(BiharTimes): The Anna Hazare wave has reached Bihar like in many other parts of the country. Students, teachers, senior citizens and many activists took to roads on Friday expressing their solidarity to Anna Hazare, who is on fast unto death to pressurize government for bringing Jan Lok Pal Bill to curb rampant corruption in our system. Corruption is all pervasive and accepted fact of our life.
Bihar has always been known for argumentative middle class. This is the reason why critical media always had strong foothold here. Be it BBC Hindi and Urdu Services or magazines like Dinman, Ravivar and many other Hindi periodicals the hard hitting stories carried by them in 70s and 80s are still referred to by many old-timers.
However, this time it was left upto none else but incarcerated Pappu Yadav to undertake fast in Beur Jail in support of Hazare. It was at his initiative that others followed and on Saturday the Head of Department of Economics in Patna University, Nawal Kishore Chaudhary, also decided to undertake fast.
I often wonder as to why after the infamous fodder scam no major movement or protest has been initiated by the civil society and media, which still have some talented hands.
Today we have media houses, especially channels, like grocery shops whose prime consideration is to make money at all cost and in this world of commercialization people lack options. Very recently some alternative media are providing some space, that too, for educated upper middle class who are only concerned with the goody goody image of the state.
During the last Assembly election media was caught on wrong foot when in every nook and corner the major issue was corruption. People were complaining that corruption had increased manifold and babus have become all powerful and no work could be done without greasing the palms of the dark gods.
The other day newspapers carried front page stories that…“Palatial houses of corrupt officers would be confiscated and schools would soon come up in those houses.” This euphoric news, of course, would cause irritation to a layman who did not know who were the owners of those palatial buildings in Patna or elsewhere.
The fact is people no more trust politicians and corrupt officers are hand in glove with their masters though the citizens have coviction that they are public servants and accountable to them.
In the last week of February 2010 raids were carried at various residential and commercial premises of senior IAS officer, Senthil Kumar, by the State Vigilance Bureau of Bihar. He was then the Commissioner of Patna Municipal Corporation. About 14 months later he is sitting very much tight in his official chair, now as the Director, Census. He presided over the survey work so important for the country with no fear of any lurking problem for him.
In contrast when a minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, Jamshed Ashraf pointed out to the C.M about Rs 500 crore scam in his Excise department on January 14, 2010 when the entire cabinet was meeting in MV Ganga, he was simply dismissed a month later. Ashraf was snot challenging the chief minister politically nor was his intention to score point. He was in fact not run-of-the-mill politician, but a Mumbai-based industrialist, whom Nitish Kumar inducted to have a Muslim face. Nobody has heard about the scam since then. Interestingly the newspapers who dared to break this story changed the line from very next day, instead of following up.
Similarly, the CAG recently once again brought to the notice the report of Rs 11,500 crore of pending DC Bills and accused the government of submitting fake Bills when the High Court gave it the time to submit them.
Not to miss another CAG report involving a sum of hundreds of crores
on the irregularities and loot committed in the Kosi flood relief fund of 2008. The report clearly mentioned that the registration numbers of vehicles carrying relief material for lakhs of people facing death were shown to be those of scooters and motor-cycles and not trucks. This exposed the fact that they were fake bills submitted to embezzle the amount.
No political party ever pursued corruption cases after fodder scam owing to the reason that political parties could not think of fighting corruption issues being a party in many decision from time to time.
Political parties thrive purely on corruption right from workers to top leaders.
The most painful part of the story is the passive civil society of the state. The weak civil society institutions and corrupt NGOs never made government accountable even on policy issues. Recently when some social activists moblised people against opening of asbestos factories in rural areas, the government was forced to backtrack.
Hopefully, Hazare movement has given a message to one and all that if you fail to lead on this issue somebody would emerge and society will follow.
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Newspapers grudgingly looked to advertising revenues for support. They were always contrite about accepting it. To solicit was considered the ultimate act of betrayal. Advertisements are now openly used as whip- yes in the political sense of the term, because failure to heed to the dictates would entail disqualification for receiving ads. Therefore, the definition of news has undergone a change. It now means de rigour coverage of specific events, official functions, reporting the pious declarations of the political elite. The news media are forced to neglect coverage of long-term social issues that dominate society. But in Bihar the management of the media has been done on very professional lines.
Together with state we have built up such a picture of peace, transparency, tranquility, development and well being that any one who cites an instance of dysfunction or even represents what is mentioned in the other forum stands tainted with anti government, which has come to mean anti people, bias. By sanitizing coverage and making it devoid of ideological content,been robbed of the excitement once associated with politics and those who are not sycophants or believers may find it boring . Even coverage of crime which provided some sensationalism or excitement in Lalujj’s days has now been relegated to the smallest print on page 2. Today, a local news paper, it seems has published a story of extortion form Beur jail with government permission.
There is the other strategy. I will briefly quote two instances very well known in media circles, and probably beyond also. Some time back the editor of a Hindi daily published from Patna reported the observations of an Hon’ble Court that jungle raj was prevalent of Bihar. Made to realize his mistake by his owner- are not all of us journalists owned by some corporate house or the other to earn profit for them- he started trailing the leading dignitary to show that he was still the poodle who had accidentally bit the hands that fed him.He committed the mistake of showing up uninvited in a public function on the dias with the top dignitaries. Since it was a public function it was only natural that he should be humiliated publicly. This was on bhadas4media.com.
A local journalist dared to mention electricity while a leading dignitary was holding forth on development etc. After that he was faced with a fusillade. He was reminded that earlier also he had done hostile reporting etc and that he was not bound to answer any stupid question because it was not a press conference. This was the subject of conversation for a week in our circle of journalists.
There has hardly been a civil society in existence Bihar for very long. Those few who were still opening their mouths have been silenced by giving them sinecures. More than scores of appointments to various committees have been made, and some have started singing in praise in sheer anticipation
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