Circus here, circus there, and circus everywhere. I can’t seem to focus on any. Every time I start surfing through Indian news channels, the circus is on. It is unlimited. It is borderless. It is free. It must be fun living in a circus that never stops performing. Parallel to this bespoke fragility, shops of outlandish claims knitted by flimsy evidence and made-up assurances unlock their gates giggling at Pakistan with cynical attempts.
It should be no surprise that India has placed good journalism on bedrest with no respite. This crusade has turned out to be a comedy circus, isn’t it? It has dropped all juggling balls and is tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Instead of serving as a watchdog for uncovering errors and wrongdoings by those who are in power, Indian media giants have often turned their newsrooms into caricatures of military command centres or warhead establishments, while anchors in combat gear calculating conventional warheads, the capability of precision target and strategic war preparation against Pakistan which underlines the dilemma that cannibalises good journalism. However, most of such a program’s substance is a recipe of erroneous, dramatic, and frivolous facts that shape the information that 1.3 billion Indians receive every day.
As is widely recognised, Indian media lacks strategic patience not only at critical moments but also in normal situations. This has damaged India’s image and amplified the risk to regional security. This settled “fact” is handed down from India’s “imperial fantasy,” where mainstream Indian news channels have landed on the stage of a comedy circus with an urge for others to join the show.
Circus here, circus there, and circus everywhere. I can’t seem to focus on any. Every time I start surfing through Indian news channels, the circus is on. It is unlimited. It is borderless. It is free. It must be fun living in a circus that never stops performing. Parallel to this bespoke fragility, shops of outlandish claims knitted by flimsy evidence and made-up assurances unlock their gates giggling at Pakistan with cynical attempts.
It should be no surprise that India has placed good journalism on bedrest with no respite. This crusade has turned out to be a comedy circus, isn’t it? It has dropped all juggling balls and is tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Instead of serving as a watchdog for uncovering errors and wrongdoings by those who are in power, Indian media giants have often turned their newsrooms into caricatures of military command centres or warhead establishments, while anchors in combat gear calculating conventional warheads, the capability of precision target and strategic war preparation against Pakistan which underlines the dilemma that cannibalises good journalism. However, most of such a program’s substance is a recipe of erroneous, dramatic, and frivolous facts that shape the information that 1.3 billion Indians receive every day.
As is widely recognised, Indian media lacks strategic patience not only at critical moments but also in normal situations. This has damaged India’s image and amplified the risk to regional security. This settled “fact” is handed down from India’s “imperial fantasy,” where mainstream Indian news channels have landed on the stage of a comedy circus with an urge for others to join the show.
Largely missing from India’s journalism are the blood bites of the rape crisis, abandonment, and social neglect of 25.7 million orphan children and 1.77 million homeless Indians who have no choice but to stay on pavements, roadsides, railway platforms, in pipes, or other open spaces. In India, about 160 million people, more than the population of Russia, don’t have access to clean water. Every year, at least 1.5 million girls under 18 get married in India. This makes it home to the largest number of child brides in the world-accounting for a third of the global total.
Instead of serving as a watchdog, Indian media giants have often turned newsrooms into caricatures of military command centres.
The shocking extent of India’s nationwide child trafficking network; a trade partially responsible for the shocking disappearance of a child every eight minutes. Even leaving aside societal paranoia, the tone of Indian media has evidently changed over the draconian sedition and use of terrorism laws, against human rights defenders, student activists, and opposition leaders. You might think there is a dodgy hidden profit motive behind India’s media obsession with Pakistan that has been diverging the social attitudes of Indians.
Unfortunately, this has become the governing logic of India’s journalism, which has inflicted civilian misery by failing to unmask humanitarian crises and sufferings of farmer’s, which has abandoned them to their fate. Naturally, this mistrust runs so deep to consume the journalistic moral compass, readily yielding rich dividends to BJP’s politics.
For the same reason, PM Modi remains unchallenged hyperpower in the mainstream media even when there is nothing to show off his bad governance and incompetence. Everyone knows that news anchors focus dramatically on Pakistan by ignoring India’s self-inflicted social disorder and humanitarian crises, which is more profound and structural than any country in the region.
What a story to tell the world of how Indian journalism has become impotent and friendless to reward Indians with more rights. These issues are crucial and, ironically, didn’t feature appropriately in the media to pass on a meaningful assessment to surface the racial theories of supremacy, obliteration of human rights and religious freedom. Nonetheless, a lot would need to change to reward Indians with their basic rights in India-a self-appointed ideologue of democracy.
The Indian media’s obsession can’t fool the world about its special relationship with Pakistan, which often buzzes wishful civil war, surgical strikes in Pakistani territory, and Islamophobia to present a plausible explanation of how the fourth pillar of democracy has become so restless, meaningless, and tragic to add ammunition into the crises between two nuclear superpowers. The pillar that was supposed to place checks and balances on the system and performance of the rulers is wheeled off to intensive care. Perhaps, the social algorithms that dress up Indian media to play Cinderella round-the-clock have invisibly reinforced pre-existing baked beliefs without filter bubbles.
To pick an example, the situation in Kashmir worsened after India scrapped the region’s special status and brought it under the federal government’s control. The Indian media turned a blind eye to the civilian casualties and human rights violations of Kashmiris. Compelling testimonies from Kashmir suggests that the Indian media has failed to deliver its moral obligation when the Modi-led government locked the region down, detained thousands of people, imposed movement restrictions and enforced a communications blackout. But you start surfing through Indian news channels and you will discover how it spends a great amount of time obsessing over Pakistan. That’s why the future of the large part of Indian journalism entirely depends on what Imran Khan and Pakistan’s military establishment say or do.
Nevertheless, I have found the news on Indian channels to be bigoted. It seems like a peddler of fake conspiracy theories allowing outrageous lies to flourish against Pakistan, which do not have a grain of reality underneath. India’s so-called dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping the region has died in front of our eyes.
As things stand, there is an urgent need within India now for a root and branch appraisal of why all this has happened. Unquestionably, Indian media has secured the first position to present a sparkling example of how to build a misguided mob at the stake of good journalism. The diminishing status of truth in India requires two things: leadership (that doesn’t yet exist) and the ability to communicate (that is useless when no one is ready to listen).
The writer is based in UK, and has specialization in health informatics from Johns Hopkins University.
