Switch on any form of popular media – and you will find celebrities hogging the limelight with regard to the Mumbai terror attacks. Actors and other celebrities are rattling of policy measures that they would like to be undertaken at a furious pace. This entry is not to discuss the validity and feasibility of these policies. Instead – I would like to ask why our Government officials are not doing the same. By this I mean, why are our Government officials not willing to come together in a public debate and discuss what kind of policies would help our country. It is extremely important that such discourse is public – so that the citizens of India know that the politicians are actually doing something.
Lets analyze what the politicians have been doing since the attacks:
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came on television roughly about 18 hours after the attacks and gave us an insipid and limp speech insisting India would not be beaten down.
Pratibha Patil spoke for about 45 seconds saying how she honored those who sacrificed their lives – even while operations were ongoing. It is absolutely pathetic that she gave a pre-written speech that must have been filed in her drawer under “what to say in case of a terrorist attack” – the lack of interest in public sentiment at the time was appalling.
A meeting of the Congress Working Committee was called in which we learnt that various public officials such as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil offered to resign. Did these politicians, tasked with the welfare of our country, not realize that a terror attack had just taken place and instead of shirking their responsibilities, they needed to inspire confidence in the people of India. The time for resigning could have come later.
Then began the whole fiasco about the Congress Government in Maharashtra. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what was going through Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil’s head when he said that these incidents were common in big cities, implying he did not think the furore being created over these attacks was justified or necessary.
After which we woke up to images of Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ram Gopal Varma at the Taj. This move further supports the theory that politicians do not have any gauge of public sentiment.
Deshmukh rightly faced a lot of flak for this incident and offered to resign. After this, 2 whole days were spent lobbying for the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Narayan Rane’s reaction to Ahsok Chavan being named as the new Chief Minister has been extremely immature.
Do the politicians not realize that terror attacks have taken place? A person without any knowledge of these attacks would be forgiven into believing that elections are next week, given the flurry of political activity not related to the terror attacks.
It is a shame that the only people that we get to see on television actually discussing the terror attacks and giving constructive suggestions are media personalities. Our politicians need to take a leaf out of the books of these celebrities – since they themselves do not seem to have a darn clue as to who to gauge and react to public opinion or sentiment.
The world’s largest democracy is in shambles.
The Movement 
well i think the worlds largest democracy has always been in shambles……it has always been run by goons…….
i read think there are three broad characteristics that define a politician in India:-
1) u need to uneducated.
2) u need to have money or a relative in a good a highly influential relative in any party.
3) u need to have a police case against u….death n rape charges better cause then the govt will give money and get u out wen the trust vote is taken…..
u know wat scares me is that the elections are cumin up in the next few months n i dun noe who to vote for cause both bjp n congress suk..i cant see anyone leader who is has that fierce power of leadership etc……..the list of reasons is a the topic for another blog……small parties do not cum to power…
i dun noe or honestly cant see a change in Indias political scene…..
deepm27,
“u need to educated” ?
seriously?
Media Out(r)age
The squakbox really came into its own this time round, squaking away at every dram, every dribble of data until they metamorphosed it to a mass of hollow, garbled, pointless ‘information’. (Pointless to everyone except the terrorists, that is).
Every industry, including the media, needs regulation. The media’s uniformly sensationalist reaction to a Bollywood premier or to a Terror attack has become all too predictable. Behind the obvious frenzy-fanning, the ‘Breaking News’ fixation, the camera space for page 3 people to propound their love for Taj as their ‘first and only home’ – there were the obvious revenues and TRP.
The media must better serve the genuine needs of the nation. I read one suggestion that DD should be given sole rights to broadcast live images of an incident; while private newsrooms could fret and fan from the comfort of their studios.