He came down heavily on the `urban- and middle class-oriented' media, particularly the electronic media, saying that it has not been able to delve deep into the society, and has been projecting superficial aspects.

Speaking on `Media and election' at a programme organised by the Media Club of the Department of Mass Communication of the Nagpur University (NU), Yadav said the media had refused to acknowledge the fact that politics and elections were the ways of changing life patterns of Indian people. Sudhir Pathak, executive editor of Tarun Bharat, presided over the lecture.

Yadav further said that in blindly following the West, the Indian media has forgotten that the ``pulse of India is its vast underprivileged masses''. These masses havenever been given the due importance on political or electoral fronts. This has mostly resulted in a very wrong picture of the election scenario being painted by the media.

He said the media needs to be sensitised to the fact that there cannot be any democracy without mass content. They should also give up the arrogant attitude of being the `star makers'. ``They should realise who is the actual ruler of the country,'' he asserted.

Speaking particularly about the election coverage, he categorised the Indian media into two types - those who depend upon statistics and information from `informed sources' to analyse the pre-election scenario. He called them Rasik (enjoyers). The others he called Pathiks (deep cynicists), who prefer not to say anything under the pretext that politics is basically a `filthy' subject.

They forget the simple fact that elections and politics change the lives of the people. It is not just a tamasha, as the media is prone to prove it, but that the existence ofthe people who matter the most to the country depends upon it.