The prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2019 has been announced. This brings along good news for India; famous senior journalist Ravish Kumar is one of the awardees of this prestigious award. This award is known as the Nobel Prize of Asia and this achievement is not only a mark of celebration for him but the entirety of India. On the contrary, it seems like only one particular section of the society is happy with this outstanding feat whereas, the rest are still stuck in politics.
Ravish Kumar has been working with NDTV since 1996 and has always been targeted as ‘anti-government’ and ‘leftist.’ This is a plausible reason as to why even the Prime Minister of the nation has not congratulated him for this massive achievement. PM Modi is active on social media and posts about almost all the major happenings, especially in regard to congratulating Indians who make the country proud.
In this scenario expecting a congratulatory tweet is not only a huge expectation but yet, it seems like he has forgotten his previous habit. Other senior BJP leaders and ministers who are active on social media have retained their silence and haven’t congratulated Kumar, yet. Although Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal are among the senior leaders who have wished him.
The hidden political rivalry can be clearly understood but turns out that group-ism exists in the journalism fraternity as well. Just a few months back, Anjana Om Kashyap was awarded the ITA Best News Anchor Award and Twitter was flooded with congratulatory wishes from BJP leaders and fellow journalists. Whereas, the stupendous feat of an international achievement has received no such appreciation except by the NDTV staff and Rajdeep Sardesai. Many newspapers have not even published this news, although it demands full-page coverage! It is saddening that such unfortunate circumstances exist in a profession which is apparently the fourth pillar of democracy.
Ravish Kumar is happy and content with his work and appreciates the people expressing their love for him. But, even he did not miss the chance of attacking PM Modi in a sarcastic way in the recent BBC interview after the award was announced.