Talking Shop: Cacophony and cronies

"Politics is the art of looking for

trouble, finding it everywhere,

diagnosing it incorrectly and

applying the wrong remedies."

—Groucho Marx

Typically, I don't write about politics or on people who wield the batons that police our daily lives, but things have come to a stead where I am forced to make a nameless exception today. Names do not really matter anyway, for every other day we all personally see the levels of cacophony and ignominy increasing on any news channel that we dare to remote on to. There's dissonance and shouting all around, and now the telly zenith has been achieved—people are screaming about 'aloos' (potatoes) turning into gold, ranting about majestically-scampering cheetahs, all but spitting on communal meltdowns and cursing a redoubtable economy. Hell, sometimes we even saunter on about who fetched God from where and by what means of transport; or where some Goddesses cried eons back, creating rivers that are causing today's floods, whenever one laments again and sheds heavenly tears that turn into horror for us.

Mercifully, many of these enlightened debaters are oft-proven wrong on live TV, but like the proverbial phoenix, they rise from the ashes and the raucous screams continue on some other channel which claims to have 'Breaking News'. I have to admit that the world has changed and should accept this new reality as today's grim truth, but what gets my goat is when 20-somethings—our shining future, no less—question leaders at live public gatherings, quoting these same TV screamers and repeating their asinine statements. This is scary and exposes not just how deep the rot has set in, but also why. This dangerous and shameless brainwashing being indulged in today is a carefully-thought-out strategy, aimed at grabbing eyeballs, making headlines and eventually ascending to offices of power. Who is to blame for all of this? Well, we all are—our gullible people, our craze for headlines, our politicians and we ourselves.

Changing times

Clearly, the times have changed, quite dramatically so. If someone so much as goes on a march of solidarity and stretches his calf muscles for a few days, others react by exercising their vocal chords and using their vivid imagination, sometimes bordering on the absurd. So absurd that the highest apex body in the land, the Hon'ble Supreme Court, was forced to take notice last week, pass stern observations and even warn of the imposition of a legal framework to quell the morass.

Expressing anguish and displeasure over unfair and crude expressions by panellists during live debates on TV channels, the SC called the visual media the "chief medium of hate speech" and questioned the authorities on why they were "standing by as a mute witness when all this is happening", treating this as "a trivial matter". Pointing out that "hate speeches can be in different forms, a sort of ridicule (to) a community", the bench of Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy said such a spread through the visual media could have a "devastating effect", that they inclined to regulate such debates and asked the authorities whether they proposed to come up with processes and means to regulate such programs. To drive the point home, the Justices underlined that "hate drives TRPs, drives profit" and warned they would consider laying down guidelines to hold the fort until legislature comes up with laws to curb the menace.

These are startling observations, but not surprising, and I use that last exclamation only because we have all been guilty of quietly watching this degeneration in our visual media channels, most of which continue to vomit out trash in the name of 'Breaking News' and 'Exclusives'. 'Something's Got to Give' is the name of a loveable movie; and something is about to give in this loveless business of hate-squelching.

It is not just politics

It is not just the realm of politics that this rot is seeping into, spewing vitriol and causing (f)ire. Educational institutions and the youth are also being exploited and (ab)used to create headlines and spur a general feeling of mistrust and stoke hatred. A recent instance is that of supposed widespread MMS leaks in Chandigarh, purportedly involving lewd videos of college girls. Thousands of students took to the streets in protest and belched their innards to the media. The media, in turn, reported for hours that 60 such video messages involving college girls were allegedly leaked on social media, making our youth go further antsy and berserk. It eventually turned out that one single girl had shared her own personal video with her boyfriend, and this gentleman turned out to be crass enough to leak it on social media—so much for our celebrated 'Breaking News'.

Another incident transpired earlier at a high school in Amritsar, where two messages were received regarding a prestigious school, one threatening a bomb blast and another about firing in the same school. Both were widely shared on WhatsApp and reported on news channels throughout the day and late into the evening. The posts on social media featured the Pakistani flag, with the dire threats being written in English and Urdu. A day after the hoax threat went viral and the media went crazy, the Punjab Police detained three Class IX students, who had allegedly started the rumour just for fun.

Bit by bit, a misinformed youth brigade is being cultivated to faithfully follow in the footsteps of some leaders who are making a mockery of the ideals and values that were enshrined in Indian politics. Remember, it was Leader of the Opposition Atal Bihari Vajpayee who attended a United Nations summit after being requested by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to do so, for Vajpayee was as gifted verbally as he was morally respected globally. If that be a backdrop, we have indeed fallen quite a bit.

Where do we go now?

Quite obviously, we need to walk a higher path—morally, culturally, intellectually and religiously. And politically, at the very least on the telly, especially because of two clarion things... One, the Global Village is watching and smirking aloud, with much of our country's visual media now the laughing stock of the journalistic world. And two, because our tomorrow and future, the youngsters watching these channels and reacting in kind (as hot blood always has) are getting increasingly misinformed, tainted and outright obnoxious and dangerously volatile, as is society at large. We should remember that both politics and the media were created over centuries to serve one sole purpose; to guide the people and ensure that public awareness is sacrosanct and remains that way. When some from these two pillars of any democracy work at purposes crossly tangential to the very reason for their existence, there is a problem at hand, a very serious and deep-seated malaise that needs to be rooted out like any similar cancer.

I like quotes, for they tell us what our fathers and forefathers were thinking, and convey to us where they sometimes went wrong. I can quote Winston Churchill, hardly a supporter of India, who once said: "A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't..." Me, I will settle for a few who predict nothing of the future, so long as they don't conspire to create unrest and mayhem today. Or I will settle for anyone who agrees with Martin Luther King Jr., who once famously said: "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because (his) conscience tells him he is right."

You can take a call too—for each day is affecting our lives, and that of future generations of Indians. Take that call soon, as if your life depends on it, because it does.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal