It has become impossible to watch television news, especially local channels, in West Bengal. There is so much blood, gore, murder, and mayhem that you are bound to get dyspepsia or risk damaging your mental health. I hope and pray things are different in other parts of the country, though I fear I’m being optimistic. Look at what happened at Pune’s Swargate bus terminus—a 26-year-old health counsellor was raped early morning by a man out on bail. Crime reporting on national news channels is somewhat sanitised but on the local Bengali channels? Inexcusable.
In their defence, the channels are mere messengers—they show what is indeed happening around us. Ghastly stuff is taking place all the time and the public needs to be made aware.
But is there any excuse for reporting the vile with unvarnished relish, with reporters forced by competition and breaking news pressure to walk the thin line between fact and fiction and anchors pitching their voices to an unnaturally shrill tone as they dissect the goriest details threadbare?
Also read: Serial killers and gore now have a growing base in India — on Netflix, Instagram, Spotify
Criminalisation
It is not as if local news has suddenly turned foul. But the past ten days have been bad and I am reeling from a dreadful overdose that has left me wondering about human nature.
The other day was particularly harrowing. I had just dug into my scrambled eggs when videos of two women and a blue suitcase surrounded by people flashed on my TV screen. The incident was from Kumartuli—where clay from the nearby Hooghly River is turned into exquisite idols of Goddess Durga and Ma Kali and everything else in between.
The two women – mother and daughter – were struggling to wheel the heavy suitcase to a nearby ghat – seemingly to dump it in the river. Suspicious, local residents gathered around them and insisted that the suitcase be opened. Police arrived and the suitcase was unzipped. In the bag was the body of a woman—chopped into pieces.
My breakfast went into the garbage bin and the TV set was switched off: I knew that the ghastly news report on the horrific crime would be aired again and again, ad nauseam.
A day before the Kumartali crime, it was the death of a 26-year-old that dominated headlines: the woman’s car had turned turtle off the national highway near Durgapur. Survivors said an SUV full of young men had chased their car, banged into it, overtaken it, all the while making lewd gestures at the woman. When the car overturned, the SUV stopped briefly. The men stepped out, but upon realising what had happened, they fled, leaving behind the SUV littered with bottles of alcohol.
The first arrest happened four days later. By then, the police had ruled out sexual harassment as the cause of the fatal incident.
All these should be read with a heavy dose of ‘reportedlys’ and ‘allegedlys’. The ‘accident’ story is still changing and facts are elusive.
The spate of horror stories began last week with another ‘road accident’. A car crashed into an under-construction Metro Rail pillar in southern Kolkata in the dead of night. Its injured occupants—two men and a teenage son of one—claimed it to be ‘a suicide attempt’. In the hospital, the men told the police their respective wives and a teenage daughter had killed themselves at home because their leather business had left the two families in deep debt. The police now suspect the women and the girl were murdered.
The truth is still somewhere out there.
What is before me is human nature in a mangled, criminal twist.
Also read: Sensational, speculative, insensitive—that’s how TV news is covering Kolkata doctor’s rape
Transactional politics
The transactional nature of Indian politics is not helping. Just this week, several hours of television news time was spent on a meeting between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and government doctors where she announced a pay hike of Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. From what I saw, the hall did not exactly erupt into applause when Banerjee announced the pay hike. In fact, some doctors could be seen exchanging unsmiling looks. The hike was Banerjee’s olive branch to placate government doctors who had taken to the streets over the RG Kar rape and murder case. She hadn’t come out of the incident smelling of roses and the salary hike was a balm.
The junior doctors who had led the protests did not attend the CM’s meeting. Some called the pay hike transactional politics at its worst. Others called it “Lakkhir Bhandar” for doctors.
Desensitisation
The criminalisation of ordinary citizens and the transactional politics playing every day on our local news channels are desensitising us and prepping us for new normals. Yes, there is crime all around us. But when it is unfolding on the TV screen inside our homes 24×7, something’s got to give. I live in constant fear of what.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
The violence witnessed on a daily basis in West Bengal puts even Bihar and other so called “BIMARU” states to shame. Bengal, quite clearly, has the worst law and order situation in the entire country.
Underpinning this culture of violence is the malevolent politics unique to West Bengal. Every single political party arms its cadres to the teeth with kattas (country made pistols), crude bombs, Molotov cocktails, etc. These cadres have their territories marked out and fights over control of an area are quite common. Nothing is out of bounds in such fights. Crude bombs and Molotov cocktails are manufactured by the thousands in almost every village. Recently, the BBC even released a documentary titled “Children of the Bombs”.
Add to this the rapidly changing demographic profile with massive influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh – aided and abetted by the TMC administration. A perfect recipe for widespread carnage and destruction.
Everything’s rotten in the state of West Bengal. The state has become a cesspool. All thanks to Ms. Mamata Banerjee.