It’s Biased Media Vs. Biased Social Media in India ...

When I was in school, I had very limited resources like some newspapers; some weekly magazines and I could only watch few TV programs to find out about the world. They all had their inclination either towards left, right or center. I used to like some of them and not agree with some of them and  I still had to make choices about the papers, editors and authors from a very limited pool. Today we have abundance of information but the problem today is  that I don’t know which information is right or wrong, genuine or propaganda, advertisement or paid news, from a hater or lover. Nowadays, there are elements in the society of India which try to spread out the wrong information or sometime right information to incite people or information which is of no value to society for the sake of TRP, money, power, ideology, religion, region, cast or just the entertainment. This includes main stream media and social media.

Main stream media is a one of the important pillar of democracy. There has been a trend in social media to discredit the media for their so-called biased reporting which they do sometimes. An unbiased media reporting is must for a healthy democracy. 

But unfortunately the sections of Media in India have been involved in corrupt practices which has undermined the democratic processes and norms. These media houses generally take higher moral ground but do several kinds of immoral practices. People must have known about Radia tape which had phone conversation of prominent journalists where they had compromise their professional integrity. Zee news editors have seen involved in a sting where they demanded advertisement for covering up a story of an MP. There has been incident of paid news all over the country during elections.

There are issues with Main stream media and those are being scrutinized seriously nowadays by everybody. But the conduct of certain people, organization on social media is more worrisome. I hardly see any news on social media as truth and genuine unless I verify that with some good sources. A culture has been developed on social media to discredit the main stream media, politician except they favor one. Politician and parties are running campaign to establish their ideology through social media. There has been a tendency to go below the belt to people/ ideology that they don’t agree with.  Social media has become a tool of advertisement and a place where Mobocracy is trying to take place of Democracy. 

Sometimes I wonder why people are not bothering to verify the authenticity of the information which they are sharing and promoting. There has been lot of false information about the individuals, organization and events circulating in social media. For example,  I have seen people sharing Japan tsunami video saying this is what happened in Kedarnath.Social media is being used by spammers/campaigners of certain ideology  to spread the wrong information and people are being fooled and become the part of the chain to spread it further. Some people are sharing the information against some political group, people which are hardly true and no legitimate source of that misinformation.  Backwardness and superstitious is being spread by the social media, there has been increasing trend of sharing something related to religion/God and asking to share immediately otherwise pay the consequences. Social media is also being used to mobilize the people, start the communal tension and the riot whether it was London or Muzaffarnagar. 

There are  things which are really good in both the media. There are lots of good people working day and night to do the reporting as true Journalists in main stream media. People should give them little respect what they deserve. At the same time, Social media is just a tool and it is highly depend on the content what people are sharing. There are positives around the social media. The most important aspect is that it gives the opportunity to exercise the very fundamental right to express. The human aspects of it to able see the updates of your friends all over the world. It has been a symbol of woman liberalization in India which is an important aspect of it too. I got to see some important and good information around all sections of news, jokes cartoons and sarcasm. But when I need to filter out these information from some misinformation, then I realize that  its long way to go when  people will start using these tool positively and constructively !!

Tweet @austerity

The internet in India is not yet mature to make any political or social movement but one social networking site is making some political uproar . The twitter controversy on the name of austerity created by loyal congressman who do not miss a single chance to prove their loyalty to high-command. One sentence written by Minister twitter is having two objectionable thing for Congress ..first one is cattle-class and second is holy cow. Every congressman seems to have an objection on cattle class but sycophant congressman have a bigger question how we got somebody in congress to dare the "holy cow".
First aspect itself is non-issue. I agree that cattle-class is derogatory to say for economy class but was the part of original tweet which has asked the question to Tharoor, "whether he will travel to Kerala in cattle-class" and Tharoor replied wittingly without knowing the upcoming problems from his own party man.
I believe the Second keyword "holy cow" means someone whom nobody can dare to oppose .This is actual worrying all the congressmen who always sing praise song for madam and somebody who recently joined party and does some nonsense twitting is showing his unwillingness to madam's wish.
I want to say something on this wish , which Tharoor can not say publicly for some obvious reasons. The way Government and congress party acted on this wish is utter nonsense. Congress shamelessly named this wish to “austerity drive”. Everybody wants these netas to use public money wisely but to name it "austerity drive” and intend to do it for a while is cheap publicity and mere tokenism not more than.
Intention of Sonia Gandhi may be good to insure the austerity in the party and government, but not actually working. In order to establish this so-called austerity practice, Gandhi family is leading from the front and making fool of themselves. They are flying in economy class and traveling in trains making discomfort to common man. Sonia Gandhi traveling in an aircraft with common man reprieved 10-12 seats from choice less common man and adding other discomfort to fellow common passengers. Rahul Gandhi’s travel plan blocked the station gates for common people for some hours. How much money government will save and how much more it will invest in security arrangements to make sure Rahul Gandhi travels in train safely, it needs to rethink. Revisit to the whole idea is needed not to do it for publicity and votes than actual saving from this.
And actually the original idea is good but needs better planning and more better implementation. India is a poor country where public servants need to follow principals and rules in spending public money without any direction from any high-command or special situation like draught. Government needs to insure the good practice guidelines which can save the public money not only for these ministers, MPs but also bureaucrats who also misuse the public money.
The bigger question is remained answered from where the whole thing started, the draught situation. Government needs to tackle the drought , insuring the drought relief fund should reach to every affected man ,taking steps to stop scams in draught fund , making preempt steps to stop future farmers suicide in the country. If government does all these then we may not need the money saved from this mere publicity.
At the end, we need austere in behavior of politicians like our great leaders Mahatma Gandhi , Lal Bahadur Shastri. Recent example of austerity is leaders like Chidambaram who does not need any security and travel with one or two guys all over the country. We cant force this austerity on any of our politicians. If we will , that would be temporary. If these leaders are not like the way we want then it’s the fault of all of us “the electorate“.