Should we put constraints on media for national security?

Hi all,

Been very busy with usual stuff that i have not been able to blog at all. Couple of times it was so bad that i abandoned posts midway.... so here i thought i'll put up something for the sake of continuity, and of course for you to ruminate... this is my speech for the PG Cult'09 elocution competition.

Our Preamble states that India is a sovereign, socialist, democratic, republic and as citizens of a free country we are endowed with certain fundamental rights. The most prominent among them is the right to free speech and therein resides the premise of an independent and strengthened media in the country. Of course, it would be inessential to exemplify the virtues of free and fair media in democracy, a debate long settled by Edmund Burke, when he said looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.’

However, in this cacophony of freedom and fairness, a growing section of the populace has started whispering another word too. That word is: Accountability. The world of media and information has changed dynamically from the good old days of Doordarshan and Akashvani. Predictably, the internet is at the forefront of this revolution but there has been enormous development and repackaging of existing channels, with news channels mushrooming overnight and tabloids raking in readership numbers unheard of. The media has undergone an era of crass commercialization and the emergence of 24x7 journalism has guaranteed that anything and everything under the sun is breaking news in India.

The recent Mumbai attacks revealed this dirty underbelly of Indian media, with each TV channel, tabloid and news forum competing with each other to bring the latest piece of action, much in the same vein of reporting the live scorecard of an India-Australia cricket match. Of course, it didn’t occur to them that revealing key operational details of the mission, committing diplomatic farces like commenting on the nationality of attackers 2 hours into the attack, would compromise the diplomatic and military actions taking place on the ground. If you have the guts to pompously announce that the attackers are watching your channel to get ground level information then where are your sensibilities in regulating what you reveal on the show? When it comes to national security, free and fair reporting is a flimsy garb for sensationalism and irresponsibility.

Unfortunately, it seems that the media has entered into a vicious cycle of generating news and creating hype, for sustenance and only external hands can rein them in. If we can have regulators for content on movies then shouldn’t we ensure that the way the sensitive information is presented to the world also be guarded closely and monitored. Lest of course, ladies and gentleman, the next time you want the attackers to have a free and fair chance at fighting back, the media should indeed be constrained when reporting about issues of national security.

Mera Bharat Mahan!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I am holidaying here at home and that’s the reason why I am away from blogosphere. It’s a week since those darned exams got over and I had an uneventful journey back while Mumbai has had an eventful week, which by the way it could have done without.
I was watching this crazy series on HBO titled “Mumbai Calling”. It ranted for an hour about domineering Indian parents and I found it tough hiding a smile whilst all this mummy-papa bashing was going on. Funny the series should worth mention here except that my parents have been fussing over me all this time and I am literally hiding from them, to pen down my thoughts. And yes, I just finished an iconic battle with a couple of cockroaches for territorial supremacy in my room. Full of bloodshed, like a Bruce Willis movie, so lets skip the gory details.
My thoughts are extremely scrambled right now. Unsurprising, you would say but it’s probably got to do with the huge backlog of events or the enormity of the events that actually happened. I have been in Mumbai for 4 months only, having come to love the city for whatever little I have seen of it and this attack (or the set of attacks) left me shocked, searching for contacts frenetically and trying to find out the ground situation. I wish to express my heartfelt condolences towards the deceased and salute the spirit and courage of our security forces, whose efforts thwarted the terrorists from carrying out any more heinous acts.
While I am trying to read a book side-by-side, the events that took place today still jangle my mind. Oh the shenanigans of Indian politics and democracy!!! A major security lapse has been represented as a government failure, used by dysfunctional spokespersons as tool to grab airtime and converted into a mega serial of the “saas-bahu” genre by our venerable news networks. I am left wondering if the Indian people have actually become so gullible that feeding them so much of noise in the form of news will make them forget the actual issue at hand. If so, then God tussi great ho.
While nationalistic jingoism was at its peak when the commandos killed the terrorists and emerged victorious from the “battlefields” and the past few days of frustration against the political classes, I am pretty sure that all this will die down in a couple of weeks. Blasphemous eh?? Well it’s just a question of time before the necessities of life and the challenges of succeeding in a billion-strong populace take hold of us and back we go on our daily pursuits of roti, kapda aur makaan. That this compulsion will be repackaged as the Mumbai or Jaipur “spirit” or the “resilience” of Ahmedabad, telecast back to us and will make us feel proud, has no consequence for us.
We have become institutionalized, and that is the root cause of our bull headed behavior. We are expected to live from one terrorist attack to another. Each time we hope that we are not at the wrong place at the wrong time. Feel bad and forget it, it’s a mantra we have practiced with perfection. But what happens when the luck runs out? Simple. Someone else takes our place, expresses sympathies and goes back to their 24x7 struggle for survival.
Till this attitude remains I have only one thing to say. Mera Bharat Mahan!!!
Now let me get back to my book, need to finish it before the terrorists find me.