The Indian visual media is bona fide middle class one, its main customers are the educated, white collared, secular and urban youths. A large society which could be considered as product the socialists, a generation with Govt employed parents, secure urban upbringing and oblivious of real India. As most of the filmi chaps may say, there are two Indias : India and Bharath , this is that and that is this…blah blah..Sociology they say can be divided in to two types, urban and rural. The multicultural, multilingual and market dominated urban regions is the real Indian Republic envisioned by the constitution. The Govt dominated,laggard and castist rural regions; India, nothing changed here since independence. The disaster is the Republic is a rich minority, which never votes and India a poor Majority, which decides the govt. The Indian Tele media can be categorized into two types, vernacular and English/National. The vernacular ones are directly controlled by the politicians and the national ones are remote cotrolled. The recent Radia Tapes disclosure clearly illustrates the nexus between Business, Broadcasting and the Babus. No one whispered about the media involvement or media ethics, but the 2G accused A. Raja was almost convicted on TV. The entire opposition has got all its ammunition against the big fish P.Chidambarm, legally valid govt correspondence as proof and still none of the media wants him arrested. They don’t even say how he won the election, all that is said its in the courts. By the time the court decide who actually won the election in sivakasi, the next election would come and PC would have complted his five year term as a cabinet minister. The point i want to make is, the Indian media is biased.
It gives only those stories which its customers would like and avoid what its customers would not like. Apart from the regular politics,if it’s the cities, it would be all about its development and pollution and if it’s the villages it would be about innovation, corruption and poverty. The educated youths understanding would never go beyond these and so would be the media coverage. Topics like child labour, Rural dislocation, shrinking agri lands, human trafficking,land grabbing, unmarried partners, minority isolation, rural discriminations, tribal issues and North East India, we hardly see or hear about any of these in so called National media. Naxalism, separatism and indigenous independence struggle not only marks a failed state but marks the failure of autonomous democratic institutions like media. I feel very compelled to quote the great African American Malcom X here.
To prove my point, the way media handled the case of Ruchika Girhotra’s molestation case , the accused was a DGP SPS Rathore who misused his power to escape from justice for 19 years. It was only after 19 year, he was convicted and only after his conviction the movement justice for Ruchika started .The campaign against the DGP went for almost a month. The grief , agony and pain endured by the Girhotra family was empathized by the media . The DGP was by no means was an innocent man and deserved a harsher punishment. A comparison has to made with an another judgment in Vachathi case delivered by a trail court on 29 september 2011 in TamilNadu, 269 odd govt employees of revenue , forest and police department were convicted for repeated rape of 18 tribals girls . The girls were repeatedly raped for one full day, until 9.00 pm. No news about the sentences, meager punishment though; it didn’t make a headline, the urbanite doesn’t care about the forest and tribal and M.Karunanidhi didn’t distribute any free TVs to the tribals. Even before i complete this parah, the second tragedy struck the tribals; Jail term of the first and fourth was suspended by the Madras high court, based on the contention that the two were officers and the investigation officer does not have the governments permission to prosecute them. No permission from the Government, even after 19 Years and no condemnations from the Judge. As the G14 members said, number of judges per Million should be increased; for Justice delayed is Justice denied.
Fine, who is this Mojo Jojo?. He is the villain in the famous American cartoon series power puff girls. Is Anna a villain then; no, Mojo is not human, he is an ape. Anna is an ape, the visual media’s ape, a very shrewd ape who apes a mimic called M.K.Gandhi-a creation of the British print media. Except for the mahars, he is the undisputed mahatma for all indians, no one will loathes him. To start with, he was a simple, secular, non-violent, celibate and a mahatma who fought for the emancipation of the untouchables; this is what the print media of the British India said and Independent India thought us. The truth, he was a racist; he called the native South Africans as kaffirs and half castes, pseudo-secular; Muslims of India feared his religious affinity, castist; he refused to support the Mahar agitation for the right to pray in temples and held a 21 days fast opposing separate Mahar electorates, affluent; even by today’s standard only the elites can afford London education,Pseudo Non-Violent; he appealed Indians to enlist as combatants for WW-I, and probably a Homo..; google Joseph Lelyveld. Was he a real Mahatma? .His Ahimsa and sathyagraha philosophies were alien to South Africa not to India, implementation of these non-violence had the sympathy of the South African press and forced Gen.Smuts to reconcile with Gandhi. The trick worked with British Indian media as well. Anna Hazare too, followed the same route.
Attempts are being made to project Anna Hazzare as the, next undisputable leader of India. Fast and walks have become the order of the day; its being used as a blackmailing tool for petty political purpose. One small team cannot represent a billion individuals and two Bhushans cannot write Laws for India. Their Joke book called Jan Lok Pal bill attempts to supersede the Indian Constitution. Mr Kejriwal may be a chamcha of Anna Hazzare, but it’s highly deplorable to misuse the media and place him above the parliament. The fact that, the parliament above its citizens does not mean any Individual is above it. Politicians can’t claim any superlative status either;for what’s supreme is the constitution not the parliament. The constitution is the fine thread that binds us as equal citizens of one country. If Jan Lok Pal bill aims of a single authority for all the tribulations of this country; then it amounts to tampering of the constitution, the balance of power between Legislature, Executive and Judiciary will be lost. A fight for supremacy between these institutions would result in chaos. It was a foolish decision to Jail Anna Hazzare, it caught the media’s attention and media caught the cosmopolitan’s attention and the foreign media made it a Revolution. Humble request to the media, enough, too much, the acts of your Mojo Jojo is too predictable, show us a different cartoon.
References- Wikipedia, Times of India.
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