The Juggernaut of Life

Juggernaut an unstoppable crushing force.( Creative Destruction as well). Derived from the Indian Lord Jagannath's rath yatra.


An unstoppable crushing force of life...thats what you get when you Add Press to politics..


Do on to people what they dont expect us to do them... this may have been the motto of Edmund Dante long back during the Count of Monte Cristo days, but may be its slowly getting incorporated in the Indian media.


This blog is not to accuse somebody but look into the hypothetical view .. what if??


What if the the media projects what the State wants it to project...???


The allainces between Media houses and Political parties are hardly unknown, and does that make news change?


May be may not be, that still to be decided , but what surely changes is the perspective of the news.


Few years back i remember i was appalled by the fact that one leading daily during Godhra riots had written, riots claim 70 muslim lives and 15 hindu lives,

Would it not been enough to write the Riots claim 85 lives.

Yes it doesnot give a clear picture but at least it does not put fuel to the fire.


Well I don’t oppose or propose filtering of news as long its good for the state.


the above mentioned case the filtering of the published news would have been good for the state.


Even when reporters during Kargil , signed off from a report the mentioning of the place gave the enemies a clear idea which point India had its artillery guns.. which lead to the bombing of the same.


Well in such cases filtering of news should be allowed.


Now to the bigger Paradigm... do we need a free press or do we have a free press.

Are we made to believe what the State wants us to believe or the political party wants us to believe vide a facade of free press??


What are the evidences that it was a LeT plan to bomb Mumbai during 7/11, or was it a greater stance to deviate attention from centers failures to some thing more intriguing?


Are we made to believe we are always under a terrorist threat, even if we are not??


We start an investigation from the idea its Pakistan sponsored.. and that’s what we are meant to believe by the Politician and press makes us believe it.


This is what you call creative destruction.. make people hate them so much that they stop supporting.. if that’s the idea of the Government, they are bombing the wrong place..


What would have been better if the Government had bombed old Delhi and the press made us believe that it was the Jehadist... that would have proved that the terrorists are anti-Indians and not pro-some community.. i wont be amused if that is done.


Well it is understood that a political party spokesperson will always give you the parties view point and the actual truth is as unfathomable as Chinese pricing,

to see the bigger picture today we need to keep our minds open, and not blindly read what we are suppose to read


Well how did the Justice Pathak report reach the press before the Parliament, that to , to a particular news channel, and no body claims it to be leaked in the first place


The crux of the matter is very clear. Media shows us things we can not see. Media gets us news from all around. The phrase nowadays, though, is news and views. Question arises, whose views? Isn’t media supposed to be neutral in providing information to us? Accepted, lets say for a while that they do. Even then, it is entirely up to the Newsmakers to decide which part of the elephant they are describing to the blindfolded man. Covering a war from either sides of the border will give completely contradictory perception or “news” of the same event. Ironically, they are both ‘true’. The big question for the media is, which news to give to the people so that the benefit is maximised. Maybe they can cover all facets of the news and make it multi dimensional. And of course, there should be no influence or reference of caste, religion, nationality social status or anything that classifies human beings.

But here is where the big blow comes. With the increase in acceleration of growth, we need to be aware of things happening half way across the globe on the go. Technology allows us to gather information as they happen. But this comes with a cost. Technology is expensive. Transmission of information is a costly process. News agencies like Reuters can no longer depend on their correspondents to cross the Atlantic on a ship in order to bring news of the other continent. But in most developed countries newspapers are free, and some are charged at peanuts’ rates. All the money the news agencies and news channels get are from advertisements of big business houses. Some also get funds from various political parties. Naturally, the question comes, that the news agencies are being privately funded, would the funding bodies not expect something in return? Would they not expect the news agencies to protect their self interests? And what if the news agencies don’t? would they continue to get funded by the same organisation? Probably not, but then there will come another organisation ready to fund them, with the same ulterior motive.




This is not a new culture in the media. In olden days, majority of the political parties used to run their own newspapers. Some of them continue to thrive in states like west Bengal. These papers cover news from the angle of interest of the political parties they represent. This is declared, understood and accepted. They are, in other words, called the official media for the political party and bear their manifesto. But readers of such newspapers, in that case, are aware that they are already getting a biased, or maybe a one-sided coverage of the news. This is far safer than a so-called “neutral” and “pro-people” news coverage that really does not fulfil what it states. And frankly, there is no way we can stop them. They are now powerful enough to start and end wars, to create social and political unrest, to stir the economy of an entire nation, and even change the political and social portfolio of a state. The pen is mightier than the sword, they say, so imagine our plight when such a deadly weapon falls in the hands of a tyrant who misuses its powers to suit his own fancy! Sounds scary? Look around you – its scarier than you imagine.