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It isn’t because of the absence of structural reform or the government’s fiscal profligacy or for that matter corruption which has reared its ugly head far too often during the UPA’s last 5 years that the country has gone down. If Minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office, V Narayanasamy’s assessment of the reasons for India’s descent were to be accepted as true, the fault lies not with the government, but with all the other pillars of democracy - the judiciary, the media and the CBI.
The minister has been quoted by the Economic Times as saying that the media is “corrupt”, the CBI has no “corporate knowledge” and the judiciary gets “swayed by the media trials and doesn't want public perceptions to go against it.”
The minister has been quoted by the Economic Times as saying that the media is “corrupt”, the CBI has no “corporate knowledge” and the judiciary gets “swayed by the media trials and doesn't want public perceptions to go against it.”
He even went as far as to issue a warning on censoring the media saying “If self-regulation isn't followed, some kind of regulation will be brought by the government. We will take a call ultimately.”
Many of Narayanaswamy‘s ‘allegations’ so to speak are not without merit. Indeed corruption in the media, the daily trails on primetime television that expressly pronounce guilt, the damaging trend of paid news and private treaties, and the emergence of profit-led political or ideological biases are skeletons that need to be fought off. But were it not for the role the media played in exposing scams like 2G, Coalgate and CWG, voters and taxpayers would have never known of the blatant loot of public resources that politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies indulged in.
It would serve Mr Narayanaswamy well to consider that the media’s role is that of a 4th estate. For everything else, there is Doordarshan. Yes, agreed that the media’s own house may not be in order, some outfits may even be blatantly defying basic tenets of journalism, but should that mean the press must ignore all the negatives - the plunder of thousands of crores of taxpayer money and muse only on government positives? Given how little good news there is to report, there wouldn’t be much left for the press to do. The media doesn’t spare its own these days (Radia tapes, Tejpal), what in god’s name makes Mr Narayanaswamy think it should go soft on government lapses?
To his point on the CBI and its lack of corporate knowledge which according to the minister has resulted in even honest and sincere corporate houses being framed - there is broad consensus even within the legal community that the CBI’s decision to implicate Kumaramangalam Birla was an erroneous one. There are also misgivings about the figures arrived at by the Comptroller and Auditor General on the losses on account of coal and 2G spectrum allocation. But does that take away even for a moment from the fact that there were gross transgressions by the government?
It is for the first time in years perhaps that an activist CBI piteously dubbed ‘caged parrot’ by the apex court and an activist CAG are being seen as functioning with some degree of purpose to root out corruption. For every flawed assessment, their offices have also carried out audits and investigations that have led to findings that politicians will not be proud of, findings that should ideally have led to some soul searching. Conversely what it’s led to is the shooting of the messenger.
So far as the judiciary is concerned, the reason for its overreach and the prescriptive suggestions it has been issuing on policy are not because of an imagined media fed propaganda, but because other branches of government have failed in their obligations.
Sadly Mr Narayanaswamy is not the first person to lash out in such a manner. The Prime Minister himself had blamed relentless exposés by the media for eroding India’s prestige on the global stage some years ago. More recently, it was Anand Sharma, India’s trade minister who spewed venom on Goldman Sachs for attributing the stock market rally to a Narendra Modi wave.
Gauging from the Narayanaswamy’s assessment of what the problem is, not even the resounding drubbing that his government faced the state polls has brought home the point that the Congress should stop looking for scapegoats and look within for its failures. Granted, the judiciary, the media and the CBI can still get it wrong, but the voter can’t, Mr Narayanaswamy. Or can he?
