Honest feedback and course correction are what the ruling party should focus on. Seeking to understand why people are dissatisfied with the government is the first step in that direction.
Published Mar 18, 2025 | 10:59 AM ⚊ Updated Mar 18, 2025 | 5:11 PM
Revanth Reddy and K Chandrashekar Rao.
Synopsis: The gutter-level discourse by the ruling Congress and Opposition BRS in Telangana is pushing real issues concerning the people into the background. If Revanth Reddy, while in Opposition, believed he would benefit from an anti-BRS campaign through YouTubers, the BRS is now doing the same with its own army.
One of the most famous anecdotes about the late Ramnath Goenka, founder of The Indian Express, is that he promoted a journalist soon after a prominent politician from Karnataka complained against him.
The media doyen’s logic was that the journalist must have been doing something right if the politician complained against him. However, those days are long gone.
Today, we have editors who cringe when they receive a call from the establishment protesting “unfavourable” coverage and are more than willing to go out of their way to make amends. Some go to the extent of even chiding their colleagues for not being faithful to those in power.
Perhaps, at no other point in the history of the Telugu states has mainstream media, both print and television, shown such allegiance to any political dispensation as it has to the Revanth Reddy-led Congress government.
Yet, the honourable chief minister is deeply upset and, therefore, the Telangana society is currently discussing what constitutes journalism and how to punish those who violate the rules.
The immediate provocation for the debate — essentially a slanging match between the ruling party and the Opposition BRS — was the recent arrest of two journalists associated with a YouTube channel, allegedly enjoying the patronage of the regional party.
That the contents of the video — filled with the choicest abuses hurled at the chief minister, violated all norms of journalistic principles — are not even a point of discussion. The arrests, nevertheless, and more so the manner in which they were carried out in the wee hours, were equally unwarranted.
The larger question is whether the airing of such a video should prompt the chief minister to declare that those posting abusive content will be “thrashed, stripped naked, and paraded” on the streets.
“Give me a list of journalists. We will deal with the rest in our style,” Reddy declared in his usual vitriolic tone. Who is to decide who is a journalist or not? And, more importantly, every citizen – not just journalists – has the right to criticise those in power. It is a basic tenet of a democratic setup.
It is also important to note that social media — amplifying the voices of the common man — has proliferated in an environment where the mainstream media has often failed to reflect ground realities. The fact is, it has helped people understand the nuances of what those in power do or do not do.
Every disruption comes with its pros and cons, much like the ongoing debate about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on our lives.
Like AI, social media has its perils too — but who created its monstrous side?
It is common knowledge that dozens of YouTubers and X (formerly Twitter) influencers have been created, pampered, and promoted by the very two parties that are now ironically discussing the ethics of journalism.
The common disease with people in power is that they strongly believe that people are unintelligent, can’t see through their games and can easily be swayed. The BRS had two newspapers – English and Telugu, and a language television channel.
Yet, it could not manipulate people’s opinions and lost power in 2023. Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy too had a newspaper and a channel only to face a humiliating defeat last year.
We also have another Telugu newspaper and channel owned by a politician, currently with the Congress. He was earlier with the BRS, switched to BJP and then moved to the Congress. The priorities of the media house in question kept changing with the changing loyalties of the proprietor.
If Revanth Reddy, while in Opposition, believed he would benefit from an anti-BRS campaign through YouTubers, the BRS is now doing the same with its own army.
The problem, though, is that monsters, once created, do not operate within a fixed set of principles. What works in one’s favour at a given time eventually turns against one and can sometimes spiral out of control. History is replete with such examples.
When in power, the BRS — the chief architect of creating social media groups with political loyalties — believed that everything was hunky-dory and that the “positive campaign” they were spinning would keep the tide in their favour. But they couldn’t comprehend that the ground beneath them was shaky.
This is exactly what the Revanth Reddy government needs to introspect on now. Keeping aside the noise on social media (even assuming it’s exaggerated or manipulated), the harsh truth is that people are unhappy with the regime within 15 months after the Congress came to power, despite the government implementing some of its pre-election promises, either partially or fully.
Honest feedback and course correction are what the ruling party should focus on. Seeking to understand why people are dissatisfied with the government is the first step in that direction.
All that we saw in the past year or so were diversionary tactics or plain mistakes — arrests and investigations into alleged phone tapping and the conduct of the Formula E race during the previous regime, demolitions on the pretext of protecting lakes and rejuvenation of the Musi River, and so on. These issues are no longer part of public discourse, and the media has conveniently forgotten them.
At the root of the malaise that we are confronted with today is the depths to which political discourse has plummeted.
If KCR (former chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao) was guilty of denigrating his political rivals and journalists, Revanth Reddy took the abusive culture to an entirely new level while in Opposition and has continued in the same vein even after assuming office as chief minister.
As if feeling left behind, KCR’s son KT Rama Rao (KTR) is moving away from his assiduously built image of a brand ambassador for Hyderabad and Telangana, to match Revanth Reddy word for word.
This benefits neither Revanth Reddy nor KTR. It’s a fallacy if the BRS believes that it would be the automatic beneficiary of the anti-Congress mood. The BJP is silently waiting in the wings and with elections several months away, no one knows how the political landscape would change by 2028.
The tragedy is that this gutter-level discourse is pushing real issues concerning the people into the background.
Globally, nationally, and at the state level, we face umpteen challenges. Farmers are in distress due to crop failures and the lack of remunerative prices. The Indian middle class is shrinking, with no real wage growth in the last decade, leaving many just one medical bill away from financial distress.
Private education is beyond the reach of many, while public education is in shambles. We have no clear plan for the thousands of young graduates entering the job market each year. Gig workers lack basic social security, and their wages remain unpredictable. There is no concrete solution for improving public transport in cities. Meanwhile, the environment is deteriorating at an alarming rate.
The state is caught in a debt trap, according to the government itself. The revenue generated is barely enough to cover salaries, debt repayment, and a few welfare schemes. There are multiple ways to potentially overcome this crisis — if only those in government were willing to devote the necessary time and effort to finding solutions.
However, we are told that the state’s finance minister is too busy otherwise. One can only hope he finds the time to engage in serious discussions on how to navigate the fiscal mess.
It’s time for political discourse in Telangana to get serious. We can set aside debates about whether KCR is a good public figure simply because he enjoys a drink or whether Revanth Reddy moves around without security and for what purpose.
History cannot erase the fact that KCR was the prime mover behind the creation of Telangana state. People voted him to power twice knowing fully well that he enjoys having his drink.
They voted him out a third time, not because he drinks but for other reasons.
Drinking or not has no bearing on a leader’s contribution to society — we have living examples of both great leaders and utterly ineffective ones, regardless of their habits.
(Edited by Dese Gowda & Muhammed Fazil.)
