It seems all is not lost for Indian democracy because there are still elements in the country’s Fourth Estate who are ‘real’ journalists and consider it their duty to inform voters about the possible strengths and weaknesses of political leaders during the ongoing elections.
This hope flashed in my mind last Thursday when I saw an in-depth front page interview with the Congress Party’s Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, done by The Hindu’s Verghese K. George -- one of the few remaining journalists who still have integrity and have refused to play into the hands of the media circus of paid news and opinion polls. I hope he also interviews Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi and Aam Aaadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal for the sake of balance.
The Gandhi interview made me wonder as to how the same leader – who was told by TV talk show host Arnab Goswami, not very long ago, to quit politics because he could not stand criticism - could come across as a mature politician and a deep thinker who really wants to change the corrupt political system within his own party, which he claims was responsible for the assassination of his father and grandmother.
While Goswami had wasted more than one hour of TV time in justifying the poor image that the TV media had created of Gandhi, Verghese found out for his readers where the Congress leader is coming from and what he wants to achieve politically.
The same leader, who was berated by Goswami by raising again and again the same questions about what Modi or another BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy were saying about him, is seen explaining brilliantly the basic differences between his and Modi’s ideologies. A similar effort by Gandhi was nipped repeatedly in the bud during the Goswami interview. In the newspaper interview, Gandhi talks very succinctly about Congress’s policy of inclusion and partnership as against BJP’s strategy of divisiveness and concentration of power. When asked about the term ‘shehzada’ used by Modi about him, Gandhi, in his classy way, brushed it off by saying that he does not want such ‘gifts’ from ‘Modiji’. In contrast, a similar answer by him during the Goswami interview was ridiculed with a sarcastic laughter by the talk show host.
In the Hindu interview, Gandhi made it clear that while Modi is supported by a couple of crony capitalists, the Congress Party has the support of what he called the “progressive business interests”. Without saying that he wants to fulfil his father’s dream of making it possible for the country’s poor to reap the benefits of economic reforms, Gandhi also claimed, for the first time, that his political constituency is the 70 crore Indians who are neither rich nor poor and are becoming the victims of Modi’s strategy, which he claimed, is to divide them on religious lines.
Although the idea of adopting the crores of poor people as his political constituency seems inspired by the AAP’s efforts, Verghese did not question Gandhi about it. The question instead was – how is Modi different when he also talks about decentralization and empowerment of the poor? To this, Gandhi very cleverly retorted that if Modi has also started talking about decentralization lately, then the credit must go to the Congress Party’s campaign. But the real problem is that the Indian media has been conspicuously silent about the fact that both Congress and the BJP began talking about the common man only after Kejriwal trounced both parties in the New Delhi assembly election by focusing his campaign on the plight of the common man. No newspaper or TV channel so far has shown systematically how Kejriwal’s campaign and victory almost forced the two main parties to change their policies and to subtly imitate his campaign by focusing on what the poor people want. No newspaper or TV channel has focused so far on steps that the two parties took to align their campaign with the winning strategy of AAP. It is only after Kejriwal spoke about “participatory politics” that Modi began his so-called ‘chai chaupals’ and Gandhi started consulting the common man across the nation, claiming that his party’s manifesto will not be prepared behind closed doors, but would reflect the views of the common man. Also, it was only after Kejriwal resigned as New Delhi’s Chief Minister over issues of not getting proper support from the two parties on his corruption and Lokpal Bill, that the UPA government tried in a hurry to implement its Anti-Corruption Bill.
The irony is that it is the duty of the country’s Fourth Estate to seek the truth in this regard so that the ordinary voter, who cannot analyze these subtle nuances, is properly informed so that he or she can make ‘informed choices’. The Indian media should not forget that in this election, there are 10 million new voters who are young and inexperienced. Many of them are probably unaware of how shrewd, deceptive and ruthless Indian politicians can be. So young voters need the media’s help in analyzing which leader is genuine and which is not; who is honest and who is not; who is just playing political games with the vote banks to win and who really wants to work on improving the plight of the people and bring them the fruits of the country’s tremendous economic growth of the past two decades.
The crucial question is not who ultimately wins in this election, but whether the media is fulfilling its obligation of informing voters about the truth, so that they can make well informed choices in an election that has all the signs of being another tippingpoint in India’s political history.
(Author/news analyst Ravi M. Khanna is a former South Asia Bureau Chief of Voice of America. He now freelances from New Delhi)
Feedback: ravimohankhanna@gmail.com
