Since BJP’s spectacular win, a hoard of persons from the media establishment have come out accepting that they intentionally overhyped the prevailing issues during first Modi government. Swaminathan Shankar Aiyar, a prominent left-liberal commentator and consulting editor of Economic Times who happens to be brother of the controversial Congress leaders Mani Shankar Aiyar has accepted that the ‘farm distress’ was over hyped. “Contradicting conventional wisdom on agrarian distress, the BJP actually boosted its vote share in rural areas to roughly 46%, double the Congress’ 23%,” wrote Aiyar in his weekly Times of India column. ‘This suggests that talk of agrarian distress is much exaggerated,” he further stated.
He also praised the irrigation and crop diversification scheme of NDA government and wrote “the annual average of 2.9% (FY 19) is the highest ever in a drought year. This heart-warming achievement reflects the increasing amount of irrigation along with diversification into animal husbandry, fisheries and tree crops that are less monsoon-dependent. Indeed, traditional crops now account for barely half the agricultural output.” Swaminathan Shankar Aiyar argued that although there is some pain, but it is not a crisis and the word has been overused by the left-liberal media establishment.
Aiyar further argued that no country has sustained 3 percent agricultural growth over long time period and “calling India’s agricultural growth of 2.5-3% in the last decade an ‘agrarian crisis’ is simply wrong.” He also criticized Congress party for not being able to accept the fact that there was no serious farm distress and also stated that the party over hyped the issues. “Congress apologists argue that Modi diverted voter attention from agrarian distress to the Balakot bombing, highlighting the need for a strongman to enhance national security. But the very fact that economic issues could so easily be overwhelmed by security issues proves that the economy is not in such bad shape,” wrote Aiyar.
Previously, Senior Journalist Shekhar Gupta, the founder and owner of the media organization “The Print” and also the Chief of Editor’s Guild, had made a surprising acknowledgement post elections. While speaking at a discussion on ‘How India voted’, he had accepted that journalists deliberately ignored the implementation and impact of welfare schemes launched under the Modi Government.
“I have to say this very honestly that we journalists at the commentariat chose not to see it. Even when we see it we compulsively try to deny it”, said Shekhar Gupta.
The Left-Liberal media, in the run up to the general election was called out multiple times for blatantly manipulating reports over the implementation of various ambitions programmers under the Modi Government. A prime example of this was the Ujjwala Yojana in which around 7 crore new LPG connections were disbursed inculcating the revolutionary idea of Direct benefit Transfer (DBT).
These comments by Swaminathan Shankar Aiyar and Shekhar Gupta expose the underlying hypocrisy in the reporting of the General election that prevailed in almost the entire Left-liberal media establishment. Left –Liberal media nexus tried to run the agenda based on their personal political inclinations against the BJP and in this meek attempt, the victims were only the voters, who were continuously being bombarded with these skewed attempts at journalism.