i dig deep into the ravines of my memory, nothing indian in those ravines has attracted such a worldwide media attention as the “mumbai on war” . first six pages in wsj, 24 hrs in cnn, 24×7 amonng indian gossip mongers.yes, they baked their breads in fire that burnt the victims, saviours and the hotels. under the cloak of feeding news to the obsessive worldwide audience (me included) they went on and on and on. we, the diners were served a smorgasbord of unverified tid bits, chanced upon gossips, fantasies of “reliable sources” and perhaps some facts while the fury within served as an hors d’oeuvre to the meal that never arrived.
the media alone is not the object of my wrath, the people who provided them the ingredients for the potpourri are pretty up my bad book as well. ATS, Mumbai Police, NSG, IB, Home Ministry, State Ministry we just had too many departments dealing with this and everyone of them wanted to catch a beam of limelight with their comments. there were varying statements about the origin of terrorists, the number of them, the armaments they used, the number of victims, the locations etc.
“reliable sources” is now a new cliche in my lexican. a convenient masquerade for an unverified piece of someone’s fantasies. the news channels are afraid that if they do not, someone else will use that piece of gossip to boost their TRP so all of them end up broadcasting a piece of unverified information . could someone sue them for the mis-information they spread?
then to my dismay they end up commending the terrorists. extremely fit, very well trained, ruthless, meticulously in planning, heavily armed, determined and dedicated.. this list of qualities would look good on a military résumé and even if true should not be used to describe those misanthropes.
i find the modus operandi of the investigation flawed. one must avoid speculation when detailing public on such incandescent matters, either there should be one body heading the investigation or if its the synergic effort of the spectrum of bureaucracy they should have one common media spokesperson who would update the media.the public should be given an admissable ETA of the investigation report update and the spokesperson should hold a press conference on such date. each official must be sworn to secrecy.
the arrested terrorist’s statements are being taken as gospel truth and someone or the other seems to be coming running to the media after every sentence he blurts. the number of terrorists have a mode of 10,median of 12, an upper extreme of 26, they may or may not have local support (is there another possibility). the list of varying revelations have been endless.
India needs an equivalent of Guantanamo from which general public and media are quarantined, the entire investigation must be done from there. the culprits when caught must be made examples , an object of terror to anyone who imagines doing such an act . the human rights organisations if making noise must be silenced in that regard.
if there has been an internal support for these kind of activities we must digout the reasons. if the reasons have roots in past government(’s) (in)action, visible steps must be made to correct them. if the reasons are religious we must even go to the extent of decalring india as athiest rather secular and it must be made clear to people that nothing on religious ground would be tolerated; if there economic incentives for such disloyalty; the treasonists must be treated at par with the terrorists. perhaps another time i would try going into what i think could be the incentive/trigger for disloyalty.
and they said