There’s curious — indeed deafening — silence in the media and society about the abrupt exit from prime-time news television of Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami, the Oxford-educated, iconoclastic and uniquely argumentative news anchor who until mid November dominated the English language 9 p.m news like a colossus. According to a persuasive market research survey conducted by Times Now, the viewership of Goswami’s Newshour programme was greater than of all the other half dozen English language prime-time news broadcasts combined. Little wonder his Rs. 12 crore per year pay package, which is a unlikely to be surpassed record for Indian media. However, Goswami’s hyper-nationalism and proclivity for bar-room style debates during which he often shouted down some of the most powerful politicians, bureaucrats and religious leaders in the country — not to speak of Pakistani generals — prompted vaulting ambition. While the Jain brothers who tightly control the money-spinning Bennett Coleman & Co, which owns the Times of India, Economic Times, Times Now television, Femina and several vernacular dailies and mags, gave him free rein editorially, typically, they drew the line at awarding him equity in the tightly-held Bennett Coleman & Co, prompting his resignation. Meanwhile in the crab culture world of Indian media where news publications take utmost care not to provide a whiff of oxygen to real or imagined rivals, Goswami has become a non-person with disrupted publishers and editors enjoying moments of schadenfreude. But worse, his fickle audience too seems to have melted away with none so poor to do him reverence. Although Goswami bravely says the “game has just begun” and is reportedly set to launch another “disruptive and independent” television news channel with Bangalore-based independent politician, social activist and wealthy media (FM radio) tycoon, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and perhaps even with the London-based media baron Rupert Murdoch, who owns the rumbustious alt-right Fox News prime time channels in the US, or both, his best days seem to be over. Sic transit gloria mundi. Mysterious deposits Although the prime minister struck a major blow against income and other tax evaders and counterfeiters by demonetising Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 currency notes, which account for 85 percent of the entire Rs.17.54 lakh crore in circulation as cash money within the Indian economy, it’s difficult to entirely disregard allegations that the BJP, which rules at the Centre and in several states of the country, didn’t benefit from insider information of this Central government (and Reserve Bank of India) fiat. It’s common knowledge that post-independence India’s electoral process rooted in the ill-advised decision of the founding fathers of the Constitution to endow universal franchise without any qualification requirements to a largely illiterate population, needs to be oiled with large amounts of cash paid to vote bank managers and increasingly, voters themselves. Therefore, reports that the biggest losers of the November 8 demonetisation tsunami are opposition political parties, particularly the BSP and Samajwadi Party which had reportedly accumulated hoards of Rs.500-1,000 currency notes to fight the Uttar Pradesh state legislative assembly election early…
