DO THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES?

(The concluding part of the trilogy on the Catholic Directory of India)

It is presumed that facts and figures speak for themselves. That largely depends on how they are presented and the methodology used. In recent times our country has been rocked by the “presumptive losses” incurred in the allocation of natural resources like coal, or scientific resources like telecom spectrum. In both cases, the tools of analysis, methodology, and even the motives of the proponents and opponents of the presumptive losses, have been suspect.

I do not wish to enter into such a controversy. Hence I have chosen to present the raw data with minimal explanatory notes or remarks, leaving the intelligent reader to draw its own conclusions. In my previous two articles, “A Glance at the Catholic Directory” and “Looking Back to Move Forward”, I have presented the preliminary data of the Catholic Directory of India (CDI) 2013, and made some observations/ comparisons with the CDI 1912. The elapse of a hundred years is a good area for study.

In this concluding piece I am presenting the comparative data of the CDIs of 1969/ 1990/ 1998/ 2013. I have chosen to begin from 1969, because this is the first CDI I have, after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council (Vat II) in 1965. It is also the year in which the Church in India Seminar was held. It was hailed as the Indian equivalent of Vat II. It was intended to be a course correction in the life and mission (ecclesiology) of the church in India. To what extent has that change actually taken place? On a personal note, 1969 is also the year in which I turned 18, and immediately joined the Legion of Mary, my launching pad into ecclesial life. It is also the year in which I purchased a copy of the Vat II documents from Asian Trading Corporation, Bangalore.

The CDIs of 1990 and 1998 were chosen in order to have a reasonable gap for study of the evolution/ progress of the church; and 2013 obviously because it is the latest CDI. I will be presenting various tables with brief observations. I have tried to compute and compare the data in a truthful manner. However, if there are any computing errors I hope to be forgiven, and will be happy to stand corrected. My first table is of world statistics.

TABLE I – WORLD STATISTICS

(NA stands for Not Available/ Not Applicable, and APG stands for Annual Percentage Growth)

Category	1969	1990	APG	1998	APG	2013	APG
Catholics	NA	877,723,000	NA	989,366,000	1.6	1,184,358,000	1.3
Priests	NA	402,243	NA	431,459	0.9	NA	NA
Priests to Catholics ratio	NA	1:2182	NA	1:2293	NA	NA	NA
Religious	NA	1,000.780	NA	928,653	-0.9	NA	NA
Religious to Catholics ratio	NA	1:877	NA	1:1065	NA	NA	NA
Catechists	NA	338,176	NA	439.134	3.7	NA	NA
Catechists to Catholics ratio	NA	1:2595	NA	1:2253	NA	NA	NA

This data is unfortunately incomplete. Nevertheless it shows that the priests and religious’ ratio vis-à-vis the Catholic population has increased. It is unfortunate that we don’t have data on catechists in India. Back in 1912 we were told that in evangelization the Protestants were more successful than Catholics because of the deployment of lay evangelists (catechists). The success stories in Africa and South Korea are largely due to lay evangelists. The same goes for Arunachal Pradesh, the only successful mission story in post-Independent India, thanks also to the far sight of the Salesians. Let us now examine the raw data on the church in India.

TABLE II – CATHOLIC CHURCH IN INDIA

Category	1969	1990	APG	1998	APG	2013	APG
Catholics	7,607,286	13,424,000	3.6	14,908,000	1.4	17,535,429	1.2
Ecclesiastical Units (Dioceses)	84	122	2.1	140	1.9	166	1.2
Parishes	3513	6277	3.7	6277	NA	10715	NA
Mission Stations	10,025	17,467	3.5	17,467	NA	NA	NA
Institutions	8,877	22,865	7.5	22,865	NA	23,104	NA
Priests	8,680	15,072	3.5	22,974	6.6	22,451	-0.2
Brothers	2,136	1,584	-1.2	1972	3.1	2592	2.1
Sisters	30,305	62,283	5.0	76,150	2.8	94,025	1.6

This table shows that in several instances the CDI of 1998 has merely copied the data of 1990, hence is totally unreliable. The omission of the number of Mission Stations in 2013 is also most unfortunate. It is time that church statisticians realized that statistics, like accounts, are useless if they are not accurate.

I will therefore restrict my comments to the apparently correct data. We find that the Annual Percentage Growth (APG) of the Catholic population has been constantly dropping, to a low of 1.2% in 2013. The most interesting observation is on institutional growth. Since the figures of 1998 are incorrect, and that of 2013 prima facie wrong, I will restrict the comparison to 1969 and 1990. This is also the first flush of the Vat II era. We find that the APG of the Catholic population is 3.6%, and that of parishes is a similar 3.7%, but that of institutions is 7.5%. This simply means that institutions have grown at more than double the rate of the population or the parishes. So much for post Vat II de-structuring! On the other hand the number of priests has declined and the APG of sisters has dropped.

Since I live in north India, and have worked in several of its dioceses, I have selected three of them for a comparative study. They are the oldest dioceses of the north – Agra, Allahabad and Patna. Agra traces its origins to the Jesuits at Akbar’s court in the 16^th century, and Allahabad and Patna to the Lhasa Tibet Mission of the Capuchins in the 18^th century. In the next table I have also included the number of Catholic students in our own institutions. This is not to be found in the recapitulation of statistics, so I had to do all the arithmetic myself.

TABLE III – CATHOLICS IN OLD NORTHERN DIOCESES

Diocese	1969	1990	APG	1998	APG	2013	APG
Agra	4,965	7,880	2.3	11,155	5.2	16,807	5.8
Allahabad	7,920	8,215	0.2	11,135	4.4	11,180	Nil
Patna	41,331	58,495	-	60,605	-	65,864	-

Here I need to make some qualifying statements. History tells us that there were about 2000 Catholics in Agra at the time of Emperor Akbar, St Rudolph Aquaviva SJ and Francis Roth SJ, the Sanskrit scholar. What happened to all of them? In recent times we see that Agra’s APG is 4 times the national one. But this is nothing to boast about. It is largely due to migration into Noida, a Delhi suburb. In 2013, of the 16,807 Catholics in the Agra diocese, 8722 were in Noida alone, which is more than half the diocese with a 500-year history.

In the case of Patna the APG cannot be accurately determined, because the diocese had two bifurcations in the period under review. Several districts were carved out in 1980 to form Muzzaffarpur diocese, and again in 2006 to form Buxar diocese.

There are no such excuses for Allahabad, my parent diocese, with which I am only too familiar. In absolute terms it has a negative growth record. There are several reasons for this, but prudence prevents me from elaborating here. But I will give two instances of large-scale apostasy. Dostpur was the diocese’s biggest mission station. In 1969 it had 2013 Catholics, which is down to just 180 in 2013. Similarly the Mudila Mission had 752 Catholics in 1969, of whom just 61 remain in 2013. This is shocking! Who is to blame? Since the bishop has just been removed for his anti-ecclesial activities, I hope and pray that the Vatican will take serious note of this before appointing a new bishop.

While two of these three dioceses have nothing to crow about in the post Vat II era, look at the phenomenal growth in the educational sector, and the inversely proportionate decline in the percentage of Catholic students, as shown in Table IV below.

TABLE IV – CATHOLIC EDUCATION

Category	1969	1990	APG	1998	APG	2013	APG
Agra
Students	3,347	25,380	31.3	43,407	8.9	79,976	5.6
Catholics	282	696	7.0	972	5.0	1834	5.9
Percentage of Catholic students	8.4	2.7	-	2.2	-	2.3	-
Allahabad
Students	13,950	35,264	7.3	44,082	3.1	52,804	1.3
Catholics	1,033	978	-2.4	1357	4.9	1385	0.1
Percentage of Catholic students	7.5	2.8	-	3.1	-	2.6	-
Patna
Students	20,385	NA	-	NA	-	47056	-
Catholics	6,330	NA	-	NA	-	3549	-
Percentage of Catholic students	31	NA	-	NA	-	7.5	-

This table establishes two things: (i) If there has been a phenomenal growth in students then it is obvious that there has been proportionate growth in institutions catering to them, and (ii) That the percentage of Catholic students in our own institutions is inversely proportionate to their growth. Such institutions are gradually losing their specifically “Catholic” character, for which they claim “Minority” status from the Govt.

I must now debunk another fallacy, that Catholic institutions are at the service of the community. On 14^th September 2001 I had presented a paper at the CBCI-AICU dialogue meeting at Bangalore entitled “Catholic Education in India – A Lay Perspective”. Details are available in my book “An Unfinished Symphony”. I had then taken data from the CDI 1998, in which just 43 out of 140 dioceses had given details of the number of Catholic students in their institutions. 43 dioceses are sufficiently representative for a study.

In that analysis I also drew on the 1991 Census of India information. According to it, 43.29% of the population was in the age group of 3-21 years; that is the age where they should be in school or college. The Catholic population of the 43 dioceses was 4,337,223; hence the student population would have been 1,877,584. But of these only 465,629 were in our institutions – a mere 25%. This meant that 3 out of 4 Catholics in the age group of 3-21 were not in Catholic institutions. The bishops were not willing to swallow this bitter pill. This flies in the face of the Church in India Seminar 1969 that unequivocally stated, “The first responsibility of the Catholic school is to impart Catholic education to Catholic children. Admission policies, such as criteria for selection, should conform to this primary requirement” (Pg 356).

What is the scenario in 2013? With a gradual decline in population growth one may hazard a guess that today 40% of the population would be in the 3-21 years age group. Let us look at the three selected dioceses in this light in Table V.

TABLE V – CATHOLICS IN OUR INSTITUTIONS

Diocese	Catholics	Student Population @ 40%	Actually in our Schools	Percentage
Agra	16,807	6,723	1,834	27
Allahabad	11,180	4,472	1,385	31
Patna	65,864	26,346	3,549	13

  Ironically, these three dioceses have a very high priests to Catholics ratio: Agra (71/16,807) 1:237, Allahabad (92/11,180) 1:122 and Patna (154/65,864) 1:428, as against the national ratio of (22,451/17,535,429) 1:781. Though this is just a sample survey I daresay that what I said to the CBCI in 2001 is equally valid today, that 3 out of 4 Catholic students are not in our own institutions. The causes for this are too many to be enumerated here. But it is high time that the CBCI and the CRI did a serious evaluation and course correction. As the old adage goes, “History repeats itself because we don’t learn from the past”.

I will conclude this analysis with the comparative figures of the Catholic population in 2003/2005/2013. Other than a few dioceses in the Northeast almost all other dioceses show negligible or negative growth in absolute terms. These figures should be an eye-opener: Allahabad – 12,540/ 12,650/ 11,180, Alleppey – 165,680/ 165,680/ 167,128, Bettiah – 5,719/ 5,729/ 5,843, Baruipur – 55,927/ 56,055/ 53,014. Belthangady – 20,178/ 20,100/ 20,047, Bombay – 497,850/ 504,265/ 523,458, Chanda – 12,891/ 12,891/ 12,839, Chikmagalur – 39,159/ 36,306/ 35,870, Daltonganj – 56,650/ 60,044/ 60,715, Irijalakuda – 285,000/ 256,683/ 242,610, Jabalpur – 25,187/ 28,787/ 24,979, Jhansi – 3,994/ 4,065/ 3,988, Kanjirapally – 172,050/ 172,050/ 166,342, Kannur – 32,040/ 32,040/ 31,197, Krishnagar – 60,045/ 45,163/ 60,000, Lucknow – 6,980/ 7,204/ 6,993, Madras-Mylapore – 341,314/ 341,314/ 331,881, Mananthavady – 165,653/ 167,000/ 167,590, Meerut – 26,873/ 27,192/ 27,176, Ootacamund – 84,000/ 84,500/ 81,447, Palai – 345,982/ 346,334/ 327,850, Palghat – 67,959/ 66,061/ 59,588, Port Blair – 38,860/ 39,500/ 35,211, Quilon – 233,587/ 235,922/ 217,797, Satna – 3,030/ 3,030/ 3,030, Shivagangai – 206,861/ 204,500/ 207,090, Tellicherry – 278,804/ 278,804/ 278,925, Tiruvalla – 36,127/ 36,673/ 35,499, Ujjain – 3,190/ 3,190/ 2,858, Vasai – 118,500/ 120,000/ 119,876, Vellore – 145,996/ 145,996/ 135,550, Verapoly – 269,593/ 263,337/ 247,326, Vijayapuram – 81,303/ 82,930/ 83,369. 

From the above we find that this is an all-pervasive malaise, irrespective of size, region, antiquity, rite or even of erstwhile Latin Rite territories handed over to the Oriental Rites for “evangelization”.

I cannot, in conscience “conclude” this study which is, indirectly, an analysis of the life and mission of the church in India. Two things stand out – (i) The ecclesiology of Vat II has not been followed and the findings of the Church in India Seminar 1969 have been frittered away, and (ii) That a highly institutionalized and clericalised church is digging its own grave. It is time for the Catholic Church in India to do an honest evaluation and self-analysis and seek the answer to that eternal quest “Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev 3:22).

The Papal Nuncio and those responsible for the appointment of bishops also need to pay heed. Merely making more dioceses and bishops hasn’t helped, barring the Northeast. New bishops should be appointed based on their pastoral and missionary experience, and not on their academic degrees or proximity to Rome.

Catholic directories are fine, but without Christian direction they are a mere scrap of paper. But for those who seek the truth, the facts do indeed speak for themselves.

MAY 2013

DISOBEDIENT LAITY OR OUTDATED HIERARCHY?

Three reports in the Secular Citizen of 10^th September caught my attention.  They are “Catholic Church Outdated”, “Pope Compares Disobedient Catholics to Judas”, and “Why are Catholics Good at Football But Bad at Business?”  There is much to be learnt from them.

The first report on the Catholic Church being outdated is based on the interviews given by Cardinal Carlo Martini SJ, the Archbishop of Milan, who passed away recently.  He had observed that the Catholic Church was 200 years behind the times, with big but empty churches, pompous rituals and cassocks!  This Cardinal was reportedly empathetic to condom users, and Divorced and Remarried Catholics (DARCs).  He had advocated a major shakeup in the Church, lest we lose future generations
.

In sharp contrast, we have another report comparing disobedient Catholics to Judas.  Here again the “disobedience” referred to is in the area of sexual ethics.  This is an appalling statement from the universal pastor (shepherd).  Who is he modeling himself on? The Pharisees who were sticklers for the unbending Mosaic Law; or on Jesus the Good Shepherd, who was willing to leave the 99 to look for the one lost sheep?  He was the shepherd who was willing to lay down his life for his sheep; rather than abdicate his responsibility, or condemn them to their fate.  If indeed Pope Benedict XVI has made such a statement comparing “disobedient” Catholics to Judas and asking them to leave the Church, then it is high time for us to ask this insensitive Pope to quit the papacy before our churches become even more empty.

We should distinguish between the Dogmatic and Pastoral approach.  An example will suffice.  A man falls into the water and is drowning.  The Dogmatist pontificates to the drowning man, “I told you not to go into the water”.  But the Pastor rushes to the aid of the drowning man, heedless of the risk to his own life or reputation.  I leave it to the readers to conclude in which category the Pope’s statement falls.

The Pope makes another unwarranted statement that “Judas remained with Jesus with the secret intention of taking vengeance on the master”.  He compares “disobedient” Catholics to such secretive, vengeful Trojan horses! The Pope has pre-judged a vast multitude of Catholics, because of his own dogmatic Euro-centric prejudices.  We don’t need the Pope to tell us to leave the Church.  We love Jesus; we love his Catholic Church, warts and all.  Just because the vast majority of lay Catholics don’t follow the Catholic Church’s assertion (not infallible teaching) that all forms of artificial contraception are intrinsically wrong, they cannot be labeled as schemers or betrayers.  Such an attitude smacks of sanctimonious morality and supercilious snobbery.  We cannot let it pass.

 The same report carries a statement by one Msgr Ignacio Barreiro, Human Life International Director, Rome.  He too endorses the Pope’s view that “it is better to leave the church than betray her”.  He goes on to aver, “in some circumstances it was better to just obey the important teachings and sacrifice your will”.  Is he advocating the blind obedience of the past, where novices were told to plant seedlings upside down, as an act of “obedience” to their religious superiors?  Does he think that the laity are fools, with no capacity to think and reason why?  Indeed one must agree with Cardinal Martini that the Catholic Church, or rather its hierarchy, is not just outdated, but obsolete, out of sync with modern reality.  We don’t need cheap advice from some European Monsignor about who should leave the Church.  On the contrary, the Catholic Church would be more robust if such myopic Monsignori kept their mouths shut.

 I am now reminded of the Gospel reading of the liturgy of 2^nd September. Jesus says, “How rightly Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites in the passage of scripture: This people honors me only with lip service, while their hearts are far from me.  Their reverence for me is worthless; the lessons they teach are nothing but human commandments.  You put aside the commandment of God to observe human traditions” And he said to them, “How ingeniously you get around the commandment of God in order to preserve your own traditions“ (Mk 7:6-9).

This brings me to the third news report, on Catholics being good footballers, but bad businessmen.  The report of the Bombay Catholic Sabha, Kalina, observes that predominantly Catholic countries like Spain, Italy, France, Brazil and Argentina have been football champions. However, most of these countries’ economies are in the doldrums.  The report quotes eminent sociologists like Karl Marx and Max Webber, to aver that it was erstwhile Protestant countries that ushered in the industrial revolution and economic prosperity.  This is a view that I too have held for long, and am happy that somebody else has now aired it.  About 25 years ago the Kanpur Catholic Association did a socio-economic survey of the community, and compared it with data compiled by a Protestant professor of Sociology, who used Max Webber’s tools.  We found that only 7% of Catholics had their own houses, as against about 28% of Protestants.  Very few Catholics were in business.  Let us look at the “football crazy” states in India – Kerala, Bengal and Goa.  None of them are business friendly! Even in Kerala, most Christian businessmen, entrepreneurs or industrialists are Orthodox, Jacobite or Marthoma.  Catholics belong to the “service class”, or become priests and nuns!

The obsession with football is only a symptom of a deeper malaise.  It is another “opium” for the asses, just as cricket mania is in India.  It is no coincidence that the football nations of southern Europe, along the Mediterranean coast from Portugal to Greece, are all Catholic or Orthodox.  They are among the poorest, most corrupt and crime prone.  In contrast north European countries, that are Protestant, are economically better off, have more social security, honesty and lower crime rates.  The Scandinavian countries are considered the best, despite their sexual liberalism.

The same goes for America.  Compare the “White Anglo Saxon Protestants“ (WASPs) of north America with the poverty, over population, slums, drug cartels, etc of the south American Catholic countries. The conclusions stare us in the face, the “decadent culture or the sexually liberated west”, notwithstanding.  The Philippines, the only Catholic country in Asia, shares the same fate of other Catholic countries.

For too long a celibate controlled Catholic Church has seen sex as the biggest sin and scourge; and extolled the virtues of being poor, “to inherit the kingdom”.  This is a lopsided spirituality.  We should not judge a nation or a society on its sexual ethics alone.  What about poverty alleviation, social security, population control, social justice, etc?  Can we turn a blind eye to them?

The Pope wants “disobedient” Catholics to leave.  There is not light for the DARCs.  There is no place for dissenters’ contrarian opinions.  There is no forum for open dialogue.  This has already resulted in the French Revolution (France is now a fiercely secular State), and empty churches across Europe.  Our young people will stop coming to Church, because they find it out of sync with their lives and legitimate concerns. But the universal Church is not perturbed; because it is still able to rake in enough “vocations” from large families in Africa, the Philippines and now Vietnam.

The story is repeated in India too. “Vocations” earlier came from the west coast, from Kerala moving up to Mangalore, Goa, Mumbai and Vasai.  With economic prosperity, and small families, “vocations” have dried up. So the focus has shifted to the comparatively impoverished east coast, moving up from Tamilnadu to Andhra and Orissa, and remote tribal areas.  I do not wish to cast aspersions on any community.  But we must accept that demographic changes affect the church, and we need to respond accordingly.

If we impartially study demographic change, we find that in erstwhile Christendom, there is an inverse proportion between economic prosperity and dependency on the Church for both spiritual and material relief.  Now that most modern societies are becoming welfare states, the role of the Church in its core area of charity and welfare is steadily diminishing.

Ironically, though Catholicism and Hinduism are theologically poles apart, their spirituality is very similar. The Catholic pious devotions come very close to the Bhakti Marg of Hinduism.  Both are strongly cultic, and have fed on fears of divine displeasure, guilt feelings, atonement for sin and placating the Almighty.

With economic independence the fear element diminishes, as does cultic spiritual dependence.  From atonement for sin the emphasis is now on pseudo-psychic spirituality that offers freedom from stress.  Several new age gurus and tele-evangelists have made this their mantra.  The old formula of sin, death and damnation has been rendered redundant by social change.  If the Pope and his Monsignor continue to judge dissidence the way they are, it is a sure shot recipe for disaster, with even more empty churches.  Would that they heeded Cardinal Martini’s warning for a large scale shake up in the Catholic Church

We need to discern the signs of the times (cf Mat 16:3) and what the Sprit is saying to the Churches (Rev 3:22). If not, we will indeed be reduced to a church of “sign of the cross making“ footballers.  That would be an entirely different ball game, not envisaged by Jesus the Good Shepherd, “disobedience” notwithstanding.

September 2012

DEBATE, DIALOGUE OR DIATRIBE?

The print media is called the Fourth Estate. During World War II spies were known as the Fifth Columnists. What of the electronic media (EM)? Should we call them the Sixth State of modern society? I would certainly not call them the sixth sense, for reasons that I shall elaborate.

Actually, I don’t see much sense in the EM, and would side with Justice Markanday Katju, Chairperson of the Press Council of India; that they too require some form of monitoring or control. They have no doubt created awareness about corruption and criminality. But on the whole I find them much too prone to sensationalism, rather than making sense of what is happening. For them TRPs mean everything. In the mad scramble for breaking news they often trip over the truth.

A case in point was the 4^th anniversary of the UPA Govt on 22^nd May. I was requested to participate in a panel discussion by a leading Hindi TV channel of U.P., based in my hometown, Kanpur. Since I knew the owners and staff of the channel I accepted their last minute invitation. There were two MLAs, one from the BJP and the other from the Samajwadi Party. There was also a senior Congressman in the studio, and a video uplink with some more politicians in Lucknow, the State capital. A couple of us were representing civil society. The anchor was about 30 years of age, and his lady assistant was just about 20.

The show began on a pre-determined line of scams, corruption and inflation. There was only passing reference to the achievements of the UPA 2 Govt. In this one-hour show the anchor did most of the talking, from his given script, followed by the BJP legislator. It became increasingly obvious to me that this was not a discussion or a debate, but a one-sided diatribe against the Central Govt. Though I do not belong to any political party I felt that the entire programme was heavily biased, and a few neutral civic activists like me were called in to just legitimize the show.

When I was asked to speak I categorically stated that the programme was prejudiced. If indeed we wanted to fairly assess the “report card” of the UPA 2, then a more balanced view should have been projected. Even inflation was often seasonal. For example, two years ago sugar was Rs 50/- per kg; today it is down to 37/-. Besides, my son, who is a post-grad in Economics, tells me that inflation is the natural consequence of development. I ventured to say that incomes have also gone up. The lowly rickshaw puller now charges a minimum fare of Rs 20/-, a skilled worker like a mason or a carpenter charges Rs 400/-, and young graduates are earning more than their parents ever did.

The anchor and his assistant did not like my observations and never asked me to speak again! They may even have got a prompt from their backroom boys. My consolation was that some viewers phoned in to tell me that they liked what I had said.

The moot point, however, is that today the idiot box has a far greater impact than the Fourth Estate. In the print media one is obliged to think, reflect and even evaluate what one reads. Writers have also to be careful about their claims. This does not apply to TV, as there are no easy recording or rewind buttons. There was an old saying that pictures never lie. But any media person will tell us today how easy it is to distort or morph an image. Visuals always have greater impact. I recall December 1992, when the BBC kept showing images of the Babri Masjid being demolished. It contributed in no small measure to the communal flare up that ensued. With greater power the EM definitely requires more responsibility.     

Coming back to channels and anchors, I will limit myself to the four major English language channels – CNN-IBN, Times Now (TNN), NDTV and Headlines Today (HT). By the time I get home from work and have my dinner it is usually past 10 pm, the time when all these channels have their lively debates. I have time and again noticed that an issue that is sensationalized in the nighttime debates is usually relegated to a small column in the inside pages of the next day’s newspaper. A case in point was the stand off between India and China over oil exploration rights in the South China Sea about a year ago. Going by the debates one expected India and China to be at war any moment. Nothing happened.

In the recent past several panelists have been berating anchors for putting words in their mouths, or not allowing them to speak. Some of the shriller anchors, who have now mellowed are Karan Thapar (CNN) and Barkha Dutt (NDTV). Among those who encourage the panelists to speak and don’t impose themselves are Kirti Razdan, Sonia Singh, Bhuvan Shome and Sreeniwasan Jain, all of NDTV. Borderline cases are Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN) and Rahul Kanwar (HT). Among the shrill voices are Sagarika Ghose (CNN) and, the worst of the lot – you guessed right – Arnab Goswami of TNN.

I find this man obnoxious. He never allows panelists to express themselves freely, prods them into error, and asks “simple questions” that have to be answered as Yes or No. I would like to ask Goswami a “simple question”. “Have you stopped beating your wife, just say yes or no?” If he says “Yes” it implies that he had been beating his wife earlier, and if he says “No” it means that he is still beating his wife! Goswami, and anchors like him, do not believe in fifty shades of grey. For them everything is either black or white. Truth is the ultimate casualty. Such obnoxious anchors are debasing debate. Why can’t TV anchors be like the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, who actually speaks the least, and gives everybody an opportunity to be heard?

From anchors, let me move to the panelists. Other than the official spokespersons of the recognized political parties, each channel seems to have its favourites. I often wonder how ad gurus like Suhel Seth and Alyque Padamsee, or Lord Meghnad Desai of Britain, can pontificate on any topic under the sun? Chandan Mitra, Swapan Dasgupta and D. Raja have such fixed views that if you have heard them once you don’t need a repeat performance.

Let me touch also on the familiar Christian faces on TV – John Dayal, Rev Dominic Emmanuel, Maxwell Pereira and Flavia Agnes. The first three are Delhi based, and the fourth is from Mumbai. One wonders if TV channels cannot look beyond these two metros? Dayal and Emmanuel are the usual public face of the Christian community, of whom I find Dayal the more balanced and forthright in his views. During the infamous Ireland abortion case one channel picked up a “Brother” from Mumbai who was so desperate to toe the official church line that he did more harm than good.

As for Pereira and Agnes, they are called to speak on their respective areas of competence – the police and women’s rights, and they do a good job. I don’t envy Pereira the hopeless task of defending the indefensible, the cops.

So the next time that you are watching TV, especially a volatile panel discussion, do a reality check to see if it is a debate, a dialogue or a diatribe. Also do check the next day’s newspaper to see if the “Breaking News” of the previous night has broken into the headlines.

June 2013