I usually defer from writing about the current HOT topics; Too many debates, too many arguments and discussions makes the subject too stale too fast. And any tuppence one adds to it, its already been heard before. However, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the games as much as the strange Indian attitude of extremities, very much propagated and influenced by the media and this time got so bad that one had to dwell on it.
So here we were, one day jumping up and down, booing the government, booing the CWG committee and booing the country as such because International media made a huge ruckus about the "facilities and infrastructure", the lack of it, at the CWG village and they were promptly and happily seconded by the Indian media. A lot of brouhaha took place - an Australian media person saying he entered the facility with a suitcase of explosive device and not being stopped, some athletes pulling out here and there, a snake, a fever and all this was blown out of proportions by our ever prompt media!
The very next day the opening ceremony took place and suddenly everyone was happy! My twitter TL was overflowing with emotional tweets - pride, tears, exhilaration and what not! Added to this the Indian medals tally and the touching closing ceremony made all of us Proud Indian.
So where was our National Pride when some outsiders were hell bent on making us look bad?
Why were we so ready to join forces with them and display to the world spit stains, a couple of removed false ceiling tiles and so forth instead of defending our country by showing the so much more beautiful bigger picture that we finally did get to see during the games?
No, let me make myself clear. I am not saying that there were no issues, the foot bridge collapsing, the corruption are as real as they could get. (And once again, the army to the rescue, now thats where we must all learn National Pride from ). But, corruption is a disease that is there in each walk of our life; and people, believe it or not it exists in every country. Just that they don't go around shouting at the to of their voices that their country is corrupt like we are so ready to do. When there is a 'black sheep' in our family, we all go around trying to protect that fact from public while trying to tackle the issue privately at home. So why don't we have a similar feel for our country?
Once the grandeur of the opening ceremony had the media and in fact the whole population who had believed the media's gory reports, thoroughly surprised, they suddenly backtracked saying 'we never questioned the facilities. The corruption is a serious issue and that has to be tackled'. Well, for one, if corruption were really the issue, why wait for a CWG to raise it? We have to fight it, we have to solve it, but the question is, was CWG the right arena? Did we have to wash our dirty laundry internationally?
Our country has enough and more departments and avenues where corruption occurs and the normal man is robbed in broad daylight. Why doesn't the media do something about it? (in lines of tehelka eh?) But I guess the TRP attained over crying foul for CWG is way more appealing. Wouldn't we all have looked better if the media had gone onto to display the facilities and infrastructure of the village, the greenery, the roads, interviewed so many Indian sorts person who repeatedly and vehemently mentioned how good CW village was compared to many international arenas and overall spread a good will and then covered the corrution that is anyways being covered now. No, they chose to ignore all this for the TRPs.
More important question is why are the rest of us such putty in the hands of the media? There were such angst and hate over twitter and other such arenas over the media report. Why? didn't we all at some level or other know that the organisers would have definitely made crores and crores. We are by now so tempered about all that, what with politicians stealing money out of fodder and food & clothing for soldiers at the border. So if the media had shown the great infrastructure and talked about corruption on the sidelines we would have just nodded our heads and said, of course! Instead, the "lack of clean living quarters" was the agenda initially to gather enough eyeballs.
In all this TRP race and hate mails and tweets we never once bothered to stop and think what this was doing to the image of our nation. Countries with the "India Itch" happily rode the medias back to show how "useless" Indians were and we as citizens took the side of the media and the International community leaving the organisers scrambling on the other end with not so much as "Oh, we shall do it".
The way I see things now, we had a mind blowing CWG. With the help of the army and the Delhi CM stepping in and acting (instead of cribbing), everything went on smooth on time. International media was silent. And now that all is over the necessary actions are being taken against the necessary. Only if the media had followed the same path of positivity and support in the beginning and questions and concerns (Negativity and Dramatics on TeleVision) after the games, they wouldn't have had to eat a humble pie.
The last weeks edition of The Week carried an article be some great mind India has become a joke in the international arena thanks to the CWG. Well, I am not sure when he might have sent that article to be printed, but by now I guess we all have realised that the joke is on the likes of him.
JAI HIND!!!
