Serve the People to Earn
Nidhu Bhusan Das
Our MPs are great .They are born to serve the people, selflessly.They are all for the welfare of the people. They do not take a single step without an eye on the people. They cry hoarse in the Parliament, sometimes create pendamonium, all for the benefit of the people. They are persons of conscience, and educated enough to read the mind of the people. They are good communicators, and masters of code mixing and code switching to win the hearts of the people who are assumed to be wise, able to choose wisely their MPs in general elections. Wise people’s choice must be wise and the chosen ones are, no doubt, wise. So, our MPs are wise, educated and persons of conscience.
MPs are politicians with mass following. They are social engineers, can rally people and mould public opinion in favor of them. They are speech wizards and can sway the people with oratory and also lung power when reason is not enough to argue a point. They are simply brilliant, shining stars in the firmament of Indian democracy, the largest in the world. They are the luminaries, and make us proud.
We wonder how they can go on thinking round the clock for the benefit of the people. It is because of their tireless, ceaseless and selfless endeavour that we have many things to be happy with, like mega cities, shopping malls, 24 X 7 TV news channels studded with their faces, gleaming.
They are our leaders – guides, philosophers and friends. We understand their well being means our welfare. They are our faces, faces of India and these rosy faces masquerade our penury, if any. Some reactionaries, deliberately, try to tarnish our image contending that we have people below the poverty-line. They talk about the slum dwellers, landless peasants, locked out factory workers.
In fact they are idlers, worthless people, and cannot take opportunities provided by our politics. Our politics need muscle power and money power to sustain democracy through elections. We need camps of armed goons, gory clashes to capture territories and retain them to win elections, if media reports are to be believed. The idlers can well be active in the political process and the money power used in it may make them happy. They should learn from the MPs who are always busy and active, and, thus, earn participating in the muscle flexing. In soccer, players of a team earn hefty amount playing against another. We have many parties vying for MP seats and the idlers can work for these parties and earn. Parties need workers and those who work for them can earn, legitimately.
In the current monsoon session of the Parliament, the salary of an MP has been enhanced more than three-fold. Other benefits have also been increased substantially. So what! They deserve more, given their sacrifice for the nation.Lalu Prasad Jadav, the messiah of the poor and the backward is right when he seeks Rs. 80,001 as monthly salary for an MP, which is one rupee above the maximum salary of drawn by a bureaucrat. Why should a bureaucrat earn more than a politician? A politician is a talent while a bureaucrat is fed with books. We may do without bureaucrats but we cannot conceive our democracy sans politicians. So, we should support the pay hike for the MPs, bask in their fortune and say: ‘Hurrah! We have been rewarded. It’s time to celebrate. We are happy when our MPs are benefited because they are ours.’
Challenges to Print Media
Nidhu Bhusan Das
Advent and use of new technology has been the cause of evolution of mass communication.Orature evolved into literature with the invention of writing. Literature spread and has been increasing in volume with the invention and upgradation of printing technology. What began as DIURNA, a handwritten bulletin in Rome Before Christ, is now the capital-intensive newspaper industry across the globe. Now we live in the age of media convergence following the addition of electronic and satellite technologies. What agitates our mind to-day is if the print media will lose ground to the electronic media. The apprehension has been that TV and internet are likely to spell doom for the print media. The print media has been able to face and fight challenges so far introducing new features like colour photos, news analyses and also going for convergence. All major newspapers to-day have electronic or web versions. Besides, newspaper groups like The Times of India have also launched TV news channels to retain the audience base and also to expand it with an eye on augmented profit.
How long will the newspapers and magazines will be able to hold sway vis-à-vis the overwhelming presence of TV, the gradual transformation of the Internet into a mass medium with more and more people turning netizens and the growing campaign for a paperless digital world, particularly when environmental considerations demand priority and environmentalists cry foul of deforestation.
Emerging ground realities, though a few, suggest all is not well in the print media world. Over the last two decades, two international newsmagazines NEWSWEEK and TIME have lost ground in circulation. NEWSWEEK sold over three million two decades ago and in 2009 the sale came down to 1.9 million. TIME dipped from 4.2 million to 3.3 million during the period. The shrink is attributed to ruthless news cycle, competition from TV, blogs and social media.
Electronic media like TV and Internet have an edge over the print media. They are instant media capable of presenting news as it is breaking and updating the same from time to time. The audio-visual aspect of TV coupled with animation is attractive to the viewers while Internet offers scope for reading on the computer monitor and having printed version. Blogs and social media available on the net have made the digital world more participatory, exciting and interactive. We are not sure how the print media will hold on in the emerging situation.
Advent and use of new technology has been the cause of evolution of mass communication.Orature evolved into literature with the invention of writing. Literature spread and has been increasing in volume with the invention and upgradation of printing technology. What began as DIURNA, a handwritten bulletin in Rome Before Christ, is now the capital-intensive newspaper industry across the globe. Now we live in the age of media convergence following the addition of electronic and satellite technologies. What agitates our mind to-day is if the print media will lose ground to the electronic media. The apprehension has been that TV and internet are likely to spell doom for the print media. The print media has been able to face and fight challenges so far introducing new features like colour photos, news analyses and also going for convergence. All major newspapers to-day have electronic or web versions. Besides, newspaper groups like The Times of India have also launched TV news channels to retain the audience base and also to expand it with an eye on augmented profit.
How long will the newspapers and magazines will be able to hold sway vis-à-vis the overwhelming presence of TV, the gradual transformation of the Internet into a mass medium with more and more people turning netizens and the growing campaign for a paperless digital world, particularly when environmental considerations demand priority and environmentalists cry foul of deforestation.
Emerging ground realities, though a few, suggest all is not well in the print media world. Over the last two decades, two international newsmagazines NEWSWEEK and TIME have lost ground in circulation. NEWSWEEK sold over three million two decades ago and in 2009 the sale came down to 1.9 million. TIME dipped from 4.2 million to 3.3 million during the period. The shrink is attributed to ruthless news cycle, competition from TV, blogs and social media.
Electronic media like TV and Internet have an edge over the print media. They are instant media capable of presenting news as it is breaking and updating the same from time to time. The audio-visual aspect of TV coupled with animation is attractive to the viewers while Internet offers scope for reading on the computer monitor and having printed version. Blogs and social media available on the net have made the digital world more participatory, exciting and interactive. We are not sure how the print media will hold on in the emerging situation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)