’s very easy to believe what is fed to us via television – on the whole, information is biased. Truth be told, the Modi administration has done a fair amount of good too to offset the ill repute that had developed since the riots.

• The TATAs pulled out of Bengal and planted themselves in Gujrat putting Gujrat on the industrial map and very soon, it may be gearing up to become quite the industrial hub
• Since 2001, the sex ratio in Gujrat has risen 8.5%. It used to be 834 and now it stands at 905, which is better than most other states in the country (now how does your humanitarian instinct feel?)

And there is infrastructure development that is growing every day. There seems to be no logic in constantly harping on past misgivings. On a personal level, I am glad that the pop-journalists have been exposed the way that they were and at least now, while they fade in the public eye, there will be a rise in conscience; a kind of fresh awareness. Thought will follow reading and closer research will follow thought. That’s the way to grow.

There are two sides to a coin. Auditing inconsistencies brought the Satyam scion and the associate auditing firm to book, and a very similar auditing function exposed murky politics in recent weeks. A de-weeding of our government is what we are all witnessing today. The questions now should be – Is it for real? Is it of any use? What’s the big picture?