by Manish Anand
The Mumbai serial blasts were very much in the making. And, so are many more like that across all parts of India. Security and intelligence experts after hanging their boots had time and again stressed how easily common civilians in India are waiting to be maimed and butchered. Listening and acting on that have become virtues of past with everyone yelling to speak, from rank idiotic stuff to sheer bull-crab, adding to cacophony of public discourse.
Quite expectedly the breed of intellectually bankrupt television journalists with deadened grey cells started yelling their crass “in-depth analysis of blasts” with bemused panelists, soaking into collective surrender of sanity.
News channels have to make fast bucks and deaths on large-scale in India just like a one-day cricket match make the advertisers scurrying for eyeballs. Added to that is the business of SMS – “make your comments heard by SMSing either yes or no to a pointed question irrespective of whether you are capable of answering the question or not". And, why should you feel that you can not answer a question if you are not equipped by skills when the TV anchors can reach to a conclusion with just the skill of speaking and patience for sitting for hours while their beauticians polish them for the camera.
Deaths and disasters are abhorrent for any normal person. A poise of maturity and a determined resolve to fight all odds have been the hallmark of any mature society. Security lapses and intelligence failure are always reasons for terrorist blasts. And, when the nation is at an open war against the known adversary who has succeeded in filtering into the ranks of the minority community who number around one-fifth of the population, it becomes commonsensical that no powerful nation despite all resources can avert a determined bid of terrorists to bleed the nation.
Yes, there has been a justifiable demand for a federal bureau of investigation, but did any of the yelling news channel succeeded in having any fruitful discussion on the subject. The mushrooming madrassas on the border areas of Bangladesh on the Indian side have been the breeding ground of hardened terrorists. Did anyone get a commitment from the politicians of the border states that schools of terrors on Indian soil would be dismantled?
The main suspect, which happens to be Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), still flourishes in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Kerala with the monetary channel funding them flowing without any check from the Gulf countries. Nothing happens on this front as well.
India is blessed with the worst Union home minister, Shivraj Patil, under whose regime the nation has just seen bloodbath in all his tenure, but nothing again happens.
In another two weeks, we shall be dancing to the tune of the shots of Sachin and Sehwag, and the Mumbai nightmare will be a matter consigned to general awareness.
God forbids if there were to be another terror strike at least the News Channels should show bare minimum shame and desist from crass commercial exploits of tragedies. Media is above all not merchants of tragedies!
The Mumbai serial blasts were very much in the making. And, so are many more like that across all parts of India. Security and intelligence experts after hanging their boots had time and again stressed how easily common civilians in India are waiting to be maimed and butchered. Listening and acting on that have become virtues of past with everyone yelling to speak, from rank idiotic stuff to sheer bull-crab, adding to cacophony of public discourse.
Quite expectedly the breed of intellectually bankrupt television journalists with deadened grey cells started yelling their crass “in-depth analysis of blasts” with bemused panelists, soaking into collective surrender of sanity.
News channels have to make fast bucks and deaths on large-scale in India just like a one-day cricket match make the advertisers scurrying for eyeballs. Added to that is the business of SMS – “make your comments heard by SMSing either yes or no to a pointed question irrespective of whether you are capable of answering the question or not". And, why should you feel that you can not answer a question if you are not equipped by skills when the TV anchors can reach to a conclusion with just the skill of speaking and patience for sitting for hours while their beauticians polish them for the camera.
Deaths and disasters are abhorrent for any normal person. A poise of maturity and a determined resolve to fight all odds have been the hallmark of any mature society. Security lapses and intelligence failure are always reasons for terrorist blasts. And, when the nation is at an open war against the known adversary who has succeeded in filtering into the ranks of the minority community who number around one-fifth of the population, it becomes commonsensical that no powerful nation despite all resources can avert a determined bid of terrorists to bleed the nation.
Yes, there has been a justifiable demand for a federal bureau of investigation, but did any of the yelling news channel succeeded in having any fruitful discussion on the subject. The mushrooming madrassas on the border areas of Bangladesh on the Indian side have been the breeding ground of hardened terrorists. Did anyone get a commitment from the politicians of the border states that schools of terrors on Indian soil would be dismantled?
The main suspect, which happens to be Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), still flourishes in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Kerala with the monetary channel funding them flowing without any check from the Gulf countries. Nothing happens on this front as well.
India is blessed with the worst Union home minister, Shivraj Patil, under whose regime the nation has just seen bloodbath in all his tenure, but nothing again happens.
In another two weeks, we shall be dancing to the tune of the shots of Sachin and Sehwag, and the Mumbai nightmare will be a matter consigned to general awareness.
God forbids if there were to be another terror strike at least the News Channels should show bare minimum shame and desist from crass commercial exploits of tragedies. Media is above all not merchants of tragedies!
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