Former minister Arun Shourie raises concern over role of money, propaganda in elections

NEW DELHI, (PTI): Expressing concern over the role of money and propaganda in elections, former Union minister Arun Shourie on Sunday said that politics in the country is in a ”dangerous phase”.

Speaking on the concluding day of Times Lit Fest, Shourie, who was a BJP minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, said ”contrary voices” were not being given space.

”Politics is not just rotten but in a dangerous phase, much of the politics is as it must be in North Korea. What is the election? What are the means for the election? What is the role of money in the elections? What is the role of propaganda, in which the media is part of it? Is that fair and free elections. ”Look at the way they buy MLAs, so that’s not the politics by which a country can be sustained,” he said in a session titled ”Dark tales from politics and bureaucracy” with journalist Barkha Dutt.

When the moderator asked if what he was suggesting is right, why would the BJP lose elections like they have done in the recent past in different states, Shourie replied, ”Because they have not perfected the whole thing”.

Not listening to ”contrary voices” is among the reasons why the 81-year-old is unhappy with the current politics of the present dispensation.

” . . . Who is really standing up today. And a leader, who is trying to manage such a complex and large country like India in such a hostile environment, should have a person who says ‘Nahi aise nahi aise’ – and the leader can always reject his advice – but he must listen to everybody. This is one of the most wonderful things about Mr Vajpayee (former PM). ”That is one of the features in which this government and the BJP differ from what things were at that time,” said Shourie.

The veteran journalist, who used the African proverb ”A dog with a bone in his mouth can’t bark” to describe the situation of journalists and even businessmen in India, said he is afraid that this is really the ”end of journalism”.

” So journalists and businessmen have all become persons with bones in their mouth. Maybe we’ll get something, so why annoy the person. This is really the end of journalism,” he said. Shourie also expressed unhappiness with Indian media over their reporting on the Adani group.

The ports-to-power conglomerate headed by Gautam Adani plunged into crisis on January 24, when Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions, and share-price manipulation, among others.

Shourie said things like ”97 percent” of his company’s holding belonging to him and his close family members or the mammoth ”300 percent price earning (PE) ratio” should have alerted everyone. ”None of these things require any deep information… These are facts which every financial journalist knows and only very few people write about it,” he said and pointed out that Trinamool Congress MP Mohua Moitra has been flagging the issue since 2019. (PTI)