When IndiGo cancelled thousands of flights and stranded lakhs of passengers last month, public fury was inevitable. What was not inevitable was how quickly that fury was channelled—through Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV debate became the chosen stage, with Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu, the TDP face in Modi’s cabinet, placed squarely in the crosshairs. Arnab’s trademark barrage—interruptions, rhetorical escalation, and theatrical outrage—was deployed with surgical precision. Ram, visibly rattled, struggled to explain the crisis while a TDP spokesperson’s mention of Nara Lokesh “monitoring” the situation from Hyderabad drew Arnab’s mocking “Who is Nara Lokesh?” retort. Within hours the clip went viral, TDP banned Republic TV from its events, and sources say a YSRCP backend team activated immediately, spending Rs 2 crore to push keywords like “Arnab vs TDP” to the top of Google and social platforms. This amplification, in turn, gave Arnab the weapon he needed to sustain the narrative: the IndiGo crisis belonged to Ram, not BJP.
This was no accident. With DGCA rosters and aviation oversight now streamlined under the PMO, real decision-making sits in Delhi, yet Arnab’s spotlight stayed fixed on Ram and his party. The BJP’s leverage in the coalition is simple: let the junior partner absorb the heat while the senior partner claims the eventual fixes. IndiGo’s operational collapse—delayed audits, rostering failures, and a 20 per cent fare spike—originated in systems inherited and centralised under the current regime, but the public saw only Ram fumbling on prime time. By the time the ministry announced penalties and compensation, the anger had already been rerouted southward, leaving Modi untouched and the BJP positioned as the calm centre.
Ram, handed a high-profile portfolio, finds himself the public face of every aviation glitch while real levers—DGCA appointments, budget allocations, policy templates—remain in North Block. After all, Republic TV network is only a hit cinema among the Hindi belt, and that too fading each day due to opposition and new media (comedians like Kamra) effectively scrutinizing and presenting these tactical news people.
