The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Obesity tax
Haryana proposes to fight excess fat

THE state known for setting many a political trend, though not all of them may be palatable, is now set to fight fat. Reports are that the Haryana government proposes to double VAT on what is commonly known as ‘junk food’ — a term that can cover anything and everything from soft drinks and ice-creams to chips, sandwiches and burgers. The administration’s rationale is that since these are non-essential items with little or no nutritional value, they deserve to be taxed at a higher rate.

Reading the rationalisation for raising the VAT on these items from 12.5 to 25 per cent, one might wonder how obesity has come to be a serious problem in a country with rampant malnutrition. A majority of Indians have no choice in the matter of what they eat for survival: they eat what is available or affordable. Even the non-obese and those without a propensity for eating junk food occasionally indulge themselves or their children with ice-creams or potato chips. These pleasures, which are few and far between for the lower economic classes, will now be priced further out of their reach.

While it is desirable to discourage consumption of junk food and soft drinks, the intent of the Haryana government appears to be to raise revenue rather than safeguard public health. If public health is the concern, there are other ways in which such consumption can be discouraged. For instance, soft drink manufacturers and bottling plants can be taxed heavily for their intensive use of scarce water. Similarly, if ice-creams are classified as junk will state-run dairies stop manufacturing them? Will the Haryana government stop serving any and all of the junk food items that attract 25 per cent VAT, including in schools and canteens? These are just a few of the many questions provoked by the proposal, which does not seem to be rational or practical. Or is it a New Year resolution which will meet the common fate such resolutions meet?

Slumdog Millionaire’s sweep
‘Chhoti si Asha’ man makes it big

WHEN British director Danny Boyle’s film ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’ swept the Golden Globe , picking up four major awards, including one for ever-innovative composer A R Rahamn for Best Original Score, India had more that one reason to exult. The movie is about India, shot here in Mumbai, based on a novel ‘Q and A’ by author diplomat Vikas Swarup and has Loveleen Tandan, an Indian, as its co-director. While Dev Patel, a British actor of Indian origin, has played the lead, the cast includes Bollywood bigwig Anil Kapoor and talented actors such as Saurabh Shukla and Irfan Khan, thus vindicating Bollywood as a cinematic force to reckon with. More so since Boyle is reported to have sought inspiration for ‘Slumdog’ from several Hindi flicks. But the most heartening triumph belongs to Rahman who has not only brought India its first Golden Globe Award but also put Bollywood music right on the world map.

Come to think of it, it was only a year ago that youthful Rahman had asserted that the time for India in the western world is now. As he crosses yet another milestone, few can doubt his musical genius. Since ‘Roja’ shot into fame and ‘Chhoti si aasha’ seeped into national consciousness, Rahman has not looked back. Unfazed by accusation of being repetitive, he has continued to enthuse refreshing sparkle into the otherwise predictable music of Bollywood. Recipient of Padma Shri, winner of four national awards and innumerable Filmfare awards, this “Mozart of Madras” has to his credit memorable albums like ‘Vande Matram’, Andrew Llyod Webber’s prestigious musical ‘Bombay Dreams’ and many more acclaimed projects, including the movie ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’ with Craig Armstrong and Chinese film ‘Warriors of Heaven and Earth’. The score of ‘Slumdog’ is being hailed as an unusual composition with universal flavour.

Rooted in Indian idiom yet with a worldwide appeal is the quintessence of the ‘Slumdog’ lapped up by audiences across the globe. The tale of deprivation and irrepressible hope has the critics gushing effusively. Rave reviews range from “pricelessly original” to “four stars out of four.” The movie has already premiered at several international festivals and also won People’s Choice Award in Toronto. Dubbed in Hindi and slated for release in India later this month, it is being vied as a contender for the Oscar too. Meanwhile, the world is becoming Bollywood’s, most certainly, Rahman’s oyster.

Thought for the Day

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

— Wilfred Owen

ARTICLE

Mayawati Raj
Money, mafia, muscle power rule UP
by Amar Chandel

NOW that the whole country is aghast over the lynching of an engineer who refused to cough up Rs 50 lakh for Behen Mayawatiji’s birthday bash, the Uttar Pradesh residents are in a “we told you so” sulk. They had been living this nightmare for long. It was not only PWD engineer Manoj Kumar Gupta who was being coerced to pay “birthday hafta”, but there are also thousands who have suffered this way, and for many years.

There are instances of BSP functionaries sitting right there at police stations to conduct such an extortion. The outsiders may wonder why the police does not stop them. They should know that in the Mayawati land where the police does not take action against MLA Shekhar Tewari even when he dumps the body of the slain engineer in front of the police station, how can they stop mere loot?

Now that Tewari and other office-bearers of the party have been exposed thoroughly, they are being proceeded against so that Ms Mayawati can distance herself from his shocking deed. But earlier, the police used to even refuse to entertain a complaint against him as he went about terrorising people. Her denials about the engineer being killed because he refused to pay for the January 15 birthday festivities – which have been downgraded this year fearing public outcry but normally cost nothing less than Rs 10 crore — carry only about as much conviction as her assertions that her self-declared assets rose from about Rs 1.3 core in 2004 to more than Rs 52 crore in 2007 thanks to the “donations of 5 or 10 rupees” made by her admirers out of “affection for her”. In 2007-8, she shelled out Rs 26. 26 crore as income tax alone.

There are many Tewaris in her party who think that they are a law unto themselves whose brief is to let loose a reign of terror. A non-bailable warrant has been issued against another BSP MLA, Dhananjay Singh from Rari in Jaunpur, in connection with the sensational murder of Dr Bachi Lal, the then Director-General of Family Welfare, in 2000. Dhananjay Singh’s name figures in at least 25 criminal cases.

A case has been registered against a former Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Fisheries Development Corporation, Ram Mohan Garg, by a woman at the Khair police station in Aligarh district on charges of sexually exploiting and blackmailing her since 2003. The BSP is washing its hands off him also, saying that he had resigned from his post in 2008 and was not a member of the party. In June last, UP minister Jamuna Nishad was arrested for killing a policeman.

The list of such heinous crimes committed by the high and mighty of the BSP is so long that it can be narrated till cows come home. The point is that she and her party have taken a mafia-like hold on the god forsaken state and anybody who dares to speak against them can have to pay with his life, like engineer Gupta.

And to think that she rode to power on the promise of ending the goonda raj by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s henchmen. The BSP slogan at that time was: “Chadh goondon ki chhati par, mohar lagao haathi par” (stamp out the goondas by voting for the BSP’s elephant symbol). Now the slogan that is heard all over Uttar Pradesh is: “Goonde chadhe haathi par, goli maaren chhati par” (Goondas riding elephants pump bullets into people). Her advent was indeed the fulfilment of aspirations of millions of dalits. But she has frittered away the advantage by actively patronising corrupt and criminal elements.

It would have been some saving grace if the queen bee herself had a clean reputation. But she not only acquiesces in such activities, she is also an active participant. The video cassette in which she exhorted her MLAs to divert money from their respective area development funds to the party’s kitty is still fresh in public memory, as is her role in the infamous Taj Heritage corridor. There has been no improvement in her style of functioning since then. Rather, there has been a noticeable deterioration.

Much is being made in some quarters of her “social engineering” under which she has been fielding candidates belonging to castes other than dalits. Make no mistake about it. There is more to it than meets the eye. Insiders tell darkly about how tickets are virtually sold to the highest bidders. As long as the money is good, nobody bothers whether the person is a saint or a sinner or a murderer.

The same holds true of transfers and postings. One has to pay for getting a suitable posting and also to stall an undesirable transfer. Large-scale movement of officials every now and then is connected with that spinoff.

As far as social indices go, Uttar Pradesh is one of the worst. But that has not stopped the Chief Minister from splurging money on parks in memory of “legendary figures”. Now who can be more “legendary” than Ms Mayawati herself? So, she has become perhaps the first Chief Minister to inaugurate her own statues. Lucknow is set to have nearly half a dozen of them. The larger the better. By a rough estimate, over Rs 60 crore is being spent on such statues. One 50-ft-high statue is to be modelled after one of Queen Victoria in Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial. For the Rs 100-crore Ambedkar Park, she diverted Rs 25 crore from the Contingency Fund, inviting criticism from the CAG.

The distinction line between the party and Ms Mayawati has been obliterated. Any criticism of her atrocities is branded as an affront to the dalits, the same way as the houses or riches which were originally shown to be “donated” to the BSP later became the personal property of Behenji. Who says “I am the state” died with the kings?

By her own admission, she possesses 5,000 silver crowns (mukuts), 787 diamond mukuts and 10,000 gold mukuts. These have been gifted to her by “avid admirers”. Then she has diamond solitaires, including nosepins, worth Rs 8.5 crore and diamond “jadau” jewellery worth Rs 6 crore.

She loathes the superior airs of “Manuwadi higher-castes” but does not mind having her own nose in the air. No MLA can dare sit in front of her, let alone speak up without getting prior permission. Even senior-most officials can get a tongue-lashing in the choicest of words at the drop of a hat.

What such megalomania is doing to Uttar Pradesh is bad enough. But what is all the more worrying is that she has her eyes set firmly on the Red Fort. Vagaries of coalition politics being what they are, there are many who are willing to ignore all her queen-sized faults to make sure that she becomes the Prime Minister one day. What that will do to the country is anybody’s guess.

The argument of her backers is that it will be a victory of the entire dalit community if a “dalit ki beti” occupies that high chair. What they totally forget is that her victory will be only about as much a triumph of the dalit cause as the Chief Ministership handed over by Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav to his wife Rabri Devi was a symbol of the empowerment of women.

MIDDLE

An eventful day
by V.S. Chaudhri

I was the Returning Officer of the Sonepat Parliamentary Constituency in 1984. Chaudhry Charan Singh, former Prime Minister, wanted to contest the election to the Lok Sabha from there. He came with a large number of respectable persons and members of the local bar to file his nomination papers. He extended his hand to shake it with mine but I ignored it as I was supposed to be quite neutral in the discharge of my election duties. I asked him to sit down, cast a cursory glance at the papers presented by him, administered the customary oath of allegiance to the constitution and told him that he could go. People accompanying him led him away shouting slogans in his favour.

On the day of scrutiny, a snag was noticed in his nomination papers. He had missed to mention his age in the form. It was a serious omission and that which could not be made up at this stage.

Hand Book Of Instructions issued by the Election Commission of India had specifically provided that the nomination papers of such a candidate shall be rejected. I had, therefore, no option but to reject the nomination form.

I called my PA to the drawing room at the residence and dictated a detailed order directly on the typewriter and signed it. I did not want the dictation to remain in the shorthand notebook which was always carried by the PA with him. I instructed the Asstt. Returning Officer to give a certified copy of the order to the candidate or his election agent, whenever it was requested for in writing.

The news made headlines in all the papers next morning. Chaudhry Devi Lal was the covering candidate in this case. When he learnt about this development, he came fretting and fuming to my camp office in the afternoon. I was inside my residence. When I got the information, I immediately went to the office room.

On seeing me, he shouted as to how did I dare to reject the nomination papers of the Ex-Prime Minister. I told him politely that it was in accordance with the instructions of the Election Commission and that I had ordered to supply a copy of the order and that the candidate could avail himself of the remedy available to him under the law.

He would not listen and said what is law and that who had made me the Deputy Commissioner. I again told him that he should not lose his cool and that if I was respectful towards him, he was also expected to be reasonable.

I got up from the chair indicating that the dialogue was over. He too understood it and he left the room mumbling some unparliamentary words. I reported the whole episode to the Chief Secretary and the Election Commission.

A few days later, I got a letter from the Secretary, Election Commission, along with a copy of a letter from Chaudhry Devi Lal regretting the incident and saying that he did not mean any disrespect to the Returning Officer. The Secretary EC wrote to me that I could drop the matter if I was satisfied with the explanation; otherwise, I might get a case registered. I decided to drop the matter there.

Incidently, Chaudhry Devi Lal lost this parliamentary election. Some legal experts were skeptical about the validity of my action. The appeal against the orders of rejection of nomination papers was dismissed by High Court and the Supreme Court. My stand was vindicated.

A few days later, Rajiv Gandhi came to Sonepat for campaigning for the Congress candidate. A helipad was got constructed in the Police Lines. I and the SSP were the only two officers to receive the Prime Minister at the helipad and escort him to the place of public meeting. The P.M. was accompanied by Ch. Bhajan Lal, CM.

As soon as they got down from the helicopter, Ch. Bhajan Lal introduced me to the PM The PM stretched his arm full-length and smilingly shook hand with me. He held my hand firmly and longer than ordinarily required. The warmth of his hand and his body language were such that I felt that he wanted to convey something special to me. It was an eventful day, indeed!

OPED

Govt as land-grabber
Farmers and UT stand to lose
by Gobind Thukral

AS a young graduate student I had a running argument with my professor of economics. It concerned the status of farmers in India. Although the professor agreed that farmers’ economic condition was appalling, they themselves were largely responsible for it.

They remained without any productive work for six months in a year and had lazy habits; borrowing without considering their needs and paying capacity. They were in the clutches of the blood-sucking money-lenders and it was their fault. Others, including the government, could do little to change the situation.

With my village background, I would argue back both inside and outside the classroom with my learned professor that the system was so structured with a primitive form of farming and money-lending that it made farmers miserable.

These were the late fifties and early sixties and farming was still a punishment; ploughing with oxen the hard soil and then watering wheat during the chilly winter nights, reaping it during the scorching heat and then being cheated in mandis.

Whenever the farmer needed finance there were Shylocks all around with huge merciless interest rates of 24 to 48 per cent per annum. The small and marginal farmers lived literally from hand to mouth.

The farm workers at the lower rung of the social and economic ladder lived a miserable life; literary a sub-human existence about which novelist Gurdial Singh has written so poignantly.

It is not my case that life of the farmers has not changed. With better credit facilities from both cooperative and commercial banks, some well-off farmers are lenders too. With improved farm machines, tube wells, tractors and modern ploughs backed by superior seeds and fertilisers farmers are producing far more.

Chemicals that helped earlier are now bugging the land and farmers too. Supported by an ever-increasing minimum support price, farming is neither a punishment nor a life of drudgery.

Yet it is not much ruminative for the marginal and small farmers who constitute the bulk. They are moving out of land in hordes. During the past decade one lakh farmers in Punjab have left their ancestral profession and moved to cities as proletariat.

Now something graver stalks the land-owning community. It is the ruthless land acquisition by none other than the state itself. The reason could be some public projects or establishing industries, imaginary or real.

It is no one’s case that land should not be acquired at all. We need roads, power projects, industries, railways lines and stations and airports etc. These would come up on land only.

But should the state become a real estate shark, buying at peanuts and selling for crores of rupees — depriving the farmers of their livelihood and enriching the filthily rich? One more Nandigram is in the making in Chandigarh.

Courtesy an honest officer, Adviser Pradip Mehra, the Central Vigilance Commission is probing several land acquisition deals by the Chandigarh Administration headed by the Punjab Governor and Administrator of Chandigarh, Gen (retd) S.F. Rodrigues.

He has pushed his pet projects: amusement-cum-theme park, film city, medicity and the Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park despite stiff opposition from farmers and Central minister Pawan Bansal, who represents the city. The Congress had sought a CBI enquiry.

Ever since General Rodrigues landed in the city, he set his eyes on all the available farm land in the Union Territory. Projects started mushrooming. He said he would create an ultra-modern Chandigarh. This was a cover for his failures to take care of increasing traffic, poor conditions of the slums and southern sectors, besides the drying Sukna Lake.

Farmers were paid low rates and big real estate sharks were favoured by the Administrator. The lack of transparency and low land compensation has forced the public to seek an inquiry.

Medicity was proposed on prime 45 acres in the IT park area. Farmers were paid small compensation. Mr Mehra objected to the low reserved price of Rs 203.70 crore as the upfront fee for the land reportedly valued at Rs 2,000 crore in the open market.

The same is true about the proposed film city where real estate developer Parsvnath wants to opt out of the Rs 191-crore project to be developed on 30 acres in Sarangpur. The Adviser sought a probe alleging that the land for the project was “undervalued”. There were last-minute changes to help the developers and the land is valued at Rs 1,000 crore.

The theme park, supposed to be a world-class amusement park on 73 acres in Sarangpur, is now mired in controversies as Unitech has failed to deposit a further installment after Rs 5.5 crore already deposited. Financial regulations were allegedly given a go-by while short-listing the companies and a company offering 13 times higher revenue was ignored.

This loot story neither begins nor ends here. In 1990 the Administration acquired 22 acres in Burail village by paying a paltry Rs 3 lakh per acre as compensation to develop housing societies. The land has not been used and stands encroached.

Next year in 1991 around eight acres were acquired in Manimajra at Rs 2 lakh per acre for development purposes. Recently, it was auctioned recently to a private developer at Rs 20 crore per acre.

In 2002 the Administration acquired around 70 acres in Badheri village for Rs 11.80 lakh per acre to build a school. The land lies unused. Come 2004, a huge chunk of land was acquired for the Information Technology Park but not all is being used for IT.

Already CAG has raised serious objections about the valuation of land. For phases I and II land was acquired in Kishangarh over a period of time. First, 111 acres were acquired between 1950 and 1977 to set up brick-kilns. These were never built and the land lay unutilised.

Then 267 acres were acquired in 2004 at a meager price of Rs 10 lakh an acre. Around 123 acres were sold off to Parsvnath for Rs 821 crore. The Chandigarh Housing Board was supposed to earn only a 30 per cent share from the housing project, which it should have handled on its own.

This project is coming up in violation of rules and regulations as the land is adjacent to the Sukhna Lake and the official residences of the Governors of Punjab and Haryana. Town planners and architects and Mr. Bansal have repeatedly stated that the master plan cannot be changed to build houses and commercial units.

But a mega housing project where a two-bed room costs Rs 1.25 crore was allowed. A major green cover in the Union Territory, part of the respiratory system was envisaged by Le Corbusier, was axed.

The UT Administration has indeed been haphazardly acquiring land in various villages in the periphery of the city at low prices only to sell it later to developers who in turn jacked up prices to make piles of money. In the process both farmers and consumers stand cheated. The cavalier way the UT Administration has gone about shows much more than mere poor vision.

New face of French intellectualism
by John Lichfield

Everyone knows what a world-renowned, French intellectual looks like. There is the older sort, now rare, who has a squint and smokes cigarettes and haunts the cafés of the Paris Left Bank. There is the newer kind, who has flowing hair and an open-necked shirt and haunts television studios.

Wrong and wrong again. The new face of the world-leading French intellectual is a brisk 36-year-old woman with the pleasant but no-nonsense look of a primary school teacher, who climbs mountains in her spare time.

She is Esther Duflo and was recently named one of the 100 most influential thinkers in the world (she came 91st). She begins a season of lectures this week at the Collège de France, the Everest of French intellectual life: a kind of PhD-level OU with no students and free lectures for all.

Mme Duflo is the youngest woman ever to be asked to lecture at this prestigious, 500-year-old institution at the heart of the Left Bank. Her introductory talk was the hottest (free) ticket in town. Several hundred people, including the former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, arrived too late and were locked out.

Mme Duflo is a “development economist” one of the world’s greatest experts – perhaps the greatest – on why development programmes in poor countries often fail and why they sometimes succeed. Her precise field of expertise has existed less than a decade. She is among its inventors.

Why is she attracting such attention? “Partly, I think, because it’s so unusual for such a young person, especially a woman, to be asked to lecture at the Collège de France,” Mme Duflo said in an interview. “I suppose people are asking ‘Who is this person? What is all the fuss about?’ Partly also, I think the subject is something that intrigues people. Why is it so difficult, despite all the efforts which have been made, to help people to escape from poverty?”

Mme Duflo is not an abstract theorist, as French intellectuals are assumed (often encouraged) to be. She investigates, in elaborate detail, the practical, small things which can make a difference in trying to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor. For instance, not just “education, education, education” but how to make sure pupils and their teachers turn up at school. (Answer: tiny incentives, such as free meals or uniforms, can transform attendance in poor countries.)

Mme Duflo has, above all, developed and promoted the concept of “scientific” testing of anti-poverty programmes – what works and what doesn’t but also, crucially, why things work and why they don’t.

She believes – and has proved – that the effectiveness of anti-poverty programmes can be explored by “random testing”, in the same way pharmaceutical companies test drugs.

Esther Duflo does her research not so much in government archives and university libraries but villages in India, Ghana or Kenya. She is left wing but in a “whatever it takes” kind of way. She has spent most of the past 10 years in the US, where she is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Three years ago, she founded the Poverty Action Lab, to put her ideas into practice. The World Bank incorporated ideas developed by “random testing” in 87 of its programmes last year.

“Some of what we prove may seem obvious but we have to overcome prejudices,” she said. “Many aid organisations, for instance, believe people should not be given bribes to improve their own health.”

“We have framed tests in different countries, which show that people will take, say, de-worming medicine in far greater numbers if you give them a tiny incentive, such as a kilo of beans.”

Esther Duflo was brought up in Asnières, just west of Paris. She rocketed through the French education system and emigrated to US academia after working indirectly for the renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs on a research programme in Russia.

In Massachusetts she worked with the MIT professor Abhijit Banerjee, who was one of the pioneers of development economics.

Professor Banerjee says before Mme Duflo, theories of development economics existed and practical knowledge of aid programmes existed. She was one of the first to put them together systematically; to apply economic skills to discovering what was going wrong and adjusting policies.

The intellectuel engagé – or intellectual committed to a cause – has a long history in France. Mme Duflo’s intellectual work and her cause are the same thing. She had expected to become an academic historian who volunteered for aid programmes in her spare time.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Is Indian state withering?
by Sarbjit Dhaliwal

HAS the Indian state withered from within or is it about to wither? Obviously, it is a very touchy question. There will be many, some out of sheer patriotism and others with their wisdom, scholarship and logic to counter this question. But this issue is required to be discussed as there are, in my opinion, some firm indications that point towards the withering of the Indian state, notwithstanding its counting among the countries with a high level of economic growth.

A state does not exist in a vacuum. Several constituents make a nation state. The most disturbing development is that people have either lost or are losing fast their faith in the vital organs of the Indian state. Its evidence was available in plenty in the post-Mumbai terrorist attack period.

Samuel Huntington, an eminent political scientist, who passed away a few days ago, once observed that “without political order, neither economic nor social development could proceed further”.

What is interesting is that in India people, by and large, distrust a majority of the politicians who are to set up the political order. The reality is that people have lost their faith in the politicians who are the main actors in running the state. The credibility of politicians of all hues, whether they are in power or outside, has touched the lowest ebb.

There is a large section of people especially middle class that virtually hate politicians. When majority of the people don’t have faith in principal drivers (politicians) of the Indian state, that automatically leads to questions regarding the health of Indian State.

A few days after the terrorist attack people came out on roads against politicians in Mumbai and a section of TV news channels gave air to people’s sentiment against politicians.

Feeling scared of the gathering rage of people, politicians started accusing the media of reviling them and spreading hatred against them among people. As politicians attacked the media, especially TV channels, these channels immediately went into the shell and stopped the campaign that they had launched to bring Indians together to build a new India by removing the wretched and inefficient politicians from the country’s democratic system.

A major organ of the state is the bureaucracy. Its credibility is as low as that of Indian politicians. A majority of the bureaucrats in the country had mortgaged their independence long back to ruling politicians from whom they draw power because their postings and transfers remain in their hands.

Most of the bureaucrats have become part of the ruling political cliques. They do not consider themselves as public servants and behave like masters. They have lost touch with the people whom they are meant to serve.

The police is another vital organ of the Indian state. The police image has deteriorated in the entire country. An honest and respectable man thinks twice before approaching the police even when he is facing difficult times.

Land grabbers, drug mafia and other evil persons operate in society because of the direct or indirect patronage provided by elements within the police force. The police, at some levels, has also become an extension of the ruling politicians.

The judiciary used to be one of the most respected organs of the Indian state. However, one can dare say that it does not command the same respect and credibility in public mind now. If the decision of the case filed by a person in a court is to be heard by his grandsons, then hardly it can be called a justice system. Often stories turn up regarding 10 to 20-year-old cases pending for decision in courts.

In India, at least 95 per cent people cannot afford to contest their case in the Supreme Court because of the hefty fee that is charged by lawyers there. And about 60 per cent people cannot afford to contest their cases in various high courts because of the high cost involved in engaging a lawyer and other related matters to the case.

Exceptions are certainly there. A vast section of the media, known as fourth pillar of the state, has also become suspect among people. Most of the people do not take the media seriously now. Most of the people have the feeling that different sections of media have different axes to grind. The media’s impatience, especially of the electronic media, has become its own formidable enemy and has played a vital role in lowering its image in the public eye. The media have failed to realise the fact that it cannot become a replacement of a government. Some sections of the media are engaged in spreading myths as true facts of Indian history.

Is the vital change imminent in such a situation in the country? To what direction will such a loss of credibility of vital organs lead the country to? That is a vital question worth dwelling on.