Every morning at the crack of dawn the babus of the information and broadcasting ministry get to work. Their job is to collate all the media feedback of the day for the Prime Minister so he can scan it before he starts his day.
“Under UPA rule, we used to collage the news items under different heads: political, security, finance and others. Now we group them under ‘positive’ and ‘negative’” an Indian Information Service official tells The Telegraph. Even worse for the beleaguered babus Modi wants his cuttings an hour earlier than Manmohan Singh.
Positive and negative. Now that is called streamlining and cutting to the chase. It also effectively sums up what the ministry of information and broadcasting has turned into over the decades. It does not just produce endless little preachy documentaries about AIDS, running water and happy Hindu-Muslim-Christian children, all apparently made by one Devendra Khandelwal. It keeps tabs on the media.
There’s nothing nefarious about it. All governments do it. But in a country like the United States that’s the clearly understood objective of the White House Press Office. Here the PMO currently has no media advisor reports DNA and the BJP’s newly appointed spokesperson M J Akbar has not briefed the press at all. What sounds like a function of the PMO is being done by I&B ministry whose stated objectives are quite different.
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