Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Give the devil its due

While there are a plethora of things to rant against 'The Chindu', once a while there is a good article. A recent article by Praveen Swami lists out the issues faced by the armed forces pertaining to their compensation and how the recent Pay commission while hiking the salaries for the bureaucrats, ignored the armed forces.
The article in its entirety can be read here,
http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/09/stories/2008040954921000.htm
This is a real problem and needs to be addressed rapidly. Unfortunately the Government and opposition do not have the courage to take realistic steps to take care of the men and women in uniform.
Good article Praveen Swami and Chindu for publishing it.


These are the types of articles the old Hindu was publishing and readers respected.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are right. PS is one of the few good journalists still with the Hindu. I like his columns which are well-considered and thoughtful. Even when the 5th pay commission report was released, there was some heartburn in the services. One answer suggested last time was a separate pay commission for each wing of government - armed forces, civil service and judiciary. That has not materialized but given that they are all facing different forms of shortages and to different extents, it is a worthwhile idea for the govt. to consider albeit with some sort of parity amongst them.

Anonymous said...

Growing up I respected The Hindu for the quality of its journalism. The quality of its coverage of Science, Sports was exceptional. In politics it was usually well balanced & fair if a bit left leaning.

Now unfortunately The Hindu has lost all sense of balance & behaves like a Communist propaganda paper than a mainstream newspaper.

I read that Kasturi's sons are on the board, I wonder if they are also left leaning or if they dont have much say in the editorial? Who all are responsible for such a strong leftward drift? Is it only N. Ram or are others e.g. N. Ravi / Murali share similar viewpoints.

Regards,
Ram

Dirt Digger said...

Pilid,
that is right, the govt. seems to consider people who do the actual jobs of protecting the people less important than a desk jockey or a babu. This should change

Dirt Digger said...

Ram,
There are 2 sons of Mr.Kasturi on the board, Mr.Venugopal is the associate editor of the Business Line newspaper and Mr.Balaji is a Director managing the printing operations.
The conservative nature of the newspaper has been in existence a while back even before the days of N.Ravi, but the left leaning opinions can be traced to N.Ram who attributes it to editorial freedom.

Another rumor with no real backing has been floating around, you can check it here,
http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/02/3060.shtml

Makes for some conspiracy theories.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Dirt Digger. I guess if the leftist viewpoint is limited to N. Ram it gives us some hope I guess.

Personally I dont have a problem with conservatism or left leaning editorial, if the reporting is fair. In a democracy we need all kinds of viewpoints. If however Newspapers become ideological mouthpieces and lose all sense of fairness, they end up promoting extremism.

On The Hindu's dynamics, if N. Ram is the primary cause of this left shift, how come the others e.g. Kasturi's sons have not tried to moderate his viewpoints?

I wonder if any of the old readers have tried writing to Kasturi / his sons, expressing anguish with The Hindu behaving more like a communist mouthpiece than a National Newspaper. Not sure if it will help, but I think we should make our viewpoints heard.

Thanks,
Ram

Dirt Digger said...

Ram,
sorry for my late response.
The management control moved over to the Narayanan family i.e. Ram/Ravi/Murali hence GK's sons while being directors are just spectators to the show.
A lot of people have written to the Chindu expressing their anguish.
Ram and Murali's statements have been stonewalling. They claim that the newspaper can report news with an ideology as long as the reporting is fair and follows proper guidelines.
Unfortunately they are wrong on both counts.