The election scenario emerging in Punjab in the forthcoming assembly elections does not appear to be what it is.   Most of the political parties are dissecting society in the traditional format of castes and sub-castes, hoping the situation will go in their favour. But it appears that the calculations of almost all will lead them to surprising results.

 Laying down stringent conditions to let a journalist function, the new accreditation policy, announced by the Press Information Bureau and prepared by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has a provision stating that a journalist can lose government accreditation if he or she “acts in a manner which is prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement of an offence”.

Since Independence, the Indian media has been a carrier of flag-waving patriotism. Anything that infringed New Delhi’s project of ‘nation-building’ invariably fell into the ‘anti-national’ category deserving no sympathy or critical appreciation from the media. The Indian periphery- deep south, far west, Punjab, Kashmir, and north-east—have already experienced hostile press at some or other point of time in the past 70 years. earlier that jaundiced approach of the Indian media was least pinching for the liberal democrats as well as to the left thinkers and ideologues who have always been visualizing and pursuing the goal of seeing the partitioned Indian sub-continent as a ‘strong Indian nation’. The BJP and its Moditva politics have recently added another factor to their popular notion.