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Journalism of Courage
The late Murasoli Maran was a diehard anti-Congress leader, but his son, Dayanidhi Maran, has played a leading role in bringing together the DMK and the Congress in Tamil Nadu politics.
On the Saturday before last, Maran’s birth anniversary, Sonia Gandhi even visited the DMK’s parliamentary office to garland Maran’s photograph.
Last Thursday, Dayanidhi visited Satyamurthy Bhawan, the Congress headquarters in Chennai, to make a floral offering on Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary. But Congress leaders of Tamil Nadu are unhappy nevertheless. They quibble that Sonia’s gracious gesture should have been reciprocated by a visit from DMK leader M Karunanidhi himself and not from his grand nephew, who is too junior in comparison.
Out in the cold
Within a day of the arrival in the Rajya Sabha of the CPI(M)’s two new high-profile MPs, Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat, the ground has already slipped from under the feet of the party’s leader in the Upper House, Nilotpal Basu. He was missing at the all-party meeting called by the Prime Minister to discuss the women’s reservation issue. Basu says he stayed away because there were already too many representatives from his party. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat made a rare appearance in Parliament for the discussions accompanying his wife, Brinda, Yechury and Basudev Acharya.
Actually not two but three CPI (M) MPs were sworn in last week to the Upper House. But since Chittabratha Mazumdar was simply re-elected and is little known outside Bengal, the national media focused entirely on the party’s two prima donnas.
Open mouth affliction
The late Jag Pravesh Chandra had once warned Madan Lal Khurana to keep his mind open and his mouth closed since the impulsive Khurana has a tendency to shoot off his mouth without considering the consequences. Khurana lost the chief ministership of Delhi and his position in Vajpayee’s Cabinet for speaking out of turn. Of late, Khurana has been overly candid on a whole range of sensitive issues and the BJP has issued him a show-cause notice as a consequence.
Since Khurana still enjoys a lot of goodwill within the party, his friends have urged him to avoid making controversial statements. Khurana has taken their advice to heart but only up to a point. At the start of the Parliament session when I asked him about developments in the BJP, Khurana declared firmly that he would speak next week. Recently, he explained apologetically that he had been advised not to talk to the press for two days since he was hopeful of a patch-up. Khurana does not seem to realise that the cure to his problem is not observing an occasional maun vrat but rather speaking after carefully weighing his words. More than his statements on Modi and Advani, it may have been Khurana’s indiscreet disclosure that he witnessed the BJP’s iron man in a flood of tears after RSS boss Sudershan lambasted him in public, which proved to be his undoing.
Blacking out competition
Since Tamil Nadu’s two main TV channels, Sun TV and Jaya TV, are controlled by the DMK and AIADMK, respectively, they tend to ignore other political parties, including the DMK’s allies, the PMK, the MDMK and the Congress. Four PMK MPs recently called on Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy and requested him to ensure that Doordarshan’s Tamil channel compensates for their virtual blackout by the private channels. It was agreed that from September the Tamil nightly news on DD will be increased by 15 minutes and prominent journalists will be asked to discuss state politics. This would provide a forum to slip in news of the smaller parties.
Getting wind of the scheme, the DMK-controlled Dinakaran newspaper has gone on a hiring spree, getting senior journalists on salaries well above the market rate. The new recruits will in all probability be forbidden from appearing on Doordarshan.
