Web of lies

This Sunday article is not about Bollywood or so-called celebrities. It is not about my cats and dogs or meandering mountain streams and bucolic rusticity. Nay, not so, sadly… It is about a disease worse than the one that led to thousands of bodies found floating in the Ganges during the Second Wave of the pandemic. In fact, it is even worse than the verity that we are now being forced to believe is a lie – that thousands of Indians went through the misery of seeing their loved ones die for want of oxygen, rasping and gasping through their last few dreadful breaths in this life as their O2 counts flagellated.

This article is then about the degeneration of a profession that used to stand tall and distinct, for it saluted the truth and the righteous. That claim stands smashed to smithereens as a mostly mute and impotent media pays tributes and obeisance to a few powerful and mighty. The shameful part of this dreadful and fecal collapse of our media is that they intrinsically know that they are wrong, the world knows them to be wrong, but they still plough on regardless with their epiphany; uncaring, brazen and very unbecoming.

"Et tu, Brutus", Julius Caesar said to his trusted aide as he choked to death after being poisoned. I find myself similarly choking when I see my media peers either croaking to new lows or shunted out of their official positions for refusing to cave in and toeing the dictated line.

Culled and cut out

We find ourselves facing a painful paradox. While many parts of the news world today pays what many of my friends chased, 'real money', there is no discernible fire in the belly in those still pursuing journalism. Over the years, there's been a disgraceful fall in the quality and tenets of reportage. Few, if any, reporters write straight and accurate now, and fewer Editors still anymore have the stomach and gumption to carry truthful reports. Take the coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput's death last year as a telling example. Shallow and full of lies, the inaccuracies and near-fiction were astounding and warned us then itself of the desecration of India's once-stellar Fourth Estate.

You don't agree? Don't. But do take a look at the news coverage leading up to the historic verdict in the recent assembly elections in West Bengal. Nearly every news channel and publication predicted a landslide victory for the challengers. For months, they waxed eloquent, cooing and humdrum, even as massive election rallies were organized through a COVID-19 lockdown. Reams of newsprint and hundreds of hours of media chutzpah later, one lone woman, Mamata Banerjee, emerged the soothsayer.

She had fought off the most powerful onslaught of unlimited money power and muscle, the infectious virus of communalism and religious hegemony, a blatant abuse of governmental machinery, as also a myriad group of central enforcement agencies and the potent might of a biased national media. She proved that the common man still has the gumption and ability to defeat even the most powerful forces. But there were next to no reports on this historic turnaround, or kudos given to her in the right kindred spirit or context. We were told only about riots happening in the state, post-elections. Et tu?

Fallout ignored too

Few, if any, wrote of the fallout of the massive rallies in West Bengal and four other states (sic, I do know that Puducherry is a Union Territory) while a pandemic was nipping at our heels. At the height of the election campaign that may have contributed to the Second Wave of COVID-19, hundreds of chartered flights were operated out of airports in these states daily, transporting political honchos for massive election rallies. Caution was thrown to the winds and India's leading politicos thumbed a nose at the national and international hue and cry about the possibility of a Second Wave. No big media houses wrote about a possible backlash. But it came and we witnessed it – after all, we had shamelessly stoked the fire in the belly of a virus that was waiting for just such an opportunity.

So what's happening today? We are being told that no one in this country perished for want of oxygen during the Second Wave. Most of the mainstream media is ignoring this too. This media segment has two problems – one, a revenue model largely dependent on the authorities, who are amongst the sole large advertisers in these tough times; and two, the fact that an alternate media section (social and digital media) has emerged, which vents spleen and runs a barrage of stories that have cascaded from a trickle at the lip to a torrent at the tip in those fateful few months of the Second Wave. The entire country has seen the facts for that they truly stand for; and some grimaced, squirmed and many began crawling out of whatever little comfort zone they have left.

Fuel prices, edible oils

Everyone who lives in India is facing the brunt of runaway fuel prices over the last few months. Through a wicked coincidence, the nearly daily price hikes happened only after the assembly election results in many states were announced. They were stagnant before that, for two months. And at its very least, the price rise has been as crippling as it has been baffling. Just this Friday, it has been announced that the authorities, just vide the excise duty on fuel price hikes, have mopped up over Rs 90,000 crore in the first quarter of the current financial year. But has the mainline media taken up this burning issue? For some inexplicable reason, no.

Few have deigned to ask the authorities the reason for this runaway growth in prices. The latter's only tepid response is that India is paying the price for its past sins (the "previous Government"). But the truth of the matter is that the APM (Administered Pricing Mechanism) has been long, long gone and prices should hence be coming down dramatically, as global crude prices are well below historic highs. Further, last week's OPEC (Oil Producing and Exporting Countries) ceasefire and the resultant increased output should, in sensibility, lead to significantly lower fuel prices. Will that happen? Your guess is as good as mine.

Finally, I don't like mustard oil because my mother never used it, but let's talk about it anyway. Prices are nearly 100 per cent higher than they were a year back; for no visible reason, except that fuel prices might be leading to increased transportation costs. And then we have reports that people are cutting down on spends on food and healthcare to pay fuel and edible oil expenses – where are we headed? Et tu, again?

Watergate, Phonegate

Year 1972 it was when then US President Richard Nixon was accused of tapping the communications devices of political opponents; thus was born Watergate. None less than The New York Times screamed in its headline on March 2, 1974 – 'US Federal Grand Jury Indicts 7 Nixon Aides on Charges of Conspiracy on Watergate; Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell on List'. Nixon eventually quit office and Gerald Ford assumed office on August 9, 1974.

So much for the United States… Just shy of 50 years into the future, media reports from 80 international publications now allege that India's top politicians may have done the same. The reports, including some scathing ones from The Wire, allege that mobile phones of politicians, businesspersons, the judiciary and lobbyists (and cooks and gardeners attached to these big-shots) were compromised and monitored at critically-crucial times – such as pre-elections, post-debriefings, pre-mergers and through other snowstorms and cataclysms.

If true, this is unreal. This is my India, a land of padharo mharo des and atithi devo bhava. We do not surreptitiously and systemically deal out below-the-belt treatments and hit you where it really hurts. We do not spy on what you do in bedrooms and bathrooms, WhatsApp and Telegram, right?! Or do we?

Something has gone very wrong in my country.

Net net, tis not good

At last count, 135 crore people (or is it 139 crore?) are being divided right across the middle over the issue at hand and that's a muddle. Am I wrong? Yes. That's because 80 crore people are being provided a handout by the authorities – free foodgrain and rations because they cannot fend for themselves; that's the Government's own announcement. At best, then, we are left with 55 crore-plus people who are wondering what has hit them right between the legs. But even 55 crore stupefied Indians make for more than the population of the United States and Canada combined. Those are mostly cold states. Let's not be cold with our own, and we are reaching the threshold. Crossing it may be a mistake, especially for those who want to remain in power. Et tu?

The writer is a communications consultant and a clinical analyst. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal