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Showing posts from January, 2010

Reliance - Victim of A Flawed Democracy?

Democracy is a beautiful word. It gives the common man uninhibited freedom to air his or her views on virtually anything without fear of retribution. But the same word takes a repugnant form when used for furtherance of petty personal gains. And when such attempts involve accretion of petty gains at the cost of the life and property of another, they become abhorrent, to say the least. Such was the effect of the fatuous gossip that was circulated by one TV channel in Andhra Pradesh on the night of the 7th of January 2010. The channel in question, TV5, perhaps succumbed to the perverted idea of giving itself a new-year gift of massive TRPs at the expense of the reputation of a large private sector company, which would explain its decision to sensationalize an unsubstantiated, obsolete piece of graffiti from an obscure overseas publication in a manner that ensured a public outcry of gargantuan proportions. Add to that the pugnacious gusto of the ubiquitous party worker (read “goon”), and