Random Musings

One of the articles in today's The Hindu was titled "Mamta gets Pranab's letter seeking support". My instant reaction to this was "So what!?", as I am sure it would be for most people. Really, who cares about the presidential elections!? They did hog as much limelight in the last few weeks as they could, but now that its clear that Pranab dada is going to be the next "head" of the country, P.A. Sangma's valiant efforts being futile, does it makes sense for an esteemed publication to carry such a useless piece of junk on its front page? Personally, I feel it doesn't even merit a place in the classifieds. Many stories buried in the centre folds merit that place. Why would it be essential for us to know how the UPA is inflating Mamta didi's ego? Time and again I wonder if our media has got its priorities right. It took three months for the news about the African student beaten inhumanely in Punjab to make it to the mainstream media.

Talking about hogging the limelight, the shameful Guwahati molestation case has captured the nation's attention in the last few days. Nothing new or more can be said or discussed about it than already has been. Here again the television news channel displayed tremendous insensitivity by replaying the video of the incident over and over and over again, with poor attempts to conceal the victim. They claim that the aim is to highlight the offenders, which could easily have been done by just showing their faces repeatedly, instead of playing the incident's video again and again to cater to voyeuristic tendencies of the audience. But what I have been wondering is that while everyone worth his or her weight in salt, from politicians to members of Women's Commission and other NGOs and activists, Police officials and even Mahesh Bhatt, has discussed the issue on national television till the cows come home, I wonder has any thought been given to the victim? Justifiable angst and anger has been stirred in the masses against the offenders, but I just hope someone has bothered to help the victim through this trauma. I am not sure if adequate mechanism or protocol exists in our country to help victims of of such traumatic crimes. I wonder if the victim has received any post trauma rehabilitation, counselling to deal with the experience and repair the emotional and mental damage following such a harrowing episode.