By Ranjona Banerji
What are the effects of the massive heat wave hitting India at the moment? If you keep your eyes on the government and the media, you would not have a clue.
You would know that it is hot.
You might even know that are massive power outages because of coal shortages, which the Modi government did nothing about until now. You may have read somewhere that coal trains are being given priority over passenger trains.
But neither mitigation measures nor policies from the Modi government are headline news.
Local governments have issued some guidelines.
When the problem covers most of the country though, the media ought to demand accountability from the government at the Centre.
Don’t think I can’t hear you laughing. After all, when has the media as a whole demanded any accountability from the Modi government? After the debacle of demonetisation? No. After the disaster that was GST implementation? No. After the needless replacement of the Planning Commission with the utterly useless Niti Ayog? No. After the consistent destruction of India’s democratic institutions? No. After the appalling manner in which the COVID19 pandemic was handled? No.
I could go on and on. But what’s the point?
Meanwhile:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/heatwaves-surge-across-india-101651171280654.html
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/heat-wave-for-next-4-days-april-set-to-be-among-hottest-ever/articleshow/91161921.cms
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61242341
As Heat Engulfs North India, Keep an Eye on the Wet-Bulb Temperature
This was Mr Modi’s grandiloquent statement to chief ministers: “Temperatures in India are rising rapidly in the country, and rising much earlier than usual.”
This anodyne comment as he packs for a trip to where? O, it is Europe by any chance?
The extent to which the media has allowed the Prime Minister to get away with doing nothing is possibly unprecedented. He has been absolved of all responsibility. This has allowed his managers to successfully disassociate Modi from the disasters around by manipulating the narrative: he wants to improve this, he wants to improve that but can’t because of Nehru, he wants to improve things but can’t because the world situation won’t allow him to, see how self-sacrificing he is, he never sleeps because he cares for you so much, blah blah blah. All this nonsense is obediently amplified by the media.
Some people make the excuse that it is fear which dictates the media’s sycophancy. Editors tell their staff and freelancers, from subeditors to comment writers to cartoonists: criticise the government all you like but don’t criticise Modi.
What courage, eh from a “pillar of democracy”?
These are the same editors by the way who have no problem with having tantrums about the Emergency and how the media was silenced then. I suppose when you agree to be silent, it doesn’t leave you much wiggle room to protest against being silenced.
Notice how those comment pieces of the first years of Modi have all vanished: 5 things Modi must do to improve the economy, 11 ways in which Modi will transform our national security, 6 manners in which Modi might change our foreign relations…
Having realised that Modi will do nothing, they have effectively silenced themselves.
And yet, they would rather shrivel in a heat wave than demand accountability.
The extent of our remarkable hypocrisy is encapsulated in this fabulous 50-word edit from The Print, about Pakistan. It reads: ‘The son of Benazir Bhutto, grandson of Zulfikar Bhutto: Pakistan’s new foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto comes with storied legacy. Fixing Pakistan’s foreign relations, amidst economic crisis and terrorist violence, won’t be easy. Lineage has given Bilawal a stage. To emerge as a leader of Pakistan will need a stellar performance.”
I draw your attention specifically to the term “storied legacy” and the word “lineage”. Such complimentary language, for someone who has strong family connections to politics. Even entitlement, one might argue, although the edit does not mention Bilawal’s father Asif Zardari who was Pakistan’s president for five years.
If poor Bilawal was Indian and belonged to the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress Party? It would have been, from the same media: “These dynasts, India is a democracy. Get them out! This dynasty. Rage rage rage. Tantrum tantrum tantrum”!
No storied legacies and lineages here unless you are the offspring (always called a “scion” by the media) of a former maharaja who has jumped ship from one party to another.
Be careful. Of the heat and who you trust.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal