Reader responses to last week’s column on media-related malpractices during elections throw further light on this serious issue, which is now before the Press Council of India. Some of them contend that the alleged malpractices were neither new nor confined to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. No less shocking than the “coverage package” of Maharashtra or the “cash transfer scheme” of Andhra Pradesh is the “power of extraction” that allegedly played...

In a recent lecture, delivered in Mumbai in memory of Nani Palkhivala, the home minister, P. Chidambaram, attacked “left-leaning intellectuals” and “human rights groups”, who, in his view, “plead the naxalite cause ignoring the violence unleashed by the naxalites on innocent men, women and children”. “Why are the human rights groups silent?” asked the home minister. The short answer is that they aren’t, and haven’t been, silent. There are very...

Huge investments, the emergence of media conglomerates and their explosive growth have brought into focus new considerations that guide professional media decisions, Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Hamid Ansari said here on Wednesday. “Today, the demands of professional Journalists are carefully balanced with the interests of owners and stakeholders of media companies and their cross media interests. The interplay of these conflicting demands is evident and [a] subject of...

A fact finding team of many civil society organizations has reported widespread occurrences of murders, tortures and cases of police atrocities in Chhattisgarh in the name of combating Naxalism. It is also being alleged that in the name of their own security, Journalists are being stopped from going to so called “combat zones” where security forces have launched an Operation Greenhunt to flush out armed Maoists.  Fifteen members of the...

“This is a country on the make.” The speaker was a young assistant to one of India’s rising political stars. And from his perspective, it did look that way. We were sitting in the lobby restaurant of New Delhi’s luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel. That evening, the Taj was not only the place for a government reception following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decisive re-election victory, but it was also the scene...