(p)AAP and the media nexus!

The following article was written for Niti Central. Pasting it here for reference.

The recent viral video of serial liar Arvind Kejriwal asking Punya Prasun Bajpai to play up sections of his interview is not the only proof of friendly media exaggeration of Arvind Kejriwal’s theatrics. Many other instances have been happening that require the attention of the reader. This article aims to give some more examples of such co-operation of the media with Arvind Kejriwal.

“If there is an element of exaggeration in what he (Arvind Kejriwal) says, it does not matter because electoral politics is shaped to a great extent by public perception.” 

This exceptional defence of Arvind Kejriwal’s statements did not come from any AAP spokesperson. It came from prominent columnist in The Hindu, Vidya Subrahmaniam. She and her ilk have continuously bombarded us with claims of how Modi exaggerates development in Gujarat. This group even spent a lot of ink coming up with obscure numbers in an attempt to criticise Modi. Today, miraculously, Vidya Subrahmaniam says that the exaggerations by Arvind Kejriwal do not matter!

First of all, I take strong objection to the usage of the word ‘if’ in the statement “If there is an element of exaggeration.” Instances of Arvind Kejriwal exaggerating are so many that it will become a Herculean task to list them all. We use the word ‘if’, only when the instances are few and far between. Everything Arvind Kejriwal says is an exaggeration. Recently in Gujarat, he  even paid homage to three RTI activists. The only problem being that these three people were alive, hale and hearty. That is the level to which this man can stoop in order to exaggerate. But for Vidya Subrahmaniam, this is okay because what matters is perception. The same perception with which they had a problem earlier.

Today’s centre-page article in The Hindu by Vidya Subrahmaniam is more revealing. She takes up a strong defence of Arvind Kejriwal’s recent antics in Gujarat. It is almost as if it was she who coached him to do and say all the things he did in Gujarat. Sample this:

“By declaring war on the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate directly and boldly questioning his friendship with the big corporates, Arvind Kejriwal has signalled a historic shift in the trajectory of India’s anti-corruption campaign.”

Phew! Hard to believe that so much bunk can be fitted in one sentence! “Friendship with big corporates” = “Anti-Corruption campaign” must be ranked as one of the most unimaginative, unintelligent comparison ever to have happened. Throwing in random unrelated questions to Adani’s rise or Ambani’s wealth to Narendra Modi’s silence or friendship is a cheap way of “declaring war”.

Arvind Kejriwal’s rise in media is precisely because of this kind of low-quality analysis and biased narrative that we have been fed with. All Kejriwal needs to do is to pose a question – the reality behind it doesn’t matter to this ilk; the content in it doesn’t matter to this ilk. Arvind Kejriwal merely wants to plant the seeds of doubt, and this ilk is more than happy to lend a helping hand to him. No wonder they think that exaggeration does not matter. The viral video of Kejriwal talking to the editor of AAJ TAK is another prime example – this ilk is more than willing to help Kejriwal in winning the “perception” campaign – let not the real content come in the way of this chicanery!

It continues to baffle me as to how Kejriwal manages to get so much coverage – totally disproportionate to the power he wields. Sample this report on IBN Live:  

"Arvind Kejriwal dares Narendra Modi in his own den, calls him a liar.” 

The entire report reads like written by someone who is a fanatical AAP supporter, in the guise of being a reporter! First off, many politicians have called Modi a liar. Many politicians have “dared”Narendra Modi in Gujarat - “his own den”. What is so big about Arvind Kejriwal doing it? Are they implying that no one else did it before? Gujarat is a State, not someone’s fiefdom, to be referred as “his den”. Tomorrow if someone were to criticise the Prime Minister of this country, is he/she doing it from the Prime Minister’s “own den”?

The second and third paragraphs in this article will put any objective journalist to shame. It starts with “Arvind Kejriwal has done his homework well” and ends with “His claims drew applause and cheer from the crowd.” And he just mentioned issues that were in the news for a long time – from when did parroting news items become equivalent to “doing homework well”? And here’s another important and pertinent question – if IBN can write such fawning articles, why don’t they have articles that criticise this man with equal fervour?

There is no end to the deification of Arvind Kejriwal by these media groups. Sample this front page report in The Hindu recently.

AAP-media nexus, dangerous combo for democratic India

The headline talks about J Jayalalithaa’s call to Mamata Banerjee, but the graphic highlights Arvind Kejriwal’s and Modi’s picture”. It says Kejriwal “prevented”from meeting Modi! He did not have an appointment; he was throwing around some farcical questions to Modi; and The Hindu feels that he was “prevented” from meeting Modi. Is this the “exaggeration” that they are ok to peddle? Because this “element of exaggeration” will definitely help them in the perception war!

Or see this report, where they say Arvind Kejriwal addressed a “huge gathering”. Do you want to know what the “element of exaggeration” in this report is? Please see this report!

IBN Live conducted a debate last night on whether the AAP was being hypocritical in giving tickets to journalists; in soliciting the media on what to telecast and yet deriding the media day in and day out. They called Ashish Khaitan – well know Modi-baiter and now AAP’s candidate for New Delhi. Also on the panel was Nirmala Seetharaman. The uneven match aside, it is important to hear what Ashish Khaitan tells Rajdeep Sardesai in the beginning,“We all know how newsrooms function”! We, the viewers don’t know! The viewer simply assumes that the editor/journalist is being unbiased – but he simply spilled the beans! And then Ashish goes on to ask the most hilarious question of recent times (he actually repeats it some 10 times, changing the words) – “ Why is there no scrutiny of Gujarat”. Whom is Ashish Khaitan kidding? Have we all not been witness to the malicious campaign on Modi, with Ashish Khaitan being one of the most prominent members to do it? Yet, with a straight face, he asks why there is no scrutiny of Gujarat? What more scrutiny does he want?

And lastly, Rajdeep Sardesai tries to paint the “all political parties are same” argument. He (conveniently) forgets that the AAP told us that they are different, and will do things differently. Why are they being allowed to get away with “We are doing the same as others” argument? Because some “element of exaggeration” is ok?

The arrogance of AAP

The following article was written for Niti Central. Pasting it here for reference. 

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was born out of a movement – India Against Corruption (IAC). The chief demand of this movement, which bought lakhs of people together, was to legislate a LokPal Bill. Anna Hazare was the face of this movement. Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi took care of the logistics. Later, Arvind Kejriwal took a plunge into politics – a reversal of his earlier stand that he will never seek public office – and promised a JanlokPal Bill within 15 days. The very first point in AAP’s manifesto is this:

“Commitment to passing Delhi Janlokpal Bill within 15 days of coming to power.”

It has been nearly 25 days since the party came to power but there is not even a squeal by the AAP on this. Not a single media hotshot, who otherwise pride themselves in grilling leaders, have questioned Arvind Kejriwal over his blatant lies and fake promises to the people of Delhi while seeking votes. Ordinarily, no one would have minded waiting for a month or two for the Bill to come – but remember this – Arvind Kejriwal went all out to promise this Bill in 15 days. This was their main plank and USP, and yet, he does not bother to fulfill this promise? This should amount to lying to the voters to secure their votes – something that Arvind Kejriwal accuses other parties of doing!

Since taking power, Arvind Kejriwal has become famous for taking U-turns on various issues. In this latest interview to NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, it took him just three minutes to take a U-Turn! At 9:30 in this video, he says, “There were some people there. The police left, so, who will take care of the Minister’s security? My Minister was not sure if he will return home alive”. The irony of this statement apart (given that AAP did not want any security to their ministers), the caveat comes just three minutes later. At the 12th minute, Barkha Dutt asks him that the crowd present there could have gone out of control while forcing the ladies to take the test. Arvind Kejriwal, believe it or not, says with a straight face, “But there was hardly any crowd. At least 20 to 30 people were there”!

Explaining Somnath Bharti’s actions, he says (at 13:40) that the Minister asked police to take action “as per law”. We all saw the video – Somnath Bharti said, “You go and do a raid there. I am telling you, you go and do a raid there”. Is this “as per law”? When questioned as to how one can force people to give urine samples, he says that only urine samples were taken, and that too in AIIMS, as if this is a big favour they did on those women.He even tells us that there must be something fishy because the women refused to give blood samples. When questioned that the reports did not show any drug use by these women, he said since there was only urine and no blood sample, the reports are false!

Arriving at conculsions that suits their thinking has been a habit of AAP leaders from the beginning. This report is false, that case is false, the argument is false, you are not Aam Aadmi – why? Because, we say so! Barkha Dutta asks him the same thing, how can he be so sure that Somnath Bharti is not lying. To this, he said, “Somnath Bharti has no enemity against these people and therefore, he could not have done anything like that!

The interview gets very disappointing after about 15 minutes. The primary reason being that the grilling stops. Arvind Kejriwal hurls a strange accusation – the SHOs of Delhi collect money to ensure their Minister (in this case, the Union Home Minister) gets them. Actually, this is quite serious too – the Chief Minister of a State accusing SHOs of giving hafta to Union Home Minister. Arvind Kejriwal has done this before too – hurl unlimited accusations. He once claimed to have proof of corruption against five Cabinet Ministers – we are yet to hear about them till date. This would have been an opportune moment to question him on his accusations, but unfortunately, it was given a go-by.

When asked about why there has been no enquiry against Congress leaders, he says wait for some more days. During campaign, he went ballistic and promised enquiries within few days. Is there a deal being worked out that we have to wait for few more days? If Arvind Kejriwal, like he claims, has proof on Sheila Dikshit’s corruption, what exactly are we waiting for? Transfer of some “compromised” officers in the ACB department? Arvind Kejriwal gave similar interviews to both NDTV and CNN-IBN. In both the interviews, he himself decided what allegations are against the AAP, and then pompously declared all allegations are false. The anchors focussed on just 1 to 2 big ticket items and allowed him to rant at will. The visible leadership of AAP (includes Yogendra Yadava, Ashutosh, Manish Sisodia) sounds so arrogant and full of themselves. At the drop of the hat, they seek refuge in the argument that this is all for aam aadmi – and due process of law is not really an impediment in implementing anarchy.

You don’t believe it? Last night, in an interview to NDTV, Manish Sisodia asked Ashok Mallik to talk about due process of law when his daughter is burnt alive. That is the level of discourse these people have resorted to. In the latest ‘raid’, no one died. But Arvind Kejriwal and AAP continue to claim “people are dying, and you want us to follow process”? Somnath Bharti yesterday said that he wants to spit on Arun Jaitley’s face, for criticising his awesome actions. Is this the change that AAP wanted to usher in? Already, our political discourse is marred by a lot of rhetoric and jargon; AAP is now making it filthy too.

Minor mistakes do happen. No one says you need to be perfect; only that you move along and make amends. Janta darbar being a case in point – Arvind Kejriwal learnt his lesson well and decided to emulate other Chief Ministers rather than be pompous about it. It’s another matter that he still thinks no one else does Janta Darbar as awesomely as he did or does it. Mistakes might happen because of inexperience and immaturity. But the visible leadership of AAP is simply arrogant, egoistic, and resorts to spreading falsehoods at the drop of the hat. The latest dharna drama is also not to seek some big ticket police reform. It is to seek the suspension of three SHOs. They are seeking that they be suspended till atleast the enquiry is complete because otherwise, it will not be a fair enquiry. The two parties to this enquiry are the SHO and the Law Minister of Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal says the Minister will not resign, but the SHO will have to go for an impartial enquiry. Need anything more be said about their arrogance?

This obsession is now deceiving the readers!

The following article was written for Niti Central. Pasting it here for reference. 

Just about a week back, I wrote an article arguing that the deification of AAP was getting nauseating. Four days into their swearing in, the media was going gaga as if every single thing that Arvind Kejriwal was doing was unique (while the truth was quite the opposite). I hoped that this deification will soon stop. Alas!

On the morning of January 5, The Hindu did a a no-brainer if a banner headline – AAP decides to contest Lok Sabha polls! Surely this was quite obvious.

Not happy with giving them front page coverage, The Hindu almost repeats the same news on page 10 the very next day (January 6).

The top headline on the morning of January 7 was baffling and deceiving.

The headline was about BJP’s program with a group called ‘Overseas Friends of BJP’. This group had existed since long before the AAP had even been conceived. Even Narendra Modi addressed this group much before Delhi elections were even held. But The Hindudeceitfully chose to mislead its readers by lying blatantly in its headline. In the whole report, there is little mention of “success” of AAP, except for some expert comment that the many NRIs canvassed for AAP on social media and therefore it benefitted AAP a lot!

On January 8, we were treated to this headline on the front page.

Wow! AAP will put up a candidate against Rahul Gandhi. This is such worthy breaking news! A political party is pitting a candidate against a strong incumbent! Who would have imagined?

The headline on January 9 was about the attack by a random fringe group on AAP’s office. I was shocked to see no front page report on January 10. But I recovered soon enough – because there was an editorial and a cartoon praising AAP as usual. However, one line caught my attention:

The evidence is there in the rush of eminent people signing up to join the party, suggesting a freshness of political appeal that is clearly disconcerting to the mainstream parties.

“Eminent” people join the BJP, Congress, TDP, BJD, and many other parties. However, The Hindu finds it prudent to analyse in a manner that implies that the “rush” is only towards AAP. Only two days back, Kiran Bedi, who worked along with Arvind Kejriwal, announced her preference for Narendra Modi.

Day in, day out we are being fed this sham that the AAP is the answer to all our political ills. Like someone joked on Twitter, if we leave it to our media, maybe they will tell us we got independence because of AAP!

Narendra Modi promised to revisit the entire tax structure.One NGO proposing a “Banking Transaction Tax” made a presentation to the BJP. News media was abuzz with talk that the BJP will introduce this tax! IBN Live even analysed this move thus:

It serves two purposes. Stop the exodus of middle class and upper middle class voters to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and give an impression that the party is for a transparent taxation.

See that? There is already an “exodus” of middle and upper middle class. Remember, AAP came second; BJP came first. Yet, the BJP wants to stop the “exodus” of voters to AAP. BJP hasn’t even made an official announcement that they were considering this move, but we are being subjected to multiple articles analysing why BJP is making this move!

IBN’s deputy editor, Sagarika Ghose wrote an article in Hindustan Times that cannot be comprehended by ordinary souls. However, she ends it with a bang.

The secular project needs the energy that we see in AAP volunteers and their commitment to 24×7 politics.

I suggest you don’t bother with decoding what she meant there – but the implication that that only AAP volunteers are committed to 24×7 politics is hilarious to say the least.

The Times of India did a random survey according to which, 58 per cent of people in metropolises want Modi as PM. But 44 per cent will vote for AAP it seems. TOI maliciously headlines the 44 per cent part. It’s another thing that ordinary mortals like us cannot understand how 58 per cent want Modi as PM and yet 44 per cent will vote for AAP! Times Now goes ahead with plugging these dodgy findings thereby ending up campaigning for AAP.

We can go on and on about many such findings. The media has now switched sides from being pro-Congress to openly campaigning for AAP.

AAP came second, BJP came first. Yet, the media will have you believe that they won with an overwhelming majority. And still they continue to call themselves “neutral”!

AAP's deification is farcial

The following article was written for Niti Central. Pasting it here for reference. 

In the recent Delhi Assembly election that was held parallel to Assembly elections in four other States, the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emerged as the second largest party in the Assembly, by winning 28 of the 70 seats. The BJP emerged as the single largest entity with the largest vote share too. However, they fell short of majority by mere three seats.

As per the writing on NDTV, the venerable Siddharth Varadarajan had this to say:

“Ordinarily, the BJP would have tried to split both the Congress and the AAP contingents in the Delhi Assembly and moved heaven and earth to form the Government with its 32 seats.”

Yes, he is pretty sure that the BJP would have all the above but for the “mood of the electorate and its revulsion for corruption in politics.”

Pardon me, if I am missing something, but the BJP emerged as the single largest party in an election that astute analysts classify as a vote for anti-corruption - “The mood of the electorate is revulsion for corruption.”

Does this mean that the electorate saw the BJP as less corrupt than the AAP? And if so, why are the commentators so reluctant to accept this fact? How can Delhi verdict be remotely classified as a vote for the AAP’s policies, when it is clear that this is a split verdict?

The AAP, then decided to accept the Congress’s support in forming the Government, the very same party against which they fought the elections. But, of course, astute commentators will not find fault with it, because this is technically not ‘horse-trading’. According to the AAP’s own estimates, about 1.5 – 2 lakh people approved of their forming the Government with Congress’s support. What a massive figure? A whopping two lakh out of a 1.5 crore people in Delhi okayed the formation, and the astute commentators see this as a new beginning! After throwing this logic at the people, the AAP went on to form the Government in Delhi.

The deification doesn’t stop here. The Editor-in-Chief of CNN-IBN, Rajdeep Sardesai had this to say:

“Agree with the decision or not, at least the AAP has forced us to discuss water pricing on prime time. That’s a step forward! “

What is this decision that has enlightened Rajdeep Sardesai so much? The AAP has promised 700 litres of free water to all the residents of Delhi. In tune with it, after forming the Government, the Chief Minister announced that all the houses with metres will get 20,000 litres of water free every month. Anything more than that, they have to pay for the full usage

Giving freebies is bad economics – you don’t need a PhD to understand that. However, AAP which claimed to be different from all the other parties followed the same tactic of announcing a freebie. Only this time – they gave water for free, 20,000 litres per month amounts to about 34 buckets of water per family per day. What exact purpose is the AAP serving by giving so much water free for the poor, middleclass and the rich alike?

But, hey! Be happy that the enlightened individuals at the Delhi-based CNN-IBN studios feel that water pricing made it to ‘Prime Time’! And then, The Hindu published this cartoon today-

The cartoon shows Arvind Kejriwal making giant strides on bijli, paani whilst Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi merely watch. This is duplicity at its best. It is a well known fact by now that the Modi Government has provided 24×7 supply of electricity to all rural households in Gujarat. How can such a massive achievement be compared to AAP’s decision to cut 50 per cent tariff for households using 400 units or less?

The strides made in water management in Gujarat under Narendra Modi’s leadership are also well known. How are these achievements even comparable to giving 20,000 litres of water for free? But what is surprising is that the cartoon comes just one day after The Hindupublished an article explaining why the idea of 20,000 litres of water for free is a bad one!

Every single day, we are treated to some news about how simple Arvind Kejriwal is, wow! He commuted by metro; he got sworn in at Ramlila Maidan; he formed a small Cabinet; he kept his promise, even though 95 per cent of the things that he is doing are already being done by various Chief Ministers representing various political parties. The Delhi-based media is so blind and oblivious that it regards what Arvind Kejriwal is doing as ‘freshness’!

The AAP winning 28 seats is a significant achievement. But this deification of the AAP and the simultaneous vilification of the BJP is getting nauseating. Remember, they came second, and have agreed to form a Government with the support of the very party they fought so stridently against.

Tailpiece: After Sadanand Dhume made a twitter comment asking whether dodgy policy decisions should be applauded by media just because they make news, the harbinger of civil discourse Rajdeep Sardesai retorted back saying, “With due respect to you, I would say that it is a stupid and inane comment. Corruption is the staple diet of news, water is not.”