OrissaMatters

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
-Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in the Dictionary of Thoughts, originally compiled by Tryon Edwards, D.D.

The Press in India has proven that it is free; because, in the context of Elections-2003 and 2004, it has established that it has the freedom to err.

However, it has erred so much, and so menacingly willfully, that the question that hunts us now, is: what should be our creed- freedom of the Press or freedom of the People? We are to think afresh in view of our experience with the Free Press during the most important events in our democracys life: the elections to the Assemblies in 2003 and to the Lok sabha with synchronized Assembly polls in 2004. First the first.

ELECTION-2003
Voting for Legislative Assemblies in the States of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajsthan and Delhi concluded on December 01,03. It exposed lurking of a new threat to Indian democracy from the electronic media, specifically the private TV channels. They vulgarized voters freethinking with motivated propaganda. It is difficult to quantify the money that fueled this mischief against our democracy; but this much can be said with certainty, that the role, played by TV channels to carry the BJP canvas, could never have been generated by detached professionalism.

Gallup polls had given absolute majority to Congress in three States, i.e. Chhatisgarh, Rajsthan and Delhi and a relative majority to BJP in Madhya Pradesh. The Lok Sabha elections not being far away, BJP was deeply disturbed.
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