Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen on rediff.com
Distorting a story is an art we have perfected, we are adept at editing soundbytes to suit our headline and we know how to blow up Shilpa Shetty into Big Brother champ. Being journalists and spin doctors, we can recognise a barb at us when we see one. It's as clear as daylight that Ronen Sen's `headless chicken' quip was directed at our byte-hungry tribe. Who else could be "looking for a comment here or comment there?"
But then our venerable MPs (opposition BJP as well as ruling opposition Left) had predetermined that they should count their chickens before they hatched. Probably some journalists had presented them with a selective version of the quote.
Presented a convenient tool to create a furore over the nuclear deal, they promptly lost their head and created a ruckus in Parliament. In their tit-for-tat world, if they were headless, the aggrieved MPs wanted Ronen Sen's head. Unprecedented, MPs taking up cudgels on behalf of journalists, albeit unwittingly.
While MPs ranted about recalling the hapless Ambassador, there were people putting things in perspective on air. Who else but we headless chickens, the object of Ronen Sen's ire.
Comrade Prakash Karat thundered, "Our ambassador in Washington is working not for us but the US." Comrade, you may oppose the deal but stop this intolerant approach. It's unfair casting such aspersions on somebody who played a key role in complex negotiations, which resulted in India getting a respectable deal. Criticise the deal, but it does not become you to stoop to the level of George W Bush by speaking in ' either you are with us or against us' terms.
The Left has all along given the impression the deal is bad because of their blind anti-American stance. Can we get a well-reasoned critique from them? Wonder how they would have reacted if it was a deal with China. After all who said not too long ago, 'China's Chairman is Our Chairman.'
As far as the BJP goes, the same party would have bent over backwards to accomodate the nuclear deal if they were in power. But then they have to live up to their name of the principal opposition party.
The one parallel I can think of is from my hometown Thiruvananthapuram, where you can see a few pillars in Bakery Junction, meant to support an incomplete flyover. The LDF government simply had to halt the project, as it was initiated by the previous regime of the Congress-led UDF. Net result, the flyover remains a headless chicken.
1 comment:
Heartening to see such good writing. Don't suppose there's any rivalry between JDT and CAL - but it's very interesting to see so much maturity and humour on both blogs. Absolutely loving it. Any possibility of bringing them together on one forum (i.e. other than the IBN blog)? Not that you have to - but i see some serious potential.
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