Tags:
Journalism of Courage
If there is one thing that is certain in Indian politics today,it is that Mamata Banerjee is from Kolkata. The Trinamool Congresss leader is also one of the most solidly grounded of our politicians. Down to earth,even. It can be safely assumed,therefore,that she is aware that Kolkata is not in the Bay of Bengal. Not yet,at any rate. Yet look at the hysterical reaction to an advertisement issued by Eastern Railways to announce the inauguration of a new train by Banerjee. Enough have claimed including the brand-new BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman that the advertisements superimposition of the trains route on the outline of Indias borders in such a way that,if one wished to be depressingly literal about it,Kolkata was in the Bay of Bengal,is a massive governance failure. How can the Railways be run,the question is apparently being asked,by someone who thinks that Kolkata is in the Bay of Bengal? Or that Delhi is in Pakistan?
Exactly how immature and unhinged can our public discourse get? At a time when the Railways are pretty much being run as a parallel state anyway,do we want them to set up a cartography division? Or a separate public information bureau? Eastern Railways,in response to the absurd intemperance of the response,announced that it would fire the ad agency,and that of course they wouldnt have signed off on such an egregious mistake. Except that,aesthetics aside,it wasnt a mistake at all,was it? It was an artistic choice,to create the outline of the route,and superimpose it on a not-to-scale outline of India. Next are we going to complain that Delhis metro map is not to scale? That it minimises,perhaps,the distance to Gurgaon while it maximises the distance to Noida and that this is a subtle insult to BSP-ruled Uttar Pradesh by Congress-ruled Delhi and Haryana?
