Where is the real focus?

Given the fascination that the Indian media has with trivia, any one looking at some of our TV channels must be wondering if we are a banana republic. Somehow, we in India have mastered the art of focusing on the trivia rather than on the real work that either is getting done or needs to be focused on. Foot-in-the-mouth is no longer an exception. It has become the rule. The stupid utterances get prime time attention whereas the developmental area is completely ignored.

The Shiv Sena should be worried about Bombay. They should be worried about the fact that as a city, Bombay is in ruins. These blokes control the corporation and instead of fleecing the Bombay citizen, they should be getting their act together. But what are they really busy with? Attacking Shobhaa De and hauling her up for privileges. I have often said that the political parties that are mandated to govern, manage to do everything but govern.

Doesn’t the leadership of these political parties realise that times have changed? You can do all this as part of a silly circus but you aren’t going to fool anyone.

Devendra Fadnavis was elected to his office only because people in the state of Maharashtra were disgusted with the earlier regime. Prithiviraj Chavan was so worried about being clean that he would have made a better laundry manager than a chief minister. And now Fadnavis is more concerned about banning beef and deciding on the cinema habits that everything meaningful has been forgotten. Fadnavis should be worried about safety; he should worry about the state of the roads even in urban centres in the state; he should worry about farmer deaths and so on. Beef is not an issue. Nor is Marathi cinema, for God’s sake.

Then you have the dolts at the Centre. V K Singh has done a commendable job of the evacuation from Yemen. Why doesn’t he just suspend his Twitter account for a couple of weeks? This ability to say the silliest of things has now engulfed those who govern us.

Presstitutes is not a word that a man in high office uses, even though he is not very wrong in his assessment. But then you don’t always utter things you believe, especially when you know that our media loves the sensational and the sound byte.

Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley are trying to sort out the mess that they have inherited. Instead of them being helped by their colleagues, both in the government and the party, they have to now defend the stupidity of their compatriots. Modi would be well advised to issue a gag order. These dolts have run amuck and hijacked the core agenda.

And now, on the media: some TV anchors must realise they don’t run the country and no one gives a toss about what they believe to be the governance agenda. Their business is to read off a teleprompter and not prompt an entire nation to think in their own retarded and warped manner. No one wants their opinion. They want the news. Not coloured by their beliefs, or their agenda. If this continues to be farcical news, people will stop watching. Simple.

For the sake of this country, and the benefit of every sensible Indian, we need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

We have to be responsible in the manner in which we pay heed to stupid comments or for that matter sensational. We are human beings hopefully, and not sheep that we have to possess an enduring herd mentality.

We as a country are at an inflexion point. We can either swim in the ocean of trivia or exercise greater sagacity and seek a better world and country view. We cannot be spoon-fed nonsense and then start believing that. If we do, we will be far worse than the Shiv Sena or the dolts who say things that even the insane won’t.