Dear Arnab ji,
When you started your innings with Times Now by demanding that power wielders
provide honest answers to the general public for their various acts of
commission and omission, many of us applauded your public spiritedness.
“The Nation-is-angry-and-wants-an-answer” approach gave much-needed vent
to citizens’ frustration at our political masters’ lack of accountability.
Every today, once in a while, your head-on approach works well, as it did when
you ably stonewalled the attempts of Congress leaders in giving a communal
colour to the recent killings and mayhem in Assam. Being from Assam yourself,
you were on surer ground. But trouble arises when you become an instant
expert on a new subject every night and want your rage to be supported and
echoed by all your panelists with the same intensity and fury as yours.
Over the years, you have let the success of your
program make you forget the necessary dividing line between journalist and
crusader and converted your prime time ‘News Hour,’ into a Kangaroo Court. Your
jingoistic nationalism mimics the aggressive onslaughts of preachers of
Born-Again Christian sects on North American TV channels. Within the
one-hour duration of your Kangaroo court, you bully your guest panelists to
participate in a summary trial loaded with self-righteous harangues, aimed not
just at the targeted wrong doer but also at those who dare resist your
requirement that the verdict against the targets of your ire be pronounced
right then and there. Unfortunately, some of the younger anchors are also
catching on this disease. Therefore, it needs to be controlled before it
assumes epidemic proportions.
You made it fashionable to see every issue
through a prism which allows only two colors to permeate-- black and white.
That prism enables the anchor to see himself as lily white knight in shining
armor out to save India
from its various real and imaginary enemies and ills and ensures that all those
whose alleged misdeeds you expose or whose views you target come out pure
black, pure evil. You become enraged if someone tries to introduce a degree of
complexity to the discussion. The panelists are expected to simply come and
lend further strength to the anchor's delusion that the one hour of News Hour
will rid India
of all its ills.
Dear Arnab, it is time you get over the illusion
that if you wrap yourself in the national flag, everyone will automatically
accept the purity of your intentions and the workability of your prescriptions
on every single issue. Plenty of people are becoming exasperated with such
posturing and want news channels to provide them real news instead of
organizing daily cock-fights in T.V. studios.
Your crusading zeal and the style of
interrogation has the effect of dumbing down the issues you pick up for
debate. For example, you are very fond of picking up sensational cases of
police tyranny and callousness. But your panelists are not allowed to go
beyond expressing pious rage at these routine misdemeanors of our lawless
police. Whenever you asked me to join any such discussion, I have pleaded
with you to go beyond raging over random cases and start a serious discussion
on police reforms to channel the energy and anger of concerned citizens to
think creatively of the systemic changes required in order to make our police a
people friendly institution designed to protect citizens’ rights rather than
tyrannize, fleece and harass them. But that requires a great deal of
homework and serious thought. You have no patience for it because it
would not allow your daily dose of righteous rage.
It is clear you are still stuck in the Oxbridge
style of debating you are likely to have learnt as a student, whereby one is
allowed to speak either “for” or “against” the motion. A good “debater” is one
who makes mince meat out of his opponent’s arguments, caricaturing the views of
others while proving the absolute superiority of his own. Debating” of the
kind, taught in our elite schools and colleges involves being one-up on your
opponents, even if in the process you end up with pompous posturing.
Those who remain stuck in this mode of interaction become incapable
of engaging in a dialogue, leave alone promote genuine “samvad.”
Samvad, as opposed to debating, requires that one gives equal (sam)
opportunity to one’s opponent to present her viewpoint, (vad). In fact,
in the Indian tradition of holding Shastratha there is well-respected code that you
acquire the adhikar (moral right) to criticize or debate
someone’s views or ideas only if you first demonstrate that you have understood
their position in great depth and appreciate the complexities and nuances of
the opponent’s argument.
Take the example of how you went ballistic when
all four of us on your panel invited to the News Hour on July 11, 2012
surprised you by our refusal to join you in condemning and demanding strict
punitive action against the Medical Superintendent who allegedly allowed a
“sweeper” to play surgeon that fateful morning in the Banarsi Das
Government Hospital of Bulandshahar. In your high voltage zeal, you converted
41 year old Mohammad Ayub who has worked for 19 long years as a ward boy in the
Operation Theatre of that hospital into a “sweeper” who had dared trespass into
the hallowed territory reserved for MBBS ( and above) doctors. Do you know that
in neighboring Bangladesh,
which has a far superior primary health care system, illiterate and barely
literate women and men have been trained as very effective paramedics? Suturing
a wound is no rocket science. Nineteen years is a long time for an OT assistant
to learn something as simple as putting 5 stitches to close a wound.
Even alleged murderers get a chance to defend
themselves during the course of trial. But you thundered at us for suggesting
that you pay heed to the explanations being offered by the representative of
the hospital before reaching final conclusions. He tried in vain to tell you
that on that early morning, 17 injured persons had been brought to the hospital
following a bus accident. Of the 23 doctors, 7 were present in the hospital.
The rest were either on leave or had left after doing their shift. The ward boy
assisted in stitching up a wound because it was an emergency situation and all
17 injured persons had to be attended to at once. The Medical officer had
sounded the emergency alarm which meant all the staff members in the hospital
were to assemble and be assigned duties. But, instead of waiting for other
doctors to reach the hospital, those on duty decided to make the best use of
available resources. You were outraged that all 23 doctors were not there to
attend to this emergency as if you have never heard of shift duty. It is likely
that more than the permissible number were on leave that day. But that had to
be established only after a proper enquiry. But you can’t afford to wait a day
or two for facts to be established since you need a new issue and a new
sacrificial victim every night.
Your fury and insistence on “instant justice”
and punishment during the News Hour itself was based on a 20 second grainy
footage taken by some local photographer covering the bus accident. Neither you
nor your correspondent cared to find out whether the ward boy had done a good
job or messed up the wound. Incidentally, neither the injured boy whose wound
was stitched nor his parents complained of any wrong doing. If you had made up
your mind to convict all of the hospital staff based on a 20 second borrowed
footage, why did you bother to invite the concerned medical officer on your
program?
We pleaded with you to contextualize the
“offense”—even if a ward boy putting 5 stitches on a wound could be
called an offense—by seeing it as a symptom of the pathetic state of our public
hospitals with their perennial shortage of doctors and nurses. If today, the
country is short of 6 lakh doctors and 1 million nurses, it points to decades
of government mismanagement and neglect of the health sector. But for you that
meant we too had become guilty of the “Chalta Hai” attitude which you
are determined to beat out of Indians.
Do you know what has been the net result of your
crusade of July 11, Arnab ji? If not, please read a report filed by Shone
Shatheesh Babu in Tehelka of July 28, 2012. Ayub, a
low paid class IV employee and the only breadwinner of a 10 member family--
including a wife, three daughters, ailing parents and an autistic brother-- was
suspended from his job to placate your fury. In addition to facing penury, he
is devastated by the ignominy of being called a “sweeper” who dared play
surgeon by a whole host of TV channels who took their cue from you. By
contrast, the Chief Medical Supervisor has only been transferred to another
hospital. In addition, the administration has “issued warning to every employee
to only stick to his/her area of expertise.” This means in future no hospital
staff will dare go beyond their officially assigned duty even in emergencies
for fear of being punished. From henceforth a ward boy hired to pull stretchers
will think a thousand times before daring to offer a glass of water to a
thirsty patient. Likewise an attendant meant for changing bed linen will avoid
letting the doctor or nurse know if he sees that a medicinal drip of a patient
has stopped working, lest he be held guilty of overstepping his limits.
Serious Political Consequences of Prejudiced
Attacks
Your narcissism and oversimplification of
political issues has serious political consequences since it is not limited to
raving and ranting against corruption and mismanagement in this or that
hospital or thana.
Take for example the way you handle issues
relating to Kashmir. To begin with, you think
of Kashmir only when there is a major upsurge
of anger on the streets, leading to violence or shut down. Without doing proper
homework, without taking the trouble to go see for yourself or get the best of
your reporters to feed you reliable reports, you invariably take at face value
the information and slant provided to you by either your favorite politicians
in the state or the Home Ministry in Delhi.
Having already made up your mind that any
protest against the government or manifestation of discontent against
mal-governance in the state is “Pakistan-inspired mischief” you invite
Kashmiris to your program only to tell them what you think of them. Either you
deliberately pick those who live up to the image of being stereotypical
secessionists or if they don’t oblige, you try to push them into that
camp. Your energy goes into showing them up to be anti-national elements
whose grievances or point of view does not deserve to be heard, leave alone
heeded. Even when Kashmiris come out to protest the killings of innocent men or
young kids by their own state police, you only pour contempt at them at having
invited such killings.
Equally important, you and your tribe rarely, if
ever, celebrate anything good the Kashmiris do. For example, you have never
covered the great hospitality shown to Amarnath Yatris by Kashmiri Muslims,
including when bad weather conditions lead to life threatening situations en
route to the shrine. Recently you went ballistic over Syed Ali Shah Geelani
opposing the creation of separate enclaves for Kashmiri Pandits but you deliberately
paid no heed to the main point he was raising that Pandits should be assisted
in returning to their original homes. He is opposed to creating ghettos for
them and has repeatedly emphasized the need to for them to come reclaim their
homes in old neighborhoods. Ask any of the Kashmiri Pandits living in the
Valley. They will tell you that any time, they feel threatened, they depend
more on Geelani than on the state police for their safety. And he does live up
to his promise. This is not to deny that at one time Geelani contributed to
conditions that led to the mass exodus of Pandits from the Valley. But would
you rather Geelani stay forever the same? Why not acknowledge and welcome his
new avatar? If you are seriously concerned about the plight of Kashmiri Pandits
why not have a calm and thoughtful discussion with them and key Kashmiri
Muslims leaders, including Geelani, on steps that need to be taken for a
dignified and safe return of Pandits to the Valley?
There are a lot of positive signals coming from the
Valley. But our national media has no time for actions and incidents that
convey a positive message. For example, during the recent Amarnath Yatra, a
Youth leader Bashir Ahmed Mir
from Kangan in Ganderbal district risked his own life to save a mother-son duo
from Bihar. A young boy named Rohit
Kumar from Bihar had accidentally slipped into the Thajwas River
at Sonmarg. In panic, his mother also jumped into the fast flowing stream to
save her child. But neither knew how to swim. Mir, who happened to be nearby,
at once jumped into the waters and saved the life of both mother and son. (See link: http://www.kashmirdispatch.com/more-news/16078676-political-leader-saves-mother-child-duo-of-amarnath-pilgrims-from-drowning.htm). Several friends from Kashmir wrote to me to say that “if a Kashmiri had picked
up an argument or a petty fight with a yatri over some issue, Arnab Goswami would
have raised hell for hours on end but such positive actions showing respect and
care for Indian yatris and tourists do not receive even passing mention in his
News Hour.”
The rough and rude treatment you give to senior and
respected Kashmir leaders causes no less hurt
than unjustified killings by the state police or paramilitary forces. Every
time I have tried to present facts about Kashmir
that you ignore you not only shout me down but also make it out as is I have
joined in support of secessionists and Pak-supported terrorists.
You have no idea how much harm you cause in the
process. Each such program leaves Kashmiris seething in rage. They are made to
feel that they don’t have the basic democratic rights that people of other
states have, and that they should neither protest police atrocities nor
mal-governance and corruption of the state , leave alone patently harmful
policies adopted by the central government. Any manifestation of discontent on
their part is invariably treated as an anti-national activity. In the process,
you and your tribe weaken their faith in Indian democracy. As a result, what
may have started off as a protest against the high handedness of the state
government ends up turning into an anti-India protest. I have been repeatedly
told in the Valley that Kashmiris would never be so estranged from Indian
democracy if at least the Indian media learns had paid attention to their
legitimate grievances.
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The author is a spokesperson, Kashmir Committee
