Human Dignity in Gutters

Imagine This : You are walking down the street. Sorry let me use "I". "I" am walking down the street. "I" suddenly see a bunch of people thrashing a man. They have torn his clothes. They are punching him left, right and central. Blood is coming out from several parts of the body. But no mercy being shown by the people beating who look no less than monsters and seem to be all excited to kill him.

By the way, I assume here that "I" am the good, civilized, law abiding citizen of the country who doesnt involve himself in these acts of nomadic activity.

What goes on in "my" mind? : Some of "me" think Oh my god how could these people be so inhuman? How can they beat this person so inhumanly? Some of "me" are thinking that the person deserves this for the petty crime he committed. Some of "me" who is reporter with several channels is busy taking every possible coverage to make sure that there is enough meat for the night showtime on the TV channel.

What do "I" do? : "I" ignore the whole activity. "I" just watch it. "I" dont move a step forward to rescue the person. What if "I" am beaten up? While he does not deserve such inhuman treatment, why should "I" risk my life to save his life? Anyway, his life is not that precious.

The above sequence of events exactly happened in Bhagalpur last night. NDTV, Headlines Today, CNN IBN etc. had exhaustive and exclusive coverages of poor, skinny thief being beaten black and blue. The anchors were interviewing Kiran Bedi, the people in power and everyone with lots of anguish about how such uncivilized acts could happen in this 21st century India?

I ask CNN IBN, NDTV, Headlines Today : Were your reporters there at the site covering it? If yes, then what kind of cultured human beings are those who kept coverage at a higher level than trying to rescue the poor skinny thief? To me, an educated cultured reporter from your channels doing nothing at the site there puts me to shame more. You know why? They are "educated" and "civilized". If they did attempt to rescue, I am sure you would have covered it exclusively.


Oh by the way, after the event, the following things happened. Do they sound familiar? :

• Two inspectors suspended.
  
• NHRC Issues notice to Government
  
• Nitish Kumar orders probe
  
• Laloo Yadav blames Nitish Kumar and his Goverment
  
• Media keeps on showing the same clip with "parental advisory"
  

And we will forget this event soon too just like we do for others.

Lastly I must also say that I am not criticizing media here. It is because of media that today politicians are not taking public for granted. It is media that has brought information to us.

But what really frustrates me is the fact that their reporters are informed citizens too. Why didnt they act? As I end, it reminds of an incident where a person immolated himself in Bihar sometime back in full media view but all media reporters were busy about was covering it and not putting the cameras aside and rescue the individual. Finally he died.

Finally, I wonder how I will react when tomorrow, in Bangalore, if I come across a similar incident. God, give me enough strength that will convince me to do what is right for supreme human dignity and not worry for anything else.

Postscript after around 1 hour of posting the above: I am not sure if it is an interesting coincidence or not but after I wrote the above, I was generally perusing through some news and came across the following article at CNN-IBN which seems like a rebuttal to my points. Interesting read :

Blame the Media