I don’t know. But I know two things. First, in Dasmunshi we have a politician displaying extravagant signs of ministerial hubris. Second, he is getting away lightly, at least so far, precisely where he should be getting a very hard time — on TV.

True, TV news channels did the what’s-the-minister-up-to stories. I saw NDTV’s and CNN-IBN’s reports. Nothing wrong with them — except they lacked the remorseless logic and reasoned anger that surely is called for when TV news is looking at a minister who has tasted the power of being the nation’s sermoniser-in-chief, and wants more.

I know it is easy for me to say this but I don’t think it is wrong — IBN 7 and Sahara should not have apologised for having carried the Gandhi clip. Who demanded the apology? The people of India? Dasmunshi, TV news please note, is blithely dropping chapter and verse of the cable law to build a bridge between the people and his prescriptive and proscriptive excesses.

I would be perfectly content and would not nitpick if every television news channel carries an interview with Dasmunshi, puts his policy through the wringer, and claim an exclusive. I was of course perfectly unsurprised when almost every channel claimed an exclusive on the Marriage-to-be that has — who doesn’t know now? — a Manglik twist. But Headlines Today still managed a surprise — repeat shots of a car outside the Bachchan home, a zoom on the number plate, and the channel beside itself with excitement at having brought to us live images of an automobile moving back and forward.