26 June, 2016 – The man who runs the nation met the nation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the noisiest embodiment of the country, its conscience-keeper, and the man who is the best thing to have happened to the sideburns after Elvis Presley – Arnab Goswami. The interview was dubbed genial and generic by irate social media and sour grapes-gobbling journalists. But everyone knows that when you land a scoop this enormous, it comes with a huge caveat.
The biggest one being that this will NOT be an interview to begin with – it is a comfortable backslapping chat between two men of equal consequence; one who was elected to run the country and the one who actually does. The Prime Minister will speak on precisely what he wants to speak on, and the journalist in question is validated as the person important enough to receive this communication. Nothing less, nothing more.
You would have to be incredibly naive or a Sagarika Ghose to expect more. Because the content of the interview doesn’t matter – its symbolic chest-thumping value does. And right now, Arnab’s chest is neck-to-neck with Mr Modi’s in the coveted 56-inch category (an unfortunate mix-up of metaphorical and real body parts but you get the gist.)
However, an exercise of this consequence cannot have been engineered without hectic parleys between the offices of both these powerful men and we have chanced upon a carefully drafted communiqué; A code of conduct, as it were, which formed the basis for this epochal interaction. We present a condensed version of it – this is an important document so consider yourself privileged.