PM spoke but no one heard, says media advisor

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made more than 1,000 speeches in the previous 10 years, said Pankaj Pachauri, media advisor to the PM, on Friday, adding the media and Parliament showed no interest in listening.

Countering the charge that Singh had not communicated with the public as he should have, Pachauri said, “It's not that the PM has not been talking, but because of the nature of the media, his messages have not reached the general public.”

Pachauri said newspapers had tended to cover the PM more than TV channels. But “the output of news channels in the past two years is 25 per cent politics and about 10 per cent entertainment and similarly sports. But those are the issues on which the PM has not talked too much.”

Pachauri also added in the past five years, there had not been much scope for the PM to speak in Parliament. “He has preferred to talk about politics on the floor of the House, and in the last five years, Parliament has not given him enough chance to speak,” he added.

Pachauri said Singh had spoken on development issues on several occasions but did not get due coverage.

“Around 85 to 90 per cent of the notifications from the PMO are on developmental issues like education, infrastructure, science etc. But only 2.1 per cent of them got coverage on news channels and 4.5 per cent in newspapers,” said Pachauri.

Pachauri added Singh had, in the past decade, given 1,158 speeches and there were about 1,600 press releases on the PMO site.

When asked why the PM hadn’t been seen much in the Congress’ poll campaign, Pachauri said Singh had addressed four rallies so far in the Lok Sabha campaign. “It is the Congress that decides about the PM’s election rallies,” he said.

On the issue of writing a memoir, Pachauri said, “I have an offer to write a book but will not write one.”