The assault on our intelligence, no pun intended
The attacks on the Taj and Oberoi were not surprising. It has been obvious for a while that the terrorists have been looking to attack the elite because that is what the media covers hysterically. Therefore, that is what gets international attention, which ultimately is the point of it all.
Can there be any doubt that this would not be half as significant an incident if a lower middle-class market place was blown up with even twice the number of casualties?
What is surprising is how unprepared the authorities were, how unsuspecting the hotels themselves seemed to be. And this – despite reports that there were warnings given out a few months ago, from the Intelligence agencies to the State Government and the Police, and then onto the hotels itself.
It is this apathy and work ethic that is the undoing of the country’s security. I flew in from Goa to Mumbai recently and the checkings I was subjected to at every stage was perfunctory at best. The fact also is that there are just too few people having to check way too many people in too little time. Maybe the government could use the recession and the market meltdown to its advantage and provide lots of security jobs to the unemployed or soon-to-be-unemployed.
Yes, it is very disheartening to see our city and country reduced to the level of anxiety and paranoia prevailing. I am as saddened as anyone else to see the human cost and as angry about the apathy in the political class in particular. But amidst all this, what I cannot understand is the utterly shameful irresponsibility our television media is getting away with. Not the comedy news channels like India TV, but even the so-called elite ones, English and Hindi.
Despite instructions from the IB Ministry to not show live footage of the operations, almost all the channels did. There is evidence that the terrorists were using sat-phones and it is highly likely that their counterparts, wherever they were, were using this inexplicably public information to their advantage. There was an interview on one of the channels where a security guard said that the terrorists were watching Aaj Tak on the 6th floor (in these times, this may even be an Aaj Tak ad for all you know!).
Also, whilst the operations were going on – almost every single channel was spewing venom on the politician – was this the time to do that? These same people in the media keep giving examples of how after 9/11 the American authorities reacted with efficiency and intent, but do not seem to remember how the American media was reacting at that time. There was a great deal of anger about failed intelligence at that time too, but was that being vented then? Was that being aired then? No, there was great deal of restraint at that time about that, because that was not the time for that. That too in a country where there is far greater freedom of speech than ours.
And what of the attention given to Shobha De – who has been going on and on about being angry and how enough is enough? It is bad enough that our intelligence has been insulted for a few years now since news began moving towards entertainment and the glamour quotient became particularly significant, and socialites like her became regular columnists. But in times like this, to find the English news channels using her like almost a cheerleader (in her evening dress and pearl necklace) has to be an all-time low. It is actually so typical of the Indian upper class – to lose all sense of balance when their own backyard is directly attacked (Madam De must be horrified at the prospect of an unwashed terrorist pooping her next cocktail party; this from someone who after 9/11 actually wrote a piece on how charismatic and handsome she found Osama Bin Laden). And what of her colleague Simi Grewal’s pronouncements – that Pakistani flags can be seen from the Four Seasons hotel? Or that India should attack Pakistan, just like the Americans attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. If you saw this on NDTV 24×7, you would also remember the hesitant clapping that followed it before thankfully outrage was vociferously expressed.
Why are these people being brought forward as representatives of “the common man’s” voice? Which “man-on-the-street” lifestyle are they speaking for – the ones they look down upon from their high rise penthouses or the ones they view from the air-conditioned environs of their S Class vehicles? Are we so incapable of finding meaningful voices to express our anguish?
And what is this anger that is being fanned anyway? Do we actually have the wherewithal to know what the Intelligence Agencies have been doing? Do we know what information has been passed on (as it happens, it is now coming out that they had sent in warnings to the government) and how many attacks have been prevented in the past? Yes, there has been political apathy, as there is in all walks of life in India – that is the national character. I just wonder how many of these people getting self-righteous after the attacks, go out and vote during election time.
Is there any sense of responsibility or accountability within the electronic media today? They have disgraced themselves, exposed themselves actually, and it is such an ugly sight. Their anchors kept attacking the softest target of them all – the politicians, and the fact that they tried to make political mileage from everything. Look who’s talking – did not all the channels, even the so-called elite channels – CNN IBN, NDTV 24×7 and Times Now, every now and then stress that their coverage was exclusive only to their channel? So, what is worse during such a time, political mileage or business mileage? And what of unsubstantiated reports being carried by them – firing at Marriot, Napean Sea Road, or on the second day when more firing was reported on all the channels as Breaking News? Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN IBN apologised for spreading false rumours, but is that the end of that story then? Are they not accountable for the consequences of their greed for knee-jerk Breaking News?
The Indian political class is rightly despised and this incident will force at least some of them to re-think their priorities to some extent, which is good. But is this disgraceful media cacophony going to take credit for that? Star News was busy wondering why Shivraj Patil was in different Safari suits in different clippings, implying that clothes were the only thing on his mind! CNN IBN, NDTV 24×7 and Times Now – the same elite channels, were too busy with Taj and Oberoi (and continue to be even after the operation); how much did they talk about CST station where 55 people died? Hello, isn’t CST a heritage site too? Oh sorry, I forgot – Taj and Oberoi are the places their senior people are likely to visit, not dowdy CST to take a downmarket local train. (Since I was traveling, I didn’t even see a lot of TV and yet came across these examples; please feel free to add some more in the comments section).
Try criticising the media like Arun Shourie did on 24×7 and see the incredible thin-skinned reaction from them. In ANY panel discussion, if any of the guests even touch upon media conduct, see how quickly they are cut off, how quickly and defensively the subject is changed.
Why do the media never talk about the miserable conditions the policeman operates in? How their measly pay and pathetic living conditions and lifestyle force them to be corrupt? Or about how utterly outdated their guns and bullet-proof vests are? This kind of specificity at least has some point to it, unlike an all-out diffused attack on the nameless political class. What is that supposed to achieve anyway – a sudden realisation amongst politicians that they have messed up? Or to provide an outlet for the pusillanimous common man for his own impotent rage about a lot of things not even connected to terrorism?
This is a country where the flimsiest rumour can cause riots. Will these media houses accept responsibility if an unhinged viewer goes and shoots down a politician as his heroes did in Rang De Basanti? If Raj Thackeray can be arrested for inflammatory statements, why not those running these TV channels? They are equally culpable on my book.
One thing that also needs to be understood is that whatever the politicians do (and by no means are we letting them off the hook), attacks like these are not going to stop. The Third World War is in its second decade and on current evidence probably has at least one more decade to go. There seems little chance of solutions emerging at the root – whether it is Palestine-Israel or Kashmir, or whatever else drives these people. In a more conventional war, one could have at least harboured hopes of talking and negotiating but no country’s domestic politics will ever allow that to happen. Enough was enough long back, for God’s sake. We had better start getting used to this now.
At best, we can make it more difficult for these terrorists to strike. Whether it is through dedicated NSG units in multiple cities or a proper guarding of our coastal kilometres, whether the constitution needs to be amended sometimes or personal freedoms shrugged-off at other moments. There are experts for all these things, and if the media could use them to focus on a balanced debate on all these, maybe this media could actually justify the position they have in our society.
For now though, we’ll have to put up with Madam De’s pearls. Of wisdom.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
jaideep, here it is….
http://smallchange.in/
@Phoenixnu
100% agreed
Pearls of wisdom indeed… Haha!
The news channels are simply getting worse and worse, now that the battle is over. The NDTV debate was a circus at best and a farce at worst. What kind of nincompoops had they assembled over there? Barring Bachi Karkaria, Ratna Pathak Shah and a surprisingly rational Ness Wadia, the others were a bunch of limelight-grabbers whose PR guys, I must say are doing a fantastic job. Luke Kenny and Kunal Kohli were part of that panel – why them? For heaven’s sake, what qualifies them as experts? And Semi Grey-baal (I am indebted to MTV forever for coining that name) was rightly chastised by an audience member, who vehemently called her “the enemy” for attempting to incite hatred.
We are, and we continue to be a nation with petty, petty issues and trivial prejudices that we defend under the argument of ‘our culture,their culture’.
Jaideep
I completely agree with this circus around Taj.
Its amazing how no one is talking about CST at all.
Its amazing how Shobhe De is reacting. Where was she when people were dying in Bomb Blasts every month all over the country? Esp in Bombay? Its actually really funny how scared she & others from the Page 3 has become.
I have not seen anything about the deaths in CST. Its almost as if nothing happened there.
Media has always been a circus. They have just been exposed in this crisis. And its the media which is making all this war cry against Pakistan. Politicians are acting much better. Accept of course the BJP stars – ADVANI & MODI. These two should be thrown out of our country.
I’m not in India so wasn’t following the Indian channels but I found a couple of good interviews on NDTV with Sanjana Kapoor and Harsha Bhogle. Granted they’re not ‘experts’ but they are sensible people. They’re here:
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/mumbaiterrorstrike/video.aspx?id=45676
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/mumbaiterrorstrike/video.aspx?id=45680
@Phoenicnu
Agreed and signed… My comments below..
For all the talk about unity or disunity among our political class (appropriately so), look at the unity that the media showed among themselves… And what is exclusive about a news as this? Why not build a temporary press station FAR away from the Taj/Oberoi and let the spokesperson speak there??? What is the intention of showing someone Burning and falling down on Screen??? When we see movies with certain level of violence, Don’t we get it rated?? Who rates these things? Why such unrated material was shown live Without Proper Proedure???
I agree with sarang.
They could have shown it from far, so that people do get to see that the situation was grim and they could have broadcasted only the necessary & important facts.
Jaideep: I have been disoriented these past few days since I can’t seem to agree to anything/anyone and I have nothing to offer myself. Here are a few things that boggle my mind:
1. Deshmukh, Patil, Achutanandan, Naqvi make insensitive remarks and are roundly castigated by the media. But when The Economic Times ran the headline “Nariman GunPoint” on Day 2 and “Quantum of Solace” on Day 4 when the NSG operations drew to a close, why didn’t they apply the sensitivity test to themselves? What kind of sick mind thinks of puns during such times?
2. There’s a talk of a federal agency to coordinate the work between IB, RAW and other govt agencies. Why should more govt babus be answer to our intelligence problems? How have the existing agencies helped that another agency running of exchequer funds will help solve things?
3. I simply don’t understand what people mean when they say “since the target was Taj and Trident, there’s outrage. Where were these people when bombs went of in suburban trains?”. What kind of logic is this? I can counter this by asking where were you when there were farmer suicides in villages? You only talk when the bombs go off in urban areas like trains in Mumbai or blasts in Delhi. And we can spiral downwards from there on. This supposed moral highground is stupid because there’s always another person who can come and claim it from you
4. I have been in dinners at restaurants here in Bangalore where police has shown up after 11 PM and asked us to leave. I know of places which have been warned because they allowed dancing in their premises (this is Bangalore, dancing is banned in public places). What are our priorities? Shutting down dance bars in Mumbai, chasing diners off at 11 PM? I was returning with a friend on Saturday evening and we were stopped by police at a checkpoint. And the police searched us a little more and berated us because we couldn’t speak the local language. In the meantime, a few cars passed by with no checks at all.
5. Why do we have Shobha De, Sharmila Tagore and Sanjay Dutt on news talking about terror? I know everyone has a view but what do any of us get out of their views. What do they contribute to in terms of solution? How insensitive can we get when we get a person who has lost 6 of his family at CST into our show and then repeatedly ask him to speak up a bit on the microphone since his voice isn’t audible?
I could go on and on. It makes no sense. So I have stopped reading or watching such stuff. I have no idea where to look for something meaningful and or what to do to be able to contribute.
hey jaideep
note- sorry i know this is a wrong place to comment abt this but just wanted to put across the message
saw your film few days back …very well intended ..just wish it could have been more tighter and short…to me it seemed to have that desire to acieve that woodey allen essence and it somehow at moments was able to achieve but couldn’t be followed ..the biggest fault it couldn’t open up as many layers as you intended for …anyways i hope things are well with you and hope to see some more interesting work from you in future.
ciao
Subrat: I think you are asking the right questions. All I can say is keep asking them and you’ll eventually know what to do. I am in the same page and am hoping that I’ll eventually realize what I am supposed to do.
Lets put Barkha Dutt somewhere very far away from the TV screen..all i remember is her hysteria from the last few days..compare her to the calm and matter of fact reporting of Sreenivasan Jain. NDTV was at its stupid best when to be the moral crusader it started wrapping up the coverage of attacks even when gunfight was going on in Taj. Bhnc**d attack to khatam ho hi jayega ..apni intellectual bullshitting start karo. All of us have become patriots when a fanatic puts a gun to our head but where is our patriotism when we make Muslims and people from North East feel like second class citizens in their own country.
Subrat, agree with everything you say, except 3. I don’t think you have to be on a moral high-ground to have a problem with “Enough is Enough” pronouncements being made now. Enough was enough in 2006 when 201 people died from all strata of life. The point about the CST omission (or relative media negligence) is that this was the same incident, with more casualties even, and yet more attention is being given to the high society attack spot. The media too has never been as hysterical as it got this time. I saw a scroll somewhere which said 192 people have died in the last one week in Tamil Nadu because of floods – shit, how many people even know this? But if I had brought up this example in the post then your moral high ground would have been valid, not now.
Nitin, as you said, this is not quite the forum to bring in Hulla, but since you mentioned it – you might just be assuming too many things wrongly there ; there was no Woody Allen essence intended, nor are there any other layers that you’re imagining didn’t open up. All my intentions are well-realised on my book – if that didn’t work for you, that’s too bad, I guess. Thanks for your wishes anyway.
I think the reason this has gotten so much coverage is because HOSTAGES were taken. Do you not think if hostages were taken at CST it wouldn’t have gotten coverage?
Bombs go off all over the world – London, Madrid, New York, Israel, Bombay. If a bomb had gone off at the Taj, or several bombs, do you think there would be this hysteria? I don’t think so.
Taking hostages – holding people captive – rich or poor or somewhere in the middle – changes your perspective of the terror. A bomb going off is a random incident. A person -any person- being held captive, “waiting to be slaughtered”, evokes an emotional response that is far different.
Should it? That’s a different question – but it does.
@Shripriya – I see your point but I don’t know – because 1) Nariman House coverage was also far less than Taj and that was hostage situation too. 2) Even after the incident was over, there was far more coverage of Taj and Trident. And yes, even if hostages were taken in CST, Taj would still have got more coverage from this media, I think. I hope we never find out though.
Thanks Mainak, Pratik, Pranit, Sarang, Pnu and all the rest for your comments.
@Jaideep – it’s entirely possible re: the media. And I hardly want to defend them. I found the coverage obnoxious.
I’m just thinking about it from my perspective. The hostage thing changed the game for me. Changed the amount of emotional investment. We’ve all been numbed by bomb blasts – as sad as that is. This just ratcheted the ante up…
Shripriya
I think you are right. Hostage situation is a big reason. Then it becomes drama.
Also this time they took it too a new level rarely seen even in the best Hollywood films. HEAT comes to mind. This time They were not hiding their faces. Or it wasn’t some unknown terrorist. This was the 1st time we saw terriorists live at work. Again more Drama.
@Subrat
Agree & Disagree with your point 3. If someone is raising that point doesn’t mean they are taking Moral High Ground. That person can admit his own selfishness in raising the terrorism isssue so much after seeing TAJ. If you see the Discussion on TIMES NOW Arnab raised the same point to Suhel Seth (who was saved by Taj Staff) & Suhel admitted that yes he probably is so angry because it threatened his life instead of a Bomb Blast in some far away place. Instead of asking Arnab where were you when X,Y, Z was happening.
Besides there are a lot of people who care about Farmer’s Suicides & there are a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to such issues. I myself have tried raise awareness a few times here, but the response is always discouraging. People think one is wasting their time reading about how Pesticide companies are driving people to death & how its so important to not eat processed food. Only drama attracts our attention anymore. Thats life. So be it. But nothing wrong in pointing it out to people.
Also your point 2 can be worked out. Maybe we don’t need more babus. We just need a Security agency which is solely responsible for intra-agency communication & making sure proper action is taken. We can take the right people from the existing agencies & do this. This has to be done. Thats the biggest lesson of this tragedy. Blaming politicians & making a people resign everywhere will not solve anything.
agreeing and disagreeing with a number of opinions in this post…firstly nariman house operation was covered in a very detailed manner by Times Now…but they are also guilty of allowing live coverage of operational details (which NDTV categorically didn’t)…the mass hysteria is really not being whipped up by the media…we need to understand that this attack is somewhat different from a bomb blast in both nature and impact….a bomb blast is similar to where a person is attacking you from the behind…it is covert in nature…here on 26/11 ten (or so) people walked in to a city and started peppering people with bullets and mind you not from your back…it was audacious…and it seems that there are enough proofs that these people didn’t pop out of this country….as a result people’s anger is also justified…what is not justified is knee jerk reaction…however, what is justified is a bold and courageous response after enough proof is obtained….no one should be allowed to tolerate/perpetrate/sponsor terror from its territory (i don’t know which is the correct alternative here)
Hey Jaideep,
You are right on most counts. In fact, I was appalled when a news channel proclaimed that one of the terrorists had made contact on Thursday night. This was followed by a “live” telecon with a (really tacky actor pretending to be a) terrorist (he had an obscene Ravan-like laugh). Obviously, it was all phoney-baloney-pulling-wool-over-janta’s-eyes ploy to earn more TRPs (which has backfired because I have a hunch that it has put the channel’s license possibly at risk). Fortunately, this was noticed by the Government… and the very next day during a press conference, the Secy of the Home Ministry thanked the media for doing a good job “except for one channel”. No prizes for guessing this one…
I see a lot of citizen activism as a consequence of the terror attacks. I think that’s great. Candle sales have shot through the roof… thanks to RDB. But as one of my close friends pointed out, if the citizens really want to do something, they should broadly do the following (especially the folks in South Mumbai):
1) Pay taxes, honestly and in full.
2) Vote (or abstain from voting after registering themselves at the polling booth).
3) Drop the elitist attitude.
While I know that the change that we envisage cannot occur overnight and would have to be a gradual process, but seeing that the citizens have got the requisite “fire in the belly”, I think it’s a good start. By lighting candles, I agree that citizens have successfully displayed sensitivity and solidarity, however, the actions by these citizens, as my friend put it, should go deeper than that. Food for thought?
Regards, Diptee
in the train blasts there were more casualties….now people are shouting from their rooftops bcoz the posh south mumbai was targeted….we didnt see anil dharkar, shobha de, farook sheikh etc after the train blasts….now that the thing has reached their doorsteps that they are making a big noise….
same applies to our corrupt politicians…unless some of them and their families get killed nothing is going to happen…
Thanks for the article. Seriously Im totally fed up with this yuppie culture .
Aag apne hi pichwaade me lagi hai to jaagen hain paisewaale.!!!!
Did you see so much hue and cry after the 2006 train blasts ……or even the torrid rains
was anything ever done about it.
Middle and lower class ppl ki jaan thodi hoti hai. Their bodies are like organ farms for these elitists.
I hear after the plaque in surat…the city changed a lot. We need that all over the country.
Every satyendra dubey and manjunath are blown to smithereens. !! Koi hope hai nazar nahi aati hai.
Imaandaar aadmi saala bewakoof hai. chaturon ne bawaal macha rakha hai.!!!
BTW I do hope this incident is an eyeopener for some film industry people who in the past have made idiotic and stupid remarks wrt Pakistan. Two examples
been
here and
here
Mark Patterson
Whats your point?
My hero Tarun Tejpal has finally spoken….
Been waiting for his thoughts after the terror weekend
Here it is
“What the Indian elite is discovering today on the debris of fancy eateries is an acidic truth large numbers of ordinary Indians are forced to swallow every day. Children who die of malnutrition, farmers who commit suicide, dalits who are raped and massacred, tribals who are turfed out of centuryold habitats, peasants whose lands are taken over for car factories, minorities who are bludgeoned into paranoia — these, and many others, know that something is grossly wrong. The system does not work, the system is cruel, the system is unjust, the system exists to only serve those who run it. Crucially, what we, the elite, need to understand is that most of us are complicit in the system.”
Full Article
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/news/fullstory1.asp?news_id=33346&tag=28298§ion_id=8
Finally… finally…
I’m so glad someone else’s voice resonates with
me.
I was ashamed that a national broadcaster such as NDTV called its coverage Enough is Enough, India’s 9/11. The constant referencing of the United Staes to the terrorist’s strike. I mean… it is our tragedy, and it wasn’t even 9/11. If the U.S. did not have 9/11, would they have searched for antther American idiom to describe the event.
Who were they communicating to? And seriously why did the Trident and Taj get such an imbalanced coverage? And why was there so little coverage at CST.
One terrorist was caught and another killed at Chowpatty. Nobody talked about it for the first couple of days.
In one of the reports, boatmen at Gateway claimed that 40 people alighted from some boats. There was no follow up. At the end, you hear that
The only voices of sanity that I heard were of Harsha Bhogle, Sanjana Kapoor and Shekhar Gupta. Shekhar Gupta, heads the Indian Express and the channel moderators were drowning his voice and constantly shifting to voices that were making dull, dumb dramatic statements.
John
The reason we saw Trident & Taj more was because it was a live hostage situation. So I wouldn’t blame the media about that.
Its how the upper middle class has suddenly woken up after that weekend that is amusing to some people.
Jaideep Varma – all I have to write here is BRILLIANT! There are just too many great points to quote, but I absolutely loved reading about Ms. De and your right-to-the-point view of the media. Thank you for finally writing a piece that helps us in being part of the solution, instead of part of the problem with our constant criticism!