And justice for all?
Udayan Namboodiri
Narendra Modi has been cleared in the Gulbarg massacre case. But the charge of partisanship and selective morality against the corporatised media establishment of India is still to come unstuck
The Special Investigative Team (SIT)’s report on the Gulbarg massacre of February 28, 2002 may have absolved Narendra Modi of a direct role in the tragedy, but that means nothing to people who think that jurisprudence as practiced on terra firma is irrelevant. Today they are recalling God a lot. They say Modi must clear his name in His court. For that Modi must die first. If not really then at least politically.
An assassination can be arranged any time. But with the SIT’s findings becoming public, beating him in an election in Gujarat and ending his chances in higher stages has got that much more impossible. What’s worse luck for these guys is that between 2002 and now, Narendra Modi has won the friendship of the capitalist bosses who know how to make the media behave.
Saturday Special is on a different issue this week — there are others at The Pioneer specialising on Narendra Modi’s prospects. Our focus is: what happens to a politician who wakes up one morning to find that he has no longer has a reason to be defensive?
We are also wondering what’s going to be the short-to-medium-term effect of the SIT report on the media professionals who have risen since 2002 following the trail blazed by towering editors and newscasters who, through eloquent prose and grandstanding anchoring, depicted Narendra Modi sometimes as Adolf Hitler, sometimes Nero, sometimes both. For the sake of their careers, they must begin to see something good in Narendra Modi. And fast! At stake are investments in oil, gas, solar energy, infrastructure, chemicals.
Where these two lines of inquiry meet, a big new variable awaits India’s imperfect democracy; namely, the insolubility of a politician’s determination (whichever way it works) in the sea of manufactured consensus. There are several indications from the last decade to prove that we are getting there.
Anybody remembers Chandrababu Naidu? Well, this one-time chief minister of Andhra Pradesh was the liberal media’s poster boy because, paradoxically, India’s liberal elite swears by neo-conservative economics. Naidu implemented everything that the Economic Times and other conduits of the Washington Consensus thought were ideal for India. He thought that “development” wins votes. The son-in-law of NTR was in for a rude shock.
Naidu made Andhra Pradesh one large public limited corporate. He took to wooing multinational investors so assiduously that he even went to the capitals of neighbouring States and snatched projects from under the noses of their people and governments by offering twice the inducements. People came secondary to him; Naidu only cared for the fat cats of industry and people who pronounced Hyderabad Cyberabad. In his infinite wisdom, small people have got to make the biggest sacrifices for the larger good. The approving editorials and gush-gush reports which all this generated convinced him that he was politically invincible.
The opposite came true. Naidu learnt a basic lesson which nobody told him before. Factories, jobs, Cyberabads is one thing, but without political consolidation in terms of striking depth at the booth level it adds up to only a finite whole.
Continue reading at: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/51427-and-justice-for-all?.html
Udayan Namboodiri
Narendra Modi has been cleared in the Gulbarg massacre case. But the charge of partisanship and selective morality against the corporatised media establishment of India is still to come unstuck
The Special Investigative Team (SIT)’s report on the Gulbarg massacre of February 28, 2002 may have absolved Narendra Modi of a direct role in the tragedy, but that means nothing to people who think that jurisprudence as practiced on terra firma is irrelevant. Today they are recalling God a lot. They say Modi must clear his name in His court. For that Modi must die first. If not really then at least politically.
An assassination can be arranged any time. But with the SIT’s findings becoming public, beating him in an election in Gujarat and ending his chances in higher stages has got that much more impossible. What’s worse luck for these guys is that between 2002 and now, Narendra Modi has won the friendship of the capitalist bosses who know how to make the media behave.
Saturday Special is on a different issue this week — there are others at The Pioneer specialising on Narendra Modi’s prospects. Our focus is: what happens to a politician who wakes up one morning to find that he has no longer has a reason to be defensive?
We are also wondering what’s going to be the short-to-medium-term effect of the SIT report on the media professionals who have risen since 2002 following the trail blazed by towering editors and newscasters who, through eloquent prose and grandstanding anchoring, depicted Narendra Modi sometimes as Adolf Hitler, sometimes Nero, sometimes both. For the sake of their careers, they must begin to see something good in Narendra Modi. And fast! At stake are investments in oil, gas, solar energy, infrastructure, chemicals.
Where these two lines of inquiry meet, a big new variable awaits India’s imperfect democracy; namely, the insolubility of a politician’s determination (whichever way it works) in the sea of manufactured consensus. There are several indications from the last decade to prove that we are getting there.
Anybody remembers Chandrababu Naidu? Well, this one-time chief minister of Andhra Pradesh was the liberal media’s poster boy because, paradoxically, India’s liberal elite swears by neo-conservative economics. Naidu implemented everything that the Economic Times and other conduits of the Washington Consensus thought were ideal for India. He thought that “development” wins votes. The son-in-law of NTR was in for a rude shock.
Naidu made Andhra Pradesh one large public limited corporate. He took to wooing multinational investors so assiduously that he even went to the capitals of neighbouring States and snatched projects from under the noses of their people and governments by offering twice the inducements. People came secondary to him; Naidu only cared for the fat cats of industry and people who pronounced Hyderabad Cyberabad. In his infinite wisdom, small people have got to make the biggest sacrifices for the larger good. The approving editorials and gush-gush reports which all this generated convinced him that he was politically invincible.
The opposite came true. Naidu learnt a basic lesson which nobody told him before. Factories, jobs, Cyberabads is one thing, but without political consolidation in terms of striking depth at the booth level it adds up to only a finite whole.
Continue reading at: http://www.dailypioneer.com/
