By Indranil Banerjea
At the time of the Mahabharat war when there was no live TV, the happenings on the battlefield were described to the blind king, Dhrudarashtra by Prince Sanjaya who was provided with divine sight for this purpose. Perhaps, a similar divine sight was bestowed on some of our journalists to enable them see and write about two unusual troop movements towards Delhi. That the troop movements were in mid- January added to the wonder of the flashback effect of the divine favour. We can only murmur during this Good Friday- Easter weekend, “Blessed are those who received such favours”.
The momentous troop movements filled the entire page one of the Indian Express and added to the intriguing drama of a new trend in the media, reporting on the army, army personnel and the ministry of defence (MoD). For weeks together, we had been witnessing endless discussions by all kinds of experts on what was wrong or right with the army, what was wrong with the Army Chief and what was definitely wrong with the defence ministry. It was like listening to a broken 45- rpm gramophone record because the experts in all the discussions were almost the same. They rushed from one TV studio to another and then to another to repeat the same views displaying wonderful lung power and stamina though most of what they said made no sense.
Lapping it up were our “extremely brilliant” anchors, who talked (or shouted) of military strategy as though they were Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte and combination of the moderns, Rommell, Montgomery, Patton and Zhukov. As the anchors pitted their wits and throats against the experts, the viewers were held spellbound. The print media was not far behind even when their learnt arguments were spurned by those who knew better. Gen Singh called the Indian Express story “absolutely stupid” and there was no reaction from the paper. It is a long time since someone indicted a newspaper so severely.
It was hard to make sense of what exactly was happening.
Gen. Singh’s March 13 interview to The Week revealed he was aware of attempts made to malign routine troop movements. Why then did the Express go ahead with its story? Over the past few weeks, we had several ranking army officers telling TV viewers such exercises were routine and had been held without any fuss. But today, everything the Army did or did not do, was of news. It all began weeks back with the controversy over Gen. Singh’s age and how it was entered wrongly in several basic documents. Of course, the age factor was important because it determined his date of retirement and other officers were waiting in the line. What should have been handled within the MoD and solved quietly began to be discussed daily as though it was an issue of national importance. If a man was not sure of his age, how did he become the army chief, people joked. The media saw a sinister conspiracy in the “age controversy” which never seemed to end.
Then came the publication of the General’s letter to the PM complaining about the shortfalls in our weapons systems and the failure of the MoD to remedy the situation. This letter was leaked to the press, providing some new masala.
There should have been only two sides to these issues, the Army and the MoD. When the media joined gleefully it became a Three Ring Circus. The media, particularly TV channels were notorious for their overkill. Take any issue — scams, cricket scandals, polls, IPL, Anna Hazare and now the Army Chief issue. The media was determined to make up what it lost during early days of our independence when it was presumed the armed forces could do no wrong and were put on a pedestal. Today, exactly the opposite was happening. With a weak government at the Centre, the media intrusion had not spared the armed forces.
Even the Western media had been careful in covering issues like national security. Powerful New York Times was very much aware that the CIA, during the days of President Kennedy, was planning to invade Castro’s Cuba through the Bay of Pigs. When the government requested the paper’s management to withhold its publication, the paper agreed. James Reston, the paper’s star political correspondent, agreed later that the paper had erred in not publishing the news for it would have saved the government much embarrassment. But today, no one would have obliged the government because media all over the world had come to the conclusion that whatever the government did was wrong. Further, the media in a democracy must recognize the civilian government was more powerful than the armed forces or any popular general.
President Truman did not hesitate to sack one of America’s most decorated generals, MacArthur for exceeding his brief at the time of the Korean War. Only the rabid anti- Communist media stood by the general.
In a strong, vibrant democracy like India, where the media was free, there should be no shackles on covering defence issues. The media had rightly focused on corruption in foreign arms deals. But where our media erred was consistently overplaying issues for days together shrilly without saying anything new, The TV channels were the worst culprits particularly their know- all, loud anchors.
It was much worse when our TV screens went on showing the same old experts, neither good looking, nor articulate, who lectured to us or aired their personal bias. It is time to move away from the Army Chief’s age or read sinister motives into routine troop movements. They are even worse than “Walk the Talk”. INAV