I wonder whether we Indians realize how fortunate we are. The main problems that occupy national attention right now are whether a controversial author can or cannot come for a literary festival, the all-important question of the army chief’s birthday, and whether a bunch of stone elephants should be covered up with cloth. Oh, and what Priyanka Gandhi is wearing for the campaign. Are we not blessed to have no bigger problems to deal with?
As I struggle to keep the television on and get a little dose of news, I can’t believe the way the media is making a meal of each trivial issue and milking it for all its worth. Yes, I get that freedom of expression is severely and scarily under threat. I also get that the handling of the date of birth fiasco will set a precedent. But I also think that the extent of attention being paid to these issues – perhaps to make for entertaining viewing – is out of all proportion to the criticality. “Has India Failed Rushdie?” Think about whether India’s failed its own ordinary citizens.
In contrast, someone who’s been raped and lies unconscious, unprotected by those who are supposed to protect her, gets a mere minute on the airwaves. Someone should do the math sometime and see whether the media is even close to reflecting the importance of problems as they really exist in real life. And whether they have some responsibility to do so, considering how they shape opinion. Or erode thought, I might say, by sheer dint of repetition.
Is there nothing wrong with a system in which Swapan Dasgupta and Mani Shankar Aiyar trade insults for great entertainment while we never get to hear a shred of world news? Even BBC seems to cover India in a real sense, more than our own television channels do. (Well, except Top Gear). We’ve become a self-absorbed country, focused on the most absurd little things, while problems bigger than all the elephants put together, threaten every aspect of our lives.