subject: Middle class conscience and Indian Media [print this page] Middle class conscience and Indian Media Middle class conscience and Indian Media
The thing that defines middle class mindset is conscience. That's the one that helps you differentiate between right and wrong and moral and immoral. But the facts that we have been hearing in the forms of stories since time immemorial establish without any doubt in our minds that policemen and politicians of our country neither have a conscience nor a will to develop one.
Now a new addition to it is the media of our country. It has been a mystery, completely out of reach of unravelling even to the best minds of media sorority, as to what is a story worth pursuing and what's not and graver still, which one to give how much importance.
It seems like our country's media is excessively obsessed with issues related to Muslims. Anything that happens to Muslims is worth reporting. It doesn't matter that the country is grappling with excessive heat, floods and other natural calamities or that we are on the verge of one of the worst scams, namely CWG, ever, it's Sohrabbudin's fake encounter that's virtually covering every inch of the available news channels.
Extra-judicial killings or fake encounters have been part of the system pre independence and were duly acknowledged and were made part of the system like everything else that was handed down to us by British. Having said that, there is nothing that can ever justify them, yet the truth is that there is nobody who is willing to stand up against them.
In 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra, who headed the human rights wing of the Akali Dal, issued a press note alleging thousands of police custodial deaths. Khalra claimed that the victims were secretly cremated. Later, CBI confirmed this, stating that 2097 victims of custodial death or fake encounters were in Amritsar district alone. The setback that Khalra had to bear alone was that he too was whisked away to be killed in a fake encounter. Congress ruled the state from 1992 till 1995.
Maya Tyagi's case is world known (her full story- http://bit.ly/bA7UiE ). Her brutal treatment by the police goons who tried to force themselves upon her and later paraded her naked was lauded by the then PM Indira Gandhi who said that she was a woman of dubious character.
Coming back to the present, since 1993 to 2009, a total of 1,224 fake encounter complaints were registered by the National Human Rights commission from across the country. Out of these, Uttar Pradesh, rarely ruled by any other party than Congress, topped the list with a figure of 716. Second place was bagged by Bihar and closely followed by Andhra Pradesh with figures of 79 and 71 respectively.
Chongkham Sanjit, 27 years, was murdered in cold blood by security forces on August 8, 2009 who claimed that he belonged to a separatist group. Manipur police commandos' claim that Sanjit was killed in an armed confrontation is belied completely by the pictures taken by Tehelka journalist, which clearly depicts the commandos approaching an unarmed Sanjit, taking him inside a pharmacy and later bringing out his corpse. Why hasn't media shown any interest in this particular case?
Sohrabbudin was a known goon with innumerable cases against him dealing in serious crimes like murder, abduction and extortion. He also had alleged links with ISI and was on the hot list for arrest by the AP, Rajasthan and Gujarat police. All this absolutely doesn't give a right to kill him in cold blood. All that I'm saying is that there are so many innocent people who are butchered on a daily basis by police merely because they confronted with the beige uniform, I beg Media to pursue their cases.
To conclude, I wish that the media, with the same fervent fervour, could showcase the gurgling clean water of rivers in Gujarat to inspire Sheilaji's dirtiest of dirty Yamuna for which crores and crores have been spent. They could have also highlighted Gujarat's getting prestigious UN Public Service Award for fostering participation in policy-making decisions through innovative mechanisms' or UN Sasakawa Award for outstanding work in the field of disaster management and risk reduction. But no, they choose to devote all their time 24*7 in bashing Narendra Modi for his alleged role in Godhara and completely forgetting Congress's role not only in 1984 but also in sending Indian forces against the LTTE (which I'll personally consider treason) and negating all the good work ever done by a Chief Minister in the history of independent India.
