In another development, left mouthpiece, The Wire has come out and recognised the Modi wave which has been flowing through this general election. In an article published, titled “At Sangam, Pilgrims and Boatmen Claim Surge in Modi Wave” The Wire agrees to the existence of a strong Modi wave though using the boatman as the tools to finally accept the prevailing political sentiment in the nation.
“If the boatmen are to be believed, Modi is likely to win the current election with an even bigger majority for his National Democratic Alliance (NDA) than in 2014.”
Nonetheless, accepting PM Modi’s political victory directly may be difficult given their business model and personal biases, however, this article is clear evidence of the social media forcing these ‘neutral’ outlets to be truly neutral and provide the truth instead of political agenda at whims of their overlords.
The ‘neutral’ media which include a few outlets like The Wire have been highly denigrating of the Modi government and all the on-going development works undergoing the leadership of PM Modi. Founded by Siddharth Varadarajan, The Wire has been a repeat offender whether it is the crass comments on Indian culture or its biased and hypocritical views on Indian political scenario.
The Wire has even gone to lengths of claiming that providing LPG connections to the rural household does not amount to rural “empowerment”. Their reasoning behind this claim is also as weak as their argument. The Wire claims that with increase in LPG connections has led to declining in the business of clay pots, which were used prior to LPG connections, hence proving to be dissociated from rural “empowerment”. This is a striking example where misleading arguments are used to fit into a predetermined political agenda, which is finally put out in the form of ‘unbiased’ journalism.
Traditional media in India has historically been dominated by a group of select elites, result of a perpetual quid pro quo within the industry and few political parties, which prevented people with an unbiased and independent view to contribute to major part of the news. The run-up to the 2014 general elections also saw a huge barrage of these ‘elites’ propagating their bias in the garb of journalism. However, with the advent of social media, these ‘opinions’ which used to go virtually unchallenged have now been facing strict scrutiny not just on facts but also underlying hypocrisy which has plagued the media for long.
This new found empowerment brought together millions of people who had for a long time led astray to believe that the repository of truth and intellect remained confined to a few media groups and their editors. The 2019 general election is also witnessing a similar trend where people have taken on themselves to counter bias and ‘limited knowledge’ wherever it is to be found.
However, The Wire conceding to the existence of a positive Modi wave is surely set to upset their political overlords; however, it remains to see if this trend remains for long or was just a pulse of light in the ocean of darkness.