As an observer, I concede : "RW" Twitteratti is a sinusoidal conglomerate of whimsical, reactionary gullible souls & for them, the panacea to every menace is : where is Modi-Shah ? It reminds me of those days in the late 90's when every time India was in a fix, the (1/n)

cricket aficionado, with eyes glued to the idiot box, asks a similar question : "Is Sachin out? How much has he scored?" The evolution of Indian cricket began when we started out churning players beyond Sachin, as Sachin can't always come to the rescue. It is high time that(2/n)

people should come out of "Modi-The-Sole-Face-Of-Ecosystem" tirade. Why burden yourself with unnecessary expectations for something Modi was not voted for in the first place : interfere in the legal proceedings of a private person in Mumbai ? Well, to drive home my point,(3/n)

I would like to narrate a story of Gautam Buddha. Buddha was once engrossed in his meditation, under a banyan tree. Everyday, a vagabond would deliberately come to his place & try to harangue him, either by throwing foul expletive or sprinkling water at him. At the end, (4/n)

Buddha will just reply with an enigmatic smile, "Stay good, my friend !", leaving the vagabond baffled. This series of altercations continued for 9 days. On the 10th day, the vagabond came & asked him : "Hey, I've been disturbing u for last 10 days. Yet u don't attack me. (5/n)

How is it possible ?" And to his astonishment, Buddha just smiles & tells him : "Stay good, my friend", thereby, slaying him in style & showing the vagabond his place.

Now, how is this story relevant to our current circumstances ? Because, we are always at the perennial (6/n)

outrage mode of passing the buck to Modi-Shah as if they are our personal chauffeurs, tasked with the duty to ameliorate our day-to-day tribulations : from buying medicines from the store to preparing filter kaapi for breakfast, to dropping kids in the school. Now, a (7/n)

rhetorical question that I usually get from the bigshots in the Twitter Hindu Indik-Pindik Advisory Council : "Why no DhArMik@ ecosystem despite 6 years?"

I can't argue with them because they have an army of RT-ers with a herd-mentality. But, what I would like u all is (8/n)

to see what has changed in the media post 2014. One of the most underwhelming reforms by Modi has been that he has abolished the "tradition" of hiring "eminent" media-persons as "media-advisors to PMO". We may waste a day on Twitter ripping each other's souls BUT the (9/n)

journalists , across the spectrum, had an omerta code : "At the end of the day, we're all journalists. Govts come & go, but we shall always rule."In earlier govts, the media advisor to the PMO was so powerful that his 1-tipoff can tilt the headlines & the subsequent mood of(10/n)

public debate. So, before 2014,we didn't see today's polarisation in the media because at the end of the day, it was all about "them". By "them",I point out at a cartel of journalists who would've "access" to the power-corridors & who had the privilege to "break big stories(11/n)

.", with the PMO's media-advisor being the "point-of-contact". With Modi doing away with that designation, what he has done is unthinkable : take out the oxygen of "them". What is this oxygen that thrives "them"? Information worth "breaking news". So, post 2014, all major (12/n)

decisions of the Govt (irrespective of being successful or not) have come as a sudden shock, out of the blue, from Demo to EWS reservation to 370 Abrogation. Thanks to the lacuna in the pipeline of acquiring information, all big media houses suffered. Modi hurt them where (13/n)

it hurts the hardest. And the cropping of Rafale-documents to manufacture a scam was the best bet Media ever had to puncture Modi's persona of a "clean" character. And yet, they failed again. Post the massive win on May 23rd, 2019, the biggest fear was that Modi would come(14/n)

hard on the big-boys of Media. Yet Modi didn't oblige & like Buddha, just gave an enigmatic smile, while not ceding them with what they want : "attention" & "information", thereby leaving them confounded with a spasm of anger & helplessness.

However, it is not that (15/n)

Modi-Shah is soft to Media. We all knew that a certain newspaper in the run-up to 2017 UP elections was doing the PR for Akhilesh. However, when the results came totally contrary to their projections, the parent media group tried to ameliorate the damage by organizing a (16/n)

glitzy event in one of Delhi's best hotels. Invitations were sent to the PM. And it was leaked via "sources" that PM would preside over the meet, with his cabinet colleagues gracing the event too. The group printed posters, invited foreign correspondents & guests. However,(17/n)

one week prior to that event, suddenly, the PMO communicated that PM won't come, & it was accompanied by cursory mails from his colleagues. The newspaper's head was so desperate that he personally requested a meeting with Amit Shah, even using his rapport with the media- (18/n)

savvy RSS "point of contact". But to his dismay, neither Amit Shah entertained him, nor did Modi. And the embarrassment he got was something he never experienced in his life. The Duckface lost her job & today, she is out there, trying her luck for a 3BHK at Raipur. Modi (19/n)

did the same with Karan Thapar, Pronoy James Roy's NDTV cartel & those who minted $$$ at Rajya Sabha TV under Ansari as VP. He made them "irrelevant" by taking out their oxygen. Doubt me? Look at the great Barkha Dutt, who once fixed ministries, is today running in highways(20/n)

& poultry-farms to reinvent herself as a "citizens' journalist". Such is her desperation that she RTs praises to her. What do u think can explain such narcissism ?

Modi knows the power to exploit media. He knows that media today is suffering a major trust deficit in (21/n)

India (same as in rest of the world) & he will never make a hero out of a Ravish Kumar or any other "anti-establishmentarian" journalist by harassing them. Congress has walked into this trap & by allowing their machinery to harass #Arnab Goswami, they just made him bigger(22/n)

than what he was. Modi is the closest we can have to a Jose Mourinho : a defensive martinet tactician, who strikes counter-attack at the right time & at the right place. And why is the rest of the journalist fraternity "silent" on Arnab ? Because they know that he is (23/n)

getting bigger with this arrest. At an age of just 46, Arnab has come out as the recalcitrant Sholay's Amitabh Bacchan who has got 10 Janpath's attention. How many have managed that after Ramnath Goenka ?

The silence is the one that precedes a storm.

That's all. [24/24]