Widen Your Horizon

We college students were in a village. Why didn't we see any farmers yet ? As we walked ahead, I realised that they wouldn't be similar to the pictures in our mind thanks to the movies that we watch where the farmers are the ones who wear dhoti- kurta and tie a cloth around their foreheads and are bent down and either harvesting their crops or sowing seeds wishing for a great harvest.

And I remembered the Vidharbha incident where farmers committed suicide because they couldn't meet their own needs, forget the nedds of their families. The government tried to ease their condition with monetary help. But how could a farmer's family reciprocate this? Should they be happy that they got money or should they be grieving their dear one's death ?

Here is a story-

The sun rise was pretty much similar to the one shown in films from time immemorial. The sun rising from amidst the cottony white sky- the typical representation of a nature artist’s top portion of a scenic landscape.

The birds chirping and crossing the sky as if in a marathon to reach God fast and blurt out the spell bounding developments of his creations on earth. And like the routine that was followed by nature each day, the newspapers too fell into a heap with something that would give readers fodder for thinking – a single thought at least. As every other day from quite a while, this time again the headlines were about the person who provided fodder for all the so called ‘intelligently and thoughtfully amazing homo-sapiens’ to function- yes it was about another helpless farmer who forgot about his own tummy and the mouths that waited for his hands to feed in order to make the ones reading the newspapers- healthy and hunger free.

The average reader uttered, “There goes another foolish farmer without fighting for himself. Coward, fool!”

But who could think of the reality?

She opened her eyes and sat up on her 'charpoy' when the first rays of the sun sneaked in through the vast number of gaps over their shanty hut. Three sons sleeping besides the ‘choola’ that was dying to be lit from quite some time now, two daughters struggling to rest their backs near her in the congested little place that they called ‘home’. 

Where did he go? –She thought. Another helpless day, God forbid.

She got up and went out. One loud shriek and all there that is around is eerie silence…at least for her.

There he was hanging from the tree that had provided shade to them even on the hottest of days. The reason she wore a mangalsutra, a red bindi, bangles that clunked as she tried to meet their ends meet- everything now meaningless. The children ran out one by one. All froze witnessing the sight. Soon people gathered. Netas arrived. 

Now what was this? One lakh!!! That’s something she had never seen in her entire life. It was more than enough to feed her family for a long time. Her eyes glowed. But strange is life, stranger the circumstances. One lakh- the price of her husband. And now when she was grieving his death here was something that didn’t let her mourn his death freely too.

On one side was the smell of the burning pyre of her husband and on the other side was the fragrance of a better future. So bad or so good?

That issue has somehow vanished from the news. Infact if one noticed, the Nirbhaya case's verdict splashed across news channels yesterday but the moment BJP's announcement of their nomination of Narendra Modi as their Prime Ministerial candidate came in, the former news faded away. Media persons would say that it is their job to keep updating people about the latest news. 

CNN-IBN had  broken the news of ‘Bundelkhand farmers selling their wives to live another day' and then the next day, a 48-hour probe was ordered by NCW Chairperson Girija Vyas in August 2010 but so far, I doubt whether even a single news channel has bothered to demand the probe results. 

This is a great example of the Agenda Setting Theory of Media which in brief means that if a news item is covered frequently and prominently by the media, the audience starts regarding that issue as more important.

Is media the ultimate news reporter then ?  

What is being fed might not necessarily be the only option that is available