Shafaque Alam, TwoCircles.net
Last week, I had a chance to interview a distinguished academician, who is also currently serving as the vice chancellor of a central university in the capital. Apart from the academic answers, he gave me one advice. “One day I might not be the vice chancellor and perhaps you won’t be working for this paper. God wish, this university and your paper will remain. We should not do anything unconsciously or subconsciously, which is incorrect, and others may have to pay for our mistakes later,” he said adding that this is for everybody who bears such responsibility.
He was correct; he knew how media functions today. It might feel strange, but it is true that sometimes (some) journalists (knowingly/unknowingly) write against the fact. Journalists know that the Gujarat Model of development is actually the development of a section of bourgeois and business class. They know the fact that in the last one decade, this development has benefited a section of upper class only. They know, there is uneven development in the state and acute water crisis.
The Gujarat government has declared 4,000 villages drought-hit, but in reality, as many as 17 districts – mainly in Saurashtra and North Gujarat – are now facing drought-like conditions. The census data of 2011 shows over 11 lakh households in the state are not having electricity as main source of illumination.
The Opposition Congress claim that there are about 30 lakh unemployed youths in the state despite chief minister Narendra Modi’s claim of MoUs worth Rs 39 lakh crore being signed during the five Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summits held in the last ten years. A political leader claimed that when Narendra Modi became the chief minister for the first time, the state had a loan burden of Rs 46,000 crore, but today it has risen to Rs 1.72 lakh crore, which means each individual in the state is indebted by a loan burden of Rs 26,000. Journalists know the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has been winning the state election not on the basis of ‘development’ but on the basis communal politics and on fictional and creative media coverage.
However, media is projecting him as a prominent candidate for the prime minister’s post. The television screen fails to give the social and economic polarization in the state. But the fact is that according to rural development commissioner, in Gujarat the number of families below the poverty line has jumped from 23.39 lakh in 2000 to 30.49 lakh in July 2012. Unsurprisingly, 9 lakh of the 11 lakh houses without electricity, according to the Gujarat 2011 census, are in rural areas. In terms of education, a report of an NGO, Pratham, shows that rural Gujarat was lagging behind states like Haryana.
Journalists also know that everything is not correct in political sphere as well. They know that the chief minister is not a man of secular credential. Even NDA’s main ally JDU is now distancing itself from the alliance if Gujarat chief minister is projected as the prime ministerial candidate. Besides this, today five Gujarat-based senior police officials are behind bars, waiting for their trials in fake encounter cases of Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauser bi and their friend Tulsiram Prajapati and Ishrat Jehan.
Journalists know that the CBI had in its charge-sheet named Amit Shah, the then minister of state for home, as the kingpin of the conspiracy which was a blow to the Narendra Modi government. Shah was arrested in 2010, spent over three months in jail. He came back two months before the last state elections and was re-elected. Strangely, BJP appointed Shah as one of the general secretaries of the party. Journalists know Maya Kodnani, also a former member of the state government, and Babu Bajrangi, Bajrang Dal Leader, have been convicted for involvement in the 2002 violence in Ahmedabad, and the state government is to seek death penalty for them. Babubhai Katara, a former BJP MP from Dahod, who had been arrested in 2007 for human trafficking and was suspended from the party, has been taken in the national council members from Gujarat.
Aam Aadmi know that Journalists are writing history in a hurry. Journalists have lot of responsibility to project the real picture of society. But they should not forget, one day they might not be there, their works will. If they write history in an unconscious manner, they may escape but someone else will have to pay for their mistakes.
(Shafaque Alam is a Delhi based journalist.)