MxMIndia

Category: NOOSEMAKER

  • Ranjona Banerji isn't surprised on how those who damned the master blaster not long ago are now singing praises.

    [MJR – Noosemakers] Will typists and babblers leave Sachin alone?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Bill Dwyre in The Los Angeles Times, in a recent comment on Roger Federer, dismisses trigger-happy journalists of print, web and broadcast as “typists and babblers”. But far more often than tennis great Roger Federer has cricket legend-in-his-lifetime Sachin Tendulkar had to face the firing squad. If the poor man doesn’t score a century every time he plays, out come the guns. O, now he should retire. O, actually, MS Dhoni, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Akhilesh Yadav and Emraan Hashmi are all better than him. O, India never wins when Sachin scores a century. O, he’s just a selfish beast. Babble, babble, blah blah. The typists and babblers, having no sense of history (or if it comes to that, geography) can’t really compare him to Gary Sobers or Viv Richards or even Sunil Gavaskar. Instead, they cast their beady little eyes around and catch the first person they see. The canteen teaboy, for instance, had he been a cricketer and played for India and scored 99 centuries.

     

    The last few months, especially after India’s scintillating performance against Australia in Australia, have been good for the knife-sharpening brigade. And all focus was on Sachin Tendulkar scoring his 100th century. This nunber was far more important than anything else in the world. The pain of our losses in Australia would have been wiped out if the great man (or selfish beast) had done it. As it happens, no one even has close to 99 centuries in International cricket and getting 100 does not constitute some significant cricketing milestone. But the typists and babblers (thank you, Bill Dwyre) picked on this and stuck to it. “Sachin fails again” were common headlines. Former greats like Kapil Dev called for him to retire.

     

    And then the man goes and does it. No one could believe it at first, so the whiners and those with bad digestion (some bran flakes in the morning a good idea to improve the mood?) got in first: O, it was only against Bangladesh. It would have been better if it had been against another team. (By that reckoning, do the record books discount all India’s victories against Bangladesh or do we hang on to them happily?).

     

    Soon after however, the joy and accolades took over. All the hyperbolic praise poured out as if the last few months had not happened. Kapil Dev appeared on TV with the “greatest” and whatnot pouring out of his mouth in his own brand of English. He ducked the retirement question, heh heh. Other former cricketers made it clear that Bangladesh was a legitimate Test playing country. Former England captain Nasser Hussain pointed out that it wasn’t just about a century against Bangladesh but the other 99 against every top team and top bowler in the world. The headlines now said, “Sachin, Thanks a Ton”, “Man of the Century” and “God of All Things”.

     

    The biggest winner however was Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee whose lacklustre budget got forgotten.

     

    Knowing the tiny thinking capacity of the typists and babblers however, there can be no doubt that they’ll begin soon once again. Sachin Tendulkar however knows that he will recover and decide for himself. As Ayaz Memon quoted from Shakespeare in The Times of India on Monday to describe Tendulkar, “I might call him a thing divine; for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”

     

    Yes, typists and babblers, you can look up Shakespeare on Wikipedia but don’t read it for too long or your little brains will hurt.

     

  • This time, in its final report, the Planning Commission lowered the number of poor people by lowering the numbers. This has led to a dramatic reduction in poor people.

    [Noosemaker] It doesn’t add up for poor Monty

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    I suppose, if you add it up, you have to feel sorry for Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission of India. Of course, it is important to remember that I cannot add and neither, it seems, can Ahluwalia. He can however subtract. That is, if you have so many poor people and you want to reduce their numbers, you just reduce the numbers that make them poor. This is an effective tool but sadly no one in this country, except business journalists (the same ones who see any schemes for the poor as burdens on the exchequer), agree with Ahluwalia. Most people find subtraction a heinous and reprehensible method especially since people seem to be multiplying.

     

    About here is where I run out of mathematical analogies. Because everything sounds like those school maths problems now – if a train is running at 100 km an hour and Peter has six apples, how many oranges does John deserve? For all I know, Ahluwalia also subscribes to my version of mathematics.

     

    Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, how many poor people in India? A few months ago, Ahluwalia and the Planning Commsion (subtraction department) told us that if you could live on Rs 32 a day in a city and Rs 28 in a village, then you were above the poverty line. Faced with universal outrage – where many tried to live on that amount and couldn’t last more than 10 minutes – Ahluwalia huffed and hawed in his very good accent and told us that his figures have nothing to do with whether these magician-like poor people were eligible for benefits or not. The Planning Commission, it seemed, just needed these figures to help them in some way or the other.

     

    So now we know in which way: to reduce the number of poor people in India. This time, in its final report, the Planning Commission lowered the number of poor people by lowering the numbers. Instead of Rs 32 in a city, now you are poor if you manage on Rs 28. In villages, the figure is down to Rs 22. This has led to a dramatic reduction in poor people.

     

    Sadly for Ahluwalia, no one bought it this time either – except business journalists. The prime minister just quietly dumped the Planning Commission’s number and decided that someone else would start counting. Hopefully, it will be someone who can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Even fractions might help – the way business journalists and the rest of the tribe appear at times.

     

  • On and on VK Singh whined about when he was born, and on and on went the media about great patriots and martyrs being ill-treated, until the Supreme Court turned down his plea

    [MJR] A man chasing his date of birth

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    First they told us he was a victim of an evil government, working overtime to throw him out of his job a year too early. Then he said that it wasn’t the government really but the army which was doing that – even though he was chief of army staff. Then he took the government, not the army, to court, saying he was younger than he said he was (Note to young people whose eyes glaze over when they come across anyone born before 1979: he is very old on both dates).

     

    Half the media then decided that VK Singh had gone too far while the other half decided that a decided patriot was being used as target practice by an evil government. This could be because many of the daddies and uncles of mediapersons under the age of 40 and holding bog jobs in television are in the armed forces. Those of us over the age of 40, most of whom have been put out to pasture, no one ever cared about our mummies, daddies, uncles, aunties and so on.

     

    Gosh, I sound just like the army chief, sorry.

     

    On and on Singh whined about when he was born and on, and on went the media about great patriots and martyrs (I’m not going there) being ill-treated, until the Supreme Court turned down the general’s plea and said he had to now be older than he wanted to be (don’t we all!).

     

    And so the tide turned. Half the media (maybe I exaggerated a tiny bit about so many uncles and daddies in the army having given birth to journalists, although even the army chief has a journalist for a daughter I hear) turned against the general and now he did a bad thing by fighting for his “honour”. Now we hear that whole date of birth fight was not a good thing, brought embarrassment to the army and so on.

     

    The general wasn’t done though. He licked his wounds inflicted by the Supreme Court, not some usual cross-border enemy and as he did that, he got quite cross. So, with a couple of months left till retirement, he started a tandav nritya, flinging accusations of bribery left and right.

     

    This means gloves off time for the media and a free-for-all amongst higher-ups is the best journalistic cannon fodder ever. Patriots, martyrs, cynics, sceptics, haters and baiters, yellers and screamers all joined in and everyone’s now bashing everyone else all day. The army chief remains at the middle of it all, putting his left in and his right leg out, doing the boogie-woogie, ‘cos that’s what it’s all about.

     

    Disclosure: My daddy and uncles are not and never have been in the army and I am well over 40 (closer to the other figure actually) though I am not as old as the general who is not sure how old he is.

     

  • You can tear down old and revered institutions, you can gossip about anyone you please but you cannot, cannot, cannot ever say anything negative about the Indian armed forces.

    Glory Be, Shekhar Gupta dared to criticise the Indian Army!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The one way to annoy the journalistic community (I’m being generous and including TV-wallahs in this) is to write something uncomplimentary about the armed forces. As Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of Indian Express, has discovered, ever since he wrote a front page story about inexplicable troop movements towards New Delhi on January 16.

     

    The story suggested that some in the government were worried about the army chief’s intentions especially since that was the day that VK Singh moved the Supreme Court over his age issue. There were questions raised about why the two divisions were abruptly sent back on ministry of defence instructions and why several protocols about moving towards the national capital had not been followed.

     

    Outrage and condemnation burst out across the media. What, the Indian armed forces, the most glorious institution in the world had been accused of maybe, perhaps attempting a coup or at best acting in a suspicious manner or at the least not following the rules? Impossible. For 7 lakh years (I’m using the BJP’s Saraswati civilisation timeline here because jingoism always reminds me of the right wing) the Indian armed forces have been perfect, never set a foot wrong.

     

    And now, to be accused of this, blah blah blah. I wonder what today’s media would have done to Emperor Ashoka when he decided to abjure violence after the Kalinga war. Can you imagine Ashoka being raked over the coals by Arnab Goswami, for daring to suggest that there had been too much bloodshed thanks to his soldiers?

     

    Anyway, Gupta has now become the whipping boy of the media. In Mumbai, there’s a term for this media anger: “khunnas”. Hmmm, that is, a teeny bit of jealousy that no one else had interpreted the facts quite like that. But there’s also all that patriotic anger – when it comes to the armed forces, objectivity flies out the window. Meanwhile gossip is flying around – Gupta is a Congress stooge, he is not in the VK Singh camp, he wanted to make hay out of an old story, he never thought it would boomerang like this and so on.

     

    Goswami on Times Now told us over and over again that some journalists with an “over-active imagination” had concocted this story. (Something TV can never be accused of possessing, oh no!) Several retired generals with large moustaches bristled with anger (how come we have so many of them, retired generals I mean, not moustaches?).

     

    Newspapers wrote editorials against the Express story. Some pointed out that half the information had first appeared on rediff.com. Others said that the conclusions were a bit far-fetched. Not a single journalist bothered to investigate the two questions raised: one, if the troop movement was innocent, why did the divisions turn back and two, why were the protocols not followed and tangentially, is VK Singh as angelic as he is being made out to be?

     

    Whatever it is, Gupta has learned one lesson. You can question God, you can tear down old and revered institutions and you can gossip about anyone you please but you cannot, cannot, cannot ever say anything negative about the Indian armed forces. Be warned, because otherwise, the wrath of Indian TV will fall on your head. Add all the anchors together and that’s quite a heavy burden to bear.

     

  • We still don't know how the President acquired this army land for herself. Did she use her position as commander and chief of the armed forces, revenge for those hours of standing in the Republic Day parade with her hand to her forehead? Or did someone do all this for her?

    [MJR] Women on top: A caricature and a cartoon

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This week, we have to share the honours between two very important women. First – this is not because she is more important but because she sort of is, in an official kind of way – the President of India, Pratibha Patil.

     

    According to a group of ex-soldiers (you know the lot, formerly noble and so on and now a bit, well, suspect) have claimed that 2.6 lakh acres of army land in Pune, meant for housing jawans, has been taken over by the President to build her retirement home. If that wasn’t bad enough, two colonial-era bungalows have been broken down in the process.

     

    Now everyone knows, especially since Adarsh, that no one – not the army, not the government – actually wants to build anything for jawans. Since Adarsh, we also know that senior defence personnel, bureaucrats and politicians will happily take any government land cheap and make luxury homes for themselves and their families.

     

    Given Pune’s proximity to Mumbai, it is possible that the President was inspired by the Adarsh adarsh (that’s a pun by the way. It is clear, I make this clear, as we approach the next noosemaker, because it is possible that I will find my own neck in a noose. Jokes are verboten you see).

     

    Still, in all the fire and outrage – now an essential ingredient to any dish in modern India – we still don’t know how the President acquired this army land for herself. Did she ride in on silver, flashing her firearms? Did she use her position as commander and chief of the armed forces, revenge for those hours of standing in the Republic Day parade with her hand to her forehead? Or did someone do all this for her?

     

    * * *

     

    And then we reach the Great Supreme Leader who is incapable of staying out of the noose and the news. The indomitable Mamata Banerjee, crusader against communists and cartoonists. Ambikesh Mahapatra, a chemistry professor at Jadavpur University, apparently a hotbed of dangerous anti-Didi-ists, forwarded a cartoon which used dialogues from Satyajit Ray’s film Sonar Kellato poke a little gentle fun at the removal of Dinesh Trivedi as railway minister.

     

    Mahapatra and a neighbour were, therefore, arrested and kept in jail for one night for not only forwarding this hurtful and nasty cartoon but also outraging the modesty of a woman. They were also beaten up by members of the Trinamool Congress for the same crimes. The police, also upset at this mocking of the Great Supreme Didi, made a mockery of the justice system.

     

    In all this fun and games, could Didi be far behind? She promptly piped up saying those who commit crimes will be punished. Quite right.

     

    It goes without saying that Mahapatra’s act of forwarding the cartoon showed him to be a communist and therefore deserving of every punishment meted out to him. It also proves that West Bengal or Poschim Bongo or whatever it’s called, has to stop these illegal acts of laughing, giggling, sniggering, smirking at Didi’s expense. Is it any wonder that Dada has left the Kolkata Knight Riders and joined Pratibha Patil in Pune?

     

  • The biggest problem for the President of India, as far as I can see, is whether they can stand for hours, saluting, during the Republic Day parade

    [MJR] Who will guard the Republic?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The last week has been singularly dull as far as the news is concerned. No one jumped up and dominated the headlines as normal life (disaster, death, chaos, catastrophe, cricket, celebrities) continued on its normal course. But one question has been burning up the cyber waves and some print and hot air space: who will be the next President of India?

     

    Since many who live in neo-India believe that we already have and definitely should have an American-style presidential system (this justifying the large quantities of hamburgers and cupcakes which their progeny consume), the person who will assume this titular post is very important. The biggest problem for the President of India, as far as I can see, is whether they can stand for hours, saluting, during the Republic Day parade.

     

    But for neo-India, it is somebody who can represent India abroad and presumably, likes hamburgers and cupcakes. Even veggie hamburgers will do.

     

    The current incumbent, Pratibha Patil, has upset everyone in the ongoing battle of the Patils. The fact that she is building a house on army land has deeply upset a retired Lt Col, Suresh Patil. The fact that some rules were tweaked to build a very large house has got our hot air experts, our cyber warriors and large brigades of the generally self-righteous exceedingly upset. Anyway, she goes away in July.

     

    So then what?

     

    Some want the schoolchild-obsessed APJ Abdul Kalam to come back since he was popular though why we need a popular president beats me. Others think it is time Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was helped up the stairs to a ceremonious post. Still others think it should be Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who gets the privilege. Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar’s name is up there in the mix. Former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma (he was a popular speaker, now!) was suggested but party boss Sharad Pawar has shot that one down.

     

    The most unimpeachable candidate seems to be the venerable Dr Karan Singh, but he may well be too erudite and well-spoken for neo-India to appreciate.

    The twitterati, as puerile as they are pliable, think that porn star Sunny Leone is a good choice.

    I leave you to chew over these choices, none of which we will make.

    You have until July.

     

  • The problem is that much worse has happened since the Bofors scandal and the grand sum of Rs64 crore – the bribe amount – seems quite teeny-weeny compared to the giant figures we've become used to

    [MJR] The Bofors scandal will never die

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    There it is, after quarter of a century, back to plague us. Or has it? The Bofors gun, once the symbol of corruption in government, and which apparently led to the death of one prime minister and the fall of another, is in the news again.

     

    For those who can’t remember anything about it, there were allegations of kickbacks in the purchase of the howitzer (the word sounds better than gun) from the Swedish company Bofors. Last week, a Swedish police officer who had spoken secretly to journalist Chitra Subramaniam all those years ago, came out in the open – to Subramanian, who had covered the story extensively in the olden days.

     

    The problem is that much worse has happened since the Bofors scandal and the grand sum of Rs64 crore – the bribe amount – seems quite teeny-weeny compared to the giant figures we’ve become used to. Also, after years and years of investigation and allegation, nothing really happened.

     

    Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated, Rajiv Gandhi lost an election and was also assassinated. Meanwhile Martin Ardbo, president of Bofors at the time, whose diary had many leads about money that went from one letter of the alphabet to another, mainly the mysterious middleman Q, also died and so did Win Chadha the Bofors contact for India.

     

    Under successive governments (including non-Congress ones), the CBI floundered all over the place, as it muffed procedures, forgot to send the right letters (not of the alphabet, the other type, probably because neither the CBO nor anyone else in India could understand what a “letter rogatory” was. It’s not ‘R’, that was another alphabet in Ardbo’s diary) and couldn’t conclusively get to Q. Everyone knew who Q was – an Italian middleman who was a friend of Sonia Gandhi’s. Of course, every Italian is a friend of Sonia Gandhi’s because she is Italian. Like all Indians are friends of mine or maybe not since I am not remotely as important as Sonia Gandhi. Anyway, after some time, the CBI gave up on Q.

     

    The story, by the way, was broken by Swedish radio in 1987 and not in India. Amitabh Bachchan was also included in the deal by the Swedish newspaper Daagens Nyheter, and not the Indian media. He successfully sued them and the CBI and everyone else, (except maybe the mysterious Q?) agrees he was not involved.

     

    Meanwhile, everyone says that the Bofors field howitzer is a nice gun or tank or whatever it is. It was very useful in Kargil.

     

    The Bofors  scandal we know will never die. But as time passes, the alphabet will get weaker and weaker…

     

  • At a time when the Indian media is grappling with all sorts of issues and allegations, the Murdoch saga presents an interesting contrast

    [MJR] The mighty Murdoch empire wobbles

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The cycle of life and death is such a wicked thing, sparing no one, especially not the high and mighty (Thank god, really, for us who are not only low and but are also tiny – I’m speaking metaphorically here). And so the mighty Murdoch empire wobbles.

     

    The Leveson inquiry into media ethics last month and the British parliamentary committee report after an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch’s companies released last week after last year’s inquiry commission both highlight that fall. The parliamentary report indeed calls Murdoch senior “unfit” to run his companies, although the Conservative party members of the commission would not endorse that. The irony for British politicians is that both the Labour and Conservative parties can be accused of getting too close to the Murdochs and their editors.

     

    From the time he bought the Sun and then venerable Times, Murdoch has been a figure of controversy. His disdain for journalists and senior editors was applauded by media moghuls elsewhere as a fine way to treat employees (India’s journalists have also suffered from the Murdoch effect). Murdoch sacked, moved and reduced journalists everywhere to paid hacks, only capable of doing what he assigned them.

     

    At the end, that became hacking into the voice mails of a murdered child’s mobile phone in order to sell more copies of a newspaper.

     

    Murdoch has said he is sorry – inasmuch as he remembers anything at all. Although he does appear to recall a bit more than his son who saw and heard (and read) apparently almost nothing all the while that he ran the European branch of daddy’s company.

     

    At a time when the Indian media is grappling with all sorts of issues and allegations, the Murdoch saga presents an interesting contrast. That Murdoch’s editors bent the rules and ignored media ethics is a certainty but it presents almost the exact opposite of the way that the Indian media operates. Can you imagine any Indian reporter – especially one involved in the glamour world – going to such depths to get a story? Hiring private investigators, bribing police officers – all this shows a commitment to newsgathering that most Indian newspapers had given up and many journalists would faint at the idea of so much hard work. (So much easier to let the PR person write the story which his client has paid the marketing department for.) I am not sure how many would object to the ethical problems raised since we have our own monsters to deal with.

     

    Meanwhile it’ll be interesting to watch as the vultures start circling around.

     

  • At a time when the Indian media is grappling with all sorts of issues and allegations, the Murdoch saga presents an interesting contrast

    [MJR] Pity the Poor Politician!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This week’s candidate for Noosemaker is our favourite whipping boy – the politician, both in India and abroad.

     

    This poor soul puts every bit of work he or she can into working for the people, but the people are ungrateful sods and show little appreciation. Take for instance, the politicians’ campaign to save the “father of the Indian Constitution” – Dr BR Ambedkar from a cartoonist. Instead of applauding politicians for this act of bravery – in the pursuit of which they even showed the courage to go against the freedom of expression which Ambedkar enshrined in the Constitution – our politicians had to face ridicule.

     

    Instead of congratulating them, people started pulling out facts about Ambedkar’s life, sense of humour, the importance of not disrupting Parliament, the Constitution and irrelevant stuff like that. What on earth, said these beleaguered politicians, have facts got to do with anything. We are saving Dr Ambedkar from a cartoon by Shankar which is part of a textbook. We don’t care if Ambedkar himself saw the cartoon when it first appeared in 1949 or not. We don’t care if Shankar was a famous cartoonist. We are only bothered that Ambedkar’s reputation has been damaged and for that, we’re willing to damage anything and anybody. Including, of course, the offices of one of the academics who decided to include the cartoon in the textbook.

     

    Meanwhile, other politicians got so bothered by the ruckus that the government just banned the textbook. This is probably a wise move as Class XI students will now have no political science textbooks, so if any of those students want to enter politics, they will be suitably ignorant about Ambedkar, the Constitution and so on. This is a necessary prerequisite for politicians.

     

    I would also advise young people to think carefully about becoming cartoonists. Dead or alive, cartoonists are public enemy number one for politicians, a dangerous breed giving to fostering humour, laughter and other subversive tendencies.

     

    * * *

     

    The other politicians in the spotlight are in the UK. They must now be careful when they send text messages to editors of newspaper. Because if those editors get involved in phone-hacking scandals and then get questioned by a media ethics inquiry, they can reveal damaging stuff. Now we know, for instance, that British prime minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party did not know the meaning of the short form “LOL”. He kept sending it to Rebekkah Brookes, former editor of The Sun and News of the World and boss of News Corp and now just a formidable person, thinking it meant “Lots of love”. She had to point out to him that it meant “Laugh Out Loud.”

     

    This has almost completely destroyed Cameron’s street cred and it is possible that because of his good friend and neighbour Brookes, he may lose his premiership.

    The Labour Party, by the way, cannot send anyone messages saying “ROFL” because they were well known for cosying up to News Corp as well.

     

  • It has been clear to the protectors of both cricket and Indian society from year one that the IPL was BAD NEWS. The very fact that so many people were interested was proof enough

    [MJR] News TV declares IPL root of most evils

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Indian Premier League has now been declared responsible for all India’s problems. This has been unequivocally stated on our TV news channels, and is thus now the incontrovertible truth. This cricket tournament has destroyed our sense of morality, taken us down a road of sex, drugs, violence and betting, not to mention completely killed cricket. These evils, so far unknown and unseen in Indian society, will soon become widespread.

     

    Look at what the IPL has done:

    Item: Made a film star fight with a security guard (violence).

    Item: Made a cricketer molest a woman (sex).

    Item: Made two players go to a rave party (drugs).

    Item: Made five players work out spot-fixing deals with bookies (betting).

    Item: Made players restrict matches to 20 overs a side and then made this version popular with – shudder – cheerleaders (killing cricket).

     

    Against all these charges, the IPL does not stand a chance. It has been clear to the protectors of both cricket and Indian society from year one that the IPL was BAD NEWS. The very fact that so many people were interested was proof enough. And then, all those film stars, starlets, dancing girls, rich people, money, parties – my word, what is the world coming to?

     

    Each year, the IPL, our TV channels have found, has gotten bigger and thus by conclusion it has become worse.

     

    Just look, for instance, what it has done to Shah Rukh Khan: Forced him to fight with a security guard and with Mumbai Cricket Association officials. This is unacceptable behaviour and absolutely no way for film stars to behave. It is one thing to run over people, help gangsters bomb the city or beat up your wife (or even wives). For these crimes, if you’re unlucky, you will get a few newspaper editorials and maybe even go to jail but you will just be seen as a lovable rogue. But fighting with a security guard? That is the end of civilisation as we know it.

     

    It is hard to know what to do to save India after this. No doubt, the TV channels will tell us. A beginning has been made by former cricketers Kirti Azad and Bishen Singh Bedi, who have apparently gone on a hunger strike to save India from the IPL. The TV channels do not appear to have given this hunger strike the 24-hour coverage they granted to Anna Hazare’s hunger strike. But they do assiduously cover the cricket part of the IPL in their sports programmes. Come on, now, the whole country watches the IPL!

     

    * * *

     

    Having made it to the TIME magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most important people, West Bengal chief minister is now planning to top the list and every other list which will ever be made. This is the link to her latest dramatic act – storming out of a CNN-IBN audience meeting in Kolkata, leaving even the formidable Sagorika Ghose, TV anchor and event host, at a loss for words. The CM was furious because the students in the audience were “CPM cadre and Maoists”. That is, they asked questions she didn’t like.

     

    The other link is to the reply written by the erring student.

     

    Enjoy.

     

     

    http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/259724/question-time-didi-watch-the-show-that-mamata-walked-out-of.html

     

    http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120520/jsp/frontpage/story_15509625.jsp#.T7nCA1In3Vq

     

     

  • Now that the IPL is over however, it will be interesting to see how our perpetual moaning machines in the media will fill up their time…

    [MJR] IPL symptomatic of the end of civilization

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    There’s only one newsmaker this morning and that’s the IPL. As Manoj Tiwary hit a four over Chepauk stadium winning the title for the Kolkata Knight Riders, season five of a very successful Indian Premier League comes to an end.

     

    And what a season it has been – a film star team owner fights with a security guard, another film star team owner castigates a third umpire for being unfair to one of her players, a player assaults a woman at a party, five players are exposed for spot-fixing and the management is exposed for unfair processes in the buying and selling of players… have I left anything out?

     

    And then there’s been the cricket. The drama over Saurav Ganguly now being with the Pune Warriors, the expectation that Sachin Tendulkar would soon reach his 1000th Test century, the thrilling last ball finishes, the sentiment attached to Rahul Dravid and all the news finds.

     

    And of course, the media. For some, like the ultra-bore Boria Majumdar parked in the Times of India stable, the IPL is symptomatic of the end of civilisation. The erudite Ram Guha doesn’t like it either. A player misbehaves at a party and a couple of former players threaten to go on a hunger strike – which I don’t think happened. Or at least, everyone forgot soon after. The TV channels also decided that IPL was the thin end of the wedge before the human race sinks into an irreversible path of iniquity. I would say the same thing about TV news as far as the fate of the media in India is concerned but…

     

    Sharda Ugra in The Indian Express lauds the good things, hopes the BCCI will fix the bad things and then focuses on what was really wrong with the IPL – the terrible pre and post shows on Sony’s SET Max, Extra Innings. I think there may be an extra ‘a’ in there for some inexplicable reason. Having dispensed with the dispensable Mandira Bedi, we have had the unpalatable and hysterical Gaurav Kapoor and those two girls foisted on us. Isa Guha, since she understood cricket and took it seriously, was a rare breath of fresh air. Why those two badly dressed, screeching and oddly accented girls had to interview minor starlets on the grounds was not explained to us. The cheerleaders in the studio were the worst available. I cannot understand a word Navjot Singh Sidhu says so I was spared tearing my hair out. My only concern was that he needed to go on a diet. Ever since Harsha Bhogle had a hair transplant, I cannot but concentrate on his new fringe to the exclusion of his platitudinous and fatuous observations on cricket.

    Ugra, I have to confess, was not this nasty.

     

    Mid-Day’s headline “Ra.Won” is the winner of the day. The Hindustan Times gave us a sort of truncated report, obviously written in a hurry and the reporter clearly did not like Shah Rukh Khan. The Times of India had a better report – a real surprise since its sports coverage has sunk to new lows recently – but its reporter is clearly no fan of MS Dhoni’s and called him out for his “standard tricks”, in this instance, slow over rate towards the end of the match.

     

    Now that the IPL is over however, it will be interesting to see how our perpetual moaning machines in the media will fill up their time…

     

  • Cartoons have caused incalculable damage in the recent past, writes Ranjona Banerji in 'Noosemaker'

    Ranjona Banerji: Cartoons as weapons of mass destruction!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    All efforts are now being made to wipe out India’s most dangerous weapon of mass destruction: the political cartoon. This awful instrument of power, if it falls into the wrong hands (ie, cartoonists), can end up doing the most terrible damage to reputations, thin skin and “sentiments”.

     

    In recent times cartoons have caused incalculable damage. But strangely – and this is their enormous reach – the cartoons have emerged from the past where they had been lurking. It is not enough to imagine that because today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s sev puri wrapping, the power of the cartoon is diminished. It has an insidious way of reappearing in other forms – like those other lethal objects, books. And even worse, textbooks.

     

    Young minds, while they can easily absorb news of war and cruelty and indeed thrive on the vulgarity which passes for entertainment in India, would be irreparably tainted if faced with a political cartoon. And yet, by stealth for what else could it be, these cartoons have managed to inveigle themselves into textbooks.

     

    It started however with that other source of free expression, the Internet. Someone committed the most heinous act of forwarding a cartoon making fun of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. But in spite of the strict action taken against the transgressor, the cartoon has only got bolder.

     

    Soon after a cartoon from 1949 was discovered being satirical about the delays in putting the Constitution together. Not only did it show the Constituent Assembly as a snail but it showed Dr BR Ambedkar sitting on the snail, with a whip in hand and then Jawaharlal Nehru whipping the snail. This is wrong on so many levels and particularly to snails. What have these fat sluggish creatures done to deserve whips? They have no feet and they cannot move any faster. There are no records about the action taken against the cartoon in 1949 by the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals but one can only hope that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will soon be holding a mass agitation at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi to increase awareness about this subjugation of snails. Good luck with getting hundreds of naked girls to agree to have snails crawling all over their bodies – a normal PETA method of agitprop. But protests there have been and there must be.

     

    And now we have a cartoon from 1968 implying that students in Tamil Nadu knew neither Hindi nor English. Now what could be more insulting to the education system of the past? Implying that students had been taught nothing is most unfair. How can the education system from 1968 possibly stand up for itself? It is therefore only right that the protests should happen in 2012.

     

    The other way of course is to put the cartoon on the endangered species list and wait for the World Wildlife Fund to step in…