Divide and Rule

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If Raj thackeray's violent tirade against the northindian community in the last one week was not enough, he has now embarked on a new agenda. Divide and Rule the media. The last one week, Raj faced heavy criticism from media across the board. Some called him and his politics "Goonda Raj" while others chose to attack his new found agenda as an attempt to checkmate the rival Shiv sena. But the feeling was common across journalists from both mediums. Violence against innocent men is not the way to score a political point. So if you cant beat them, divide them. Raj Thackeray feeling the heat from both national and regional media did what the Britisher's did best.Divide them and watch the fun. He sent out signed invites to select regional media houses and kept Hindi and english news channels out of the list. The message was loud and clear....

Reporting from Dalal Street

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Scene 1: The year was 2004...I was working for a Hindi news channel. The Sensex was hovering around the 4500 mark. Reporting on the markets was then a quite unexciting job. No bull run. .. No 500 point upward movement in one day .. No record landmarks... It was under such circumstances that one of my colleague wrote a market story with a outlook of Sensex crossing over 5500 in the next fortnight. I still remember the furore we created and asked him to scale down his exuberance. Scene 2: If this was not enough, a senior official from a govt department made a comment on the sidelines of a seminar in 2005 stating that the market would soon reach 18000 mark. All hell broke loose since the markets had not even tested the 8000 levels. The media highlighted the statement...And the poor official got a tight rap....

Demons Yet Again

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So yet again, the electronic media is the insensitive, senseless devil who only understands the language of TRPs and hence chose to blow up the Mumbai molestation incident out of proportion. No, I am not saying this... It's the self appointed TV critics who think its fashionable to blame media for all the ills in the society. Dear Politicians, please be happy. You are not the only whipping boys for a frustrated society. The media will now give you company. The context Two couples out on New Year night get hounded by drunk hooligans whose hormone levels were on a high. They groped the women and pulled their clothes, pushed the men who were accompaning them and refused to let them go. Until two responsible photographers from a mainline newspaper arrive at the spot and click pictures while also alerting a nearby police van on....

Tragic July

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I am neither superstitious nor a believer in jinx. But the month of July seems to be jinxed for Mumbaikars from the last three years. On July 26th 2005, 944 mm of rain lashed Mumbai in four hours leaving nearly 1,000 people dead and loss of property worth crores of rupees. On July 11th, 2006, seven bombs ripped apart seven trains across the western railway line leaving 187 commuters dead and over 800 injured. So you may ask me what happened this year. Till the afternoon of 18th July, 2007, I was glad that no form of tragedy has struck Mumbai this July to make it a tragic hatrick. But I was celebrating too early. Around 5.45 pm on 18th July, a residential building collapses in Borivali leaving 29 people dead and more than 11 seriously injured. Yet another human tragedy and precious lives....

7/11 blog: The CNN-IBN Impact

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The frequent criticism about News channels is well known ... Too much noise but negligible impact on the lives of people around them. So three weeks back when we sat together to make an outline for the program on the lives of survivors of 7/11 blasts in the last one year, the brief from our Special Investigation Editor, V K Shashikumar, was very simple. A hard hitting followup of survivors who have been ignored by the administration and society in general and ensuring justice is done to them. We started on this difficult path by first getting in touch with many individuals who were already on our list. But we faced an uphill task trying to convince them that we were serious about helping them get justice. Many had lost hopes of getting any compensation from the railways or state government after making several rounds and....

7/11: Spirit of Mumbai

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"Spirit of Mumbai", "Mumbai back on track", "Life moves on"... I first started hearing these terms on 11th July, 2006. The fateful day when mindless terrorists blew up 7 local trains in Mumbai killing 187 commuters and injuring over 1000 commuters. And it was not just me, every journalist reporting on this terror act used these terms freely in an effort to showcase Mumbai's terrific spirit to fight against all odds and get back on track. But were we right" Does life really move on" Maybe we are wrong. Life does move on for most of us who are unaffected by the blasts. For journalists like me, it was yet another story to be covered. Yet another deadline to be met. Yet another case study to be shot. Yet another round of administration bashing. Most of us got into the trains the very next day. And after a....

Private screening in Surat

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What do you do when you are stuck in floods and unable to move out anywhere. I was faced with this dilemma last week when I was in Surat. Due to some strange reasons, before I could reach the OB van(Satellite van), water from the Tapti river rushed into the city and put us on opposite sides of the city. My OB van was stuck somewhere close to Surat Station and I was in the heart of the city shooting stories but with no medium to release those visuals. By the second day, I managed to release one of my tapes through a senior Banker staying in my hotel. He and his family were airlifted by a private helicopter hired by his bank from mumbai. He kindly agreed to deliver my tape at the mumbai office. And to my relief, all the human angle stories that I had....

Mob and the Media

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The five days I spent in surat covering the worst ever floods in the city will be forever etched in my memory. And there are various reasons for that. The rising water level, wading through neck-deep water, people's struggle for clean drinking water, basic food and survival stories that I witnessed. But there is something else which I cannot forget. The increasing intolerance against the media, especially the electronic media, among common people. The media by the second day had arrived in full strength and gathered near a hotel at Surat station. About six OB vans stood with full preparation as reporters were rushing to uplink all that they had shot during the day. But by the fourth day, one of the glass panes of our OB van had already been smashed by an irate mob. Surat residents were already frustrated and dejected with an inactive and....

Mob and Media

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Mob and Media The five days I spent in surat covering the worst ever floods in the city would be forever etched in my memory. And there are various reasons for that.The rising water level, wading through neck deep water, people's struggle for clean drinking water and basic food and survival stories that I witnessed. But there is something else which I cannot forget. The increasing intolerance against the media especially the electronic media among common people. The media by the second day had arrived in full strength and gathered near a hotel at Surat station.About 6 OB vans stood with full preparation as reporters were rushing to uplink all that they had shot during the day.But by the fourth day, one of the glass panes of our OB van had already been smashed by an irate mob. Surat residents were already frustrated and dejected with an inactive....

As I reported, I was almost in tears

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It's been a tough 48 hours for everyone in Mumbai. And especially for thousands of Mumbaikars like me who unfortunately happened to be on the trains in which mindless, brainwashed terrorists decided to make hapless innocent citizens the target of their most sinister terror campaigns. It is at moments like these when one feels that hatred is not just a six letter word in the dictionary but a reality which can force ordinary men into terror machines. 11 July, 2006, started off as a normal day for me. I was on the morning assignment shift and had reached office at 8 am. Though I have worked on such shifts many times before, but for some strange reason I decided to go home by 5 pm that day. Usually, I leave after 7 pm. But I reached lower parel station and boarded the 6.04 pm slow local to borivali....