By D N Singh
In politics to hold contrarian views or firing salvoes at the opponent or call each other’s bluff is ok but making sweeping statements or indulge in rumor mongering over someone’s personal health is just condemnable.
This is not only lowering of political standards but such frustrations reveal the defeatist humanism of such propaganda makers.
If there is anything or a tirade that borders on someone’s personal life or more importantly on health, then that is against all ethics of politics and deserves condemnation.
But what, apparently, seem to be in practice in Odisha or may be elsewhere, misnomers spread about someone’s health.
On Friday the media was, for an hour or so, fell victim to such an extreme propaganda allegedly by a section of the opposition that the chief minister was unwell or very unwell.
What was equally sad that, without an effort to ascertain the veracity of the rumored news the media never desisted from running the unpalatable and whispered propaganda for some time. Which obviously injects a sense of unease among millions of viewers.
While the bandwagon of rumor-mongers were busy in that foreboding tale, they had a slap on the face when the chief minister emerged and was seen in the premises of the lord Lingaraj and politely rejected such maniacal spread of lies in his usual cool.
It is not for the first time but it had happened in the past when the same misnomer manufacturers tried to adopt that kind of unsavory tactics to demoralize, God knows whom.
Everyone is aware of the lowering of the standards in politics of the day, but such decline is the choice is distasteful.
However, it would not be improper to say here that, Naveen Patnaik, perhaps, is one among very few political leaders who never seemed to have allowed his language or reaction to deteriorate in response to any diabolic from any opposition camp.
Nor had he shown his disdain for such people in politics who are on the other side of the fence.
