E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: “Nodi swami, naavu irodu heege…” (We are like this only) was a line uttered mostly in jest. More and more, is this becoming our national hallmark? Let’s see a few examples.
1) Whether it is Sunita Williams, Hargobind Khurana or Dr. Subrahmanyam Chandrashekar, we quickly want to identify their ‘Indianness’ and thump our chests and proclaim ‘Another Indian in Space’ or ‘Another Indian gets a Nobel’. All three have nothing to India now and Khurana especially refused to identify with India after he was unsuccessful to land a job in a CSIR Lab and went back in disgust.
2) We have a tendency, particularly, among our television networks, to blow up anything beyond the stratosphere. Frothing in their mouths, the correspondents belch out ‘Breaking News’ every half-hour as if doomsday is about to hit the coast. Any news is built in to a hype with an SMS poll thrown in and “at the end of the day” you can’t even differentiate the real from the hype.
‘Sachin’s plaster will be opened today,’ screams one channel. The competition hits back with ‘Bachchans visit Varanasi temples at midnight.’ The networks are so caught up with their TRPs, which should be more aptly called ‘Tripe’, that they have reduced everything to a joke. Most of the times, they behave as if they are creating the news and sometimes they act as if they are the ‘News’!
3) Do the networks keep the ‘score’ of farmers’ suicides who are dying all over India? Do they ‘break’ the news when Vishwanathan Anand becomes World No. 1? Do they discuss his games, get experts to talk about him, or discuss moves made by Anand? You only get to hear ‘moves’ made by a Sachin or a Sourav.
4) We have poor idea of what it takes to be a champion team, Nobel laureate or a Formula-One driver. If you have been given a hall ticket, it only means you can write an exam and not assume you already have the first rank! Ponting talks of taking things match by match, Mahela Jayawardee even plans ‘Power’ Plays within a match , whereas all our TV-bred heroes thought that they only had to do to go to the West Indies and collect the Cup from Sir Garfield Sobers!
5) If Sania Mirza moves a couple of notches in the ATP rankings, there is a collective hysteria of her ‘upsetting’ the seeds and winning the Wimbledon. Even the good ones we have, Leander and Mahesh Bhupathi, squandered their chances and spoilt their career with their silly ‘we are OK now, we aren’t OK now!’ splits so often. No tennis official, or past greats made serious efforts to drill some sense in to them. Otherwise, they could have ended as all-time greats in doubles and served the country with distinction and honour. This will remain a pity.
6) It’s only in our country, politicians can interfere in any area and throw their weight around at will. Remember, ‘The Gang of four’ of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Somnath Chatterjee, Brinda Karat and Pranab Mukherjee? They are as closely connected with cricket as earth from Jupiter and have nothing in common except they are all ‘Bongs’. But they got together to bring Ganguly in to the team because he is a Bengali! Even if he was good enough to be brought back, it happened more by show of political muscle.
Thank god for small mercies—I don’t see Gowda Sr., Yediyurappa, Kharge and Vatal Nagaraj doing a hartal for Rahul Dravid, should he lose his captaincy! But the way the issue was brought in Parliament with Sonia finally arm-twisting Sharad Pawar to accommodate her Leftist chums!
7) Our Prasar Bharathi would bend every rule in the book in the name of ‘patriotism’ and ‘one billion people’, and get Parliament to pass a Bill to get ‘live’ feed from the private network who has paid through the nose to win the tender! It was shocking the Industry did not bother to raise its collective eye brow at the daylight robbery perpetuated right its nose.
That’s why ‘We are like this only’, 60 years after we became free.
We were like this even less than 15 years after independence, if I remember correctly. Even then the media was talking about Krishnan winning the Wimbledon championship when he reached the last 16, Narlikar as a potential Nobel prize winner, all inventions (from aeroplanes to satellites) were ideas originating from ancient India etc.. Today these are replaced by stories of Indians and their achievements in America, President Kalam inviting selected NRIs to show how good the ‘Indian stock’ is etc.. Then there is endless chatter about that ‘Indian’ Amritiya Sen We pay less attention to that poor and millions like him for whom life is still a continuous struggle.
I am reminded about the Hungarian claim of that great Scientist Von Neumann. Hungarians parade him as their illustrious son and have created a learned society named as Von Neumann. Any student of world history know that Von Neumann escaped Hungary when native Hungarians colluded with Hitler in wiping out countless Jews in Hungary andVon Neumann had to escape from Budapest to avoid similar fate.
I think it stems from the juvenile insecurity of a young nation with a long history.
TR baalu a cabinet minister(shipping) has been sitting in the pertoleum ministry and asking the petro minister to supply gas from the cauvery basin for his companies. times now reported this story. none of the other channels bothered to report the story.
its such a serious issue. they had evidence of paperwork of the meetings taken place and also had evidence of him asking the petro secretary to arrange for the gas to be transferred.
imagine a cabinet minister , instead of improving the ports and other stuff is sitting in another ministry and asking the government to supply gas for his company.
this guy used to work in the public works department for rs 2000 per month . now he has 3 ships and shipping companies under his name.
now ask urself ” Why we are like this only after 60 years ”
its because of the politicians who have no sense of honesty in public life.
god please save this country.
Politicians are our ‘real’ entrepreneurs!
Along with “Breaking news”, we also have “Flash News” and “Just in” and so on and so forth. Well, the only difference is, a Vishawanathan Anand becoming the world no 1 would be a “Just in” Kinda news whereas a sania missing the wimbledon due to some strange injury would be a “Breaking News” as though she would have reached the last 4 without a hiccup.!!!!!
Just one thing, there are 700 points like this in India, right from traffic to military, from muslims to shiv sena, from police to politicians, from banks to government offices, everywhere and anywhere, but yeah..We are like this only or This is the way it is, Saaaar.