Compare this: Rs 1140000000000 of public money lost versus six students of Jawaharlal Nehru University allegedly shouting seditious slogans around Ganga Dhaba.
Despite what you think about the importance of the two events, we know which one grabbed the undivided attention of the media and continues to do so.
Since the JNU row hit our TV screens on February 10, the question of “nationalism”, “extreme nationalism” and “pseudo-nationalism” has dominated our prime-time debates, and the front and home pages of newspapers and websites. Subsequently, an issue as important as Rs 1.14 trillion gone down the drain went virtually unnoticed under our easily-offended noses.
But is the fault with our media or is the media only mirroring our government’s priorities? Well, it is true that the government and its top ministers have taken the seditious students of JNU a tad bit seriously. The state apparatus has been swift in preventing the division of Bharat Mata by a handful of sloganeering students and butt in on what was essentially a spat among student parties in JNU. Everyone from Union Minister of Human Resource and Development Smriti Irani to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Bharatiya Janta Party President Amit Shah to Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju has had something to say on this. The result: JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar has been in police custody for the last 15 days and Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for more than a day.
Job done properly. India is safe and in one piece.
But what about the “scam” in public sector banks, as it was described by former Reserve Bank Deputy Governor KC Chakrabarty? Does the money, amounting to more than a trillion, not worth a decent debate in the media?
The RBI has clarified that the write-offs are technical and the banks haven’t stopped the recovery procedure. However, the procedure is so slow (the State Bank India’s recovery rate in 2012-13 was 19.06 per cent, 11.7 per cent in 2013-14 and 10.88 per cent in 2014-15) that the government is planning to pump Rs 70,000 crore into the public banking sector for it to carry out its usual lending function properly. That is again from the taxpayers’ money, but obviously your money being used to subsidise “anti-nationals” is a graver issue. Even if the loss incurred by the bank will ultimately translate into a loss for the people.
As of now the Supreme Court has asked for the names of defaulters from RBI, which earlier denied having any information on the issue. If you think the bank debt is all that was eclipsed by the JNU row, there was Arunachal and Chhattisgarh.
Arunachal Pradesh reconstituted its state Assembly under the rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul. The Northeastern state had become a hotbed of controversy after the state Assembly was diluted by Governor JP Rajkhowa and President’s rule was imposed there.
In Chhattisgarh, a development that bypassed national attention was the cancelling of tribal rights over forest land in Ghatbarra village of Surguja district by the state government. The government has scrapped the community land rights given to the tribal people under the Forest Rights Act. The move has been made to facilitate the mining of Prasa East and Kete Besan coal blocks by Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RVUNL) and Adani Minerals Private Limited.
While it cannot be said that the events unfolding at and around a national university hold no relevance, the fact that it can overshadow events much bigger in impact and implication speaks volumes.
Whether or not the protesters in JNU were seditious is a question the law courts are yet to decide, but the complete absence of an issue like a debt write-off from the national discourse is a clear case of misplaced priority.
Is an imagined threat to the nation more relevant than a major damage already done?
