Why bother with edits?

 You don’t say!

Darius Nakhoonwala

 

 

There used to be a time when editors, while writing editorials, took it for granted that the reader knew the background. That seems no longer to be the case. Sometimes, desperate to get the chore over with and to fill the space as well, they say the same thing in different words in contiguous sentences.

 

Here are some examples from the Lalu conviction on September 30. Most papers wrote on the same night because the news came by noon. But the lazy ones, who perhaps regard readers as a nuisance, postponed it by a day.

 

Only one of the edits – in the Times of India -- made the proper connection between Rahul Gandhi’s rejection of the infamous ordinance, the pressure that Nitish Kumar brought on the Congress as a pre-condition to an alliance with it, and the conviction itself. Two or three phone calls would have done the trick.

 

The Times of India said, “Nitish Kumar will see this as an opportunity to expand his party’s electoral base, especially after the RJD's victory in the June 2013 Maharajganj bypoll indicated a realignment of Muslim and Yadav votes in favour of the RJD. This can pave the way for a much-relieved Nitish to seek an alliance with the Congress which, by rejecting the ordinance, signalled its willingness to do business with JD(U).” 

 

The Hindu was at its repetitive and sanctimonious best, full of needless  background. It was also a perfect example of very sophisticated repetition and superfluous adjectives. Indeed, if you read the letters column in the paper, you find that they are all saying the same thing in just as nice a way. 

 

The Indian Express which is usually very alert also disappointed. The first two paras were full of known facts. The third para started with some promise of analysis but faded away into sentences like “At this point, Bihar's political certainties are crumbling”, “The RJD's Muslim-Yadav combination is looking shaky” “The RJD will face tougher odds than ever, and it will take all Lalu Prasad's skill to steer the party beyond this setback.” These accounted for the half the words in that para.

 

The Hindustan Times which has diminished its own edits by often writing childishly was similar – needless repetition of known facts and almost wholly lacking in analysis but rich in smugness. “A very strong point has been driven home which the public at large, fed up with corruption, will appreciate. The law may take its time in catching up with you, howsoever powerful you are, but catch up at some point of time it will… The alignments and re-alignments of the votebank, which many are raising, is not the real issue at the moment. It is the major boost that the battle against corruption has got in the fall of a politician as mighty as Lalu.” It then mentioned the ordinance in passing. “The only thing that could perhaps have saved him is the ill-fated ordinance, which is now in cold storage.” No connection was made between Nitish’s insistence and the placing of the ordinance in ‘cold storage.’

 

The Telegraph, as is its practice wrote the next day. I mean it just wrote. You know, words strung together nicely. “Indians are rather intriguing when it comes to corruption. It is almost as if they accept that big boys will play big — the big boys in this case being politicians. That makes it easier for the small boys to play too — even if they play a little smaller.” 

 

Then came the history, 122 words of it. This was followed by an analysis of the RJD’s future which, everyone knows, is going to be quite bleak for a while. Why repeat that? The edit ended by repeating what it had already said in the second para, namely, “the fact that the court has at last come to a decision is also an indication that times are changing, possibly for the better. The delay suggests pressures from which the justice system should ideally be free. The decision suggests that such a freedom may finally be within sighting distance.”

 

The Deccan Chronicle delivered a Gandhian homily. “The verdict should make us introspect as a people about the kind of leaders we have projected through the power of our vote over the years.” Ouch!

 

Then came the rhetoric. “It is also fairly typical that when the law begins to go after political bosses, the drumbeat of vendetta at the hands of opponents is heard the loudest, and desperate caste and community mobilisation is set in motion to save wrongdoers.”

 

This was followed by coffee house analysis. “The jailing of Yadav… cannot but impact the politics of elections in Bihar. This can conceivably have an effect on the fortunes of state parties and leaders who aspire to have a say in the government-making at the Centre after the 2014 polls.”

 

Spare us, you frauds. Shape up or ship out.