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I don’t feel Ex-Civil Servants making any significant contribution in their respective Ministries. Politicians are far better.

L S Hardenia

 

IAS officer’s ‘Bhajan’ video a much sought after

It is rarest of rare. Unique. At the top of worldly achievement, it is really an achievement of spirituality. Great.

Raj Gopal       

 

Anarchy in the Airwaves

While every organ of democracy has been contaminated to varied degrees in India, as also in many other advance countries, television has infected the press and lowered its prestige irrevocably. Viewers have no other option but to switch off the television rather than consume intense negativity wrapped in TV news and debates full of lies and malignant agenda. The famed “independence of the press” stands compromised today. News has become big business and filthy news becomes huge commercial success. The integrity of journalists is so low that many of them have become metaphors for corruption and doubtful integrity. The result is that the strongest Fourth Pillar has collapsed at the altar of political business, forfeiting public trust in its independence or objectivity or non-partisan reporting. Journalists can’t be blamed as no one is free or independent but subservient to his/her employer and depends on them for the job. In the early years of democracy in India, the editors used to dictate terms to the employers and were not pliable, but today they can be fired any time if they refuse to obey and do the news as demanded by the owners. There are many subjects that are included in the State List under the Constitution of India, where the executive authority vests in the state government. Police is one of them and instances are aplenty of misuse of the police in intimidating, harassing, coercing or arresting journalists for showing the spine. The free press is more or less a dead idea in democratic India. If an occasional or accidental independent and free journalist continues to be threatened and harmed, the public is bound to rebel. The people of India don’t tolerate autocratic behaviour of officers or the ministers of any rank.. Attempts to silence are going to prove counterproductive. Such conflicts regularly arise in one part or the other in India since democratic values are routinely violated by authoritative politicians and bureaucrat advisors. While the people seek justice, the political parties can ill afford to dispense justice. They are always selective. The police are not independent but function under the state government. If the police are unable to do justice to a citizen, the victim has the fundamental right to seek justice from the court. But here lies the catch: the judicial process is tardy and costly for the common man who is deterred from going to the court against the establishment.

M L Gupta

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