India’s capital (New Delhi) and India’s Media

I am back to the blog after long. Interestingly my last post was on eve of general elections in 2009 and this post is on the eve of next general elections of 2014. So 5 long years passed !!

Not that I deliberately chose this time, but I felt compelled to express my self about certain things I keep on hearing in the media.Indian media (and for that matter people) is known to be stereo typing, they create loud noise,hue & cry, build an image about people, things, places etc and continue to harness it , blatantly & shamelessly.

One of such examples is about city of Delhi. Media keeps on tagging Delhi as “Most unsafe” , “Most corrupt” and what not in their news, never highlighting good things about the city. And most of the time being blatant & wrongly putting facts giving bizarre and silly arguments (as listed below the first item).

Few examples below

1)    I was aghast by this and this prompted me to write this post.

After AAP’s win in Delhi assembly elections in December-2013, A journalist (Kumar ketkar if I remember name correctly on CNN-IBN) said on TV, “ parties like Aam admi party can win in Delhi but cannot be successful is Mumbai as Mumbai is a city of practical & mature people and such fairytale to remove corruption and clean politics by a new party will not be taken well by mature mumbaikars.

My question to Mr ketkar “ Does maturity lie in not supporting promises to clean politics and rather lies in supporting social hatred and violence against own countrymen?. No points for guessing, the biggest trump card to win “Mature “ Mumbai voters is to spread social hatred, indulge in street violence and goondagardi which has been the biggest political issue there.

Here I don’t intend to undermine Mumbai or its residents but intent is to rather show mirror to the particular journalist.

Not only Mr ketkar, I heard similar comments elsewhere also denying any credit to Delhites of choosing an alternate politics, rather branding them as non mature for not giving majority to traditional cong & bjp. Thank god Delhiets are not “mature” enough.

My point is here not to demean Mumbaikars. But I want to ask why Delhietes are not being given credit for opting an alternate brand of politics (Which may or may not prove to be successful), and rather they are being dubbed as “immature”. Hence a positive is turned into negative. 

2) Now An example how Delhi is denied credit it deserves.Delhi has been the rebellion capital of india where youth power of India is on full display. Youth of Delhi is well aware, mature and comes out of their comfort zone to demand justice for others and protest against the system unlike other “mature” cities. But Delhi is never given credit for such passionately display of its people against the social evils.

Be it Anna movement, India against corruption, Youth for equality movement against blatant reservations, whether Nirbhaya case or Jessica case. Youth of Delhi has always come and shown its power. On the contrary Anna movement was flopped in other cities when once he did his Anshan outside Delhi.

And again Delhi is never given credit and was rather dubbed as “angry” city  by Media (CNN IBN in this case). Hence yet again this positive  of Delhi is turned into negative.And other cities are never criticized for being apathetic to various social issues.

3) Delhi being showcased as “most unsafe” city of India. And when one looks for the basis, The basis are always “opinion polls” and not the hard data. And “opinions” are always driven by what media shows day in and day out.

“An autowallah brushes against the feet of a woman while taking out some material from under the back seat of auto becomes a national headline like ”Woman molested in Delhi”, as the front page news. But the rape & murders happening in other parts of india don’t even find a mention forget about being in headline. As per the statistics there is a rape in India every half an hour hence about 50 rapes take place in this country daily, but none of that finds even mention and autowallah-brushes-hands becomes the National Headline News.

Agreed, crime numbers in Delhi is higher than some other cities but on per capita basis its lower than most other cities. Only thing is that media shows Delhi news day in and day out and this may form opinions in people and these opinions very much created by media are the basis of the opinion polls which further create opinions. And his cycle goes on.

Above three points are just few examples. i am sick of such biased and stereotypical attitude of media towards Delhi. One reason may be that 90% of national media is based in Delhi. And that good news is no news, they have to show bad news only.

Another factor is also that there is no Local pride in Delhi unlike cities of Mumbai, Kokata, Chennai etc, which of course is not a bad thing, but it simply doesn’t exist in Delhi. There are no “ketkars” from Delhi who will put shameless and laughable opinions just to support his city and demean others. Also In Delhi there are no “locals” or “outsiders”. This is another outstanding feature of this city which media fail to recognize due to their biased attitude.

Objective of this post is not to demean other Indian cities but to help Delhi get its due respect as one of the greatest cities in the world which has historically been capital of this country under many dynasties, which constantly faced barbaric attacks , destroyed and rebuilt and stood from the Ashes and it today stands tall as the capital of the largest democracy in the world.