Did N.Y.Times Sai-nath?

Yesterday the entire staff of 108 HQ was reading this opinion piece in The Hindu. The main gist of this article is that the people of Andhra Pradesh are still punishing Chandrababu Naidu for his " pro-rich, anti-poor measures". And that this may have significance beyond the borders of Andhra Pradesh.

It is written by P.Sainath, a well respected journalist.

In the article -- an anti-Naidu polemic -- writes:

"Also, Mr. Naidu's union-bashing (so richly praised in The New York Times) did not help his party much."

We wanted to find out what kind of "rich praise" Mr.Naidu's "union-bashing" got from The New York Times. So, what did we do? Yes, we went and read all the New York Times articles where Mr.Naidu's name gets mentioned - from Jan. 19th 1996 to May 15th 2004. There were 30 articles and we read each one of them.

Out of the 30 articles, there was only one article that mentioned about Mr.Naidu's "union-bashing". On December 27th 2002, Keith Bradsher wrote in his report:

Under Mr. Naidu, Andhra Pradesh has enacted a law requiring union leaders to be workers from the factory or office they represent. Outside political activists have sometimes used Indian labor unions in struggles between political parties instead of seeking better contracts for the workers. Andhra Pradesh has also relaxed some of the restrictions on laying off workers, removing a major obstacle that has discouraged many businesses in India from hiring additional employees.

To the anger of public-sector unions in a country famous for its slow-moving and often unresponsive bureaucracy, Mr. Naidu has begun measuring state employees against one another and preset targets, and he has instituted surprise inspections. He has fired 50 people just in the state's agriculture department and disciplined many more for nonperformance.

Yes. That's it. Is that a "rich praise"? For you and us it may not sound like much of a praise. But, Mr.Sainath is not just a well respected journalist. He is also a left winger who takes part in a workshop organized by The Student Federation of India -- Communist Party of India's student wing.

Is he a card-carrying member of the Communist Party? We have no idea. But he seems to carry a lot of water for them.(We will write more about that later.)

He of course is also an editor at the India's "national newspaper", The Hindu. Does that bother any one?!