PANJIM: Two national TV channels, Times Now and CNN-IBN spent the entire day, running a mischievously edited speech of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar at a meeting of the Goa Small Industries Association, reportedly supplied by a local cable channel (not HCN), to portray that Parrikar himself compared a rape victim’s plight to that of an industrial investor. Prime time debates and discussions with several intellectuals, studio hoppers and rent a cause specialists, castigating Goa’s Chief Minster, were aired with frenzy, on a day when his PWD Minister Sudin Dhavalikar was hogging equal air time nationally for his disgusting and sexist remarks on pub culture and against women.
According to the speech (in possession of Herald) at a GSIA function the Chief Minister speaking in the investment policy recounted an example of a IIM professor who had told him that after a lecture by him on entrepreneurship, a young entrepreneur got up and told him “that if he committed a rape he would have to face one inspector, but in case he wants to start a business he would have to face 26 inspectors.” Parrikar also recounted that the IIM professor was shocked and at a loss of words when he heard this. He used this anecdote to underline the nervousness and scare in the industry.
Parrikar went on to add that this was the reason why he had decided on the investment policy and the investment promotion board to cut down inspector raj.
National TV picked up a cleverly packaged version of the byte which sounded as “If a woman is raped, she has to deal with enquiries only from one inspector, but if someone wants to start an industry they have to deal with 16 inspectors.” Nowhere in the full speech available with Herald does Parrikar even utter the word ‘woman’ even once in this context and it is clear beyond doubts that he was recounting a story and included that the IIM professor who told him this story was shocked to hear it.
Speaking to the Herald late Tuesday night the Chief Minister said “I don’t care what they do and what they air, they can go on telecasting such utter rubbish.” It certainly was black Tuesday for Goa when two of Goa’s senior most politicians were ridiculed on national TV, the only difference was that Dhavalikar got the treatment deservedly and Parrikar unjustly.
