The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday 1 January 2010

SOCIAL LEARNING AND MEDIA CONNECT: THE OPEN-ENDED MUTUAL AGENDA SETTING (I)

Media doesn’t operate in isolation. Yes, it is a matter of debate who is the agenda setter and so all the bohemian debates that which one is the manipulating agency. But clearly there has been one development that seems to send some sort of reconciliation in botched confines of the socializing, tabooing and moralizing on part of the communicators.

The way Ruchika case has evolved into a greater national issue and has created a debate that is extending to the people affecting on the street, though in metros and major urban settlements, as clear from voices of different victims now coming out from different parts of the country, gives a reason to the associating alignment of media and therefore its role in the most pragmatic lesson of life, fighting to live with dignity not allowing the perpetrators who inflicted the pain to go away freely and easily.

So today we have voices being raised by victim relatives of a forest department clerk who was molested by the then Conservator of Forests in 1994 in Panchkula when the fellow pulled the lady towards him and tried to kiss her. That was 1994 and in 2009, the case has somewhat similar developments as that of Ruchika before this month’s hearing and subsequent developments for justice to Ruchika's soul. Another case getting much media glare is of confinement and rape of a constable’s wife by a DIG in Rajasthan. That educated goon kept tribal wife of his junior-most colleague handcuffed for days in his Noida house and raped her, and again that was in 1997. Here the case was a little different as the goon ran away after the case surfaced but never a serious effort was made to bring him behind the bar. He is still at large. The case has only picked up after media campaign in Ruchika case and involvement of an influential tribal politician of Rajasthan.

Then there is yet another 11 year old case of Gujarat, where, this time, the right to justice has been made to suffer under influence of a politician. A 13 year old Dalit girl was allegedly gangraped by a relative and a friend of an MLA on next day of Holi in Vadodra, way back in 1998. After the horror, the injustice took place in the usual manner, justice - delayed and delayed; still the matter is in court and who know for how long it will be dragged on.

There are cases and cases. A case has surfaced in Nepal where the government is trying to hush up the proceedings in an alleged gangrape case. Here again an official establishment, police services is under the dock, for six male policemen reportedly gangraped their female colleague and that too in the police station on September 27 last year. The police establishment of the country tried everything to suppress voices and assassinate the character of the victim. Things were their way until the media started raising the issue and now an intense media campaign is under the sun to extend the shine even to the moon. Kavita, a young lecturer, mysteriously disappeared from Meerut in 2006 and is still untraced amidst allegations that a powerful UP minister got her killed. Shashi, another Dalit girl and Law student from Faizabad got killed and another UP minister Anand Sen was taken-in for the case, but, for heinous crime like murder, he has met nothing more that a mosquito bite. Similar are the cases of Amar Mani Tripathi and RS Sharma, two names, that got another two victim names, Madhumita and Shivani Bhatnagar, wiped out.

We need to know here that we should not expect a great change as far as punishment to these burdens is concerned, for, experts feel even SPS Rathore would continue to flash his shameless face as evidence available in Ruchika case is not sufficient enough for a long term punishment, in spite of all the media pressure. Other cases which are being dragged-on for years are bound to have the similar outcomes. Around 2.5 million cases, that are waiting to see some positive in our court-rooms, would have how many more Ruchikas, who knows? Adding to it, is the jitter that, though we look towards judiciary for final respite from corrupt clutches of bureaucracy, diplomacy, polity and administration, our judicial system, too, ranks as one of the most corrupt services sectors in India.

There are cases and cases and no one seem to reach a logical and valid conclusion, yes, except very few. S Manzunath’s killers got their due only this month. We all know how the convicts of cases like Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo, Manoj Dubey, Satyendra Dubey and many faceless names are treated.

So what is new? We all, almost know all these.

Nothing! Except for the debate that Ruchika case helped to develop.