Is “Free” Indian Media Free of Unethical Practices?

 Is "Free" Indian Media Free of Unethical Practices?

Reading famous English daily or watching your favorite news channel while drinking tea or coffee after a nice healthy morning walk is a routine most of us love to have.  We normally believe in what's said in the newspaper or what's shown on the television. We do not question the sanctity or righteousness of the news, and implicitly, start believing what is presented to us.  We never doubt the author’s intent behind the story; never check the editor or owner’s dubious associations, if any.

Two recent events not just questioned media’s credibility, but its behavior as a responsible constituent of our democratic structure.  Without substantiating the facts, two news items were published.  First was the CAG report on coal blocks, and the second was the porn-gate in Gujarat.  Either it was over enthusiasm or deliberate attempt to mislead the facts.  In both the possibilities, media displayed lack of professionalism.

This has once again brought to the forefront the issues raised by Justice Katju a couple of months ago.    There are several other issues that have come to light with regards to the media's conduct such as ownership of media houses, blackmail, sensationalizing the story, intentional breach of ethics, paid news, etc.  Clearly, the self-regulation is failing to regulate the media.

Today many journalists lack professional skills, commitment to the profession, and do not feel the need to take time to collect all the facts and to cross check them before publishing the story.  Therefore, the stories that come out of their fold are of very poor quality.  Although journalists are not liable to any poor reporting, certainly, they are responsible for what they write and hence can lose credibility and a faithful reader.

Deliberate breach of ethics due to ownership or otherwise is an issue that has got more prominence than before.  Today, headlines are twisted and turned so that a win can look like a loss and a loss can look like a win. Today, most media houses have political affiliations and hence their intent of airing the news is very controversial.  No wonder we see friendly media jumping to defend their respective political parties more vehemently than even the party spokespersons in a television debate.   Deception is the order of the day.

Nira Radia tapes have shown how the media can go overboard and start power broking instead of doing their duty of honestly putting facts in public domain and let the people judge them.

Here are few lines quoted by someone on media’s unethical behavior: The media is but a tool in the pockets of the corporate, political, and financial establishments that seeks to mold and even manipulate public opinion in the favor of those who have vested interests in various channels around the globe. What is needed today is discretion, critical thought, and the ability to read between the lines, gauge the information being churned out, and accordingly judge whether the source is indeed being unbiased or not. The answer will be no in almost all cases, and if you look carefully, you will see that each media conglomerate has a leaning, inclination, or affiliation with a certain party, group or organization that seems very subtle at first, but is actually extremely pronounced through the method of reporting and presenting information – (Unconfirmed source).
 
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. - Noam Chomsky
 
After taking all these things into consideration, one should be aware of the possibility of the fact that the news may not be true at all or there could be a deception in what is presented to us. Facts could be entirely different. There could be vested interests in what we are reading, seeing or hearing.  Therefore keep your eyes, ears and above all, you mind open in a true sense.

Indian National Congress, its heir apparent, and Indian politics

 Indian National Congress, Its Heir Apparent, and Indian Politics


Congress party’s debacle in the recently concluded state elections was on expected lines for many independent observers like me who watch politics from a distance.  The party, which governed India, like always, baring few aberrations here and there, is today struggling to survive.

To begin with, during post-independence era, Congress ruled the country without a hitch because of lack of credible opposition.  The sympathy wave post deaths of its leaders too brought it back to power twice.  It faced real opposition only in the late 70s. Then, the only instance when the opposition was able to complete its full term was from 1998 to 2004 when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the prime minister and completed its full term.  Therefore, by and large, Congress really had its way when it came to ruling the country.

The Nehru-Gandhi family has had always been the glue of the party, and things have always revolved around it.  This has encouraged sycophancy, which in turn has made the party vulnerable to management problems like poor decision making.

Some musty decisions taken in the near past have cost the party heavily.  This took away all the goodwill it enjoyed during UPA1.  The staleness was evident when Congress party announced quota for Muslims of UP.  Muslims understood their fallacious intent and completely shunned the Congress party.  Nevertheless, UP campaign of the party was very aggressive, but without genuineness and was always viewed with a doubt by the UP voter.  Instead an honest appeal to the voters without any political posturing could have garnered them more votes.  In fact, Mr. Rahul Gandhi would have done much better without Digvijay Singh and Salman Khurshid in UP. 

Sycophants usually lack talent and leadership qualities.  Look around any Gandhi and you will see people with zero mass appeal. This style of functioning has created a void between its voters and central leadership. The void became so deep and wide that The Gandhis couldn’t save their own turf.

Another issue Congress has is lethargy.  They take ages to take decisions.  UPA-1 in its common minimum program promised to spent 6% on education and 2-3% on healthcare.  Other issues like administrative reforms, judicial reforms, panchayati raj, women reservation, separate Telangana state have been in limbo, even after eight long years.

Dynastic politics, due to its very existence at the top, is something that Congress has not been able to discourage in the party. This has also alienated the voters.  Goa is a classic example of this with 11 out of 40 seats went to few families of Congress members.  This made voters angry, and they aggressively voted against the party.

Congress party’s heir apparent, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, should start doing things on his own and stop taking advice from others.  After all, he is in his 40s and can understand good versus evil.  He should take control, come out in the open, deal with the issues head on, make some mistakes, and learn from them.  He should brew his own ideas instead of following others.  He should think and should act like a leader if he wishes to be one.

Congress might face tough times going forward.  BJP, on the other hand, doesn’t look very strong and therefore we may not see coalition politics ending very soon, ahh!  What a pity?

Indian Railways, Its Budget, and Aam Admi’s Travel

Indian Railways, Its Budget, and Aam Admi's Travel

There has never been such a bad time and good time to write an article about politics in India.  Good time because there is no dearth of issues.  When I took to write this article, Dinesh Trivedi had been sacked as railway minister and press reported that Mamta Banerjee has asked prime minister to replace him with Mukul Roy.  Then in the morning, things changed and now they say he is still in chair.  Minutes after Akhilesh Yadav took oath as the youngest chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, there was a ruckus on the same stage and an unruly gathering made chaos.  Bad time because you cannot focus on the event, which you are writing about.

Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi presented his budget where in he proposed to raise rail fares across all classes.  Safety as recommended by the Anil Kakodkar Committee was the main focus area.  The budget, as many did say, was very bold.  The financial health of Indian Railways has not been very good since over the past decade there has not been any increase in fares. On the other hand, costs have gone up significantly.

Indian Railways has become a toy in the hands of the politicians that they use for their own benefit.  During last one decade, there has been mushroom growth of new passenger trains on an already insufficient rail infrastructure in the country.  During last five years, addition of more than five hundred new trains, increasing the frequency of trains and adding more coaches per train has left Indian Railways in a tight spot. Today, IR needs spare capacity.  Such a massive addition of passenger trains every year without any serious thought, mainly on political consideration, has severe implications on safety preparedness of railways. Further, neither any system or mechanism exists to evaluate safety risk of such uncoordinated measures nor has any effort been undertaken to ameliorate the worsening conditions created by such an act.

The proposed investment on safety as per the High Level Safety Review Committee for five years is more than 1 lakh crores.  Indian Railways needs to improve its finances in order to implement those recommendations.

Indian Railways transports more than 20 million passengers and 2 million tons of freight on a daily basis.  It has a network that is spread across the length and breadth of our country comprising close to 65,000 route kilometers.  More than that, it has a strong workforce of close to 14 lakh employees.  Therefore we cannot ignore the needs of this organization for a protracted period of time.

Today, IR enjoys less than 12% market share of India’s total passenger traffic.  To improve on this front, there are several other measures that need to be taken such as separation of passenger and freight businesses, discourage short-distance passenger, reduce travel time, increase service speed, and reduce train stops.  It also needs to work on problem-free ticketing and reservation, improve its safety, security, and hygiene standards.  It has to improve on reliability with timely arrival and departure of its trains to repose faith.

Those who oppose the fare hike should also realize that today’s aam admi is not that aam and demands better service too.

State Elections 2012 – Who is the real winner?

 State Elections 2012 - Who Is The Real Winner?

The state elections of 2012 that took place this week are finally over.  Five states went to polls and out of them, two (Punjab and Goa) clearly went in favor of the BJP.  One, Uttarakhand is tied very closely and could go either way.  Only Manipur gave the Congress something to smile about.  Uttar Pradesh once again brought back to power, a regional party and completely ignored the national parties.  BJP and Congress expectedly finished third and fourth respectively.

These state elections left the Congress party in a very bad shape.  For political parties, losing and winning elections is the part of the game, but the manner in which Congress lost the election cannot just be ignored and needs serious introspection by the congress top brass.

Let’s take Punjab first; they could not throw out the incumbent government of the Akalis even though Punjab has a history of replacing governments every 5 years.  In Goa, Congress was in power and were defeated convincingly by the BJP.  State of Congress is so unfriendly in Goa that a so-called right-wing Hindu party got votes from the Catholics of Goa.  The anger and frustration against the incumbent Congress was also evident from an unprecedented 82% voter turnout this time. The real Congress’ debacle came from UP, and this very much establishes the fact that something is horribly wrong with the Congress.  In UP, the party was unable to even save its bastion like Rai Bareli, Amethi, and Sultanpur.  Out of the 15 assembly seats from these areas, it could only manage to win just 2.

Congress itself is to blame for this poor showing.  Today the party is behaving like an arrogant fat cat that drinks milk with closed eyes and roars if you interrupt.  Several corruption scams came up during its regime.  Instead of dealing corruption head on, they tried to defame those who were fighting for corruption.  The way they handled Baba Ramdev and Team Anna and the whole Lokpal episode has not gone down well.  Every time you can close your eyes like a cat when you steal the milk, but you cannot fool the people all the time.  Corruption may not be as big an issue as an inflation or governance, but it nags with the subconscious mind of an average voter.  Congress has failed to acknowledge the fact that it is seriously tainted and needs immediate corrective steps.  An arrogant Congress drank bad milk and now is complaining of stomach ache and may fall very sick if not treated immediately.  They should immediately consider demands of the civil society of an effective Lokpal and come out clean against corruption in order to change its image.  Another reason for the poor performance is the lack of trust of the people in Congress.  After many attempts to woo the Muslim voters, the party has failed to convince them. It needs to correct this trust deficit.

The BJP, on the other hand, may find solace that it has done pretty well by grabbing Goa from the Congress party and keeping Punjab in its belt, but BJP too is crippled with several issues like lack of strong leadership in the center and lack of rural presence.  Mr. Advani has a very low visibility and appeal among the masses.  Mr. Modi is not acceptable to many political parties.  The second-line leadership is extremely talented and deserves to come forward, but needs direction from the RSS.  The magical spurt in BJP’s tally when counting began in UP and then the sudden slowdown demonstrates the BJP is largely a party with an urban presence.  It needs to touch base with the rural masses in order to improve its tally.  How can a national party in India do well if it has a low-rural base?

There are a few winners of this election like election commission, but the real winner of this election is the voter who once again managed to establish that he is supreme by voting out corrupt and arrogant governments.  Rahul Gandhi might have lost the election, but he has won many hearts.  Also, winners are well-educated, fluent, English-speaking candidates from UP. They are refreshingly new faces which bring hope for UP and make us believe that India is changing.

Free Universal Healthcare – Possible or Distant Dream

 Free Universal Healthcare - Possible or Distant Dream

Recently, a meeting was called by prime minister’s office to take steps to help the government offer free universal healthcare along with union health ministry and planning commission.  This scheme was proposed to the prime minister by a high-level expert group last year.

The PMO meeting asked the commission to allocate adequate funds to enable the government’s health spending to increase from the current level of 1.4 per cent of the GDP to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by 2017.

John Bryant in his book Health and The Developing World says that large numbers of the world’s people perhaps more than half, have no access to health care at all, and for many of the rest the care they receive does not answer the problems they have.  India has the same story as the world has as half of our population has no access to healthcare at all.

Now,  the question is whether free universal healthcare is the answer to this problem?

Up until now, India had two national health policies, one in 1983 and then another in 2002.  Primary healthcare was their prime focus.  The goals and objectives of both these policies have not yet been fully achieved, though we had some success like eradicating diseases like small pox.  The national health policy, 1983 stressed the need for providing primary health care with special emphasis on prevention, promotion and rehabilitation.  The policy suggested planned time bound attention to few points like nutrition, water supply and sanitation, immunization programs, and most important maternal and child health services.  We have failed in dealing with all these and that should be the focus area of our spending.

Today in India, 42% of our children below the age of three are malnourished that is twice than the sub Saharan African region.  Only 25% of the population has drinking water in their premises and over 50% of the population defecates in the open and has no access to latrines.  Immunization programs have so far covered only 55% of our children.  There is also a pressing need to add more vaccines to the EPI (expanded program of immunization), which are costly and may need more funds than anticipated.

Free universal healthcare is a very good idea, but may be very hard to implement due to lack of infrastructure and basic facilities and could encourage large-scale corruption since health is a state subject.  We have seen that in case of NRHM.  Our focus should be primary health, safe drinking water and sanitation, major thrust on immunization, and child health services.  Our focus should be each malnourished child.  There should be a system to monitor its growth until it completes a certain age.  The child should get all round care for it to grow in a healthy way.

Instead of having a free universal healthcare plan, we can introduce a scheme that will guarantee any patient who has spent Rs 25,000 (including hospital bills or medicine) and still requires treatment, will automatically get free treatment thereafter, whatsoever may be his/her cost of treatment.  Government of India should pay the bills after that threshold.  Today cost of healthcare has gone up tremendously and average household cannot spend more than 25,000 in hospital bills.  This will also eliminate the possibility of chaos that might occur with the free universal healthcare.  The Rs 25,000 cost can also be brought down by encouraging affordable health insurance schemes.

Free universal healthcare sounds very nice, but there are certain negative aspects to it as well.  We are a huge developing nation of more than 1 billion people with different medical needs than say any other developed country that have universal healthcare.  UPA’s image is already tarnished because of corruption, and they cannot afford another scam by way of universal healthcare.  Let us hope this is not the case this time!