Archive for January 2016
Modi and Trump: Why they don’t care about Media?
Modi and Trump have a lot in common. Both portray themselves as outsiders. Both vows to fight against the accepted norms.
One thing that both fight against is the Media. And they have been highly successful at that. Voters have supported them whenever they have lasted out against News giants. From Modi’s news-traders barb to Trump’s open fight against Fox News, they have gained public support. This begs the question how/why?
Well a lot can be owed to the rise in competition in News Sphere and to the downfall of journalism in the traditional sense. News gave way to News-Entertainment to earn more advertisement revenues. Nowadays, if you ask any common man about the biggest problem that ails our society, most common reply is “Sensationalist Media”. Zillions of channels in search of breaking news destroying the very pillar that stood for.
Moreover everyone knows how fat pay packages are earned by media professional these days. People no longer see them as poor guys fighting against big corporations and politicians. The ‘behind the scenes funding’ of media houses have become public thanks to social media. This has further damaged credibility of the news that we read/listen. Media itself has become THE INSIDER. Since Modi and Trump portray themselves as outsiders, they out-win the media.
Thus Trump breaks no sweat when withdrawing from Fox News debate, which would seem like a political suicide for any other politician. Similarly Modi has no problems in not taking media along on foreign tours as part of his entourage. They both fight against the insiders.
This is the hope they instill in public. To do what no one else dares to do.
The Frustrated Indian, India Against Presstitutes etc: You are Blocked
Facebook was such a sweet place where I could see updates/pics from my friends and stay in touch with people I met sometime in my life. Then came the surge of paid Profiles/Pages, with propaganda to sell.
AAP and BJP supporters were the ones that destroyed the utopia that facebook used to be for their election marketing. And then people in my friend list started liking such posts/sharing them, which then started showing up on my page. Mudslinging, name calling and what not. Newsfeed was getting hogged by such alien posts that I never wished for.
I have started unfollowing such accounts/pages one by one. Below are the few Pages that I have unfollowed (unfollowed would be a wrong word as I never followed them, they just started appearing whenever any of my friends liked/shared them).
- The Frustrated Indian: Dude you are seriously frustrated. Time to get laid. You spread negativity and in a bid to defend him, you end up damaging our PM’s reputation and make him look intolerant.
- India Against Presstitutes: Was nice when it began. Press reporters are anyways pathetic. But you have gone overboard and more and more negative. Time to buzz off my facebook.
- AAP is No More for Aam Aadmi: Again the same dumbshi*. Modi don’t need you guys. He just doesn’t need you to defend him. Period.
- Indian Youth Congress: Never knew such a thing existed. Budding cronies, buzz off.
- OpIndia: Right wing extremism to its best. Negative, negative, more negative.
- A lady whose name I forgot, who suddenly became messiah for pro-Government.
- A lot of them I forgot
Main reason is not for what they post, but for how they post. Insulting, crass and cringe-worthy. Sometimes I feel these accounts are managed by another insulting, crass, loud, negative media men, Mr. Goswami.
I can use internet. I am relatively well off. I am not a frustrated elite. I don’t need such leeches to feed off me. Not the least on facebook.
Modiji, please shed the coterie
I see a lot of fighting these days in social media. Pro-Modi, Pro-AAP people berating the leaders. Personal offensive remarks of Bhakt, AAptard and what not. Seriously fed up with this, I have started unfollowing certain mischief accounts. I know triggers are created by paid profiles, but why to blindly forward them and spam your friend’s timeline. So much negativity!
Back to the point. Personally I am okay with Modi’s performance, in his personal capacity. He has made world take notice of India, lifted the country from a sense of gloom, made Swachh Bharat the cool thing among a lot others.
We all know how he went overboard during elections and promised the people of this country, the stars. We all know it’s not possible to deliver in a short span of time. People have a right to criticize as they were not told, “You will get stars after 5-10 years”. They were promised instant relief which can’t happen in reality. No point bashing the electorate. If they are fools now in criticizing Modi, how were they not fools when they voted for him?
Modi, I feel, is falling short of few selfless men like him in his Government. The biggest crook of them all is our FM. He is edging away a lot of Modi’s charisma. Piyush Goyal is working superbly at grass root. Smriti Irani is competent.
Railway ministry is working only for facebook and twitter crowd but nothing for poor who travel via General Class (90%). We need a revolution in railways. Loyal vote bank of BJP, the middle class has been neglected and left to fend for itself, which is not nice. More importantly the attitude of his Ministers and spokespersons is not right. They seem just like Congress. Equally arrogant.
Given the history of Modi and BJP, it is there responsibility to win over 69% who didn’t vote for them. But our great FM calls it manufactured dissent. Why name calling. When you in power, it does not look nice if you start berating people. Modi knows that but he is being misguided by coterie around. FM was the one who aggravated the situation by badmouthing people returning awards. Political mastery of Vajpayee was missing. All it needed was to call them all for a talk. Soothe their ego if need be. They would have gone silent.
Same goes with communal politics of BJP. It’s great when in opposition but boomerangs when in power. I hoped BJP would have learned this by now.
I have my hopes and faith in Modi. But not so much in his coterie. I am sure Modi will find a way!
IndianExpress and the Mockery of News
Just looking at the headlines in Newpapers these days makes me cringe. The sheer shamelessness and biasness leaves me aghast. These ‘relics of the past’ as I always call them, still have ideological hold over a lot of news that circulates in regular media and it worries me. Read the below two headlines from Indian Express website on the same day,
Rohith Vemula is not alone, this is happening in every university, says Rahul Gandhi
V/S
Muzaffarnagar: Rape video goes public, BJP leader jumps in
My simple question to the editor of the “self certified awesome” paper is, why not approach it the other way round.
Hyderabad: Student commits suicide, Rahul Gandhi jumps in
V/S
BJP leader calls for justice to Hindu women who committed suicide post rape video going public
I have no love lost for BJP, Congress of for that matter any of these thugs who wants votes just to make merry. But reading such headlines appalls me. Why couldn’t it simply have been below? Or some other headline without bias to either issue.
Rohith Vemula suicide case: Rahul Gandhi alleges casteism happening in every university
V/S
Muzaffarnagar rape and suicide case: Justice for the Hindu women, demands Virendra Singh.
We have no respect for our politicians but these newspaper editors still hold some respect in society and I wish they are stripped of this respect. Social media is breaking their citadel brick by brick. Hope it happens sooner than later.
Casteism: Does it really happen in Colleges in India?
With the sad demise of a PhD scholar coming in from Hyderabad, a debate has been raging if the monster of casteism is still alive in the temples of education? That it used to be rampant in the past is a documented fact which no one denies. But since the days of Mandal, have things changed or are they the same.
I can tell from my college experience that I didn’t notice any such incident. And mind you, I was very vocal on such issues and Editor of College Newspaper. But then my campus was not at the center of politics. It was a laid back campus just concerned about studies. That I was one of the most political guy in the campus won’t be an smug statement.
I am not overtly qualified in passing judgements for other colleges. But based on what I have observed, I am not too positive that it takes place in other colleges too. But again the dead students’ family and friends will be the best people to comment on this particular case. It might have happened or it might not have.
What I don’t like is the politicization of college campuses. It’s fine during times of uprising and revolutions; It really hurts during peace time. I have been an advocate of ending student body elections and political groups. It hampers academics. I know there are arguments for it also, but cons are too glaring. Students will be able to contribute more if they stick to studies.
If students need to do politics, it should out of the campus. Same goes for ministers and college administration. Keep your politics out of it. Hence my open dislike for recently organized talk on Temple formation in a college in Delhi. Also my open dislike for the students/faculties of that very college for they are the ones who have relegated their campus to political playground for a long time now.
Until politics is taken out of college campuses, our nation will continue to lose the sons of the soil.
Then I woke up
After quite a while, I had a bad dream last night. Funnily enough, I remember quite a few details of it. With those details in mind, I try to understand the reason behind the dream.
I have not been in a great spirits last few weeks with a lot of things bothering me, and I guess this dream might be connected to it.
The setting was in a neighborhood that I have lived in long back. But it was O! So drastically changing. It was not completely changed, mind you. But huge infrastructural change was going on in front of me. I was there discussing with an unknown young fellow about landmarks which were no longer there.
Then there was a murder case which that guy told me about. A murder that took place in the same neighborhood recently, but in a house that was not there during my time. It was a two story house overlooking a lake. But there was no lake when I lived there. A guy killed a girl and then shot himself. They were both students who lived on rent there. Then there was a tale of the ‘girl that lived’. Apparently this guy open fired, one girl died on the stop and the other girl remain unscathed.
I found myself talking to that dead girl. Séance of some kind. She was telling me how that guy entered her room, told her he has already killed two others and shot her dead. She didn’t know anything else. There was no reference of two others killed anywhere in my dream.
I found myself crying for some reason with all the sadness around. Then I woke up.
Plea to Chief Justice of Supreme Court: Clean the rotten eggs of Judiciary
I know the first defense for judicial custody of Palak (Kiku Sharda) in Baba Ram Rahim case would be, will such comedians dare play Prophet? How would they piss their pants thinking of backlash from minority fringe! Agreed. But why to fall to their standards. We are better than that.
I know moving courts is a civilized reaction when compared to Malda riots, and I appreciate Baba’s followers didn’t go the Malda route. I have nothing against Baba’s hardcore supporters going court. It’s their democratic right. But I have issue with the Magistrate who remanded Palak to judicial custody.
The only pillar of Democracy with some ethics left, is too withering away with such decisions. Such frivolous cases need to be thrown out of the window at the onset. I hope top Judges are watching this, pull up the people below and devise guidelines for lower rungs to adhere to.
But when the ‘stands exposed’ Finance Minister himself is clogging up judicial system to fight his politics, how can we expect anything else.
सो पाऊँ
थोड़ी असमंजस में हूँ यारों,
किस राह चलूँ ये बूझूँ मैं,
या खटिया डाल के सो जाऊं?
कुछ करने को करे न मन,
बांधूं औ हो जाऊं कण-२,
या चादर ओढ़ के सो जाऊं?
खा के डाकारूं, डकार के खाऊं,
कभी हफ्ते-२ नहीं नहाऊँ,
या तकिया लगा के सो जाऊं?
आधे अधूरे ख्वाब हैं आते,
पूरा कैसे उनको कर पाऊँ?
या बत्ती बुझा के सो जाऊं?
दिल धक-२ कर धड़क उठे,
लगे के जैसे मैं उड़ जाऊं?
या ख्वाब संजो के सो जाऊं?
कुछ राह मिले, तो चाह मिले,
सुकून आये, जब साँझ ढले,
अब उठूँ, ताकि कल सो पाऊँ॥
Kejriwal: Just another Neta?
Communal riots in Malda has been in news for around a week now. Mamta Banerjee and her ilk, has reacted as expected. Deafening silence in the name of appeasement. BJP has been high on vocals and justifiably so, after long they are on the right. Among this there are two politicians I want to concentrate. Modi and Kejriwal on Dadri and Malda.
Modi has been silent on both and let his Govt. speak. Kejriwal has been vocal on Dadri but ‘finger on your lips’ on Malda. And this saddens me. We expected better.
You take on Jaitley, people support you. You do odd/even, people support you. You go to Dadri, people support you. You set up commission on 1984, people support you. But if you now be selective like Award Waapsi Brigade, how do you expect people to support you?
You took a stand on Dadri. You need to take a stand on Malda. I am not saying you speak on anything and everything but you should have some parity. When reporters ask you on Malda, you rush away. That’s purely disgraceful. People of Delhi might be with you for your good governance. But you are losing a lot of your supporters by such hypocrisy.
It is expected of Mamta, Nitish, Lalu, Gandhi, the whole AwardWaapsi gang, but it’s not expected of you. There is still time. Course correct and don’t become another run of mill the minority appeasing majority leader. Call a spade a spade.
Aamir Khan Issue: Let’s look it from Brand Point of View
So Aamir Khan is no longer a face of Incredible India Brand Building Campaign. Media debates and public discourse followed. Diverse views of vendetta and course correction were put forward. Let’s look at this decision from the brand point of view.
Aamir is promoting India as a tourist friendly country to get more and more people to visit India. And when he discusses how his wife wanted to leave India due to intolerance and he too feels despondency in the air, what it does to the brand India? Tourists would be like, “Dude the brand ambassador of India himself does not feel safe in India, to hell with going there. Let’s party in Ibiza”.
Won’t a responsible CEO pull up the ads and replace the brand ambassador to save the brand? This is what exactly Indian Govt. has done. When Aamir did the movie PK, and if he went on air and said, “I felt I should not have done PK. is the most pathetic movie ever made. Waste of time, don’t watch it”, wouldn’t it had affected the movie? Of course it would have. Wouldn’t the producer pull away Aamir from movie promotions?
What if Aamir had said, Coco Cola is a pesticide disguised as a soft drink, wouldn’t he have been replaced and contract scrapped. He might also have been sued by the company. If tomorrow I publicly badmouth the firm I work at, would I not be pulled up and subjected to disciplinary action. Does it really infringe my freedom of speech? Those who sympathize with Aamir and berate the Govt, try badmouthing your employer. Scared? You should be.
Aamir Khan is doing Incredible India for free. And here lies the problem. When you do something for free, you don’t have anything to lose. Had it been a 10cr/year contract, he would have thought 10 times before damaging the brand. He would fear losing the contract. I don’t blame him, we all are like that.
I would suggest Govt whoever they choose as the brand ambassador, either pay him/she well or if they refuse to be paid, ask them to sign a contract which mentions that their actions in any way should not demean the brand India.
ArpitGarg's Weblog 