Month: February 2017

EVM Conspiracy Theories

12ss1THE WORLD LAUGHED  when Donald Trump, initially unsure of his victory and riled by the higher popular vote Hillary Clinton got, floated a theory that the US election was rigged and declared he would not accept the verdict unless he won.

Conspiracy theories crop up everywhere. The high-pressure campaign in the social media in India in favour of Narendra Modi was attributed by his detractors, mostly of Congress, as the handiwork of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Later, when BJP won, the Continue reading EVM Conspiracy Theories

Pathetic Predictability of the Tamil Tragedy

jayalalithaa-sasikala-dressed-as-twins-for-Sudhakaran-wedding.jpg<Amma (left) with Chinnamma

BEING RULED FROM  A  JAIL  AWAITS THE INDIAN STATE OF TAMIL NADU.

The ‘inevitability of the Greek tragedy’ has been much written about.

The fatalism of Indian philosophy alone, perhaps, comes anywhere near it. The recent events in Tamil Nadu were so extremely predictable that, despite the media hype and efforts to create suspense they followed the expected comic path. Continue reading Pathetic Predictability of the Tamil Tragedy

A Boon Turns Dangerous Tool

unnamedWHAT APPEARS TO BE AN INNOCENT PASTIME OR A COMMUNICATION TOOL, CAN POSE DANGERS. WhatsApp has more than a billion users all over the world, Most ‘smart phone’ users are busy checking messages almost all through the day and till late into night and forwarding most of them, taking up a lot of time and resulting in loss of productivity.

This, however, is not the only danger it poses to civil society. Hate messages, fake news, inflammatory information that can lead to violence, can now be spread to millions of people within an hour, if not in minutes. Pictures, videos and voice can go across the world within seconds. And all that at no cost.

Much of Narendra Modi’s success in the last Parliamentary  election can be  attributed to WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms which his party used very effectively.  The recent event of demonetization was made out to be a major disaster by the Opposition  leading to a bitter, personal attack on the Prime Minister, but lakhs of WhatsApp messages going around the country supported his action. And this was reflected in elections that followed. Continue reading A Boon Turns Dangerous Tool

Homo WhatsAppian Evolving

WHAT IS UP ?
WHAT IS UP?

Evolution, though some Americans still reject it, is accepted by all civilised, sane people. Whether evolved from  apes as Charles Darwin propounded, or created by God, Man has come  a long way from primitive days.

If evolution is continuing, what will Man, Homo Sapiens, evolve into?  On this day it seems his next stage is Homo WhatsAppian. The prevalence of WhatsApp all  over the world , the addiction of millions to it and the billions of messages that  go around the world every minute explains why Continue reading Homo WhatsAppian Evolving

Facing Facebook’s Downside

                                                                                            Hooked on from childhoodimg-20170204-wa0009

“Why write?”, they question, “No one reads. Who has the time? Facebook and WhatsApp have killed reading.”

facebook_2That was from my blog post (Tomorrow becomes Today, Dec20, 2016). So get used to writing without expecting anyone to read. I still write, though almost no one reads.

But when I wrote that, a friend responded that in my decades as a journalist I must have realised that writing was like throwing a stone at random – it may hit someone somewhere.

One of the reasons why no one has time to read (post ‘Where Is The time?‘ Jan.13) is their being too busy with Continue reading Facing Facebook’s Downside

Slaves By ‘Democratic’ Choice

img-20170214-wa0015The ight of choice is the  essence of democracy.

We are an independent, democratic, nation because we choose – between our caste and the rival caste, between fair and black faces, between the known devil and the unknown.

We choose between prostrating, grovelling and cringing before a fair lady and a black man who was doing the same along with us just a few weeks ago. All because she danced around trees with a ‘star’ whom we adored. Continue reading Slaves By ‘Democratic’ Choice

Politics of Tears, Jokes, Tweets

Chinnamma sheds tears with television cameras focussed on her. OPS stages a drama at the Amma Samadhi earlier. Hundreds tweet comments and jokes on the power struggle.

Public memory may be phenomenally short, but not short enough to forget a letter of apology by Sasikala declaring her family members who had become power centres and reportedly amassed wealth as ‘personal non grata’ and then  see them all there,  as soon as  Amma died, to take over the house whose whose doors were closed for them.

So the promise in the letter to keep them away  was a lie? The humble, grovelling, ‘mixture mama’ was good enough to be CM thrice, but suddenly becomes a ‘traitor’!

How could a people known to be highly intelligent and capable stand the sight of ministers and legislators prostrating before a ‘leader’,  see a  Chief Minister to be treated like a menial and stopped from seeing the dying leader after going to the hospital every day for weeks or  fall for a politics of freebies and sops to voters  at tax-payers’ cost?

The social media are flooded with jokes and comments about the political developments in Tamil Nadu, which seem to be driven by tears, melodrama, Twitter tweets, WhatsAppp posts and  blatant power-struggle  based not on ideology, policies  or capability but personality and gimmicks..

Can politics get dirtier?

 

 

 

 

Our Blind, Frivolous Media

When I joined a newspaper in 1957 after  a few contributions were published, it was under a notion that journalism, in a way, was meant for the betterment of society and therefore was social work, the field I was associaharakhchand-sawlated from the age of 14.

It took me decades to realise that I was wrong. The Press of the freedom struggle days has become extinct. Print medium is overwhelmed by the TRP-driven electronic media with its  sensationalism and hype. Both, therefore, have no time and space for anything  not sensational or ‘hot’ news.

What should be the eyes and Continue reading Our Blind, Frivolous Media