An interesting Point of View..-- of a print Journalist

COUNTERPOINTS

[The screaming 24x7 coverage on TV channels may have put quite a few off. I was one who wondered what's happened to Pranoy Roy & Barkha Dutt. The following came to me from Shukla Sen of Peace Mumbai, as a breather of sorts. So thought of sharing with you- Arunan.]


We Can Compete; They Should Not

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Manmohan Singh and Advani visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even at this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why can't these channels pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this time of national calamity and share the sound and visual bites which could mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge human resource to command? Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep harping every five minutes that this piece of information was exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a national crisis? Is this the time to promote the channel? If that is valid, the politician promoting his own political constituency is equally valid. And the duty of the politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the people to evaluate that politics.


And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.


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Israel Has A Point

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in management that the top brass should never t ravel together in crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to liberate.
Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering? This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the mighty apparatus at his and government's disposal?
Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances.


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Resilience - Obscene Now

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains. He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in this game of one upmanship over TRPs ? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for government intervention now to protect their private spas and swimming pools and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, General Motors and the ilk cry for government money when their coffers are emptied by their own ideologies.

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Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from terrorists - the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj to show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead they were again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop shot of the dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered to cover in detail what transpired there.

Why Terrorists Chose Hotel Taj?

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam Aadmis of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj, Oberoi and Trident closing down for a couple of weeks or months. What mattered to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for one hour. But the channels were not covering that aspect of the terror attack. Such information at best merited a scroll line, while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and politics, not India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for those who wielded power over these mass of labouring classes. Leopold club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids who would drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the glitterati of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) , Political brokers and industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people, that the terrorists chose to strike.

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Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of India. Your obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from the print media please.

No channel bothered. Only Srinivasan Jain replied: you are right. We are trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after the terror attack.

Excerpts from Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ?
By Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai

THE RIGHT VIEW--Why are Hindus angry?

I just came across this artilce by Tarun Vijay in ToI today and wish to share this. Please find below the text.........................................................

In Srinagar, a Muslim women’s organization – the Dukhtaran-e-Millat – vows to impose the strict Islamic code on women through violence and declares that it is in the interests of women. The leader of this outfit, Asiyah Andrabi, was jailed several times for working against the nation and for being a conduit for money to jihadi groups who used that help to kill Hindus and create disaffection among people against India. The US State Department Report of 1995 held a Dukhtaran-e-Millat activist responsible for a parcel bomb blast at the BBC office in Srinagar in which one person was killed and two injured. The DeM has recently been linked to certain money laundering cases. Andrabi was booked under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) for receiving ISI money through hawala channels. Whenever she speaks against India, there is no emotion or any sense of regret. She was never subjected to a narco test nor did the media feel anything bad about her. Instead, women's groups interviewed her, called her the “new face of Muslim feminism”, and glossy magazines splashed her interviews with a tinge of revolutionary romanticism. For Indian seculars, the Srinagar crowd working against India brings added fizz, a thrill and a heroism that has to be “understood” rather than condemned. Serious academic columns are published saying that if they are so passionately and aggressively pursuing separatism, why shouldn't we give the Kashmir valley to them? It’s only when a lady monk is killed in Kandhamal or arrested in Nashik and appears to be wearing saffron rather than green that expressions become stern, the law becomes the guiding force, narco tests are immediately ordered and before anything can be even remotely established, the person is pronounced guilty. No women’s organization comes out openly to say she is a woman and hence the police must protect her honour and religious obligations at all cost. Her father says she is innocent. No one gives any importance to that statement. She cooperates during the narco test and nothing incriminatory is proved. The police say she practices yoga, hence the narco test didn't work. The bike, the RDX, the targets – nothing is proved. Yet, she is tortured in police custody. The women's commission that swung into action when an item girl used it to get cheap publicity and hot assignments maintains a studied silence. The Human Rights Commission remains unfazed and the red sirens of the Marxist class look the other way. They had been demanding a pardon for Afzal although the Supreme Court convicted him. But the issues involved were of secular nature; hence they had to speak. Nobody still knows what Pragya actually did or didn't do. She has to be severely dealt with just because the colour she wears is not registered as secular in the government's registry of protection where rapists, extortionists and scandalous criminals get a cabinet berth and a murder accused jailbird becomes a chief minister for being on the correct side politically. First they said an army officer used 60 kg of RDX to blow up the Samjhauta Express. Then the denial comes; no RDX was used, it was ammonium nitrate, oh no perhaps IEDs. Then the Mecca Masjid blasts are linked with Malegaon, then the Hyderabad police issue an official statement that nothing has been found to link the two. The motorbike, the disfigured numbers on the chassis, the absconding person, the real mastermind, the saffron terror guru ... Remember when the Kanchi Shankaracharya was arrested, what kind of charges were levelled against him? Rape, murder, financial fraud and womanizing. And women came foreword to issue statements about how they were “lured”. What happened afterwards? Even “nothing” won’t convey the nothingness of the entire plot. But the damage to the great seat of Hindu reverence had been done.

After Kanchi and the Kandhamal murders, a new tool in form of Hindu terrorism has been crafted to make the Batla House terror gang happy. Not a single Hindu will ever condone terrorism. It's not in our genes. Our blood group in this matter is different. If someone does it he is guilty of doing an un-Hindu act. Anyone caught and proven guilty must be severely dealt with. But why humiliate a majority community that defines the character of the nation for election gains? Words, cacophony, a celebrative secular media's new 24-hour preoccupation – lynch the saffron, light the party fire. Just one incident and look how Batla House terrorism, Jamia's protective belligerence, Assam blasts, Pakistani flags carried in Bodo areas by Muslim infiltrators, the Ram Setu destruction and affidavits that humiliate Hindus, everything got under cover. Only the newly manufactured “Hindu terrorism” is reigning in the national debate as a new fashion statement. The invention of “Hindu terrorism” helped the government get out of a defensive shell and be extraordinarily active to crack a whip against “bad elements”. It had never displayed this action-oriented thrill when the Delhi blasts occurred or the Jaipur blasts claimed more than 60 lives. No Maulana was arrested or caricatured in the media as the bloody green terror guru or ghastly Islamic terrorism. No, they said, terror has no religion hence these blasts, though done with a holy book surrounded by AK47s, and long quotes from it to justify the blasts and the killings of Hindus shouldn't be sourced to religion. These must not be explained away as Islamic terror, but just the work of some misguided people who are giving a bad name to a peaceful, brotherly way of worship. Fine. But when they see saffron, everyone loves to tie them with the speeding bus of law enforcement and constitutional propriety and beat them black and blue to prove a secular manliness of dhimmitude variety. Pragya says she was tortured in police custody but no one took any notice of that. Why? Even the most dreaded women criminals have been accorded human rights protection. Pragya is no criminal, she doesn't advocate violence against the state, she is not a traitor, she doesn't impose any kind of obscurantist code on women nor does she use acid, like Andarabi, to make other women fear her dictates. She has not said she is out to kill others to bring about any kind of religious order. But she is tortured and no one says it a gross violation of human rights. Is she not to be given the protection that every woman is entitled to? Those who write against the nation, insult our heritage and support secession, get applauds and awards. But those who die for the nation and protect the civilisational flow are tortured in police custody. That's the brevity and power of a state that's in reality headed by a woman and is being actually run by another. More than 60,000 Hindus have been killed by Islamic jihadis, in the name of their religion and not a single Hindu stood up to say: Enough is enough, I will now see the wicked are punished and innocents are protected.
There is a list of more than 200 Hindu temples razed or desecrated in the Kashmir valley. No Hindu Kashmiri vowed to establish a Hindu terror group to take revenge because the state apparatus has failed to provide them safety. Seema, a six-year-old girl, was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood in Doda when Islamic terrorists came to her house in the thick of night at 2.30 am, woke up her father, mother and her 11-year-old brother, killing them after brutal torture. They used big knives to cut them into pieces. Still no Hindu terror group was formed to teach them a lesson. A two-and-a-half-year old boy who was crying for milk as his mother was shot dead by Islamic terrorists in Wandhama attracted the attention of the jihadis and the bullets silenced him too. Even then, Hindus didn't become terrorists. The great socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia use to say – India has three dreams – Ram, Krishna and Shiva. The abodes, the principal temples of the global Hindus dedicated to these three dreams of India were destroyed and desecrated by Islamic invaders. Go to Google and see how the Shiva temple in Kashi has been turned into a mosque in such a style that the pillars of the old Hindu temple remain clearly visible to show Hindus that here was once the temple they used to worship, which has been converted into a mosque. Yet for the last four centuries no Hindu has turned a terrorist to take revenge in Kashi. Now when elections are underway, the government is in shambles showing utter unworthiness to govern and protect patriotic people. Suddenly every single person arrested for terrorism is a saffron, a Hindu and nothing is appearing on the channels or in Sunday magazine features except the “grave danger of Hindu terrorism” and the army getting the saffron “tilak” of terror. Even the Ghaznis, Ghauris and Abdalis haven't done so much of character assassination of a majority community as this government has done just to garner a few Muslim votes. Is it fair? Will it not create a reaction among those who have been chanting mantras of global peace and fraternity and praying for the welfare of all, irrespective of faith or colour? Pushed to a corner, restricted from crying and blackholed like the Jews during the Nazi regime, will it not be a bit too naive to expect that Hindus will remain silent and offer their necks for the secular sacrificial ritual of election gains? Their temples are bombed, their children are killed, their property is looted, their orchards are burnt, their motherland is disfigured and assaulted, yet the state declares a war on their sensitivities, the media muffles their voice and bans all for a for them to express their views. On the contrary, it shows the victims as aggressors, humiliating them in the eyes of the real attackers. Nature abhors such Siberian gags. Peace is strengthened by justice alone. The way Pragya has suddenly become a hero must make sane people sit up and take note of the wave passing through the Hindu heartland. Tsunamis don't send advance emails before they strike. The author is the Director, Dr Syamaprasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.

Turnaround of Indian Railways - Lalu's style

Today I was anxiously logged into http://irctc.co.in/ an Indian Railways online reservation web site to book rail tickets from Secunderabad to Pune on 2nd of March 2008 under Tatkal scheme before the quota gets over. I was lucky enough to have a few bearth's in 2 tier AC available in Konark express (the other most convenient train Mumbai express is always full even under Tatkal quota). For this I have to book a ticket from Bhubaneswar from the train originating station until its destination boarding at Secunderabad. (If I forget to mention this after one station from Bhubaneswar my ticket gets cancelled). So far so good. I paid the money using my creadit card and yes now I can see the bearths are alloted. I my eyes ran through the ticket to see if evrything is ok. I missed out something...yes, though the train starts from Bhubaneswar on 1st March it reaches Secunderabad on the next day i.e. 2nd March my boarding point. Errr....I made a mistake now my date of journey sorry boarding at Secunderabad is on 3rd March. That changed my entire schedule.. So I decided to cancel the ticket. I was told by the customer service of the Indian railways on cancellation the refund would be only 25% if it is made with in 24 hours from the date of trains departure. Just 25%?!!!!! I booked it 5 days in advance. Since I didn't have much option I had to cancel the ticket after cancellation the mentioned for refund is less than 25%. Thats cheating.....!

Today Incidently it is railways Budget day presented by great Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav who turn around Indian railways from a losemaking unit to a profitable organisation. And even claimed that it is better than fortune 500 companies. One thing I must say this guy has got a lot of political and crimainal brain other wise no one else can achieve this. How he achieved it now everyone can guess.

Initially when tatkal quota was introduced only a few bearths are available under it and you have to book 24 hours before the departure and now you can book 5 days in advance and many more bearths available. That means less bearths for those who want to book the tickets in general quota. Passenger who book ticket under tatkal scheme has to book for enitre journey of the train. If he cancells it only 25% is refunded or even less. Now imagine how much money he is making out of it.

Now lets see the general quota tickets. If you have to book a round trip ticket than you would pay a little extra. How?! lets see. If you have to book a ticket from Secunderabad to Pune it would cost you some Rs X/- and if you buy it from Pune then it would cost you some Rs X+Y/- the difference could be Rs 10 per bearth in for sleeper class and for upper classes its even more. Now how many people in a year travel between Pune and Secunderabad and back. Now calculate how much money railways would have made that way.

Its Indian Railways way of unethical business.....ofcourse you can never expect any better from Lalu Prasad Yadav under whose stewardship the Indian railways is flourishing. One hand he says reducing the fare on the other he wouldn't even mention these things upfront. He even gives guest lectures to Harvard Management graduates on Railways case study. God only knows what lecture he gives to them.