MEDIA ON KASHMIR

The world is watching Kashmir, but much to my dismay, they are seeing only  one side of the coin. This side of the coin has been very well brought to the fore by the people who are concerned about it, but at the same time, they have been the ones who have kept away the truth from everybody.

When I read about Human Rights Violation in Kashmir, the fact that appalls me the most is the ignorance that we Indians bear towards the Largest Minority of the Kashmir Valley, the Kashmiri Pandits. Their mass exodus due to the genocide, rapes, looting, etc.  is hardly ever talked about when the topic of HR Violations in Kashmir is broached. All that media talks about is the HR Violations by the Army, which it perpetrates on the people living in Kashmir presently.

My basic concern regarding such media reporting is that they grossly fail when it comes to identifying the worthy and the relevant news. While being adept at reporting certain events, they hardly cover the process. In turn, giving us the event-based news, rather than the process-based news. The former according to me is like so much so of a half-baked and ill-informed presentation of the true picture of any state of affairs.

It was in late 1980s that the Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) had to leave their homes to save their lives. They are still awaiting something conclusive to come their way. There are hardly any media reporting demanding accountability on the part of the government for what happened to and with the KPs. Its like one fine day, around half a million people leave their home state and government does not even look into the matter. It turns a blind eye to their problems and in a certain way tacitly approves of what happens to them, no matter how grave HR Violations they suffer. Thus the government fails its people by its omission to do something that was needed/ required as a bare minimum. It fails to provide the KPs with the Basic Rights of Security & Subsistence (Henry Shue) !

How come we never hear about it! How come people like Yasin Malik roam about freely and proclaim themselves as leaders of a section of people, when they are brutally massacring another set of people on the other hand. Is this not duplicitous on their part, considering the fact that leaders who ever succeeded were the ones who fought for the values that the entire world and all people believed in?

Instances like these draw our attention towards what Media really is doing and what it ought to do.