The politics, and business, of human tragedy

TV REVIEW

Channel surfer

By

Randeep Wadehra

The late American poet Walt Whitman was privileged enough to live during the times when he could proclaim with confidence, “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on – have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear – what remains? Nature remains.” But what if nature becomes a victim of “business, politics, conviviality, and so on…”? The results have hit us like a champion pugilist’s right straight on the nose, courtesy the Uttarakhand disaster. Nature remains, and shall remain forever, because she is eternal and all-powerful. She has immense patience and fortitude to put up with all the destructive imbecility that mortals indulge in, destroying natural wealth and transgressing nature’s laws blithely while gratifying their venality. But, even here, red lines exist. And eventually, the comeuppance visits us. From all accounts, thousands have died in this tragedy and several times more have been traumatized to various degrees – quite a few for life. But these sufferers are not the actual culprits. They are victims of the “business, politics and conviviality” in high places – the places where even nature’s fury does not reach easily. After all, what could possibly be the sin of that three-year-old child whose both legs are fractured, and separated from her family (Aaj Tak, ABC News etc)?

Last week, we witnessed low politics in terms of scoring brownie points and trading accusations on various news channels, even as men in uniform risked their lives to save those hapless gullible, who were stuck in places inundated with water, debris and cadavers. There are simply too many stories of loss to be narrated here. Just suffice to say, if these do not move our political-bureaucrat combine to start governing the nation, then nothing will. But going by the manner in which credits were being sought and contested by politicos in assorted TV debates, the chances are dim. The Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami described the claimed feat of Modi having rescued “15000 Gujaratis” as ‘Rambo-like’, which triggered off another jabber-war on the show. But nobody asked such questions as, where are the details of rescue personnel who saved 15000 Gujaratis in a jiffy? What equipment and modes of transport were used for the purpose? Where were these rescue teams stationed and from where exactly the people were rescued? There was no mention of the exact sites of camps where the rescued people were brought, treated and then sent back to Gujarat. At least on paper, Gujarat’s rescue teams have excelled even the far more capable Indian Army! But then such are the imperatives of propaganda war that truth often gets buried under the debris generated by untruth. Moreover, why no questions about Rahul Gandhi’s delayed visit to Uttarakhand? Was his sojourn in Europe of such national importance?

The Indian Rupee “crashing through the psychological barrier” of sixty rupees per dollar was a talking point on NDTV Primetime. There were two sets of opinion. The first was traditionalist and pessimistic, viz., it is a crying shame that it has been allowed to fall so low as to send our import bill shooting skyward – what with, gold and hydrocarbons etc being our major imports. The counterview was more optimistic, viz., this development would make India’s exports more competitive in the international market. While this is true, low prices are not the only determinant of a product’s competitiveness. Other factors like corporate image and product quality too matter a lot. Unfortunately, in recent years, some of our high profile drug manufacturing companies have not exactly done the country proud with their rather arrant manufacturing and trade practices. The Primetime anchor Ravish Kumar observed in the context of the rupee depreciation that he does not understand all the implications of an economic phenomenon. But, even he would admit that India Inc’s unflattering corporate image is one thing that the country can do without. Talking of unflattering images, Cricket India will have to do much more than win the Champions Trophy or dedicate victories to the Uttarakhand victims to get the former sheen back. Hope, from now on, the cricketers would continue to walk the straight and narrow path.

Published in The Financial World dated July 01, 2013