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Adi Shankara’s sarpa-sutra nyaya (snake-rope analogy) propounds two levels of truth: what the common man perceives and the absolute truth known only to those who have realised the Brahma (ultimate reality). Big media under prime minister Narendra Modi depicts only what the prime minister’s office (PMO) wants them to portray. Nothing more or less.

Consider the voluminous election analysis churned out by the pro-government big media ever since the election results were declared on May 4. People, they said, voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because under the Trinamool Congress (TMC) they were suffering due to unemployment, price rise and lack of minimum facilities. Some narrated how young voters, Gen Z, restive youth and the aspiring women saw better opportunities under the new double engine government.

But the loyal media has obligingly avoided mentioning newly-crowned chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s dubious background. He has the distinction of having been neck deep in two of most vicious scams in Bengal: Saradha Ponzi scheme and Narada cash-for-favours scam. The BJP had officially labelled him a ‘chor’ (thief). In 2020, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had alleged that he ‘jumped into’ Modi’s washing machine’ to escape the probe by central agencies.

Look at some of brilliant explanations in godi media for the state voting for BJP: Government employees expected better deal under Modi; people hoped to get liberated from the entrenched goonda groups under TMC in villages and towns; how Mo-Shah’s rallies helped expose Banerjee and other opposition leaders; how many rallies they addressed and how the suffering poor and women waited hours for their leaders and so on. Also, how the BJP’s top two identified themselves with the common people by eating fish and Jhalmuri.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Then there were stories of how Shah strenuously scripted the BJP victory with meticulous planning at different levels and how the BJP had worked to save people from TMC’s ‘goondaraj’. Also, there were plenty of stories on the Opposition’s governance failures, extortion by the ‘mafia syndicates’, Banerjee’s selection of unpopular candidates under duress – all of which led to vitiate the atmosphere, according to these reports.

After the results came out, sections of the media wrote long stories about outgoing chief minister........

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