One man threatened to fast, and the media was seduced to give him front page covering day after day and the government bent backwards to appease him until they learned he was pulling a fast one on them.
In the midst of all this, I read the following yesterday: "Agitating farmers threaten mass suicide" (HT, June 10, p.1). Small font headline, of course! These farmers in UP villages are threatening mass suicide if their land is acquired by the government.
We know the government policy: take over ancestral property from the poor, promise them a pittance in compensation (even which never really reaches them!) and sell the land to the rich corporations and developers - and make a fast buck in the process too.
"We started our agitation on April 15 and there is no response from the administration. So, we have decided to commit mass suicide after June 30 by hanging ourselves here," a farmer leader said. I wonder how much of media interest and governmental attention this threat will garner!
These farmers are agitating against a government land acquisition policy that touches them dearly; which deprives them of ancestral land and their livelihood. The one-man fast is against the hydraheaded leviathan that is "corruption" - a reality that does not really touch the faster, but is a fast-track strategy to garner media publicity and increase in personal popularity and filling financial coffers. I have so far not heard of anyone dying of fasting!! They all stop it before they do!! So, fasting today is really a gimmick (Gandhi excepted; his was a different kind of fast) And the government's response was lightning quick!
But suicide? That is real!
I wonder how much media coverage these farmers will get and if some minister will rush in there to appease them (Fat chance really! There was no response to their agitation for two months!). But who knows? The media might see something to grab eyeballs in a suicide threat. There is something darkly fascinating about death! Even threat of death.
One man's fast or a whole group of farmers' suicide threat? Which gets government's and media attention? Not difficult to answer, right?
Will we see photographs of a line of farmers hanging dead from trees on the front pages of our head-over-heels "socially conscious!" newspapers, as much we as have been seeing that of a saffron clad and bearded swami - the last one of five doctors hovering over him? He was taken to hospital by force, I understand.
I have not seen on front pages of our newspapers photographs of doctors hovering over children dying of hunger - a phenomenon not so rare in a country that is projected to be an economic giant within a few years! Nor of these children taken by force (or no force) to the hospital and given treatment by a concerned administration. But so much fuss over a fasting swami! I guess he is in a league apart. But why!!
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