Will the Indian media, please shut up?

I wish I had a voice that is as loud as the media. It reaches the farthest corners of the country, and all one really needs to do to assimilate the information is to watch and listen while drinking your favourite brand of coffee. The poison then effortlessly slips between the tresses of the brain and scars the organ for life. If you are around in India during these times, the issue that might strike you as being very prominent is the sentence handed to Sanjay Dutt for his involvement with the Bombay blasts in 1992- 93. Some people consider the sentence excessive, others severely flawed, some call it justice and a large part of the country doesn’t give a damn about him and are more worried about their next meal. I’m quite pleased with the verdict. I’m not in a position to say whether six years is excessive or not because I honestly have no clue about how the legal system works. I also don’t think most people who pass comments about this in popular media are in a position to do this either. That said, the media isn’t making the length of the sentence the talking point. The question asked is about the sentence itself. Is handing out a jail verdict appropriate? By all means the answer is : Yes! I think the justice system works in a fairly straightforward manner. It looks at victims, looks at criminals and says one is right and the other is wrong.  (I’m thinking interms of the spherical cow approximation here but it does work fairly well) If you possess something on the lines of an AK 56, a few grenades and have conversations with the underworld at bleak times, I doubt if the case is more complicated than assuming all cows are spherical.

I watched a popular show yesterday called “We the people” which as the name suggests is to echo the sentiments of the people. There is a debate with a panel selected to field the questions. Now lets squeeze the lemon of sympathy at Sanjay Dutt’s end. Squeeze it dry by putting up a highly biased panel that refuses to talk on the basis of evidence but prefers sentiments and that very annoying mode of argument- tangential subjects. Everyone refuses to talk about the point of contention because its much easier to claim victory in this sort of a forum by talking about everything else. “Hi, did you have lunch today?”;  “ My new car is a snazzy Ferrari.” Everyone goes gaga over the car and forgets what was for lunch.  Everyone on the panel agrees he was wrong but says that his apology and the life that he has lead for the last 14 years should suffice. What utter nonsense this is? The host remarks that, the purpose of prison is to reform or to keep socially unfit people away from society. I wonder why she chooses to be so naïve. People are not so forgiving and if one is a victim of an attack, punishment serves as a means to an end. What that end might be is immaterial, or whether there is an end is debatable.

Civilised societies resort to prison, some hundred years earlier, castration might have been the order of the day. The bottom line is that a wrong doer suffers in a manner that the court of law deems appropriate.

 I think the common man is unanimous as far as the validity of the verdict goes. If the Letters to the editor is a measure of his sentiments, he has spoken and has spoken in favour of justice is above all. Unfortunately the voice of the common man is weak and feeble and is restricted to page 10 of a national newspaper. The voice of the celebrity is louder and so is his plea for (in)justice. A government that yields to voices of unreason is a government without a spine. I hope that the balance of justice will prevail. Can the media, please shut up?