Why is the media not talking of Nandigram anymore? Is it because some of the Leftist-run newspapers have had eggs on their face? According to Hard News (April 2007) ?the true history of the terror at Nandigram between March 14 and 16 will probably never be disclosed in its fullness. Snippets of information that broke through the police cover, and visual fragments that could be shown on television channels have, nonetheless, brought forth an unprecedented upsurge of popular outrage all over the state (of West Bengal) from all ranks of people?.?
The reason is clear. Our so-called secular intellectuals are cowards. Listen to what Hard News has further to say: ?What happened in Nandigram has been rehearsed there already in early January and at Singur in September and December 2006: Imposition of unilateral party and corporate decisions on villagers without even informing them that their land had been acquired for corporate profit, private profit now designated as public purpose. Intimidation, especially by party cadres, violent attacks on villagers by the police and by cadres, violence that did not spare women and children?.?.
It is a long story. Stalin had millions of farmers killed. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya'smethods differ in quantity, but the style remains the same. Cadre terrorisation. Yes, there was time when land reforms in West Bengal greatly helped farmers. But nobody talks of some 50,000 dead factories and the virtual collapse of the jute industry. That is only one part of the Indian communist story.
Murder and mayhem is part of CPM tactics, especially in Kerala. Says Organiser (April 1): ?Keeping its commitment of killing at least one Sangh Parivar activist every week, CPM'sgoons butchered advocate P.P.Valsaraj Kurup (37) on March 4, at Punur, near Thalassery in Kannur district.?
Valsaraj Kurup was highly popular; he was a bright and energetic advocate of the Thalassery Bar. Around 11.50 pm on March 4, around 10 men came to his house and knocked at his door. When he opened the door, the men lied to him saying that there had been an accident close by and they wanted his legal help. He innocently agreed to visit the accident scene. Once out of his house the CPM goons dragged him to a near-by lane and hit him with an iron rod. With axes and swords, they dismembered both his legs and left him to die. Did our secular press describe the scene? Not on your life. An RSS pracharak is a good target to be cruelly killed. Does anyone remember Pannayannur Chandran who was killed before his wife and son or K.T.Jayakrishnan who was cut to pieces in front of the students he was teaching? Or of Valsaraj who was butchered right in front of his wife, five-year old daughter and a three-months old child? How many newspapers have asked what happened to the butchers? Which reminds one of Nithari. Whatever has happened to Surinder Koli, the domestic help of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher? Readers have such short memories. As The Tribune (March 24) was to say: ?The low priority accorded to criminal investigation?as against general law and order maintenance?may be viewed as a typical attitude of the police.? The same paper, The Tribune (April 17) which is friendly towards the Congress had some harsh words to say about Rahul Gandhi, though it is not the only paper to do so, underlining the clich? that a favourite has no friends.
The paper said among other things that ?Congress MP Rahul Gandhi suffers from the foot-in-the mouth syndrome? and that ?every time he makes a statement, he lands the Congress in an embarrassing situation?. That is the under-statement of the year.
Among other things the paper said: ?Mr Gandhi'sstatement also amounts to showing disrespect to the people of Bangladesh who had to sacrifice a lot at gain freedom. The role of the Mukti Bahini played in the creation of Bangladesh can be written only in letters of gold in the history of Bangladesh. By ignoring all these historical truths and claiming credit for the vivisection of Pakistan the young MP has exposed his ignorance.?
The paper noted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had extolled Rahul ?as the future of Uttar Pradesh?. Wrote The Tribune: ?If the future of Uttar Pradesh is indeed in Mr Rahul Gandhi'shands, the state rightly deserves the fullest sympathy of the nation.? Over to you, Mr Prime Minister. With this, there is no need to quote from other papers which have been uniformly critical of Rahul and the Congress Party. The Tribune has said it all.
There have been stories about how easy it is to get passports (faked, of course) and visas. Recently, the Free Press Journal tried to find out how easy?or difficult?it is to plant bombs in trains. An FPJ ?Terrorist? team consisting of three reporters boarded three different trains from Mumbai Central Station, each carrying a bundle of newspapers weighing 2 kgs approximately, the weight of the RDX allegedly used in each of the seven bomb blasts that rocked the Mumbai Western Railway some months ago. Boarding different trains at different times, the FPJ team managed to ?plant? seven paper bundles in two Borivali slow, two Borivali semi-fast and three Virar fast trains in a gap span of ll, three, zero, three, zero, three and zero minutes.
?Eureka? reported the Free Press Journal, you need only three persons to plant seven ?bombs??, which shows the efficacy of our railway police. So the media has a job to do: To show how weak our police structure is and how easy it is to plant a bomb in a train and get away with murder. But many want the media to do other good jobs as well. Thus, Hitavada (March 7) reported Chief Justice of India, K.G.Balakrishnan as saying that media should draw the attention of the administration and policy makers of the country to the ways of improving the judiciary of the country. More about this at a later stage.
The point to remember is that no matter what the media might say or how loudly it says it, the administration is just not accustomed to move fast. If one makes a list of all the editorials written by all the papers, say, in just one year, and the administration responded favourably, to them, we would be living in paradise. If favourites have no friends, a responsible media has even fewer. The administration just does not like to be told what to do. If bureaucrats would only talk a little more loudly, one would hear them saying: ?We know our business. You mind yours.? The media may shout and wring its hands, but you cannot get the bureaucrats working.
