What moves the media: the elite mind?

What moves the media: the elite mind?

By Minu Jain: This could be the Eureka moment for anyone trying to understand what moves India. A debate on quotas evokes a vicious backlash in the media and in cyberspace, activists on a hunger strike to highlight the future of 35,000 families displaced by a dam attract but a cynical smile and a fashion week is the subject of avid discussion and endless news space.

It could have almost been pre-ordained, so perfectly timed were the events that dominated the media and the mind in the last week. All coalescing together to point to an uncaring India where the other half - or shall we say three-quarters of over a billion people - just don't matter.

That a drummed up debate on reservation for backward classes, environmental activist Medha Patkar's hunger strike to demand rehabilitation for the tens of thousands displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam in central India and the fashion week should have come at exactly the same time is a coincidence that would be deliciously ironical were it not so grim in its overtones.

As the media went into overdrive hysterically raising the spectre of Mandal II, there were few voices of reason to explain that reservations for the other backward classes (OBCs) in central government-funded institutions like the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) was not something new at all. It was a constitution amendment agreed to by all parties and passed in parliament way back in December.

But nobody stopped to pause as TV channels and the print media devoted reams to students spewing venom against the move and hate mail flooded blog spots. A comment from a couple of students who were beneficiaries of the quota system at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) that they were uncomfortable with it because it gave them an inferiority complex was blown up into a second lead in a leading newspaper.

But what about the other side of the story of a deeply feudal India that led to this sense of inadequacy and the need for affirmative action to bring some degree of equality? That was not looked into at all.

In the last week, there have been many references to Rajeev Goswami, the poster boy of the 1990s anti-Mandal (eponymous movement named after the author of affirmative action for socially backward groups) student protests who attempted to immolate himself with cameras flashing and many watching.

That sight of the body in flames is seared in the collective memory of the nation, but has anybody in the last few days recounted the tragedy of the student who tried to become a leader, could not and finally died in relative obscurity at the age of only 33?

No. For many of us he is just a romantic figure and a mere means to stoke the fires of angry protests.

That effort to romanticise and glamorise youth anger has also been seen in many references to the "Rang De Basanti" generation and their anti-reservation sentiments.

"Rang De Basanti" generation? That same film where a group of youngsters cynically and cold-bloodedly murder the defence minister and a son is shown as mercilessly killing his father all in the name of idealism and patriotism. Is that the anarchy that we aspire for?

It would certainly look like it.

In savage contrast has been the blasé attitude towards Medha Patkar and her colleagues who launched their fast unto death. For days, nobody bothered about the high-profile activist as she sat under a scorching sun near Delhi's Jantar Mantar monument, hoping that someone would listen. Nobody did. It didn't merit much interest until she was on the verge of collapse.

Some ministers went to meet her and then on day eight the rest of the country woke up when she was forcibly taken to hospital in the dead of night. The land of Mahatma Gandhi turned a deaf ear when Patkar tried to give the thousands of tribals in the Narmada valley a voice.

Viciousness or sheer indifference? Both are equally worse as far as our reactions to the reservations issue or to the tribals of Narmada are concerned.

That sense of involvement was, however, more than evident as special programmes and many, many columns of news space were devoted to the Wills India Fashion Week and the one before that in Mumbai. Both events, as expected, attracted huge interest and lots of educated writing on the business of fashion - not very big anyway - and whether hems are up or down this season.

By the way, even as I wrote this piece, Salman Khan was declared guilty in a Jodhpur court of killing an endangered chinkara gazelle. And horror of horrors, the bad boy of Bollywood was even sentenced to five years in prison.

Enough grist to keep the TV channels going for the next couple of days at least.

Lucky for them, unlucky for Salman.