You don`t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
When too many things happen at once, leader writers are thrown into confusion. They don`t know which event to focus on. Usually, someone sorts out the priorities and leaders appear one after the other. But every once in a while, that doesn`t happen and important newspapers fail to comment on important events.
This happened last week. Three things happened over the weekend that needed editorial comment: the Supreme Court order on police reform; the Congress chief ministers` meeting in Nainital; and the Musharraf joke book.
In the event, all these were commented on but not by everyone. The Indian Express wrote on the joke book twice. The Asian Age dismissed the Nainital meeting with the following words. "The Congress chief ministers` conclave at Nainital turned out to be an academic exercise, with no decisions at the end of the two-day session." But the Hindu was more charitable. "Ms. Gandhi strongly defended Dr. Singh, sending out an unequivocal signal to factional leaders looking to feather their own nests. Ms. Gandhi did well to assert the primacy of Dr. Singh in the Congress` scheme of things." The Deccan Herald said "election fever seems to have caught up with the Congress a bit too early. The party leadership virtually converted the latest conclave of its chief ministers in Nainital`s cool confines to undertake a mid-course stock-taking."
As you can see, no one really figured out what was genuinely important, perhaps because, as a columnist pointed out in The Hindu on Wednesday, the chief ministers` conference was designed in 2001 to vest Sonia Gandhi with the authority she needed, as also to teach her the ins and outs of politics. Now that that has been done, the meeting seems to have no purpose left. But no editor pointed this out.
I thought the Pioneer would pour scorn and venom. But it kept quiet even though living as it does in a glass house, it has never hesitated to throw stones.
Then it was the turn of the joke book by President Musharraf of Pakistan. The Indian Express took up 120 words saying nothing and then had this to tell its readers. "Notice the Hollywood heading… The whole point about Musharraf`s unique brand of success is that he always found himself — whether by design or by divine intervention — always out of the line of fire." And so on for another 200 words. It was, well, plain vanilla bullshit.
Somone must have told the editor this, because the paper returned to the subject on Thursday. This time it was a defence of the army. "Does our political class have the bipartisan spirit to stand up against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf`s brazen distortion of the nature and outcome of the Kargil war? This is an important question posed by former army chief General Ved Malik, who led the Indian military operations to evict Pakistan`s aggression in the summer of 1999."
Well, General Malik can complain all he wants but should not the paper have pointed out that he was not in India when the fighting started in May 1999? And that the army had been found sleeping on the job?
The Pioneer asked, perhaps rightly, if too much was not being read into the book. "It is entirely possible that the comments were nothing more than a publicity gimmick for his book."
No one else commented on the book which is full of lies. I think it was the duty of editors to explain to their readers just what sort scoundrel this man from Daryaganj is. Alas, that was not to be.
The edits on the police judgment trickled in over the week. None of them made a point worth recalling.
All in all, it was a poor showing.
Darius.Nakhoonwala@gmail.com