Mera Bharat Mahaan

Mera Bharat Mahaan...
We are a great nation. We are witnessing a growth rate nearing ten percent. The German luxury carmaker, DaimlerChrysler, has launched the most luxurious car in India. At Rs 5 crore a piece, the upwardly mobile have already begun to queue up. This comes at a time when Saurav Ganguly appears to have regained his form.
Also, when Amitabh Bachchan has been named as the brand ambassador for Uttar Pradesh. And he is happy reciting boring lines of a poem for ‘India Poised” that Times of India has launched.

Selling dreams is no longer the prerogative of Bollywood. On the eve of the New Year 2007, a woman is manhandled outside the gateway to India in Mumbai. A Mumbai daily terms it a national ‘disgrace’. Electronic media picks up the story.
For days together we are told that the Mumbai incidence was not only a shame, but showed how pervert the lower middle class is. The intellectuals collected for such talk shows join the chorus. But none of them have the courage to question the ‘disgrace’ the media (both print and electronic) has instead turned into.

Every day you open the pages of any daily newspaper and you can count the semi-nude or scantily clad pictures of women flashed throughout. On one such day I counted 62 pictures of semi-clad women in an English daily. Switch on your TV and the chances are you see semi-naked girls gyrating to lousy music.I am repeatedly told that this is the new India.

Let us look at the other picture. If the child of a Chief Executive Officer of a big business house is kidnapped, the media goes berserk. Breaking news is flashed 24x7. Media begins it own investigations. For the days the child remains in the hands of the kidnappers, the media gives an impression as if the nation is in grief, ready to cry enmasse for the aggrieved parents of the stolen child.

Electronic media’s social concern evaporates when someone questions that 38 children in one village of Noida (in the outskirts of Delhi, and the same place from where the CEO’s son was kidnapped) have gone missing.

When the bones are dug out, there is an outcry. But it doesn't match the frenzy that was witnessed when the son of a CEO was kidnapped. Nor did those who lined up to light a candle to seek punishment for the kilers of Jessica Lal showed the same concern for the children of the lesser gods.

We know they failed to turn up when a candlelight took place for the children of Nithari in Noida. We revolt and react when Shilpa Shetty is showered with abuses on a UK TV but we turn a blind eye when much worse discrimination happens back home. We surely are a great nation.

There is anger when Mother Dairy increases the price of milk by Re 1. It is however another matter that we pay Rs 15 for a bottle of mineral water and no one complains. People feret and fume when the price of tomatoes goes up. Potato prices going upto Rs 10 a kilo angers the rich and the elite.

The middle-class frowns when the onion prices go up. We are repeatedly told that food and vegetables is what constitutes 'essential commodites'. Their prices should therefore be under control.

I had always thought that the aam aadmi was struggling for "roti, kapdaa and makaan". Why is that it is only roti which constitute the "essential commodities"? Why don't we incorporate the prices of 'real estate' also among the 'essential commodities"? How come no one is questioning the stupendous increase the land prices, in the cost prices of houses? Hasn't a roof over your head now become a distant dream for an average Indian? And why is that we do not get angry when at the way real estate has made the dream to own a house evaporate for an average Indian?

We are certainly a great nation. The sensex is going up. The media is escatic. They spend discussing more about sensex, jumping in their seats when it crosses some mark. And when the sensex dips, the electronic media paints a gloomy picture. It looks as if a great tragedy has struck the nation. A 'blood bath' is being witnessed. The sensex rise is also happening at a time when more than 1,50,000 farmers have committed suicide.

I am told one farmer commits suicide every hour. But when was the last time you found the media launching a campaign on the issue of farmers committing suicide ?
When did we, as great Indians, ever show concern ??
How many more farmers need to hang themselves or drink pesticides before we took notice, before we felt outraged?

When was the last time you wrote a letter/sms to the media to express your dismay over farmers committing suicide?
Probably you are waiting for Shah Rukh Khan to ask you a question. Probably you are reserving your angry comments with the hope that you might also become a crorepati. Even death has to be weighed in terms of money.
If there is no financial gain accruing why should we, as Indians, protest?
We surely are a great nation. Mera Bharat is certainly Mahaan..........