Montek trashes govt’s online newspaper bid

The UPA government’s ambitious plan to counter online propaganda in the wake of corruption scandals and improve its social media image has not found favour with the country’s top advisory body, the Planning Commission, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 2, 2013, 23:13:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government’s ambitious plan to counter online propaganda in the wake of corruption scandals and improve its social media image has not found favour with the country’s top advisory body, the Planning Commission.

The information and broadcasting ministry had circulated a cabinet note seeking the financial approval for starting an online newspaper, considering the huge reliance of people on the online media for news and views.

The ministry felt that the government newspaper would be an effective tool to tackle the negative image of the government and will also help in disseminating news faster to people with rising internet penetration.

The plan panel, however, had a different view.

It thought that the government’s online newspaper will not click. “Considering the low credibility of the government, the project is unlikely to succeed… There is a huge people-government trust deficit,” said a senior planning commission functionary.

The panel believes that instead of starting a new wing, the ministry should concentrate on improving functioning of its existing units to have better impact of the communication strategy. The ministry’s proposal is said to have been rejected by plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The panel wants senior government functionaries to use the existing online media tools to project the government in a better perspective. Ahluwalia had been on Google hangout and National Innovation Council chairperson Sam Pitroda had held India’s first twitter press conference. The panel wants other ministers to follow suit.

The ministry’s proposal to set up a newspaper was unique as no government — state or Centre — runs a newspaper. It had been a norm in the government not to start a newspaper as having an independent media was a model adopted by India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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