By Karan Thapar

Aap ko kya lagta hai, kya hamara moorkh to nahin banaya ja raha?” Pritam’s question took me by surprise. I’ve never doubted his wisdom but I did not expect him to be so clued up on the latest political developments. He asked his question as he started cutting my hair on the day of the reshuffle. At that point of time none of us was certain what would happen. But Pritam, despite not knowing the finer details, had put his finger firmly on the nub of the issue.

“Har che maheene sarkar ki shakal badal dete hein” he continued. He was wielding his scissors with deliberate concentration, a sign that he was also thinking carefully. It’s a combination I’ve come to detect over the years. After all, I’ve known him for almost twenty and we meet at least once every month. “Magar shakal ke ilava aur kuch nahin badal ta. Kya public yeh dekh nahin sakti?”

More than his content, it was the tone of Pritam’s voice that made me sit up. His scepticism at once dispelled my journalistic interest in the revolving door government. As he saw it, they were simply rearranging the furniture on the top deck but the ship itself continued to sail aimlessly. This, I presumed, was why in his eyes the redecoration did not really matter.

I put that to him. Surely, I asked, the type of people in government, their character and their reputation, are important? He smiled and, I daresay, indulgently. But he took his time to answer. I could sense he was chewing on his reply.

“Samajhyega aap heater kharidna chahte hein. To kya aap khabsoorti ke bharose chunenge ya kamyaabi? Aur phir pheda kya hua agar dekhne layak ho lekin garmi na de. Aise heater ka kya matlab.”

To be fair to Pritam his dismissiveness was by no means restricted to the BJP or even the wider NDA. He tends to think the same of most, if not all, politicians. So whilst the rest of us are exercised by their image or their rhetoric, their behaviour or their alleged politeness, Pritam judges them rather differently.

far as he’s concerned it’s their performance alone that counts. Will they do anything? And by his reckoning most of them have not.

“Agar hamare neta kuch badal sakte the, agar aisa sochte bhi, to kya mulk ki yeh haalat aaj hoti?”

I struggled to think of an answer but, quite frankly, I could not. So I stayed silent. The truth is that Pritam’s attitude reveals how little the actual content of a government matters to those who are, and have good reason to be, disillusioned with it. What can one say to them?

The test – and it has to be the right one – is what has a government done. Has it delivered on its promises? Has it adapted the country to the changing world we live in? Has it identified solutions to our many problems and tried to implement them seriously and relentlessly? These may be obvious questions but the answer isn’t always yes. That’s been true of India for so long most of us have forgotten the time when it wasn’t. But Pritam broke my little reverie with a sharp comment about the present.

“Jab inse tel ki company nahin bechi jaari to aap hi bataye konsa sona bech sakenge?” This time I didn’t even attempt to answer. Anyway, Pritam wasn’t finished. He was only pausing for effect.

“Vajpayee sahab kehte hein sarkar majboot hogi aur Advani sahab kehte hein ki party safal hogi. Magar kaise? Jab do-do ministry ek admi ko di jari hain to iska yeh hi matlab hei ki sahi aadmi ki kummi hei. Ya dusre nalayak hein. Aur jab 6 maheene ke andar party ke secretary badle ja rahe hein to kya pehli baar galti ki thi?”

I smiled. How could I not have? But despite his wit Pritam’s point was simple. A government that changes itself so often is a government that doesn’t know what it wants to be. And, anyway, it’s not the appearance that counts but the performance. On that score he, at least, was not impressed.

Yet Pritam’s disillusionment went further, although I was slow to realise that. There was also a message for the media. May be it was less clearly enunciated but it was equally sharp and telling. I squirmed when it began to dawn on me. Stop getting lost in the details and the speculation, he seemed to be saying. They are peripheral. What counts is what’s actually achieved. But that is an area we journalists seem to be unable to properly focus upon. And when we do we get side-tracked by personalities.

I walked out of Pritam’s saloon shorn of more than just my hair.

I’m appalled by Fox News. Last saturday, around 10.30 p.m., when the channel was profiling the seven astronauts whose death in the Columbia disaster was widely believed but still to be confirmed, the channel said of Kalpana Chawla that she had made mistakes in 1997 resulting in satellites tumbling out of control and requiring later space walks to put things right. And that’s all they said of her. What a graceless and tactless way to mark her death. Clearly this can’t be true otherwise NASA would not have sent her back in 2003.

Incidentally, BBC, just half an hour earlier, said she was perhaps the most experienced astronaut on board the ill-fated space shuttle.

I hate to draw conclusions from one mistake no matter how unforgivable. But I hope Mr. Murdoch’s new Indian news channel has more tact and more brains.