The News Minute’s six-minute video in the Let Me Explain series on the Coimbatore and Madurai Metro issue is not an explainer, it is curated political messaging wrapped in the tone of “analysis,” padded with a full one-minute emotional appeal for subscriptions.
In a video supposedly “explaining” a major infrastructure dispute, TNM’s Pooja Prasanna spends nearly 20% of its runtime begging for money while spending 0% of its effort on verifying the most basic facts.
The result? A half-baked, rage-bait video that camouflages opinions as “facts”.
Let’s analyse the video point by point.
A Manufactured Crisis: Calling It a “Rejection” Without Reading the Letter
Pooja Prasanna’s entire video is constructed on one pillar: “The Centre rejected the metro proposals.”
Except, it didn’t.
The Centre returned the proposals for clarifications with a detailed, three-page list of technical objections, which TNM never even mentions. Why? Because it destroys their neat political storyline.
They amplify the ruling state government, the DMK’s talking points and tweets, but ignore the fact that the letter explicitly says the DPRs need revision, not rejection.
CMRL issued a clarification within 90 minutes, which TNM did not bother to incorporate or even acknowledge in the video.
MOHUA flagged severe issues in ridership projections, Right-of-Way dimensions, and physically impossible alignments – none of which appear anywhere in TNM’s video.
If this is an explainer video from a portal that asks for funding from viewers to support “independent journalism” for a “healthy democracy”, well, it is just shamelessly asking people to fund their lies and propaganda.
Population Criteria: The Convenient Half-Truth
TNM acts as if population was the only reason raised and even then, misrepresents the policy. They harp endlessly on 2011 census data but never disclose the fact that the policy criteria were one of several remarks, not the deciding factor.
Cities like Agra and Bhopal were also initially returned because of population and were later approved after corrective revisions.
The Tamil Nadu DPR inflated numbers beyond believable limits, including Coimbatore’s fantasy 6 lakh daily ridership – higher than Chennai’s actual ridership with 4× the population.
Population was barely a footnote. TNM turned it into the story’s hero.
The Most Damning Technical Failures Are Conveniently Hidden
TNM completely sidesteps the biggest, most embarrassing flaw in the Tamil Nadu DPR – 79% of Coimbatore’s proposed metro alignment has a Right-of-Way below the mandatory minimum.
What didn’t make it to the TNM video:
The central government’s letter points to specific corridors where construction is physically implausible:
- On the Old Post Office Road (Coimbatore Junction to Ramakrishna Mills), the RoW is a mere 7 meters.
- On Nawab Hakim Road, the RoW is between 10-12 meters.
- On Big Bazaar Street and Oppanakara Street, the RoW varies from 12 to 22 meters.
The state government has proposed a metro line through streets that are too narrow to build it. The Centre has essentially asked, “How do you plan to construct an elevated metro in a space where there is physically no room for it?”
Metro pillars cannot be built on roads that can’t hold them. You cannot pass a multi-ton rail system through roads that physically cannot fit it.
But Pooja Prasanna mentions none of this. Because once you include these facts, the narrative collapses.
The Ridership Scandal: Silence, Because It’s Inconvenient
TNM loudly shouts “political vendetta” but quietly conceals the most farcical metric in the DPR:
Coimbatore Metro DPR claims 6,00,000 daily riders.
For context, we have Chennai Metro (approx 10 million people) having a ridership of 4,00,000 daily and Bengaluru Metro (approx 13 million people) having a ridership of 5,00,000 daily.
The Fairy Tale Timeline
The state government promised a three-year completion for a 34-km project, most of which requires complex land acquisition. Given Tamil Nadu’s own abysmal track record with land acquisition (see: Parandur Airport), this timeline is a fantasy. The Centre called out this delusion.
Yet TNM wants people to believe the Centre is “anti-Tamil” because it questioned a blatantly inflated fantasy number.
What we saw was stenography for propaganda.
The Hypocritical Plea for Funds Amidst Shoddy Work
TNM has the audacity to spend over one minute, a sixth of the video’s runtime, begging for subscriptions and funds. They preen about being “independent” and not taking money from governments yet are willing to become an unpaid propagandist for one.
If they want people to fund their “independent journalism,” perhaps they should start practicing it. Independence means chasing down the full story, not just parroting the talking points of a state government. It means reading the Central Government’s three-page letter instead of just the Chief Minister’s inflammatory tweet. The video was a perfect example of how to launder political propaganda under the guise of “news and explanations”.
Not an Explanation, An Exploitation.
The News Minute did not “explain” anything. They exploited the public’s legitimate desire for development to fuel a partisan fire. They took a legitimate process of technical scrutiny; a process applied to metro projects in BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh (Agra) and Karnataka (Bengaluru) and twisted it into a saga of discrimination.
The real story was never about a rigid population rule. It was about a state government submitting a shoddy, unworkable DPR, and a media ecosystem rushing to defend that incompetence with cries of victimhood.
TNM just pushes propaganda. And in doing so, they fail their viewers, every single time, and also fail the very principles of journalism they claim to uphold.
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