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Business Week's latest list of “50 Most Powerful People in India” has five media people—

• Ajith Balakrishnan: Chairman, Rediff.com
• Ramachandra Guha: "Columnist, historian, and die-hard cricket fan". Also See: Ram Guha in Outlook
• Vineet Jain: "Younger of the two brothers who run The Times of India and the Economic Times, the world's largest English newspaper and the world's second largest business paper" 
• Tarun Tejpal: "A celebrity journalist like no other in India". Editor, Tehelka. Also See: Tarun Tejpal in Outlook &
• Amit Varma: “Blogger Amit Varma brings a particular libertarian point of view to his columns and blog items, but also a risqué sense of humor that keeps readers hooked. He won the 2007 Bastiat Prize for his columns in Indian business paper Mint, and for a select group of Indians, he represents a libertarian, anti-tax and anti-government sensibility that is still quite rare in the country.” Also see: Amit Varma in Outlook

Congratulations, all.

When Rajiv Gandhi's government cravenly gave in to Khushwant Singh's advice and cynically banned Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, one of the (certainly unintended) consequences -- was that it ensured huge publicity and sale of the book that would otherwise never have been possible. 

Something like that is what a TV channel/anchor -- and presumably, their legal team -- seem to have managed to do by getting a blogger to not only withdraw a blog post [though it is still available in Google cache -- scroll down or just search for ‘Shoddy Journalism’ on your browser] but also issue an unconditional apology.

OK, it's not a great analogy -- there is no fatwa, no death-threat and, hell, no copies to sell either -- and, please, no, I do not think that Salman Rushdie should be thankful to the RG government either -- but you get the picture. 

This is about all I am capable of at this late hour in this sleep-deprived state, after a particularly tiring day.

--

PS: 

1. Looking around, I see there is, understandably, a storm of outrage out there in the blogosphere.  A quick search shows that the bloggers seem to be concentrating on the broad point that the withdrawn blog entry was quoting some excerpts from Wikipedia but, as Prem Panicker poi