Category Archives: India

FirstPostic Journalism

Over recent times,  web news portals like FirstPost have emerged as popular destinations for news junkies seeking to know whether Raj Thackeray spoke in Hindi when he visited Gujarat to meet NaMo (not my way of writing Narendra Modi, but a borrowed popular style of writing his name) or whether it was Aishwarya Rai who delivered Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai’s baby.

FirstPost is that thing that comes in between TV/newspapers and news websites like Times Of India or The Hindu or one of them (if the other brings it down through a series of advertisements). It’s like a third category, like how Apple created a third category when bringing in the iPad as an in-between to the iPhone and the Macbooks. Also like how my Mom created a third category called STUDY between SLEEP and FOOTBALL when I was growing up. Okay, probably not that. It’s not this or that, but it’s got a little bit of both this and that. The thing about FirstPost is that it is not a regular, unbiased news portal because of the way you would read what they tweet.

Lately, FirstPost and ESPN Cricinfo have begun to offer opinion or satirize writing when it comes to tweeting. You’d think they are a ‘neutral’ medium, but they aren’t. FirstPost is irritatingly in-your-face with hashtags. It’s so extreme with hashtags diarrhoea that you’d imagine emails between FirstPost staff to go something like this:

Dear XYZ, send me a copy of your draft for the post on Mayawati. #SENDNOW #DONTFORGET #BOSSWILLCUTYOURBALLSOFF #ELEPHANTS

Hey ABC, do you want to go on a date with me on Valentine’s? #VALENTINESDAY #PRAMODMUTHALIK #VIAGRASTILLWORKS

Apparently, FirstPost recently tweeted “#Finally, there’s news on a news-dry day” in the wake of the attack on the Israeli diplomat in Delhi. I wonder if too much opinionizing leaves any space for even basic sense, forget sensitivity. They did move to apologize in a while, but by then that tweet had been retweeted way too many times, good enough for even Shahid Kapoor to learn the spelling of ‘news-dry’ from the tweet. Just so that he won’t go out and spell it as juice-fry.

Of course, if a website can get CNN-IBN journalist, political liberal democrat, author Gin Drinkers and Blind Faith, mother of two teenagers and HT columnist Sagarika Ghose to do an incisive analysis on how clothes matter in politics (Who knew! Oh wait, Shivraj Patil did.), then it can certainly tweet scatterbrained bullshit straight out of a Dummys Guide To Being Dumb.

Fantastic journalism. FirstPostic journalism. #WELLDONE. #KEEPITUP. #BUTBESENSIBLE.

<On Twitter>

13/7–A Perspective

A few thoughts, following yet another terrorist attack on the city of Bombay.

1) An Indian reaction is overdue. It doesn’t matter if it has been 30 months or 10 years since we were struck by terror strikes. But it is high time India’s leaders understand that the buck really stops here. Two decades of suffering and loss of innocent lives cannot be put away under the carpet without a reaction that raises our dispirited levels, which are currently at an all-time low. The cycle of terror is currently unstoppable and we are all sitting ducks, waiting for that bomb to go off.

2) Yes, there has been improvement in India’s immediate reaction to attacks. The Home Minister was wise enough to not speculate which terrorist group was behind the blasts that killed 17 and injured over a hundred others. This helps avoid alerting the actual group that may be responsible for these vicious attacks. As of now, no group seems to have claimed responsibility and this blogger will also refrain from speculating who might be responsible.

3) News channels and newspapers have disappointed in their scramble for rating points, with gory images doing the rounds in both of these mediums. With the odd exception, most media sources crossed lines and it is unlikely they will ever learn when to respect the dead. Especially, given the way in which these lives have been lost.

4) While we await an official Indian reaction, it is distressing to note that the government admitted to having absolutely no intelligence prior to these attacks. One would expect that given the scale of the attacks in Mumbai less than three years back, India’s intelligence services would have learnt the lessons of failure and improved drastically. Instead, we were treated to question-mark faces. And these are the faces that are supposed to answer our questions in the first place.

5) Twitter, significantly more than Facebook or any other  form of social media, played a heart-warming role in circulating information, aiding the search for missing people and in general, spreading awareness. The idea of creating a spreadsheet listing down all the people capable of delivering help of several kinds stood out. Obviously, Twitter is incapable of helping actual on-ground operations, but it’s importance cannot be understated given how spreading information during a crisis is absolutely desirable. The occasional misleading/erroneous information aside, most of it is generally intended to be useful. I am not sure or qualified to comment if it helped emergency response systems on the ground, if there were any at all.

6) At this point, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and BJP leader Narendra Modi have stressed the importance of unity. In my opinion, this misleads us. People are not empowered to do much, apart from the usual outrage and creation/circulation of public opinion. It is the leaders at the top who are supposed to make critical decisions that is supposed to justify why they were elected to be there in the first place. A mere statement like “India will not tolerate this” never saved our souls. Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has proved himself to be a top-notch humbug of a leader by claiming that the UPA has thwarted 99% of terror attacks, but 1% of attacks do get through. On what mathematical basis he has managed to come to this conclusion is sense-defying, and makes you want to pull your hair out. This is all the more worrying because this man is almost certain to take up India’s top job, come 2014.

In essence, it is disappointing, depressing and bewildering that yet another terror attack has managed to shackle up the Indian mainland and caused the loss of yet more innocent lives. It was supposed to be a perfectly normal day, with people going about their usual routines.

And suddenly, there came deafening sounds and blinding lights. And some blood.

Losing The Plot

You thought it was a Baba Ramdev special. But err, no.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who once famously suggested we Indians watch TV instead of having sex at night in our innovative one-of-its-kind solution to our population ‘problem’, has said that homosexuality is a ‘Western disease’ and needs to be ‘cured’. Apparently, it’s not Indian. It’s also unnatural. The difference between Azad and Ramdev is that Azad is a direct representative of the Indian people and his views do a lot more damage than Arrow Baba incessantly repeating his medico-spiritual blah-blah on what homosexuality is or isn’t.

The statements have, as expected, received coverage in the foreign press. This does us no good and re-inforces India’s binding with archaic and uber-conservative medieval-era beliefs. The Health Minister seems bereft of rational advice and random sprouting of such public statements is what has actually helped create the Congress of today. This cannot be expected of a leader of a ministry so critical to the widespread acceptance of homosexuality in India.

Sadly, public statements in India are hardly ever well-thought out or researched. The power levied on to a person tends to create a misunderstanding in the mind that thinking can end, simply because the authority is that person himself. If such ignorance becomes commonplace, then India’s leaders are likely to match the views of non-thinking commoners or even groups that drive any agenda. Especially, the anti-gay ones. What one needs at this point in time is caution.

And add tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality to the mix, too.

SlutWalk And Liberal Aberrations


In succession to the grand marches being held across the world,  New Delhi will host India’s very own Slutwalk. The idea of Slutwalk focuses on the belief that women have the right to wear what they want. As this Hindustan Times news piece says, women must claim their right to be sexy without being subjected to being called ‘sluts calling for being raped’. It is entirely understandable that the use of the word ‘slut’ is in poor taste. There is no doubting that.

Rape is one of the world’s most despicable crimes. So unfortunate are man’s urges, that they stand to ruin (in many cases) the life of those women who subjected to rape. Societies, the world over, must focus on providing maximum assistance to women subjected to heinous crimes like rape or torture. Instead, we pull the same old rabbit out of our magic hat of potential solutions – symbolism. Again, I must make a point here that women have the right to wear what they want, and irrespective – nobody has a call there, as it borders on subjugation of individual freedom. Moreover, it goes with the thought stream that people don’t know what’s good for them.

So, evidently, liberation is a great thing. Standing up for liberal values in a democracy, equally important. However, the problem lies with symbolism. The phenomenon of symbolism makes news once in a while, largely tends to create a lot of inconsequential hype and mostly ends up in the graveyard of public memory. The usual routine is followed – Twitter activism and retweets, Facebook pages and the Like button, TV studio coverage that creates the typical feel-good surrounding such events and email forwards coming from all directions, asking people to come out, take a walk and ‘be heard’.

The problem is the lack of solutions that such events bring out. It is classic Indian symbolism, that is becoming all too typical now. We ‘feel’ we have done a lot, but in reality we haven’t done anything significant. Symbolism, as we have seen with the Pink Chaddi and Pink Condom campaigns in the past (remember them?), does not solve the problems surrounding the oppression of women, crimes like rape and murder (a crime which follows rape in so many occasions). The need for better policing, rejection of ‘ultras’ and action against those engaging in these crimes is the need of the hour. And SlutWalk cannot bring these to the table, can it?

There is a strong need for understanding liberalism at it’s core. Mere raising of sound levels and generation of massive hype across civil society creates one more event that comes along and will be forgotten. What about working at the ground level? Are we doing that? What is the point of distant symbolism that may bring a smile to the face of a woman who has been subjected to rape, but does not improve her condition in any way whatsoever? Let us ask ourselves. What is the point of our activism? The point is action, followed by results. And why are we engaging in such symbolism? Simply, because it’s easy. And it’s fun, too.

It is the ability to research and implement solutions, that is difficult. And precisely that, is what is the need of the hour.