There’s curious — indeed deafening — silence in the media and society about the abrupt exit from prime-time news television of Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami, the Oxford-educated, iconoclastic and uniquely argumentative news anchor who until mid November dominated the English language 9 p.m news like a colossus. According to a persuasive market research survey conducted by Times Now, the viewership of Goswami’s Newshour programme was greater than of all the other half dozen English language prime-time news broadcasts combined. Little wonder his Rs. 12 crore per year pay package, which is a unlikely to be surpassed record for Indian media. 

However, Goswami’s hyper-nationalism and proclivity for bar-room style debates during which he often shouted down some of the most powerful politicians, bureaucrats and religious leaders in the country — not to speak of Pakistani generals — prompted vaulting ambition. While the Jain brothers who tightly control the money-spinning Bennett Coleman & Co, which owns the Times of India, Economic Times, Times Now television, Femina and several vernacular dailies and mags, gave him free rein editorially, typically, they drew the line at awarding him equity in the tightly-held Bennett Coleman & Co, prompting his resignation. Meanwhile in the crab culture world of Indian media where news publications take utmost care not to provide a whiff of oxygen to real or imagined rivals, Goswami has become a non-person with disrupted publishers and editors enjoying moments of schadenfreude. But worse, his fickle audience too seems to have melted away with none so poor to do him reverence. 

Although Goswami bravely says the “game has just begun” and is reportedly set to launch another “disruptive and independent” television news channel with Bangalore-based independent politician, social activist and wealthy media (FM radio) tycoon, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and perhaps even with the London-based media baron Rupert Murdoch, who owns the rumbustious alt-right Fox News prime time channels in the US, or both, his best days seem to be over. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Mysterious deposits

Although the prime minister struck a major blow against income and other tax evaders and counterfeiters by demonetising Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 currency notes, which account for 85 percent of the entire Rs.17.54 lakh crore in circulation as cash money within the Indian economy, it’s difficult to entirely disregard allegations that the BJP, which rules at the Centre and in several states of the country, didn’t benefit from insider information of this Central government (and Reserve Bank of India) fiat. 

It’s common knowledge that post-independence India’s electoral process rooted in the ill-advised decision of the founding fathers of the Constitution to endow universal franchise without any qualification requirements to a largely illiterate population, needs to be oiled with large amounts of cash paid to vote bank managers and increasingly, voters themselves. Therefore, reports that the biggest losers of the November 8 demonetisation tsunami are opposition political parties, particularly the BSP and Samajwadi Party which had reportedly accumulated hoards of Rs.500-1,000 currency notes to fight the Uttar Pradesh state legislative assembly election early next year. With the state unit of the BJP tipped off about the demonetisation deadline and having converted its cash hoard into cadre deposits and/or Rs.100 notes, the front-runner BSP in particular is widely believed to have suffered a severe setback. 

Read against press reports that a shell company owned by the president of the BJP’s Maharashtra state unit with almost no assets or income for four years, suddenly received a cash injection of Rs.3.6 crore by way of share application money and Rs.6 crore as unsecured loans which it banked in July, and that the West Bengal unit of the party banked Rs.3.6 crore a week prior to the deadline and Rs.1 crore in old currency a few hours before the midnight of November 8, mischief is afoot. But such is the murky climate of mass distrust created by the country’s déclassé and self-serving politicians across the political spectrum, that it’s impossible to take any national cleansing initiative at face value.

Prohibition subjugation

Disturbing reports are emanating from the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 63 million) about ways in which the state’s liquor consumption prohibition law is being selectively invoked to terrify and subjugate the population, especially businessmen. Although in deference to the memory of Gujarat-born Mahatma Gandhi, it was the first state to impose prohibition in 1960 and has never relaxed the official ban on liquor consumption, it’s an open secret that alcoholic beverages are freely available in the state, albeit at stratospheric prices, courtesy of a thriving liquor mafia hand-in glove with the police and top politicians and bureaucrats. 

At ground zero level and particularly in urban Gujarat, the state’s draconian prohibition law is practised more in the breach than observance. A Nelson’s eye is turned towards the urban upper middle and business classes modestly enjoying a tipple in the privacy of their homes. However, recent reports from this state ruled by the BJP with an iron hand, indicate the state’s prohibition laws are increasingly being used to humiliate and extort money from businessmen who voice even mildest criticism of the state government. They are immediately raided by the police for infringing prohibition laws. In effect, the prohibition stick has proved very handy to subjugate the small minority of the state’s politically independent businessmen. This has prompted a trickle, if not quite flight, of capital from the country’s most business-savvy and entrepreneurial state.

Now on the eastern seaboard, Bihar’s foolish chief minister Nitish Kumar is hell-bent upon imposing Gujarat-style prohibition upon the already severely stressed population (104 million) of the state. Amazing depth of ignorance and poverty of imagination.