Hours of crisis at both national and international level. Naxalite, artificial food scarcity, communalism, border problem with aggressive china and disintegrating Pakistan; It would be far better for India if its government gets off those commanding heights of the economy, and addresses basic problem like health care, illiteracy etc. How to make accountability of the corrupt, self-serving political and bureaucratic elite to ensure social and economic justice for those it had claimed ? Cut the services provided to officers and make them managers. Its time for Inclusive and Integrated development.
I had faith in the people. They had good wishes for upheaval of everyone but the path design requires merit not popular support. Hence, I fear populist democracy as sometimes behave like celebrity culture.
Looking for guidance towards west is hopeless. The uniqueness is in individual not in the society. A group is diverse with its unit having own characteristic. Hence westernized concept of One language, people custom and religion does not hold true in India. For the west, democracy means believing in exactly the same things that they believe. Is that really democracy?
Our mass media is far away from the mass realities. It seems like a conspiracy of silence and a conspiracy of denial. Common people angst can be against such corrupt system as all of us remain angry against a system, in which we work because we find injustice is done to deserving people. And voice is raised when wrong is done to people with money by people with power.
Reputed Journalist, P Sainath puts that responsibility if media is - 'to signal the weakness in society. That remains a minimum duty of a decent press. A society that does not itself, cannot cope. The focus is on the spectacular. The long term trends that spell chaos does not make good copy. '
In his insightful book, 'Everybody loves a good drought', he proclaimed - "But at the best of times, press has viewed drought and scarcity as 'events', not 'process' behind it. And belief that only events make news, not processes, distorts understanding. Some of the best reports on poverty suffer from trying to dramatise it as a event. The real drama is in the processes. In the causes. Deforestation has much to with drought. But being a process it becomes a 'feature'. And then disappears int newspaper ghetto called 'ecology'- presumes to be off interest only to rabid 'Greens'.
It is ridiculous to expect the press to transform reality, but it can contribute a great deal by deepening public understanding of problems. Doing that requires some analytical rigour."
Short Sightedness is not dishonesty. And people blame leaders for it. Leaders are chosen in democracy by people only. Hence wrong decision taken by leaders reflect their own wrong vote in choosing representative. The change is going to happen and You have to swim with the tide. You have to be patient and wise enough to choose the right path. It requires a long term vision and fluidity to go towards optimum solution irrespective of showing loyalty towards any school of thought. This requires media of high integrity and better coverage.
But, this is more idealistic talk appear to me. It requires money to run the newspaper or news channel. TV-18 fired 200 reporters but it didn't become the news. In such market condition, the real news is hiding beneath the financial liabilities. Here is the small article by a journalist on our decaying state of journalism. But people love entertainment more than news, then what is the need of crying out loud here.... I always fail to understand why media has marginalised itself more to elites and have no link to what all hundred of millions of Indian are thinking.
PS: I had compiled + composed this post in the anger our media which fail to highlight the causes of problems. Vikram with his more analytical article shed more light in this case.
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