And much as some of the collegiate studio debatists might want undercover journalists to be reduced to a menial status in the hope that the whole genre spins out of people's heads like a fad. But one should remember that if it weren't for them, we wouldn't have got stories like corruption in mplad funds, MPs taking money to ask questions in Parliament, how some Muslim clerics were taking money to issue fatwas, how Uttar Pradesh cops were open to bumping off people for money under the guise of encounters, or how some doctors were in the business of amputating healthy limbs. We also wouldn't have discovered a talented journalist like Jamshed Khan about whom you shall hear much more in the future. Khan's most recent Cobrapost-Star News investigation exposed 10 Muslim clerics issuing 15 fatwas for money. The fatwas ranged from how Muslims could initiate divorce through anSMS to how sleeping on a double bed was against the tenets of Islam. There were another dozen-odd fatwas that didn't make it to telecast for lack of space.
In a polity where bureaucrats are trying to muzzle the Right to Information Act, where prosecuting agencies have to take the government's permission to proceed against officers above a particular rank, and where the production capacity of corruption is seemingly unlimited, you need diverse weaponry to be able to bayonet the Huns. The cyclones of bacteria need dashes of penicillin and not various lines of bullshit from the Kentucky Colonels. The whole fussiness of the thing has to stop.
