The Mega Media Blackmail

“I sleep, with the doors tightly shut,

I sleep, with the intruder alarm aptly in place.

I sleep, with a gun under my pillow,

I sleep, in my panic room”

The “so-insinuated” callous decision of the Supreme Court to execute combined with the “showcased” lack of sympathy by the President to commute or pardon has been widely reported by the media, so Yakub Memon has definitely earned some commiserations among the de facto rulers of the democracy, the people. How can a terrorist who has waged a war with the country, engaged innocent civilians into warfare, bred fear into the hearts of children earn such sympathy amongst so many of us? How are we able to judge the contention that he is innocent? Is he our true friend, were we involved in the investigation and interrogation when it was in progress, or were we the court judge who had to make the hard decision to grant the verdict to execute him provided all the necessary evidence? Then how come we know that he is not so evil and is being wrongly sentenced? On what basis is our opinion grounded so firmly? How come I know I am going to protest in support of a man who has hardly been closer than a thousand kilometer of radius of my existence? Our sentiments have been swayed to take a stand by the watchdogs of democracy, the media, which has the kept the most powerful and the fearless of men in check and has kept its liability firmly to the common man.

Now, here is a straight forward question, how has media successfully convinced us that the convicted terrorist deserves some mercy at least a commutation? A father breaking down on seeing his daughter, a pregnant wife left alone in an unfamiliar land, an innocent man being betrayed by his own treacherous brother to take the blame for mistakes that were never his own, sounds familiar? These were the tactics that have been widely used to create a picture of a man, who has been innocently convicted for “masterminding” an act of terrorism that has left many families destroyed. Did he leave his pregnant wife behind to fight against the atrocious actions of a colonial power like our freedom fighters or to protect a motherland from external aggression like our brave soldiers? But he left her behind to create more such pregnant women waiting for their husbands to return home, to create more daughters who may breakdown when their fathers name might be mentioned. The innocent father, husband, brother image so actively publicized by the media has nothing but emotionally blackmailed us to ignore the actions of a man who has been responsible for conspiring and executing the killings such fathers, husbands and brothers.

My intent here is not to express my opinions on the rights and wrongs of the verdict upheld or to gather support for or against Memon. I am simply trying to analyze the role the media is playing in this particular scenario. Let me draw a parallel; remember the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight in 1999? The demand was to release the prisoners from Indian jails in return for the hostages. At the time of negotiations, the media took a stand, it made the country sympathize with the passengers on board, it made us empathize with the families of the hostages by telecasting the terrors of these families in losing their loved ones and through these actions media justified its stand to make the government listen to voices of the people to release the prisoners in return for securing the hostages on board. Which the government did, not doing so would have been anti-national at least after all the polarization the media had done. It was appreciable of the media to take a stand and do what they did, but the story doesn’t end here, once the terrorists were released and the hostages secured, the media had taken a different stand altogether, it lashed out at the government for making compromises and bending to the whims of the terrorists, it now started telecasting the atrocities of the men who were released and spoke in volumes about the weakness of the government to stand its ground, releasing terrorists who were captured with great difficulty in return for a few Indian lives was suddenly made to seem like a very bad idea!

Today, the media seems to be preoccupied with granting some relief to an innocent Memon, now an interesting question is, if Memons life is spared from the death sentence, will the media hold on to its stand or would it make a 180 degree flip like the earlier case and start to showcase victims of the 1993 bombings and make the decision to spare Memons life a mistake? If so, then for justice it is but a lose-lose situation. Media has manipulated us to support relief for Memon but tomorrow, it will make us feel otherwise if his life is spared, do we have any opinion of our own after our thoughts have been so heavily polarized by this Mega Media Blackmail?

Decentralization: The Story of a Villagers Abuse of Power

“What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism”

In light of Gandhi’s views that local participation being essential for democracy and the importance of a Panchayati Raj system of village councils, with village as a basic unit of governance and politics has been the objective behind the 73^rd amendment that has left the system of Indian polity transformed forever. Local participation, the importance of “local opinions” and “local expertise” to solve local problems at the local level, the logic may seem undeniable. Here is the question, the local people understand the local problem better, true,  but are they in a position to decide upon a solution for such a problem, do they have the knowledge, the proficiency and the knowhow to actually work up a solution and see it through?

Let us now imagine a typical villager, a potential candidate to enhance the essence of democracy by actively taking part in the grass root level government. Our typical villager is now entrusted with the responsibility of choosing a panch and a sarpanch. Being a typical Indian villager, our character is plagued by prejudices based on caste and faith, which makes the typical Indian villager susceptible to appeals along the communal lines. The differences in human society which is hard lined into them since birth, building up an attitude intolerant to these differences and proliferate the superiority of one’s caste or faith over the other, empowering this typical Indian villager, who embraces provincialism and communalism that addles the attempt to make a choice in exercising the political right to vote is nothing but an abuse of the personal power our villager is being entrusted with. And also, by choosing someone who was alluring such votes along the communal differences, who will abuse power during their tenure of office nurturing and further deepening the communal strains to hold the vote bank intact, thus our typical Indian villager has fostered communalism; our system has created a means to empower communalism. Now even a greater evil comes when chance places our typical Indian villager as a potential contender for panch or a sarpanch. Our typical villager, who has not been educated enough to think clearly to overcome the narrow-mindedness of a villager, who has still not discontinued the hereditary village temperament of tagging fellow villagers on the basis of their birth, how can we expect our villager to be any different or how can we trust our villager to handle the cornerstone of governance of a country? 

The image of a typical Indian villager was created by me after I read an article titled “Panchayat polls worsen tension” dated 30^th May, The Hindu, where the deciding factor of the village sarpanch was a 30 year old disputed mosque in the Atali village. The elections that is yet to be conducted, its fair and simple what is determining the verdict, one set of voters who want the mosque to remain there and the other set who would want the mosque ruined, whichever opinion would muster the maximum sympathies will define a winner, whose only motive would be to decide/fight for or against the existence of a mosque.  So, we have empowered our villager, to do what? To determine the fate of a Mosque! Though the idea of decentralization was introduced with pure intentions it has been belittled by the narrow mindedness of the targeted audiences and hence a novel idea goes to waste. Though it is acknowledged that education is a part of empowerment, it is important that education itself is stressed before empowerment and also a quality education is imparted that would make them adhere to logic, sense and merit that would vest our typical Indian villager with the power to overcome and confront the communal evils of the society at the very place where it begins, at the very roots. Empowerment without this quality education would be similar to pushing instruments of destruction right into the hands of a devil. Empowering our typical Indian villager the way we are doing now we promote marginalization and to a greater extent communalism. Hence without proper understanding if our villagers are constitutionally empowered due to the efforts towards decentralization we end up enhancing and giving a berth to localism, ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism.

Prelude to War

“Whom the Gods love die Young”

Nothing is merrier than being young with the world on your shoulder; it displays a possibility so seductive, you start to feel that there must be something more important that you could be doing than just studying for an exam. Everyone has a reason to do something; the reason may range from a simple satisfaction in doing the work, to maybe a responsibility one could not simply avert, or from recent revelations probably an attempt to defend ones ideology. With so much to my credentials, it would not be a surprise if many attempt to ponder upon my own motivations. What made me work for the Students’ council for year or with the Gymkhana for more than two years? Why was I with Voices? What made me actively help in managing the Scholarship hike campaign when the nationwide protests were declared? What makes me lead when I could be happy following?

I have always walked that line very carefully, keeping secrets rather than telling lies, and here there is no secret to divulge. I have no ideology to defend; I am a person with a “mindset” rather than a “set mind”, this makes me adhere to sense and logic and accommodate conflicting notions without any pride and prejudice.   The unity in our campus that breaks the diversity in age, language and culture, or the position you hold here, when it comes to common problem, like mess subsidy or scholarship hike, when we all marched together, when we had a common issue to fight for, has always fascinated me. Anything done for the welfare of a larger community than oneself reduces the burden of one’s own consciousness and gives one the inner peace and outer strength to be of more service to the institute and then to the nation as a whole. While the unity in diversity fascinates me, I have grown to respect the diversity as well. To preserve the space for individual choices must not come at the cost that compromises on the unity; this might sometimes require us to keep some forces at check. The collective mind of such forces has no ultimate desire but a constant temptation for dividing the society, an obsession against the prevalence of unity.

Poisoning a popular mind, only a fool blames the victim. I am not someone’s puppet; I am not someone’s messiah, I will lead when I am sure of myself and seek guidance whenever necessary, I have always done what satisfies me and would continue to do so, no one dictates me as much as I dictate my own happiness and personal satisfaction.  I prefer to stand alone to preserve the unity rather than to stand together and break it.

It is not that I am too young to pick a side, but it is just that I am too wise not to pick one.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

“The woods are lovely, Dark and Deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

The time between bed and sleep is the worst of the day. The past comes back with a vengeance- the mistakes, the misery, the could-haves and should-haves. Try as you might, you simply cannot close your eyes and go to sleep. A time when the private hell opens up right before your eyes, a private hell is something you lived with alone; even when sometimes someone else’s casual questions nudged old, raw wounds within yourself.

Dully and with only the vaguest of reasoning, you seek out a place where you could be unknown and which, as well, is unfamiliar to you. Familiar things, their touch, their sound, their sight, had become an ache of heart all together which had filled the waking day and penetrated sleep. Strangely, in a way shamed you. There were never nightmares; only the steady procession of events on some unforgettable days. Days, that relive inside you as memories in the day and dreams in the night. And hence keeps you up and occupied till dawn, as you feel dawn gives you a sense of security as if the perils of the night are over. And in the stolen moments of the night you try to sleep and probably get a little shut eye only to be woken up perspiring and wishing for someone besides you warm to hug.

There were certain moments in life where you cannot help but feel like a character in a motion picture acting out a scenario that was written by somebody else. Probably because sometimes you responded in certain ways, leave alone others, you never expected yourself to be reacting, or sometimes when things happened too fast that you wished you could stop the clock for a while and try to take in everything. Miles to go down the memory lane, as time tries slowly to fade away the intensity of such incidents, the road not taken might seem a distress, and for you were the lonely traveler there. Miles along the road not taken, lonely, with no one to tie a bandage around your foot when a glass piece went in, lonely, when you limped along the rest of the miles seeking support on the old grown trees who lived alone long enough to care for no one anymore, limping along to seek out a dream which you always wanted but now fear would come true.    

But then, there is a mile I go before I sleep, down the road I walk not alone, just to see her smile and wave goodnight, just to see her turn back and give me that extra glance, just to see her smile one last time for the day before I see her smile yet again in my dreams. For once, the mile to go before I sleep is when reality seems better than dreams, when aspirations are strengthened and ambitions seem worth achieving. The mile I walk to see her off, I feel the raindrops in a dessert of drought, I see fireflies in a world of darkness, I see a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless planet. En route the miles to go before I sleep, it is when I realize the pleasurable attractions of the world waiting for us at the end of the road not taken, as I walk along confidently holding her hand to meet out the ending, the happy ending. If things are not happy at the end then it is not the end, then there are yet Miles to Go Before I Sleep with a lot of promises to keep.