Andher Nagri

I generally don’t use such expressions on my blog but this is a clear case of mutual ass-licking. First NDTV declares Manmohan Singh the leader of the year and then sycophant journalists like Rajdeep Sardesia, Barkha Dutt and Vinod Dua are conferred Padma Sri, one of the highest civilian awards in India. It is anybody’s guess why these three journalists got the award.

At home we were discussing if such biased people keep on getting such awards then what credibility do such awards carry? Actually these kinds of awards fetch many privileges to the awardees, for instance getting their books published, obtaining lucrative government contracts, getting highly sought-after assignments abroad, and of course, in this twisted case, lots of publicity to the news channels they belong to.

Last year I read Arun Shourie’s “Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud” in which very laboriously he has explained, taking examples from various texts and other sources, how these “respected” journalists, historians and scholars keep promoting each other’s works and causes and keep getting rewarded in shady manners and then keep getting cushy jobs and assignments and this cycle goes on and on and on. The only difference now is that common people can articulate their thoughts using blogs and other communication means. So at least there is a certain section that can see the truth and talk about it and I think this is an extremely positive development, and this is a reason why conventional journalists dislike new-age media, especially the kind of media that empowers practically everybody to communicate and exchange ideas.

In another diabolical development our Prime Minister declared that the families of jihadis who are killed by the Indian armed forces will receive compensation from the government. Read this satire recently published in The Pioneer. This is like telling them: kill our army men and if they kill you back we will compensate your families. In another right-thinking society such a Prime Minister would have been arrested for abetting terrorism and his or her party would have never been able to form another government. But alas! This is India, the land of million tragedies. And then they wonder why the Indian Army is short of 12,000 officers. Who would like to fight for the government that compensates people who are out to kill them? This is so bizarre.

Andher nagri by the way means a completely chaotic state of affairs where nothing logical happens.

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