Jindal Vs Zee, And The Winner Is Twitter

I am laughing, or what that today’s Facebook generation utters in every second word; yes ROFL since afternoon. On a day when we lost some humor in the form of Jashpal Bhatti, a member of parliament called Naveen Jindal rose to the occasion and made sure that we never feel the void.

Jokes apart, in this latest saga involving Naveen Jindal and Zee Network, one thing is clear; our nation is full with jokers. Much, much more than what we perceived there to be. Both Naveen Jindal and Zee network, over last fortnight have managed to display some extraordinary skills of idiocy. Even beyond the calibers of the best idiots of the world; like Digvijaya Singh. At one hand while Naveen accuses the Zee network of acting like professional blackmailers, as a counter volley the Zee network is accusing Naveen’s claims are nothing but diversionary tactics to shy away from the core issue of massive Coalgate loot. Both in their own terms are taking the moral superiority and trying to prove themselves cleaner than Dettol. All in all a classic case study on how one shouldn’t behave as a member of parliament or a responsible mainstream media house.

It is no secret, well almost on how Jindal Steel has done a lot of jugglery to get their hands dirty in Coalgate. It’s a different story that Jindal Steel along with Naveen Jindal, the MD of the company vehemently deny any involvement in this mega scam, the suspicion of involvement grows manifolds seeing the history of the company and the position of Naveen himself. Even the history of the party to which Naveen belongs doesn’t give any confidence either. A party which believed to have, not a single entity to its credit who is not involved in at least a 1000 crore scam, Naveen claiming his holiness is more unbelievable than Anu Malik’s claim of his songs being his own and original.

Now look at Zee Network in other hand. Or for that matter any media house of India. Do these guys look honest? An ounce even? Are they really doing what they are supposed to do? Call it plain hilarious or whatever, our media no more remains the fourth pillar of democracy. As someone correctly said, the foundation of a democracy is gauged by the strength of its fourth estate. But alas, in all likelihood, like our democracy, our media has also gone down the drain. If it is the bad state of our democracy that has pushed our media to such a stage or it is the reverse is debatable; it no more surreptitious that our media have conveniently sold themselves to the powers that be for quick and easy gains. More than making news worthy contents, our media is busy colluding with their political bosses to give colors to individual’s political vendettas. From airing paid news to maligning someone’s image since that’s what suits their pay masters; they are all over the place in spewing lies at alarming regularity. Hence, even if Naveen’s own image is shaky to say the least we can’t just refute his accusations so easily.

In all of this one more thing that emerged as a trend is how political fights are fought over Twitter now days. From the time Naveen held his press conference to tell about the so called sting operation, he is almost tweeting nonstop since then to solidify his case further. The cyber war just didn’t stop there. At one point this tweet from HT has as many as 27 people among all those who had retweeted it, having profiles that looked highly suspicious. Not only all of them had names starting with ‘D’ but they were following only one person from this entire Tweeter planet. No marks for guessing who could that person be. Yes, Naveen Jindal himself. To even surprise more, all the profiles looked as if they all are freshly created since none of them has got the tweet counts crossing double digits. Not to mention, all those tweets were in praise of Naveen Jindal and his bravado in exposing Zee network. Coincidence? Could be. But can we really rule out the smartness of Jindal’s PR team in here? Or foolishness may be?

Moving forward; as part of the standard explanation Naveen tweeted a whole lot about his stand and how his intention was to expose the nefarious intent of Zee network. Among many one that caught my eyes was one which looked foolish in every sense. Naveen, a mere suggestion. If it is not you then please sack the PR guy who has tweeted this on behalf of you. Believe me, that guy deserves no mercy. Yes, coming back to the tweet. Read it carefully. ‘Zee news has been constantly misrepresenting Jindal Steel & Power’. We will go back to the tweet later but first a simple question. Why would Zee network do so? Of all the companies in India why they are targeting Jindal Steel? It is no surprise that flies buzz around where there is rot. If there is no apparent spot for profit and that to an obvious one why in earth Zee would be so interested for Jindal Steel? And let’s not forget, Naveen Jindal being the MD of the company is also a minister in the ruling corrupt and arrogant government. This means, there is a lot of power at disposal for Naveen Jindal, both as a businessman and as well as a minister. And I am not going to believe, a huge network like Zee couldn’t have realized the possible repercussions, had they not been equipped with proper and solid reasons to jump into this so called blackmailing nonsense. When Naveen says, Zee was blackmailing them for Rs 100 crores, one cease to understand if Zee guys are fool to the core. If they don’t have clear and watertight evidence to substantiate the accomplishment of Jindal Steel in Coalgate, would they have even made any noise; let alone asking for money?

Another thing that looks more than fishy is Naveen’s own claim of agreeing to pay 25 crores. Why would they agree to pay this amount? For charity? And please, none should bring here the nonexistent intent of exposing the media crooks. Get this straight; knowing Naveen and his political clout, had it been a false allegation, they would have taken Zee network to task legally and quite rightly so. I am sure, not only Jindal Steel but anyone else when aggrieved would take legitimate steps to clear the air than going about doing a Sherlock Holmes to make the matter theatrical. So the claim of Jindal Steel that they called up the Zee officials to meet at a hotel on the pretext of negotiating the bargain while the real intent was to record the proceedings for the so called expose to happen, looks little out of shots and unbelievable to say the least. In reality, the spoiler could be greed. In pursuit of earning a little more Zee chaps might just have stretched it little too far. And what we are seeing now is an attempt by Naveen Jindal and his company to actually do a face saver by their forced whistle blowers act.

So the bottom-line, both sides are equally nefarious in their intent and actions. It is just that the sweet deal to cover up the national loot went sore in the middle because of greed. And we are fortunate that it in fact turned sore or else we might never know these thugs. Had there been no washing of dirty linen in public, we perhaps would have never realized the modus operandi of our media to earn money either by airing the news full of false propaganda or covering up the truth in exchange of sweet favors