Skip to main content

India Today’s own Narendra Modi


India Today to Narendra Modi: What about creation of jobs?

Narendra Modi: As for creation of jobs, it has been the topmost priority of my government. All our efforts have been geared to this task.

The above question-answer is from India Today’s latest edition, which is an out and out eulogy to Narendra Modi who is given the Newsmaker of the Year Award by the weekly.

Now let’s look at a news item from India Today’s website: A Romanian flight carrying 276 Indian passengers landed in Mumbai early on Tuesday after being grounded in France four days ago over suspected human trafficking.

It was not human trafficking. It was a whole airplane of people leaving India illegally but voluntarily to find jobs in the USA or Canada or any country better than Modi’s India. Ironically, most of these ‘illegal’ jobseekers are from Modi’s own Gujarat which he claims in the India Today interview as the state made ideal by him. “When I became chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, the size of its economy was around $26 billion (Rs 2.17 lakh crore). When I left Gujarat to become the prime minister, the size of Gujarat’s economy had become $133.5 billion (Rs 11.1 lakh crore).” Modi claims that in the India Today interview. He goes on to make a similar claim about India’s economic progress after he became the PM.

If India is indeed making all that progress which the PM claims in the India Today interview, why are millions of Indians choosing to leave the country and live abroad doing even menial jobs?  Hundreds of thousands of Indians are even giving up their Indian citizenship in order to be able to work abroad. Where is the ‘connect’ between Modi’s claims in the India Today interview and the ground reality in the country?

India Today has chosen Modi as the Newsmaker of the Year. They have dedicated the last issue of the year to Modi. Almost the entire magazine is about Modi. There is a long - very long, in fact - article that lists Modi’s achievements with ample details. The senior journalist of India Today has done a great job to project Modi as “The Reformer,” “The Builder,” “Messiah of the Poor,” “The Vishwa Guru,” “Master Strategist,” and so on. I’m not listing all of the epithets used by India Today, which has put up no less than 24 scintillating photographs of Narendra Modi in this one volume. 

The interview was conducted by India Today’s owners, Aroon Purie and his daughter Kallie Purie. The father and daughter know their business, if not their job. Senior journalist of the magazine, Raj Chengappa, was also part of the interview team. It is he who wrote a long panegyric to Modi as the lead article of the issue. When you read the article and the following interview, it will be clear to you that all questions and answers were ready long before the interview was conducted. Probably the interview was just a chai per charcha and a photo session. Yet another of those well-known Modi gimmicks.

Let Modi keep spending money on propaganda. He will definitely win the next Lok Sabha elections. He will be India’s PM yet again. And India will become a Hindu Rashtra. The minorities in India will suffer the same fate as the minorities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is, Modi will make another Pakistan of India. We become like our enemies, some writer said. Modi will prove that statement’s veracity yet again. Some silly people will think that history is avenged. A few, very few, intelligent people will know the truth: the masses are easy to be fooled. Endlessly. Magazines like India Today will go on eulogising the ruler even if the party changes, the ideology changes, whatever changes… the Puries just want to laugh all the way to their banks. 


 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanDecember 30, 2023 at 5:00 PM

    Hari OM
    "The Press" has been guilty of influence (and being influenced) by politics since ever it developed. I despair at the possility of there ever being anything like unbiased news. It is a near impossibility. But one can at least hope for alternate points of view, some counterpoint and balance... clearly none present here! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 30, 2023 at 6:48 PM

      If the press tries to be unbiased Modi won't let them survive. He knows every strategy possible for keeping enemies away, real or perceived.

      Delete
  2. magiceyeDecember 30, 2023 at 6:04 PM

    Looming tragedy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 30, 2023 at 6:49 PM

      Undoubtedly, especially when he will come back next year with a bigger majority.

      Delete
  3. Liz A.December 31, 2023 at 4:29 AM

    Too many in the press are more interested in access than journalism. And too many are beholden to monied interests so much so that they don't even try to dig deeper on pressing issues.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 31, 2023 at 7:46 AM

      Some rulers make it impossible for the press to be honest.

      Delete
  4. CareenaJanuary 15, 2024 at 8:39 PM

    It honestly boggles my mind that every other day we hear about N number of people leaving India, and still nobody wants to question it !?! Insane how foolish we've become!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 15, 2024 at 9:05 PM

      Probably India has learnt about the futility of raising certain questions.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...
6 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more