How many “real” newspapers are there in this country? I can’t say for sure. I am not reading all the newspapers that are being published in this great country of ours. I can’t afford to buy all the newspapers being published. But I do spend about an hour of my time on 2 or 3 important daily newspapers.
Some of the very high profile newspapers have these days started carrying articles that are about a “million miles away from the small patch of land where I exist.” Majority of their articles are focussed on expressing the views of the exceedingly rich (the jet-set limousine liberal class). From time to time they do seem to carry articles that are about to the so-called “aam-admi.” But I have no idea who “aam-admi in this country is. I can’t empathise with their writing.
I think the basic problem is that our newspapers have for last few years been so rich that they now exist in the stratosphere of billionaires. They seem to have completely forgotten the middle class. Instead of reporting on real stories, they fill their pages with frivolous hype of issues, personalities and events that are of no real consequence.
One newspaper whose articles I like is The Indian Express. This newspaper often talks about the issues that are essentially middle class. In today’s The Indian Express, we have this article titled “The incredible powers of a junior minister” by Tavleen Singh.
Tavleen Singh writes, “They failed to notice that on his watch not a single one of our rivers became less polluted or our forests safer and that none of the decisions he took will serve to ever improve our tragically degraded environment. This is because at no stage did Mr Ramesh come up with a list of universally applicable norms and standards. This should have been his most urgent task.”
This is completely true. I am an environmentalist at heart. Given a chance I would like to leave the city and live in a clean village, but the truth is that currently most Indian villages are unliveable. That is why millions of Indians keep migrating to our congested & filthy cities. What has Jairam Ramesh’s so-called environmental activism done to clean up our rivers, our forests, our villages and even our cities? He just played a “losing game” of politics with environment.
Why don’t other “great” newspapers in the country notice such problems! Have these guys completely forgotten the real India? The elite in politics have something in common with the elite in media – they are completely cut off from real life, and that is why they can’t stay at the top for long.
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