Hypo-Crises

It is two weeks since the Uttarakhand tragedy unfolded. There are normally four kinds of people in a disaster: The victims and survivors, those who directly help in the relief and rescue work, those who indirectly help and there are hypocrites. Hypo-crises is simply hypocrisies in a crisis. The figure of deaths quoted by the Uttarakhand CM, their Speaker and Home Minister Shinde varies between 900 and over 10000. They are in grip of the situation. The biggest hypocrite in the whole episode undoubtedly is the darling of the media; Rahul Gandhi.

When the floods broke on June 15 RahulG had already made his plans for his birthday celebrations abroad. So, according to reports, he had dashed off to Spain. RG did once say that Indians are a hit in Spain too because they have Amitabh Bachchan posters in bars and clubs. There are reports that the Congress had loaded relief-trucks ready and waited 3 days for RG’s arrival to flag them off to UK. Well done, but it seems the trucks reached Rishikesh and then didn’t know where to go or what to do with the stuff. Writing in her column ‘Inside track’ in IE Coomi Kapoor notes that even the PM couldn’t reach RahulG in Spain for a while. By the way, the call wasn’t to ask RG to come back but to wish him happy birthday. When your country is in a crisis situation who're you gonna call? Ghostbusters?

Of course, RahulG returned, rolled up his sleeves, and choppered his way to Uttarakhand. Did he help? Maybe, we don’t know. But we do know that he was a nuisance there too. The Congress party couldn’t help screaming that RG was in UK not as a VVIP but as a “common citizen”. Frankly, I don’t have anything in “common” with this chap. He goes there and the army had to displace a group of ITBP soldiers to accommodate his meagre life-style. From all the images I have only seen him talking to a few officials and his usual sycophants. The worst was exposed in a video on Youtube. A villager screams at the passing convoy of RahulG: “We are destroyed and these security people are chasing one man (RahulG)” to protect him. Predictably RahulG didn’t stop to pacify the group and moved on. Thankfully, all citizens aren’t as “common” as this insensitive lump of hypocrisy.

Then there are those two channels from the unholy trinity, NDTV and CNN-IBN, who were raising funds for Uttarakhand. Both were promoting some Uday Foundation. As far as I know UF is a Delhi-based charity that works for children with birth-defects. It’s a noble thing to do but I didn’t know how they were going to help in UK. Still, there is some merit in promoting UF. But NDTV goes on to promote something called HopeTrust. Now this HopeTrust specialises in curing addictions with 5-star facilities. Look it up on the net. They aren’t even remotely connected with relief or rescue work in a crisis. These channels didn’t consider it fit to promote those charities that were already working in Uttarakhand on the ground. You can estimate a reason for it as good as anyone else.

To their credit, many reporters from all channels did a wonderful job of reporting the tragedy at great personal difficulty and risk. They deserve our gratitude and applause. But there are some who continued with their hypocrisy and sheer nonsense even as the relief work was on. The first obviously has to be Rajdeep Sardesai. For much of the last 10 days he was missing in action. Reports suggest he was away at Manipal for his son’s admission to a medical course. Good to see Rajdeep’s son doing well but Rajdeep comes back and semonises like Moses as usual. He wonders why people applaud the Army but don’t send their kids to the armed forces. At any other time this would have been a reasonable thing to say but tweeting it after he had just got his son into a medical course does sound like hypocrisy. Maybe Rajdeep was ‘introspecting’, we don’t know. If the great cricketer Dilip Sardesai had sent his son to the Army it would have been a great service to the nation.

Oh wait, if Numero Uno has this thing about Army then Numero Unee can’t be far behind in her hypocrisy, can she? But this time she’s not alone, she’s got company in a “Jenny-come-lately” and they both tweet identically. First Unee and then there is a new NDTV find called Kashish. Take a look:

Did you say identical twins? I wonder what this obsession is with Ramdev! Oh I forgot, Ramdev wears “saffron”. It is a fact that many of Ramdev’s ashramites were on the ground helping. There are unconfirmed reports that a mini-camp he had set up at Haridwar railway station was demolished by the UK govt for being “illegal”. So what bothers these bimbos? Nothing but their sick minds! They couldn’t find anyone else to carp about. This thing called Kashish even tweeted that Ramdev’s “eye is still looking in another direction?” Hehe” to mock his eye-disability. Anyway, Kashish likes riding horses and bikes so it’s understandable. But yes, the Numero Unee was indeed doing some creditable work and to prove it, in the midst of the UK crises, she sent out this tweet on June 27:

Now, don’t be silly enough to think or even suggest that she’s having a ball at the beach. She’s definitely not! Sagarika used all her might and was keeping the sea at bay so that another Tsunami didn’t hit some part of India. Now that’s what I call proactive, preventive action. And as she says in her tweet it’s “another one”, so she saved Manipal from Tsunami from multiple disasters.

Like twin sisters both NDTV and CNN-IBN also had similar names for the UK tragedy, both called it “Himalayan Tsunami”. NDTV in particular played up bogus CBI stuff on the Ishrat encounter case over and over again to cover up the failures of the UK and the Central govt in proper action in the relief and rescue work. There are damning reports that the UK govt had spent 50 crores on the media to cover up or suppress bad news about their bungling. There is a report on a website that explains how the govt not only spent money on the media but also to individual editors to play their line of reports. You can read it at International news and views but as the report cautions it is a private report.  

Finally, it’s not over until the fat lady sings as they. If you haven’t read “Indian media’s top 5 prayers” I recommend you do. So after many days since the UK tragedy broke Barkha Dutt packed her bags and off she went to Kedarnath and other places. A cheeky tweet by someone describes the possibilities well: “Bogged down with an avalanche of criticism Congress deploys its top diva journo for damage control”. As usual Barkha was there with groups and individuals doing her “human spirit” and “God” stories. She also suggests “Netas play politics” during a crisis. Well, what exactly do media people do? They used fake pics to report the flood and their hypocrisies in a disaster are pretty much evident.