Every time I pick up a newspaper, I sense an
increased sense of numbness and indifference developing around me. It seems we
are getting more and more self-engrossed with every passing day.
The importance of News has leveled down to
mere stress buster for many just like those mills and boon and mindless stories
of the kind become the refuse for students during exam season. While we consume
news, somewhere inside we secretly feel content because we believe that tragedies
of the sort happens to certain people and we are positively different from
“them”. We forget that we are the part
of the same society; we are watching on tv and renouncing.
Everyday, the newspapers and numerous twenty-four
hour news channels in India are overflowing with stories of murder, burglary,
theft, rape, frauds, scams and anti government protests but there is hardly any
positive news on development or government reforms. The exact same crimes and
the exact same stories everyday, which are crisply articulated by our hard
working journalists and fed to us everyday, day after day with the only change
in names and dates.
Surprisingly like most others, such news
does not make me sad or enraged anymore. We all seem completely indifferent on
such matters and towards those victims and a lot of us consume news as
entertainment.
For example, I read an article today where
a teenage girl from Delhi accused the father of physical, mental and sexual
harassment and next to it a new report on Arushi Talwar case stating that on
the night of murder, the parents of Aarushi googled murder techniques on their
computer. Such stories have become a norm in our society. In fact these crimes
turn into trends for example the trending rape cases and the children in
borewells trend a while ago and the domestic help abuse trend before that.
Apart from these issues being the trademark
of an ailing society, the bigger issue is the way it is affecting our
sensitivity, morals and our efforts to eliminate the ills.
Unfortunately, the daily dose of crime
report has made us numb and inconsiderate. All that matters to us is our
personal safety, security and wellbeing and in the process we forget that we
are all connected with each other for our social and economic wellbeing.
India is a big country with a bigger
population. It’s a big chaos where everyone is struggling to survive, grow and
grab every possible opportunity. It’s a country of intense competition. Economically,
we are one of the fastest growing nations in the world. But socially, we are
still lagging far behind. We are poor, our living standard is one of the lowest,
sex ratio one of the worst, poverty ratio one of the highest and corruption
level at among the top in the entire world. We are a society with huge socio economic
disparities and the differences won’t go unless we become sensitive towards the
problems. We need to give a closer look to such matters that are affecting
anyone around us and figure out a solution for each problem. News is not all
about entertainment and it is definitely not something to watch and forget. News requires reaction. Only a collective
social sensitivity can lead to a better individual life.
