Once there were allegations on the history book that nothing other than the dates was true in it, then from the beginning of the twenty-first century, allegations were also started on journalism that thankfully, the date is still printed and shown correctly. When tweets and news screenshots of senior journalists were embarrassing them after the recent Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, two books by senior journalist Girijashankar bring out the truth against election legends. Girijashankar’s two books ‘Electoral Politics Madhya Pradesh’ and ‘Contemporary Politics Madhya Pradesh’ have been described by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, from former minister Suresh Pachauri to socialist thinker Raghu Thakur as essential for the school curriculum of politics.
It is said that the collective memory is short, but in the field of Indian politics, generations are carrying the wrong memory as a legacy. The only journalist who can rectify the memory defects of the public can be done by battling on the ground, sorting the pebbles of stories from the facts. These two books are neither history writing nor any research paper. It is a journalistic act that differentiates facts from common memory.
In ‘Contemporary Politics Madhya Pradesh’, Girijashankar writes on the legend spread about Indira Gandhi- ‘However, in gathering the facts of the political journey of Madhya Pradesh, there were occasions when there was a difference between common memory and facts. For example, the general belief is that Indira Gandhi’s victory in the Bangladesh war resulted in immense electoral success, while the fact is that Indira Gandhi’s victory in the general election was followed by the Bangladesh War. The police firing on the mine workers of Dallirajhara took place during the tenure of Chief Minister Virendra Kumar Sakhelcha while the fact remains that this incident of police firing took place during President’s rule.
The political effect of Madhya Pradesh is different from other Hindi states, so Girijashankar’s democratic training sets him apart from ordinary journalists whose fact-finding is dominated by political content. Girijashankar destroys every election traditional belief. In particular, he proves the practice of proving the anti-system wave to be harmful to the ruling party in every election with complete figures. A general perception has been created in the electoral analysis that high turnout is considered against the current government.
But Girijashankar, on the basis of statistics, calls it only a matter of political awareness and hard work of political parties. They try to give a new dimension to traditional notions by analyzing the data from the first assembly election of Madhya Pradesh in 1957 to the 2018 assembly elections. It is very rare now that an anti-incumbency wave changes the government. They say that anti-incumbency wave does not arise on its own. For this the opposition has to prove itself as an alternative. Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are examples of this.
Along with Madhya Pradesh, Girijashankar has also experienced all kinds of governments. Whether it is the government of Congress, coalition and BJP, the color of the ink of his pen has not changed. Girijashankar writes in the book, ‘The experience of all these governments shows that the styles and programs of the governments may be different, but in the scale of development, the character of all the governments has been the same, the character of ad-hocism and partisan political equation’. .
In Madhya Pradesh’s journalism, Girijashankar has achieved that position in which a politician needs Chanakya like him. Starting with journalism, he also became an advisor to the Chief Minister. The specialty of Girijashankar is that even after becoming a political advisor, he did not put his journalism on the edge of his concerns. The politician needed his experience, not Girijashankar’s. Therefore, even after changing the form of governance, the form of his writing and journalism did not change.
Today he is at the point that it doesn’t matter what he is, it only matters that he is Girijashankar. It is said about journalism that once one becomes a journalist, he always remains a journalist, but this example has been rare. Girijashankar is one of those rare journalists who are just journalists, so if he writes a book then it is important for journalists, politicians, students to readers of all classes. Apart from the dates, facts are also true in this political history of Madhya Pradesh.