Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are equal

• Retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Ajit Prakash Shah, declared scathingly, “The Republic of Intolerance that India has turned into in the last few years reflects and confirms to us our collective psychological malady, where we have lost sensitivity to the pain of our fellow citizens, and have become numb to the increasing loss of rights as citizens.”
• Justice Shah confessed that his own roots were seeped in saffron: “My grandfather was one of the founding members of the Hindu Mahasabha in pre-Independent India. I grew up reading the poems of Veer Savarkar.”
• He said, “Until the day the RSS declares that Islam and Christianity are equal to Hinduism and other religions born in India, there will be little scope for social harmony.”
• He said that those who lead the mob violence are clearly doing so with impunity, while fear spreads amongst the minorities. The mobile phone and the violent content it brings to you has become a terrorising device, with mob lynchers recording their acts and spreading them.
• The home ministry has directed wide publicity of the severe punishments that participation and abetment to mob fury can draw, it needs to be seen how sincere the government is in implementing this stated intent, Justice Shah said.
• The Indian media has been a big disappointment. “Far from questioning the government on behalf of the people, the media today circulates fake news and questions those who question the government. If the media at large feels compromised, barring a few exceptions, then democracy is in peril. Lynchings have to be condemned by news anchors, not used as ‘masala’ for prime time television,” he said.
• Justice Shah said that in the recent judgement of the Supreme Court directing continued detention at home for activists accused of conspiracy, the value was is in the dissenting verdict of Justice DY Chandrachud. 
• “Dissent is being curbed. Sloganeering is becoming a test of patriotism. When Akhlaq was killed, it wasn’t his body that was sent for post-mortem first. It was the meat which was sent for testing,” he said, pointing out the prejudice in the law and order machinery.
• “When violence happens in small doses, and regularly, we find it hard to remain angry, and accept it as commonplace.”
• The hope for the nation lies in common citizens refusing to accept any deviation of the founding values of the Constitution, Justice Shah concluded.

The one-day event saw nearly 2,000 people register to attend and listen to various speakers, which also included the articulate MP Shashi Tharoor and student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

Why NDA lost in 2004?

The Congress-UPA has just won 26.7% of popular vote people's mandate while BJP-NDA has won 22.16% only. Congress became the most voted party in this elections with a vote share that was 5% more than BJP. While UPA won 145 seats (gain of 31 seats), NDA won only 138 seats(loss of 44 seats). Although it is not a clear victory for Congress-UPA, it is a clear defeat for BJP-NDA. Here are the core reasons for the BJP-NDA's defeat. 

• NDA projected the election as the battle between Vajapayee and Sonia, and Sonia won and Vajapayee lost.
• NDA fell because of their own weight, own sins and Vajpayee's visionless leadership. 
• Old men are supposed to lose their marbles and AB Vajpayee seems to have lost the same. 
• Media singing songs of Vajpayee's greatness harmed NDA. 
• The media created a hype that Vajpayee is the greatest Indian leader, who could do no wrong and people didn't find any substance in that.
• NDA created an illusion that Vajpayee is the greatest PM, but people of India saw this old man, who never said a word or gave any opinion on any issue and remained silent through out his prime ministership and never took any crucial decision or reigned any of his colleague or Parivar people.
• People saw Vajpayee was old, forgetful and incompetent to solve India's problems while in Sonia Gandhi they saw a fresh face with purpose.
• The middle-class lost their hard-earned money in the UTI scandal.
• Large rural population's welfare has been over looked. 
• Unemployment and anti-poor stance. 
• Over-indulgence on trivial Hindutva issue.
• NDA reduced interest rates and impacted the voters honest savings. 
• The Tehelka reporters who exposed corruption were harassed.
• Concentrating to impress world nations and criminal negligence of the people's problems.
• Inaction on Gujarat CM Modi for not catching either Godhra train massacre culprits or Gujarat communal riots culprits that killed 2000 Muslims.
• After the horrendous massacre, Muslims were expecting that the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi will be put to trial, but instead he was awarded 127/182 seats (2/3rd majority) in mid term polls immediately after the riots with a gain of 10 seats.
• Gross miscalculation of NDA and their misreading of the 'pulse ' of the people.
• Impressive orations, debates and arguments like in court rooms than performance.
• BJP went overboard with the “India Shining” campaign which offended the rural & urban poor. Sonia Gandhi used the opportunity to mock at this campaign by pointing out India’s poverty.
• Anti-incumbancy factor.
• NDA allies too fared very badly - TDP(5/42) in AP & AIADMK(0/39) in Tamilnadu suffered humiliating defeats.
• BJP criticised congress and Sukhram.  Congress expelled Sukhram and in the next election Sukhram becomes an ally of BJP. BJP ought to be more ethical.
• Never in the history India witnessed such a low level malicious campaign by the ruling party. 
• BJP belived that insulting people is Hindu dharma, that's the price they have paid for. That's one of the main aspects in BJP debacle.
• BJPs failure to control Modi and his uncultured tirade against Sonia Gandhi.
• The consistent "Sonia Bashing" by BJP and it's top leaders, the larger than real life images and speeches by the so called second rung leaders of BJP ... Mahajan, Jaitley etc. and Rabble-rousing by Katyar, Modi, Uma bharati etc. have all had negative effects.
• Over-usage of the tasteless word "pseudo-secularism". It was flogged to death. Watching the arrogant BJP men debating on TV in the last two years.
• Corruption as exposed by Tehelka, Petrol-pump, coffin-gate by George Fernandes, etc. had its effect.
• Towards the end of this campaign, the BJP even openly begged Muslims for votes, thereby upsetting lakhs of its conventional supporters.

Elections 2004: BJP pays heavy price for arrogance, haste and strategic blunders

India Today | May 24, 2004 | Prabhu Chawla 

It has become fashion to interpret defeats with figures and statistics. It is very easy to come up with statistics and 'spin' the results any way you want but the reality is that the voting population preferred the Congress and their allies much more to the BJP and its allies. If anyone feels that it was not a mandate for Congress since they did not get majority of votes, it is just a joke. It might have been local issues that have brought the Congress to power and the people had no clue that they were sending Vajpayee packing who never deserved such a drubbing. Indian mentality will not allow appreciate a sacrifice and we always attribute some ulterior motive to every one. Even Mahatma Gandhi had serious critics at his time. No one wants to acknowledge Sonia Gandhi's sacrifice. If Sonia Gandhi wanted to become prime minister, nobody could have stopped her even if it was for one month and go down in history. If any one tries to find out for reasons why BJP should have won in 2004, he would have been amused with none. Vajpayee's inaction against Modi-Gujarat riots and ignoring poor and peasants are the primary causes for NDA's debacle in 2004. Today in 2018 similar situations are prevailing that is causing jitters among BJP, Modi & co., who are clueless how to come overcome this mess they created for themselves.

How cronyism dictates Modi’s India

Gautam Adani & Narendra Modi

• Strategic litigations are being used by big corporates to curb free speech and discourage high-quality investigative journalism.
• While Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that there’s not a single stain of corruption on his three-year tenure in the Centre, a barrage of attacks on media, creeping self-censorship and a belligerent government clamping down on those trying to do their job well and ask critical, uncomfortable questions about the state of the political economy.
• With 58% of India’s wealth owned by the top 1% of population, crony capitalism is thriving and under this government's regime. Despite PM Modi’s hard talk against corruption and claims of ending it altogether, there exists a concerted attempt to delete every mention of such collusions.
• The "collusions" of the alleged Modi-Adani nexus, whether in terms of bending of rules pertaining to special economic zones as to benefit the Adani Group per se, or helping the businessman deal with black money, give him undue loans from public sector banks on overseas projects that had run into troubles with local authorities there.
• It was SBI trying to extend a line of credit worth $ one billion to Adani Group for the Carmichael coal mining project in Australia, or helping the billionaire from Gujarat engage in "riskless capitalism" by tweaking SEZ rules, laying waste to India's environment, or saving Adani from green penalties, the collusion has been happening right before our eyes. 
• Of course, Gautam Adani* had reportedly poured money into Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha election campaign in 2013-14, making it the costliest ever in the history of India. The Gujarat-based businessman's proximity to the prime minister was flaunted in the politician flying all over India in Adani's private planes and choppers.
  *Adani is a college dropout, who spurned his father's textile shop to set up a commodities export firm in 1988. He survived the terrorist attack in Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in 2008.
• Adani Group allegedly took out over Rs 5,000 crore to tax havens abroad, using inflated bills for the import of power equipment from South Korea and China, and the SIT on black money was told by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
• Despite his anti-black money bluster, one of the biggest black money cases before the retired Supreme Court judge-led Special Investigation Team - a decision taken by PM Modi himself in the initial days of his taking office - has been that of the Adani Group of Industries. 
• What has happened to that investigation? No clue. Brutal clampdown on any mention of the alleged Modi-Adani nexus, strangling free press by using what in legal jargon has come to be known as a "SLAPP", or strategic litigation to avoid public participation.  
• Press freedom in India ranks at a dismal number 138.

Read the source article

Implausible Indian media suffers trust deficit

During 2017 increasing numbers of people express no faith in the mainstream media. Main stream media houses owned by business houses are biased and are TRP driven. Their focus is on earnings, breaking news, advertisements and hardly get any chance to verify the veracity of the news. Driven by competition, the media and journalists became corrupt, lacked ethics & morals, irresponsible, spread fake stories and fake propaganda etc leading to erosion of public faith. With media suffering enormous trust deficit, their viewership has eroded and people started depending more and more on social media.

• During the last two decades, rules and norms of journalism have been cast aside amidst the frenzied competition. Loose allegations, without even the basic verification, are broadcast and published with little fear of defamation. When today's news is the next hour's history, then truth can lose out to sensationalism with worrying consequences for media credibility.
• Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. The purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.
• Journalism must be fair and accurate through objective methods and managing bias. Journalism is different from other forms of communication and that is what make it indispensable to democratic societies.
• Our journalists of present days are simply presstitutes not journalists.        Presstitute is defined as an individual reporter or news broadcaster, or a media news group, who reports to be unbiased but is in fact tailoring their news to suit someone's goal of corporations or big businesses or political parties.
• The implausible Indian media is known for spreading fake stories and fake propaganda and none believes its news stories. The journalists turned to be PR agents of few political parties to earn benefits.
• There are now more than 500 channels across the country, a third of which are news channels. Add over a 100 million newspaper copies that are sold every day, more than 8 million internet users, and the image of a news-driven society is complete. When consumption reaches such mammoth proportions, the media is bound to play a larger-than-life role in our lives.
• Media is one of the most corrupt institutions with no ethics, no morals, no patriotism and no responsibility. They are divided by names and united by TRP ratings. In most countries people won't trust media content which has vested interests and exploit the situation for gaining TRPs.
• Every night we see news anchors to play judge, jury and executioner. From being neutral and detached observers of the news, media have arrogated to themselves the right to speak for the nation. If you look at media now, all the hosts of these other shows are interviewing themselves. The guests are a prop for the anchors.
• Very often Indian journalists use silly issues blown out of proportions to create panic among public. In India media and people form Lutyens club of Delhi and play main role in spreading fake stories. The poor and middle classes have no idea what exactly is the truth and tend to believe these media stories as truthful.
• With trust deficit, news channels have turned out be gossip boxes. With emergence of social media, main stream media has lost relevance and viewership declining.
• The media pretends it is speaking for the anonymous masses but the same audience believes it has the right to hold the media accountable. The media, which holds the rest of society to a higher standard of accountability doesn't adhere to those same rigorous standards. 
• History reveals that the more democratic a society, the more news and information it tends to have. The media is supposed to reflect the opinion and voice of the unheard where as in reality they are for rich and influential people giving rise to total trust deficit.
• The media as a whole must not be judged by the flawed behaviour of a few. The media is made up of hundreds of committed journalists, reporters and news gatherers all of whom do a tough honest day's job in bringing you the news without fear or favour. It is they who uphold the spirit of journalism.
• A recent poll suggested that 97% of those polled did not trust journalists. Another poll ranked the media just above real estate agents and politicians in the trust factor. Restoring the media trust deficit is a distant mirage.

In the infamous 2G Scam case of Rs.176,000 crores, the special CBI court judge, on Dec 20, 2017, acquitted all accused stating that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused. Special court judge said that “a huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none. Some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels.” Former PM Manmohan Singh said the 2G scam was a massive media propaganda against the UPA without any proof. 

Implosion of trust

• The year 2017 witnessed the largest-ever drop in trust across the institutions of government, business, media and NGOs.
• Trust in media fell to an all-time lows, while trust levels in government dropped and is the least trusted institution. The credibility of leaders also is in peril: CEO credibility dropped globally to an all-time low, plummeting in every country, while government leaders remains least credible.
• The mass population distrusts their institutions, compared to the informed public.
• The implications of the global trust crisis are deep and wide-ranging. It began with the Great Recession of 2008, but like the second and third waves of a tsunami, globalization and technological change have further weakened people’s trust in global institutions. The consequence is virulent populism and nationalism as the mass population has taken control away from the elites.
• Current populist movements are fueled by a lack of trust in the system and economic and societal fears, including corruption, immigration, globalization, eroding social values and the pace of innovation.
• Politicians and the government are in real trouble. People don’t think they are the solution. They simply don’t trust them. The majority of people believe blunt, outspoken, spontaneous straight-talkers over rehearsed and diplomatic communicators.
• The cycle of distrust is magnified by the emergence of a media echo chamber that reinforces personal beliefs while shutting out opposing points of view. People favor search engines and more likely to ignore information that supports a position they do not believe in.
• People now view media as part of the elite. The lack of trust in media has also given rise to the fake news phenomenon and politicians speaking directly to the masses. Media outlets must take a more local and social approach.
• The dispersion of authority is evident. An ordinary person is now just as credible a source of information about a company as is a technical or academic expert, and far more credible than a CEO and government official.
• Business is viewed as the only one that can make a difference. Many believe a company can take actions to both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates. Moreover, among those who are uncertain about whether the system is working for them, it is business that they trust most.
• Yet business finds itself on the brink of distrust of the public seeing it stoking their fears. A majority of population  worries about losing their jobs due to the impacts of globalization, lack of training or skills, immigrants who work for less, jobs moving to cheaper markets and automation.
• Business is the last retaining wall for trust. Its leaders must step up on the issues that matter for society. It has done a masterful job of illustrating the benefits of innovation but has done little to discuss the impact those advances will have on people’s jobs. Business must also focus on paying employees fairly, while providing better benefits and job training.
• Trust in business & NGOs dropped. Employees are trusted more than CEOs. In many countries people have lost faith in the system. Trust in traditional media and social media dropped. Only online media received the biggest bump in trust.

Read the source article

Now a days, we don’t trust anything, or anyone. Mistrust is high, morale is low and trust is in crisis.Trust has been so much corroded that we now trust leaked information much more than traditional news sources and algorithms over human editors. Trust in institutions has evaporated to such an extent that falsehood can be misconstrued as fact, strength as intelligence, and self-interest as social compact. To rebuild trust and restore faith in the system institutions must move beyond their traditional roles of business as actor and innovator; governments as referee and regulator; media as watchdog; and NGOs as social conscience. Companies can build trust by treating employees well, offer high-quality products and services and listening to their customers. With employees more credible than a CEO, companies should work harder to get their customers and their expert employees to speak and advocate for them as much as possible. Companies have to show that they are not just listening but are also learning and responding to any feedback that they are given. The winners will be those that are more open, responsive and leverage the collective voices of both their employees and their customers.

Media's servility to Modi

• Three decades ago, state broadcaster Doordarshan was ridiculed and condemned by the press for behaving like ‘Rajiv Darshan.’
  At the time, there was no other TV channel in India, the number of TV sets in the country was very limited. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was ridiculed by the opposition and the press for projecting himself so much.
• Now, nearly 80% of the population has access to TV. There are nearly a thousand TV channels. News channels alone are nearly 300 in all languages.
• On all these channels, there is incessant Modi Darshan. All his speeches are televised live and repeated 24×7. All radio channels are under a sort of obligation to air his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ every month and his speeches in Parliament or elsewhere. 
• The print media too has begun to crawl before this ubiquitous (and narcissistic) self-proclaimed messiah. This nationwide media omnipresence of the Prime Minister has not generated criticism like it did at the time of ‘Rajiv Darshan’ in the late eighties.
• Columnists in the press and commentators on the shouting panels in TV debates, ring-mastered by the equally narcissist anchors, have not questioned this obscene personality cult. 
• The same self-styled educated urban intelligentsia was so vociferously critical of Rajiv and before that of Indira Gandhi for the promotion of such a cult, which they argued, “distorted” and “destabilised” democracy. Their liberal sensibilities expressed deep revulsion and concern for India’s democratic ethos then.
• These people surrendered their sensibilities to the powers and feel absolutely comfortable in this multi-media driven glorification of the personality of the Prime Minister Modi. 
• With the exceptions like Ram Jethmalani, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, and a few others, there are hardly any resistance to this media-led authoritarianism from the political, cultural, or intellectual class. They have failed the people and democracy.
• A kind of passive resistance is building up. More and more people feel these days that there is nothing they learn from news broadcasts. They are getting fed up with the panel discussions, as they neither grasp what the debate is about, nor who is saying what. 
• Many normal viewers stopped watching news channels or debates. They get their news on their mobile phones and varied commentary on social media where they can interact on the net.
• There is also concern expressed in newspapers’ editorial that readership is becoming indifferent and unresponsive from the young and also from the old or middle-aged. There is a sharp decline in news magazine circulation. 
• It is ironic that the media-communication revolution gave rise to information illiteracy among the educated. This is a wake-up call for the traditional press and TV media as their audience has become the whistle-blower.
• If Indian media becomes more and more servile towards Modi, it will lose whatever viewership they are left with.

Sound minds of India expect miracles 

by electing educationally and morally illiterate to power.

While urban middle classes in 1980's were connected to rural India and urban poor and were socially conscious people, today's urban middle classes live in complete disconnection to rural India and urban poor and are fundamentally selfish. Therefore, they rally behind Modi as long as his decisions doesn't pinch them. Today's media's servility is characterized by its selfishness and business interests protection rather than any principles. There are no Ramnath Goenka's in media business now a days.