Of drought trains & AgustaWestland Choppers
Naseer Ganai (May 25, 2016)
(Photo attributed to Stanislav Sedov under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license)
In the past 16 months, 1548 farmers have taken their own lives in the Marathwada region which is reeling under the fourth consecutive drought, where all the wells, rivers, and dams have gone dry. And our media is only busy questioning the Congress over the AgustaWestland chopper deal. The present government is so lucky.
Media anchors say they ask Congress these questions because in 2010, the Congress-led UPA government signed an official contract with UK-based AgustaWestland to buy 12 helicopters for the Indian Air Force to fly VVIPs like the president, prime minister and others. The cost was to be Rs 3,600 crore.
They say in 2013 the then government put the deal on hold after the CEO of AgustaWestland and its chairman were arrested on charges of bribing middlemen to acquire the deal with IAF. The following day, then defence minister AK Antony ordered a probe into the matter. Thus, they argue, Congress is culpable.
Since April this year, fresh revelations have been published about alleged kickbacks. Now the BJP is accusing Congress of being involved in receiving the bribe and the latter is responding by asking why the BJP didn’t blacklist the company in the past two years.
If things go well for media channels in India, they could run the AgustaWestland story for the next three years on prime time and no one will ask why.
AgustaWestland is goo prime time material. It has choppers, it has middlemen in Dubai, it has Italy and it has got Congress. All the media has to do is get a few spokesmen and women, a couple of experts and then enact a show: AgustaWestland: Exclusive Investigations!
Now compare the AgustaWestland coverage with that of the drought that has hit at least ten states in India. About 330 million people are affected by drought in India, a BBC report quoting the government said. Another report said that a senior government lawyer, PS Narasimha, told the Supreme Court that a quarter of the country’s population had been hit by drought after two consecutive years of weak monsoons. Remember these two figures: 330 million and a quarter of the country’s population. Doesn’t this 330 million and a quarter of India’s population deserve some media coverage? Compared to the AgustaWestland, the coverage received by the drought that has hit India is negligible. The only news that was carried prominently about the drought was that a special train was deployed to carry drinking water to Latur, the biggest city in the three worst-affected districts of Beed, Latur and Osmanabad in Marathwada.
The lead stories went like this: Water Train Arrives In Latur To Cheers, Second Water Train Chugs Into Maharashtra’s Drought-Hit Latur, Latur water supply affected as Jaldoot Express comes to a halt, Politics over an empty water-train in Bundelkhand. No government would ever get such a good press during a drought.
There is no harm in projecting the government’s efforts to reach out to the drought-affected people. But seldom have TV new channels carried any reports reflecting the real situation in the states affected by the drought. In contrast, for coverage of the AgustaWestland deal, TV channels even dispatched reporters to Dubai and Italy to get some news bytes and projected it as ‘investigation.’ The drought-hit areas didn’t get even 10 per cent of news space when compared to the coverage given to the AgustaWestland case.
No one knows what has happened to the people affected by the drought. We have no clue if the crises have ended or there are more suicides. Media has closed the drought chapter. With media being silent about it, the government has not even bothered to talk about it, while the opposition is busy defending its stand on the AgustaWestland case. The Indian media prefers to go Italy and Dubai when it should have been in Marathwada. The present government should be happy to get such a good press. It crawls when it is not even asked to bend.
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