Lead India 2009 Campaign-Is TOI walking its talk?
In the past couple of days, I have written 3/4 blogs on the Lead India 09 campaign being conducted by the Times of India group of publications (TOI). I had mentioned that if TOI is serious about bringing about a change in the country’s political system, it should inform the voters about all the candidates that are contesting the elections for a particular seat and not just about the BJP and Congress candidates or the ones who are famous. I suggested the above because I feel that just increasing the number of voters is not going to solve our problems. We need to elect good candidates who will act as country managers and take decisions in the nest interest of the country.
But how will the voting public get to know about good candidates if the media is going to talk about only the candidates of major parties like Congress and BJP. For instance, yesterday Times of India profiled all the six candidates that Congress has decided to field from Delhi, that is, Sandeep Dikshit, Ajay Maken, Sajjan Kumar, Kapil Sibal, Jagdish Tytler and Krishna Tirath. TOI has already given Congress the headstart. They have made the visible candidates more visible. The invisible candidates will remain invisible and we will get the same people elected.
The point I have been trying to make is that at least the media should provide as much a level playing field as they can. Today, they devote practically all their time on visible candidates of visible parties. What about the invisible candidates. What about people like Meera Sanyal? What about people like me who are planning to contest the elections. Such candidates do have money or big party backing and I am sure most of these guys would not be interested in it.
I am hoping that TOI will also profile other candidates electing the Delhi elections. I will keep watching.
So I urge TOI to walk its talk. We all know that it is easy to preach than to practice.
avinash narula
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Can the Times of India get the details of all the candidates irrespective of their party or status. We need to know about all the candidates especially the independents who have a clean record. Also, when publishing about the candidates letz get the information like their wealth before getting to politics, and now. The most important is the person’s criminal background and thier connection with the criminal elements. Also, like to know if these people who are contesting the election would give power to the Lok Ayukta so that we can weed out corruption from the country.
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I do agree with you about yoyr perspective which you very strongly placed.It’s a dire need of the hour to give a chance to potential underdogs than keep on highlighting the useless lin-the limelight sickos.I strongly feel that as much as decrminalisation,depersonalisation of politics is also equally important.People should’nt just go by the outward glory of a candidate in terms of their worth,history supports we’ve endured the fruit of disappointment in those cases.It’s high time to go on a quality basis than to take into account any quantitative nonsense as our ground for choosing someone.This calls for a fierceful integrity and committment on an individual basis for all the voters.
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