Robert Serious, Come Quick

In the absence of the usual Congress suspects, the latest programme about Robert Vadra’s dealings in Haryana was doomed to be tame. A desperate Goswami made a public appeal to the Congress and its friends to come to his show and answer all questions. “Not doing so is an oligarchic attitude (sic),” he threatened. When no one came, he attacked NDTV, saying that the cowardly kept away because his show was all hard question, no “underarm deliveries like, ‘will you join politics’?” The snide reference was to long-ago colleague Barkha Dutt, who had asked Vadra rather hopefully about his political ambitions, in Rae Bareli during the 2012 assembly elections campaign. It may be recalled that Vadra’s motorcycle rally at the time had caused shock and awe, especially after an IAS officer was controversially transferred to Goa, allegedly for waving the model code of conduct at him.

Briefly, all too briefly, the Swachh Bharat campaign got some attention. First, the Delhi BJP and Shazia Ilmi were red-faced when they were caught on camera staging a cleanup drive of litter which had been tastefully scattered by municipal employees in the first place. But Kamal Haasan did the real stuff. Closely watched by NDTV, he celebrating his 60th birthday by leading the cleanup of Chennai’s Madhambakkam lake. Six tons of garbage will be removed, which computes to a ton per Kamal Haasan decade.

And then, like a force of nature, the prime minister lit out on his first visit to Varanasi after his landslide win and trifles like Vadra and Swachh Bharat ate his dust. CNN-IBN made it the story of the day at first light, with a logo threatening complete, nonstop coverage. Early in the day, the adoption of Jayapur as a model village was expected to be the big story. NDTV read it as a challenging choice, since the village had only a primary school and poor road access. It’s in the sugarcane belt, the villagers want a sugar mill, but we all know the straits the industry is in. However, Headlines Today said that the village had been nurtured by the RSS, an opinion which some other channels shared. If that’s true, and there are no roads and schools, the RSS needs to do some chintan.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com