Sagarika's 'Miss India' Solutions To Illegal Migrants

On April 20, 1968 British Conservative party member Enoch Powell made the fieriest of speeches against mass immigration. The media titled it the “Rivers of blood” speech. He had then warned of immigrants swamping Britain and marginalising its original population. Mind you, it wasn’t even a great deal of “illegal” migrants he talked about. He started with the line: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature”. For two decades now Britain is coming to grip with reality and paying the price of failing to heed Powell’s warning. Rivers of blood haven’t flown in Britain but they certainly have in India, especially in Assam this month.

Lately, some in India have been talking about illegal migrants and how to deal with them. The problems India is facing on account of illegal migrants are outcomes of seeds sown and nurtured by the left-liberal-votebank mafia and their sympathisers in the “communist” media. Many also make the terrible mistake of tagging a predominantly communist Indian media as “liberal”. Typically, it’s the bimbos in this very media who tend to make absurdly loose statements about illegal migrants in the wake of the Assam communal violence; the Bodo-Muslim riots. Cleverly, the media and the Congress won’t even call them Illegal Bangladeshis but Bengali-Muslims.

Many may be aware, many not but Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, campaigned in 1979 to bring in immigration reforms. Till the early 80s Indians visiting UK didn’t need Visas. We could go to any port of entry in UK and get an entry permit. Same applied for Britons visiting India. All that changed in 1984 when Thatcher introduced Visas for even short visits to UK. Till then, many Indians went on a visit to UK, got married or contracted a marriage and got settlement rights. All that changed when Thatcher introduced the British Citizenship Act in 1981. New rules meant that your ‘Visitor visa’ for UK couldn’t be converted to a residential permit. Also, UK now has a Border Control Agency, US has a Homeland Security along with Border & Customs Protection agency. All these were measures to check illegal immigration and other illegal activities at their borders. However, the eminent Social Genius (SG) in our media will tout some liberal nonsense without the slightest thought or reflection on what changes have been brought about by many democracies to curb illegal immigration. She is like that famous MissTeen SouthCarolina who explained why Americans weren’t good at reading maps. Doesn’t ring a bell? Never mind! We will get to that soon. Our eminent SG likes to cook ‘2 Minute Noodles’ with the most serious of problems with absurd comments.
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Don’t look at me! I didn’t think of that 2-minute noodles thing. I’m not that original. This is none other than Barkha Dutt admitting with unusual candour that media folks tend to cook 2-minute judgements. I like the honesty in that tweet. The only problem is that these cooks don’t seem to show any intention of learning. If you read articles by Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghose or Rajdeep Sardesai you will hardly find much research, no depth, no painstaking digging for facts. Lately, you will only find such serious work in the Social Media. Take this article on Right To Education by @ssudhirkumar or this one on Kingfisher by @TheKaipullai. Both have depth, filled with details and meticulously compiled. And these are just two of them. There are hundreds of such writers who aren’t regular journalists or media celebs. These aren’t 2-minute noodles! But the media celebs have found something even better to cook their 2-minute journalism with – Twitter!

Again, I’m not the one saying it but just rephrasing the eminent SG: “When it comes to understanding and judging Twitter, Rajdeep Sardesai is “Numero Uno”! And true to his enormous reputation Rajdeep concludes, after being nagged by tweets over Assam, that he will now see Twitter as just ‘amusement’. Yeah! He wants to get back to some ‘real work’ like concocting some amusement like ‘TheGreatestIndian’! I guess Mr. Yogendra Yadav must be on vacation or else Rajdeep could have conducted another national poll to reach the same conclusion: ‘Twitter is amusement’ and then conducted a panel discussion on the amusing topic. Alas, we missed some amusement ourselves! But only for a while! For before too long his deputy, Sagarika Ghose (SG), the eminent Social Genius backs up Rajdeep’s conclusion with some mind-numbing and amusing tweets. 

Damn! I was almost starting to forget what I started with: Illegal Immigration. But I trust SG to bring my focus back with her tweets. So in the midst of all the violence and discussions on illegal immigration SG quotes someone and concludes migration from the rest of the country that has led to ‘ethnic multiplicity’. So now all the ethnic migrants in Mumbai should shut up and live to together. Raj Thackeray should learn from SG. Oh wait! She wasn’t talking about Mumbai but Assam is it? It’s always such a thrill to misunderstand SG! After Jerusalem, Assam, particularly Bodoland, has to be the best ‘promised land’ around the country. Not surprisingly migrants from places like Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and other states have been rushing to Assam for many years. Then these people learn Assamese or Bengali, convert to Muslims or Christians or to Bodo Tribals and create havoc in the area. We would have heard such reasoning and answers from many past Miss India winners. And yet this nation of 1.2 billion (minus 1) can’t see it as clearly as SG does. And here’s a warning for those who rant about illegal immigration (I’m already heeding..):
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Stupid USA! They should have shut their borders in the 18^th century itself. For a country that was built by immigrants they should have listened to SG long back. The tough measures that USA frequently takes against illegal immigrants, especially in their southern border with Mexico and with their legal framework have to be researched by some social media writer. Such silly tasks are not for our 2-minute cooks you see. And even Rajdeep will find it amusing that SG says ‘whites attacking browns’ without mentioning what kind of attack that is. Well, let’s just assume its racist more out of colour and ancestry rather than stupid illegal immigration. What SG forgot to tell you though is that India, Bangladesh, Pakistan are all ‘whole wheat bread’. They are all brown! There may be some differences in physical features but comparing an illegal immigrant or migrant issue to a racist issue is what an absolute moron can manage, without any assistance. I am no expert to firmly conclude the Assam tragedy is only of illegal immigration. But SG, given her 10 years of journalistic work in the Bodoland area, can most certainly conclude it’s not.

So you see, it’s quite hard to understand or interpret the amusing tweets of SG. Maybe we need expert comedians like Raju Shrivastava, Johny Lever or that guy (Pehchan Kaun) to really understand the genius of SG. I say that because late night comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, a few years ago, did a splendid job of interpreting a Miss Teen USA contestant’s answer to the question: “A 5^th of Americans can’t locate USA on the map, why is that?” (Do watch the video of 3.53 mins):

So you get it now, don’t you? The similarity between MissTeenUSA and Sagarika Ghose when it comes to offering solutions to issues is striking. Isn’t it? Fortunately MissTeenUSA is not grappling with some nuclear-bomb issue. I can't say the same for our Social Genius! But hey, they are both still very young and will learn as they go.

On a serious note, illegal migrants from Bangladesh have been a problem for decades. And yes, as I said in the beginning they find support in our Vote-bank mafia who will sacrifice national interests to remain in power. The communist media too will do all they can to support this mafia. Assam may have a strong contingent of these illegals but they aren’t all permanent residents of Assam alone. They are in Bengal too. Many have melted into smaller towns in India. Many have melted into the vast ghettos of Mumbai and other suburbs.

I quote from the post: ‘MakeMumbai a separate state’ (And also recommend you read it if you haven’t already) - (Rediff): “In terms of illegal immigrants in Mumbai, Bangladeshis alone account for between 3.5 lakhs according to a minister and 16.0 lakhs according to Kirit Somaya, a former MP.  What would you say about a government that can’t even get its numbers right on such matters? This is in no way to suggest that any of this population is involved in crimes but the possibilities that some may be cannot be discounted. But it sure is a matter of serious concern”.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh and also Pakistan is a truly serious problem. When have you even heard the current govt talk about any population control measures? It is not just a social problem but a serious national threat as well. The threat of ‘Rivers of blood’ is far more pertinent for India than Britain. The tragedy, apart from the terrible votebank mafia, is that bimbos from the media seem to think this is a simple “Miss India” contest question and answer it that way. 

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Excuses For Assam

For a change conflict-heroes like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai weren’t reporting from the ground on the Assam situation. Hardly any great incentive there for anyone, not even one of bringing down a govt or tarring a Chief Minister. As the violence in Assam flared, even on July 25, all our channels were running programmes on Pranab Mukherjee as president right through the day. Sure, they had to repeatedly show Pranab taking the oath, given it’s the first time ever an oath was administered to a president-elect. When they managed to remember Assam they had to hunt for titles for the violence. Communal violence, ethnic violence, Bodo-Bengal Muslim clashes and so on! They didn’t seem to be sure what to call it but soon every one settled for “Ethnic violence”. Ethnic sounds a lot more moderate and fashionable than ‘communal’. Doesn’t it? Much has since been written and aired about Assam but very few seemed to deal with proper facts and sequence of events. It’s also not what they didn’t or couldn’t report but the reasons or excuses they brought up that should make interesting reading.

And what could be a better reflection of journalistic ethics than that practiced by Rajdeep as his tweet shows. More died in Gujarat than Assam he says as reason for media coverage. Well, you can’t fault RS for vision and foresight. When he landed in Ahmedabad to report the 2002 riots he was pretty sure the toll would cross 1000. Just a minute! When did he come to this lousy figure of 1000 though? For years NDTV and CNN-IBN, both homes for Rajdeep, had thrown up any number for Gujarat; from over 2000 killed to over 3000 killed. They also made you believe it was ‘genocide’ or it was a ‘pogrom’ in which Muslims alone were butchered. At the time here’s a bit of what Rajdeep wrote on Gujarat: 

“…And now in Gujarat, the accusation is of (media) ‘inflaming communal passions’ when the fact is that the flames of communal hatred have been stoked by a mob, a section of which at least has been patronised by the ruling establishment in Gandhinagar”. The numbers Rajdeep reported and even concocting without any solid evidence that the mob was patronised by the govt could have very well come from Digvijay Singh or any Congress member. Umm.. it must be hard to find such intelligence on clashes in Assam. Later, on the same day of July 24 Rajdeep tweeted an apology for his insensitive tweet. (He says tweet of previous night although it was on the same morning of July 24.) Typically, after his apology RS asked if other tweeters would apologise for questioning his integrity. Integrity? That’s laughable. The lies through Rajdeep’s tweets and reports and of his channel are all too many to qualify him a liar, integrity is too far a bridge.

If Rajdeep’s apology was a lightning bolt of conscience the deputy editor of CNN-IBN couldn’t be left behind. In her true bumbling style Sagarika Ghose tweeted about the violence and a majority of those in relief camps being Muslims. Here we go! So I read both the pieces by Samudra Gupta from the relevant dates, here and here. Nowhere do his articles corroborate her statement. 

The first article of his (July 25) even contradicts her statement as does The Hindu, a clip of which someone has pasted with her tweet. That Sagarika feels motivated enough to take on Internet Hindus is one thing but the content of her tweet, like many before, is the kind of integrity that viewers are questioning. Rajdeep doesn’t seem to get it. Does she or Rajdeep ever wonder if they only report to Internet Hindus or to a larger audience who deserve the facts? After all that and after tagging Assam incidents as “Ethnic violence”, accusing IHs as wanting a religions narrative and describing the state as a complex cauldron what does SG’s channel run as headline? “Clashes between Bodos & Muslims have killed 44 people dead so far”. That is since 8am on July 27. Religious narrative? That’s integrity of these characters who parade as journalists.

It is one thing for the Indian TV channels not to have been quick enough to be on the scene to report but to make excuses, compare degree or deaths in riots all indicate the degradation of journalistic thought and ethics. Capturing images of violence or damage is not merely for airing those for vicarious pleasure of anyone. Videos and images have also often helped in rendering justice to the victims and during times of trouble get help faster. Most channels do not even have regular reporters in the NE states. Not even in the state capitals. Each time there is an incident someone rushes from Kolkatta or from Delhi, after much heartburn I suppose. Instead of admitting that the NE is off their radar, not politically or financially very attractive some media celebs indulge in a slanging match on twitter.

Ironically, the best report I have read so far in MSM on the Assam situation, clearly sequencing the various incidents that led to the larger flame, is on a foreign journal. Samrat, the Asian Age editor and from NE himself, wrote the report on NewYork Times’ India Ink page. (Violence in Assam has deep roots). His report, sans drama or literary flair, narrates the story of events since May 29 which is hard to find in an Indian news report.

Oh well! If you wanted drama and thrills in a report about Assam, the best place has to be NDTV. As the Congress organised a 10-member panel for Assam NDTV came up with their usual “TOP10” on Assam. The hits just keep on coming. I am surprised they don’t do a countdown of the top 10. The only recent occasion NDTV itself found a good deal of time for Assam and sent some reporter to the state was for their entertainment programme “Will Travel for Food”. As for Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose, what can one say anymore? They couldn’t even find their usual best reporters in Assam – the Citizen journalists. Whether for riots or for other issues will the TV channels at least now alter their approach to NE states and care? One has to remain sceptical or wait for more creative excuses next time instead of scale and degree of riots and deaths.
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Raging Women & Guwahati

Images of the Guwahati molestation have shocked every television viewer. Fury erupted on the safety of women, the role of the police and the role of journalists. Then the National Commission of Women (NCW) woke up. An NCW representative, the glamorous Congress member Alka Lamba, arrived in Guwahati with superbly blow-dried hair. She swept into a press conference. She posed for the cameras. She then announced the name of the victim. Ahem! “Glamorous, blow-dried hair”! That’s not me. That is eminent Telly-scientist Sagarika Ghose in Firstpost in her opening shot on the incident and aftermath. Nothing wrong with the rest of her article though.

Imagine, if I had said ‘fashionable, westernised, journalistic-bimbo, heavy lipstick and jet-black haired’ Telly-Scientist Sagarika writes on Guwahati. That would be considered uncharitable. But oops, I just said it. So while writing on women, trash her first for her glamour and her hair (as if Sagarika is any different) and then try to fit in some logic and outrage. Alka Lamba may be stupid and may have bungled terribly but what’s it got to do with her glamour or hair? Well, that’s how we approach journalism these days. That partly explains the mindless statements from some women on the Guwahati incident. I am not going into the incident itself or any legal aspects of it. Let’s just read what the very women who were foaming with rage had to say themselves.

Let’s start with Sagarika herself. A nice place to start! By now most people on the net and elsewhere have already read her tweet on the left. From “sickening, disgusting video” in just over 24 hours she went to “Courageous of cameramen to shoot the horror”. The guy who popularised the statement “measure twice, cut once” (Stephen Covey) died a few days ago but he must have had exactly SG in mind when he wrote about it in ‘7 Habits’. So what’s the count? We have dealt with two women, Alka Lamba and Sagarika. I never critique writes by bloggers or tweeters but here’s a list of interesting statements from some more women storified by @BarbarIndian: “Girl stripped, then the cover-up began”.

Then there’s this NCW chief, Mamta Sharma, who summed it up neatly by suggesting women should dress carefully. Oh! That is surely a veiled warning to the Poonam Pandeys and Sherlyn Chopras. Well, maybe even a warning to all the item girls and the bikini actors in movies. All of them, including Sunny Leone, better heed Sharma, else they are tempting fate. Then Sharma goes on to recommend special police at pubs and spots haunted by women. What? Only yesterday I heard a group of policemen raped a woman they had actually rescued from somewhere. Alright, maybe she meant police-women. From all the videos of the Guwahati incident I can’t really conclude the victim was dressed badly or temptingly in anyway as Sharma means. But once the molesters did their job, some channels (I did see Headlines Today) managed to expose her cleavage and tits, her shirt having been ripped off. So next time Ms.Sharma I suggest you recommend women wear armoured vests under their clothes. That should fool those criminals at least, if not teach them any lessons! Am I finished? No, not yet! Patience, the beast is yet to come… I mean the best!

You can’t possibly understand atrocities on women or girls without Barkha Dutt trying to get in her last word. So on July 17, on her program on Bucks, she ran the headline “A thousand cuts” which then turned to “sensitivities” and became a “million cuts”. If time had permitted it could have been a ‘billion cuts’. But before that, on July 13, she tweeted about the incident and how not to lock up daughters but teach sons better. There’s nothing wrong in principle with that tweet considering that she’s the mother of a 16-year old daughter. No? She’s not? Okay, I thought that could only come from a very courageous mother. She’s not alone though. Other celebs to publish the same quote are Rahul Bose, Bipasha Basu. Ah well, I guess parenthood is easy when you’re not a parent. (Google that quote and you’ll find more celebs who tweeted that without ever parenting a girl). Motherly advice! The first cut is the deepest and the victim must have felt that. Trust a raging Barkha to accuse others of adding a million more while she herself does no different.

So during the exciting discussion Barkha was a bit amused to find a couple of panellists not generalising but specifically pointing fingers at Youth Congress goons. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they know they can’t accuse Congress members on NDTV? Don’t they read the script before they come on the panel? In the end Barkha, as always, pontificates on whether journalists should get involved in such incidents or step back and shoot and report. In case you forgot, the discussion was on “media ethics”. And what does she pull out? She pulls out pics from war-zones and conflict zones.

Take the pic of the Vietnam Napalm girl she pulls out. Should the journalist have helped her? Incidentally, she’s not the only one fleeing. There are many others. The journalist in this case has to step back simply because it’s a major war-zone. He doesn’t have options. Who does he call? The police or Halle Berry? True for other pics she put up from conflict zones. Supposedly a journalist with a great sense of understanding of situations it is one more example of outright stupidity that Barkha pulls out these war-zone pics in a story of violent molestation of a woman by a criminal mob. Guwahati is not a warzone or a conflict zone. Guwahati wasn’t under siege by a dictator. Yet, reports clearly indicate that the journo who filmed the incident was actually encouraging the mob and instead of helping or calling for help, he actually called for more cameras from his news channel. And then, to complete her agenda, Barkha pulls out the pic of Ansari from Gujarat riots. Regardless of the merits or truth behind that pic a riot still remains a conflict zone. That photo has been disputed for authenticity but that is hardly the point in this whole discussion.

The worst part is hearing Barkha Dutt sermonising on ‘media ethics’. That is surely a laugh. So what really riles these so called journalists? I have no problems with their raging and venting over Guwahati. Most of it is genuine too. I believe what also riles these media celebs is that it’s one of their own who’s done immense damage. One from their own ‘Hammam’! Those who shout vociferously about ethics in journalism are usually the ones breaking the code all too often. Let’s see, there is this Society of Professional Journalists. Membership is voluntary and they have some codes on ethics. Take a look and decide how many of our news channels and newspapers would pass the test on ethics.

Here’s the real tragedy: A bunch of goons engineered and executed the shameful incident at Guwahati. But the ones who made it worse with their writings or utterances are women. Mamata Sharma, Alka Lamba, Sagarika Ghose, Barkha Dutt… the list can go on. Raging Women! 

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CNN-IBN - The Dirty Awards

J.Jayalalitha, Jairam Ramesh, Mamata Banerjee, Salman Khurshid, Arun Jaitley/Sushma Swaraj and Tarun Gogoi. What do these names have in common? Easy – they are all politicians. Some of them are chief ministers of some states. And they are all going to be part of a most shameful act in a democracy – sham awards titled “Indian of the year” by a news channel. Of course, this is not the first time that CNN-IBN is handing out these awards and also not the only channel. Their mirror channel NDTV was the one to start this shameful practice some years ago. A few weeks back NDTV hurriedly gave out these awards in October, although they excluded politicians this year.

One must recall the Indian of the year awards handed out to Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar and other politicians by these news channels. Can’t say there’s a connection but under the Congress govt. at the centre people like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai have received the Padma awards. That’s like politicians and news media scratching each other’s backs. Ironically, the new tagline for CNN-IBN is “the most awarded channel”. (They seem to have dropped the previous “whatever it takes” line.)

Last year I wrote the post “CNN-IBN– Indian Of The Year–The Sham Awards” on the same topic. It is one thing for a news channel to hand out awards to sportsmen, businessmen and others but altogether a different thing to hand out awards to the very people they are supposed to keep a watch on and report. Jairam Ramesh is on the list of CNN-IBN for the second years running. Arun Jaitley & Sushma Swaraj are clubbed together as one entity. The reasons are not important. The Radiagate incident has exposed the nexus between media and politicians and these sham awards are a furtherance of the continuing nonsense by CNN-IBN.

Since giving the ‘Indian of the year’ award to Rahul Gandhi for 2009, CNN-IBN has subsequently questioned whether he has a vision for India. The channel is on record stating they have no idea of his views on various national issues. None of this occurred to them before bestowing a silly award on him. What is equally shameful is the manner in which media celebs like Barkha and Rajdeep address various politicians. Barkha addresses CM Nitish Kumar as ‘Nitish’ like he were an old classmate of hers. The news media is yet to evolve a protocol on how to address public servants and politicians. Rarely do you hear them addressing senior public servants as sir, mr or madam. That is the kind of superior and powerful position they have accorded to themselves.  A previous article by regular blogger V. Gopalakrishnan on the topic, “Media awards to public servants – a crying shame” is also worth reading.

What the politicians, who equally, shamefully accept such sham awards from the news media,  miss is an important aspect of who funds these awards and shows. These are ‘sponsored’ honours which no politician or public servant should ever accept. The list is long: SRM University (a university?), Hindustan Times, ONGC, Mint, Hindustan, Swarovski, Ford, Parker, Sensodyne, Chivas (liquor brand), GE and some more. In short, it’s just another money-making business for the channel which public servants should be avoiding.

The practice of news media handing out awards to public servants and politicians while they are still active is one of the most unethical practices of the Indian media. You may not find this in most mature democracies. TIME magazine does have a ‘Person of the year’ lead story but that is only to acknowledge the impact of an individual on the world during the year. It does not involve handing out some award or some ceremony. I can’t also understand the title of ‘Indian of the year’! What the hell is that? Fair to have a sportsperson of the year or businessman of the year from India but that certainly doesn’t make the person Indian of the year. This is clearly an insult to all other Indians, many of whom do make extra-ordinary contribution to society. Which is enough reason for me to call these the ‘Dirty Awards’.

Most of all, in the politician category, I can even predict the winner. Well, it’s a simple toss-up between Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalitha. Why? Because they have swept the state elections this year. And all possibilities are it will be Mamata Banerjee for her accomplishment of ending the three-decade old CPM rule in Bengal. If you know any of these politicians or can communicate with them do make sure to advise them not to accept these awards. These dirty awards are merely another form of media corruption.