Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
“All are reluctant to become the Chief Minister” is the caption of today’s streamer of daily Sambad on the occasion of its 33rd birthday. The baffling caption comes from its sister concern Kanak News.
Kanak News, the TV channel owned by the owner of Sambad – Eastern Media Ltd. – in a specific-purpose-event organized on October 3 at State Information Centre (Jayadev Bhavan), Bhubaneswar, asked three eminent leaders of three major political parties to spell out what would be their respective dream if consecrated as Chief Minister of Orissa. Their individual answer had a commonality that made the channel to conclude: none of them dream of becoming the Chief Minister.
The three were Dr. Damodar Raut (BJD), Bijay Mohapatra (BJP) and Narasingh Mishra (Congress).
Why these three persons were chosen for the question is not known, though it is known to any political observer that in their parties none of them is regarded as a chief ministerial candidate.
If Kanak News was serious in its pursuit to find out how an would-be political head should be dreaming about Orissa, it should have invited parties instead of individuals to answer such a pertinent question.
But it seems, primacy of political parties in this Republic doesn’t carry any meaning for channels that eye on income under the pretense of news and prefer person-centric plutocracy to ism-centric democracy.
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