A shady nexus

Ok, so two months have passed since India's latest (and worst) terrorist attack. While NDTV dutifully exercised its monopoly over English news reporting, other channels (notably Star TV) pulled no punches in Bollywood-ising the unfortunate incident. While the general coverage of the incident was quite poor in India I thought (I abhor Barkha Dutt and her pseudo-intellectual patronisation of anybody remotely more intelligent than her!), a lot of outrage was - rightly - expressed by news reports on how this incident was so brazenly allowed to occur. The almighty and all-powerful politicians were being fired left, right and centre, and angry citizens aired their views on generously provided air time by channels such as NDTV.

I noted of course how people such as Bal Thakrey and similarly jobless yobs kept quiet on the incident, but was surprised why no news channel reported this. (Given that until the attacks occurred, the same yobs were getting high beating up innocent North Indians who chose to make something of their lives by arriving in Bombay)

Two months later, it's all back to business as usual of course for the news channels. Nationalism and patriotism is history once more, as media dedicates its energy to resume covering the nitty-gritty of the Indian polity. Today I watched in horror as some yobs (belonging to another one of those yobby, tin-pot political parties in middle India) decided to beat up women because they were in a pub....And we're back to what we do best. While the Honourable Prime Minister gets his heart fixed, and the country is without a leader, some goons in Bangalore say, "fu&* this...I'm bored...let's go and beat up some people..." No arrests will be made obviously. Obviously the media will report this and obviously Barkha Dutt will gather another "We The People" meeting and enjoy the sound of her own voice.

There is a very shady nexus between the politicians and the media in India, and they both know it exists. The one could not survive without the other. Now you might say that this nexus probably exists in a lot of other (Western) countries, too. True, it might. But the point is that in India we keep going on about sound-bytes like "change", "progress", "India shining"...blaah. The reality is that Indians are incapable of any meaningful progress. And that's because we're an incredibly selfish people.....