(Bell Rings)
Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is scheduled for 2019.
It’s for the Indian Prime Ministership.
Introducing the participants,
First,
The representative of the Grand Old Party, from Amethi, Uttar Pradesh.
Eyes winking, trailblazing, figures forgetting, and the new Gandhi Scion on the block, Rahul Gandhi….
And his opponent,
The representative of the Bharatiya Janata Party from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
Chest thumping, mushroom eating, jumla striking, and the reigning, defending, undisputed Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi…
Above isn’t a figment of my imaginative faculty, but a direct yet correct rendition of what is being played out in our non-pliable media channels for the last couple of years.
This ridiculously much hyped gladiatorial-esqe fight for the crown has been razzmatazzed and jazzed up by our television media. Highly inspired by their US counterparts, they have stopped believing in our constitutionally mandated parliamentary structure, and have instead embraced the Presidential structure of the US.
Media houses were traditionally meant to dispense news and leave it to the viewers to form an opinion, but due to compulsions of TRP, news channels threw their traditional model in the dustbin and adopted Ekta Kapoor’s entertainment model. TV media has been giving a tough competition to her ever since.
In this news model, there is only one, generally accepted principle,
‘News channels sirf teen cheezon ke liye chalti hain,
Entertainment, Entertainment and Entertainment,
aur NaMo v RaGa entertainment hain’
Every insignificant political story is tweaked to reach one climax, which is, an eventual fight of the two tsars in 2019. Viewers are made to believe that we’re not electing our parliamentarians, but a deity, who’ll come to power and solve all our problems. Journalism is an intense exercise in blatantly shameless futility. Facts, figures and logic are sent on leave. There is also an option for their forced leave where henchmen of both tsars do their duty of silencing facts through intimidation.
TV media, instead of being conceived as news channels, has started to look like PR management of political leaders. Like uttering the name of Voldemort, strenthens Voldemort. These media houses try to manufacture a similar ‘Voldemort Effect’ by repeatedly chanting and praising their preferred leader’s name, thereby conveniently ignoring the lingering issues that are plaguing this great country in due course. Perhaps, the media has reached its nadir. More than a disservice to journalism, it has done disservice to the country.
Portraying a parliamentary election as a full-fledged propped up presidential contest is an insult to our carefully crafted parliamentary structure. Parliamentary structure basically means, we elect our MPs and whichever MP has 50% support of total MPs becomes the Prime Minister. Prime Minister is the first among equals and heads the cabinet, which is responsible for running the government at a national level. In short, we don’t elect our Prime Minister directly and he isn’t directly responsible for any developmental activities in our constituency, but our elected MPs are.
The media campaign of over-emphasising on two leaders and depicting the 2019 saga as a presidential contest is sheer ignorance and fallacy. Completely disregarding the value of MPs and reducing them to mere numbers is a mockery of our parliamentary system.
I have little hope from the media, but I do have high expectations from conscious citizens whose voting behavior must be based on the competency of their prospective MPs and the development work of the incumbent. It mustn’t be affected by this ignorant and agenda-driven campaign, which has the potential to decelerate our pursuit to the zenith.