MxMIndia

Tag: Sharad Pawar

  • People have starved, they have walked for miles without sustenance and where is the brave media, asks Ranjona Banerji

    Poverty, PM & Pretend Journalism

     

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Ranjona BanerjiSome problems are key to most Indians right now.

    Foremost amongst these is inflation and the high cost of living.

    Recent videos have emerged of people going to ration shops to collect the grains and sugar due to them and being told that they will not get what is rightfully owed to them unless they spend Rs 20 on the Indian national flag. Most of these people say they have come with a little money – maybe Rs 100 – and thus this expenditure of Rs 20 is very high for them.

    I can guarantee you that 10 years ago, this would have been major news and would have dominated every news channel and outlet.

    I send you back, if you can remember that far back, to 2011 when Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the erstwhile Planning Commission, said that Rs 32 a day was a reasonable limit for the poverty line in India. He was roasted for this amount. Journalists tried to live on that amount. Others went around shops trying to glean how much one needed to survive and more. Anger and some investigative work.

    Sharad Pawar, as Union agriculture minister also faced media anger and heat when he said that South India was eating too much wheat and thus chasing wheat prices up.

    The late Shivraj Patil resigned as Union Home Minister after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. One of the major media criticisms against him was that he changed his clothes three times in one day.

    Look around you today.

    People have starved. They have walked for miles without sustenance only to be doused with bleach. They have died in massive numbers from a pandemic badly managed. They have to choose between food and a flag because of vanity and symbolism.

    And where is the brave media?

    Is it bothered about the Prime Minister equating wearing black to protest against rising prices to black magic practices against him?

    Imagine the extent of the fear where the sheer malevolent absurdity of such a statement cannot be challenged by the television media? A media which is ready to ridicule just about every opposition leader, every human rights activist, every artist and artiste who speaks up for the downtrodden, or against abuse or in favour of democracy.

    A TV anchor from one of these “all hail the government” channels was heckled by a crowd. Every similar TV anchor, who has remained silent when journalists have been killed, attacked, jailed without cause for actually doing journalism, has been frothing at the mouth in defence of their fellow anchor. Kudos to them for actually finding it within them to stand with one of their own. What they need to do now is just rebrand themselves as “TV anchors” and disassociate themselves from journalism. They have not practised it for ages and they have not stood with us when we have been attacked by their precious government. Those other anchors who feel they might be helped by them in the future, forget it. This so-called concern must have followed a government diktat.

     

    But when it comes to pretend journalism, what have we got?

    Attacking Nitish Kumar for ditching the BJP in Bihar. He has not been praised for “Chanakya Niti” or embraced as a hero like Eknath Shinde who broke the Maharashtra government to shift the Shiv Sena to the BJP. Heroes and villains are clearly marked. Hero = Pro BJP. Villain = Anyone who is not.

    If Nitish Kumar flips again, he will be welcomed as a returning hero.

    The black magic comment has been turned against the Opposition parties, because when the PM says something, it must be true.

    Black Magic I know as a chocolate brand.

    Not as government policy. But I do not obviously work in television.

    As for the starving poor, well. To quote the defenders of demonetisation, who were not questioned by our dear anchors, there will always be poor people in India who will suffer. Don’t waste time talking about them.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal

     

  • The Shiv Sena-led MVA government gets even with Republic founder-ed Arnab Goswami. But the arrest was coming

    Comment: Not right to arrest Arnab!

     

    By Pradyuman Maheshwari

     

     

     

    On issues like these, we can’t be sitting on the fence. It’s important to say where we stand. Upfront. Unambiguously.

     

    But before we do that: We must say that we don’t believe in or endorse Arnab Goswami’s journalism. Friend, Consulting Editor and our founding columnist, Ranjona Banerji, in fact goes a step further: she feels Arnab doesn’t practise journalism.

     

    It’s ditto with many other journalists and news media ventures. Sadly.

     

    Since Republic TV has been in the business, MxMIndia has helped produce 10-odd A&M shows for the channel. But that was purely a business decision. We didn’t go to town that we did it. But we must add here: no one then said they don’t want to be interviewed by the channel. They enjoyed the reach it offers.

     

    We admire Arnab Goswami’s business sense. He was our MxMIndia Mediaperson of the Year for 2017, thanks to the super success that he made of the channel. He’s a journalist, yes, but also a very shrewd businessperson.

     

    So enough of reinforcing our standpoint on Republic. Yes, we think it’s incorrect to arrest Arnab Goswami. It is clearly a blow to the freedom of the media, and the attempt is to muzzle and damn him. Even finish him as a journalist and close his media company.

     

    There may be many who say that Arnab asked for it. By damning the Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Sonia Gandhi belligerently in a way that only he can, he wasn’t going to get away with it easily.

     

    Then there is this senior police official who is now reported to have called him a hawala operator. It was clearly incorrect for the Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh to indict Arnab in a press conference, without adequate proof. But in the height of the Sushant Singh Rajput case, Arnab also asked for the CP’s sacking.

     

     

    However, as we said earlier, it is incorrect to arrest Arnab Goswami. The 2018 suicide abetment case which had been reopened by the Maharashtra home minister, a fact he tweeted about in May 2020 We are surprised that the Republic TV founder, with Senior advocate Haresh Salve as his advisor, did not seek anticipatory bail. Even when the case first came up in 2018, it was considered very sensitive and there were fears of an arrest.

     

    Home Minister Amit Shah and a variety of political leaders, lawyers and other biggies have damned the arrest. Some of them weren’t as vociferous on the attack on freedom of speech when a few others were put behind bars for dubious reasons. That though is a different story. Arnab Goswami must be released. If his 20-year son was also assaulted, check the CC TV footage and someone must pay a price for that.

     

     

    But, Arnab also must take it easy. Practise your journalism. Take on the world. Expose people. But don’t go on to demolish them.

     

     

    For, by taking that route, he could well get caught in the crossfire.

     

    Editor’s Guild of India and News Broadcasters Association issue statements:

     

  • Once again we lean on the Amul topicals to tell the story – on Sharad Pawar, the race for the CM post and on the Shiv Sena

    Utterly Butterly Maha-licious

     

    Once again we lean on the Amul topicals to tell the story – on Sharad Pawar, the race for the CM post and on the Shiv Sena. We were a little surprised though that there haven’t been, but guess doing a funny ‘un on the Sena is a serious matter…

     

    This is when Sharad Pawar came back to the political arena in Maharashtra as Chief Minister (1986)

     

    Return of Sharad Pawar as Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 1986

     

    There was a furore when the Australian cricketers pushed the then BCCI President Sharad Pawar at ICC Champions Trophy prize distribution ceremony at in Mumbai in November  2006… the joke doing the rounds is that only Ricky Ponting & Co had the you-know-what to push Pawar!

     

    Amul reflects the Shiv Sena’s popularity in Mumbai. This was in 1989, when the city was still called Bombay.

     

    Politicians fighting for the CM’s post… may not have been done for Maharashtra, but we all know what’s been happening over the last few days

     

    Was a topical that appeared in October 2014

     

    Remember there was a problem in Maharashtra in September 2014 too…

     

    This was done when there was a change of CMs in Maharashtra in Jan 2003
  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Ranjona Banerji: The news that did not happen on TV

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    All day on Monday all that happened in India was that yoga teacher Baba Ramdev and a few thousand followers continued their protest against corruption and black money in New Delhi. That is, if you watched television. As the day progressed, political leaders attended the protest and gave speeches. That was it. The rest of the news day was in Shavasana – the dead body pose.

     

    Not however, if you read the newspapers on Tuesday. Grains rotting in Gujarat, Haryana minister Gopal Kanda on the run after an employee’s suicide writes a letter saying that a suicide note is not admissible, the latest on the Mumbai violence, especially the provocative doctored videos on the attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, Sharad Pawar given the number 3 slot in the Cabinet behind AK Anthony, a woman researcher allegedly molested on the IIT Mumbai campus by a staff member and the end of the Olympics.

     

    This is just a smattering of the news that did not happen on TV. There is more, though undoubtedly a lot of it is city specific. However, it would have been interesting to know how Delhi reacted to the traffic snarls created by Ramdev’s protests, whether people suffered or not, how many were affected and so on. TV sadly did not oblige.

     

    ***

     

    Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has been mainly silent after his dramatic ascension to the throne. But now he’s popped up again. Strangely, it is not the media which is his focus. Rather it is West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who he had once lauded for her honesty and determination. Now he is appalled at her authoritarian ways after a farmer was arrested after he questioned the CM at a rally. Banerjee accused the farmer of being a Maoist.

     

    Katju has also stated that Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption movements are “empty gas”.

     

    He said: “Nothing is going to happen by Anna or Ramdev’s crusade against corruption”. The former judge said he was not justifying corruption but instead was pointing out that India was going through a “transitional period where there is no moral code”. His prophecy: corruption will continue for 15 years.

     

    Presumably, we will all become moral after that.

     

    * * *

     

    What does one make of anti-corruption activist Kiran Bedi’s statement that the media spends too much time on “small rapes” (she then said she meant rapes by “small” people) instead of corruption? In Bedi lies a lesson for the media. She was pumped up for being India’s first female IPL officers and qualities were attributed to her which she never had. Once she was made into a heroine in the people’s eyes, it became very difficult to dethrone her. As a result of all that hype, she is now in textbooks and has won numerous awards.

     

    Prolonged exposure to her during the Anna Hazare-led movement has however exposed her many short-comings. Now we know that amongst her other faults, she is also dismissive of rape. Some female role model.

     

  • The award for Noosemaker/Whiner/Tantrum Thrower of the week is divided between PA Sangma and Sharad Pawar

    Ranjona Banerji: NCP ties itself for Whiner of the Week award

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The winner of the presidential election maybe Pranab Mukherjee but the award for Noosemaker/Whiner/Tantrum Thrower of the week is divided between PA Sangma and Sharad Pawar. One is former NCP, the other current NCP and both founders of the NCP.

     

    Pawar suddenly decided that he was very upset with the sort of musical chairs being played at Cabinet meetings. I quite sympathise because I never liked musical chairs as a kid at birthday parties. Today’s children will not understand, but in the olden days birthday parties were an elaborate form of torture for children, who were forced to compete with each other and make fools of themselves in order to get a slice of cake and a few chips. Sounds a bit like today’s political parties actually.

     

    Anyway, Pawar felt that every time the music stopped, he was forced to sit in another chair. Sometimes it was the second chair (first being the prime minister) and sometimes it was chair 3 or 4. This was clearly insulting. He might have only nine MPs but why should that other chap from a much smaller state holding a job that Pawar once did get the second chair?

     

    Later we were told he was not so petty to be worried about chairs. All he wanted was a coordination committee. Whatever.

     

    PA Sangma, former Lok Sabha speaker and the country’s best known Tribal and Christian – according to him – wanted to become President of India. This is a legitimate goal, but Sangma, one might say, went about it the wrong way. He approached, of all people, Naveen Patnaik and J Jayalalitha for help. However powerful they may be in their own states, they did not have the numbers to make Sangma President.

     

    Since Sangma was part of the UPA, he could have at least spoken to someone within the coalition. Instead he chose to go out of it. After much reluctance, the BJP decided to support him. The UPA and two NDA allies supported Pranab Mukherjee. Everyone except Sangma saw Mukherjee’s victory as a foregone conclusion. Not because Mukherjee is much loved or the greatest person ever but because the UPA had the numbers. Then Sangma and the BJP said he wanted to be the loser with the highest number of votes (this is a strange award category known only to Indian politicians).

     

    Then Sangma said that he had to win for India’s Tribals and Christians. Most Tribals and Christians were silent. (As it turned out, not all of their representatives voted for Sangma.) Then Sangma said that Mukherjee had used a comma where it was not needed in his nomination form and had not used the right kind of nib in his pen. Also, he did not stand on the right side of the table when submitting the form (unlike Sangma who seems to be heading quite firmly to the right). Since Sangma was by now advised by the world’s biggest litigator Subramaniam Swamy, the plan was to go straight to the Supreme Court with 1,000 public interest litigations. The Election Commission blocked that route.

     

    So now that Sangma has not become president, he is nibbling away at sour grapes. He should not, because he is now eligible for the Best Sore Loser and Most Ungracious Defeat speech awards, with a good chance of winning both. The Congress used bribery, extortion and threats to get Mukherjee to win and the North East states (which elected Mukherjee by the biggest margins) betrayed him.

     

    Boo hoo hoo.

     

  • 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.

     

  • If you think you've haven't had enough with the original, here are 9 variants of 'Why This Kolaveri' that's still a rage on You Tube and elsewhere.

    The Anchor: 9 variants of ‘Why This Kolaveri’ that have had YouTube afire!

    If you think you’ve haven’t had enough with the original, here are 9 variants of ‘Why This Kolaveri’ that are still a rage on You Tube and elsewhere.

     

    #1 First, the original in HD:

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8&feature=aso[/youtube]

    #2 Sharad Pawar slap version

     

    While we strongly condemn the attack on senior minister Sharad Pawar, what we have here is a variant that could well give the original a run for its money.

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIhQm6gcUCw&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #3 Gujarati Kolaveri

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEQ6N-rJmUA[/youtube]

    The Gujaratis on the social networks were particularly pleased that  their homegrown DJs and RJs came up with this static image verson:

     

    #4 Funny Kid

     

    We thought it wasn’t really funny, but judging by the ‘views’, this version too has had its followers

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZivBhTNZ0&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #5 Female version

     

    Again, no great shakes, but yet again the song’s popularity is such that even a mediocre cover could get a reasonable following

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW6gSMXXtPY[/youtube]

    #6 Japanese dance

     

    You’ve got to see it to believe in what we said: anything with Kolaveri will get huge hits!

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfprwzgHDtE&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #7 Violin version

     

    Interesting version, but no great shakes.

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBdvjLDiT7o&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #8 Marathi Kolhapuri version

     

    The only reason why this makes it to this list is the bizarre heights people have been to in doing their Kolaveri versions

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_FjmF2K0cQ&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #9 Chipmunk Version

     

    Chipmunk versions are in, not just of Sheila Ki Jawani, but also Why This Kolaveri!

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvHMq1B_3Cc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

    #10 Side step Mani

     

    Well, actually, you could be better off not viewing this.

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”250″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8uNjyxGgR4[/youtube]
    Nine-u variants-sa. Sa-sa-sa-saa. Not enough-u? Sorry, folks, after having watched so many of them, we couldn’t stop-u talking-u this way-u. Sob, sob!