The Little Grey Cells' Blog

Note: this piece of writing is not meant to preach; it is merely the confused ravings of a clueless media student.

I’ve been thinking about what, C K Meena said in class today about news channels projecting SMS and internet surveys as representative of what the majority of the population think. I think this practice shows exactly how we, view the world. By we, I mean people our age and of the same socio-economic backgrounds. A lot of us believe that the world we live in, the lives we lead are all there is.
Take the reservation policy for instance. Of all the people protesting the move, how many were people who lived below poverty line? How many were OBCs? The majority of the students protesting belonged to upper middle class families. I’m not judging the anti-reservation campaign or taking sides but I think that the urban middle class controls the majority of the opinions and information. And it is the urban middle class that the media reflects. This is especially true (in my opinion) of the English news media. How many pro-reservation campaigns did CNN IBN cover?
When we make a stand against reservation, how many of us are aware of a little dalit village called AB colony about two hours from Bangalore without electricity, sanitation or schools. And how many of us know that just a few yards away separated by a brick wall stands an upper caste village (Boodhikote) where almost every house owns a colour television with cable!

We don’t know simply because we’re dependent on the media for our information, and we don’t care because we’ve been fashioned to think that there is no world beyond Bangalore. So medical students of Ramaiah College get our sympathy, votes and mails, but the disillusioned dalit youth of AB colony don’t even register in our awareness. So how can we claim that the choices we make, the stand we take are based on informed decisions?

And we’re supposed to be the future of the Indian media!

-Bhanu