India Retold: REMEMBERING RAJIV: CONGRESS IS WORSE THAN MAYAWATI

• India Retold: REMEMBERING RAJIV: CONGRESS IS WORSE THAN MAYAWATI

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  • Mayawati has been in the cross hairs of the media's sights for constructing dalit memorials at state expense. Much has been written and spoken about how she is mindlessly squandering public money on building her own statues. In a recent program on NDTV, a very agitated Prannoy Roy called for a complete ban on such activities because they utilise the tax payers' money for furthering the cause of a political party. With a straight face, Salman Khursheed of the Congress party agreed with him completely.
  • Today is Rajiv Gandhi's birthday. Without a worry about what the much flogged "aam aadmi" might say or feel, the Congress party is brazenly using the occasion to make maximum possible political capital of it at state expense. Newspapers have been saturated with advertisements by various departments of the central government to sell Rajiv Gandhi to India. Examples of two newspapers published from New Delhi should give you an idea of how the minds of Indians have been carpet bombed by the Congress today with Rajiv ads:
  • This is not the first time that this has been done. Nor is Rajiv Gandhi the only one who is so remembered. Jawahar Lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi are also so remembered on their birthdays and death anniversaries at government expense, and this has been going on for decades. Has the media ever complained? Is it complaining even now, in the light of its own moral outrage at what Mayawati is doing?
  • How can it? It is raking in the moolah by publishing these advertisements. You don't criticise the "hand" that feeds you, do you? If someone carries out a detailed analysis of how much money has been spent by the government - and paid to the media - over the years, the mind boggling figures will expose one reason why large sections of the media find it almost impossible to be objective and unbiased in their political reporting and analysis.
    
  • It also needs to be remembered that it was the Congress party that started this ugly culture of creating memorials for political leaders and the naming of roads, bridges, airports, buildings and what have you, after them. Mayawati was not wrong when she tauntingly said that the real estate value of the three sprawling samadhis built in Delhi for Nehru, Indira and Rajiv far exceeds the amount that is being spent by her for building dalit memorials.