Bias Against News From The Northeast India

By Aditi Nigam

For three days running, lakhs of people in Guwahati stood in serpentine queues to pay their last respects to the legendary singer, Bhupen Hazarika. Around half a million bid him a tearful farewell on Wednesday. Assam-watchers say this was an unprecedented event. However, the singer's fans and ordinary readers in North India, who depend on ‘national' dailies for news from across the country, had to draw comfort from either a photograph or a news item tucked away somewhere in pages 16, 12 or 11.

Worse still is the space given to the over 100-day economic blockade of two National Highways in Manipur, which has dried up supplies of essentials to this North-Eastern state, leading to unimaginable hardship for ordinary people.

The misfortune of both these happenings is that they concern North East India. Any upheaval in the lives of the people living in the eight states in the region — Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim — is only theirs. Their emotions, demands and needs just don't seem to find any place on the radar of those who decide matters in the newsrooms in the political capital of this country.

It was probably Hazarika's good fortune, as well as that of his fans, that he had moved to Bombay and breathed his last there, and was somehow connected with the biggest news-making industry in India today — Bollywood . This ensured him some space in the ‘national' dailies and television channels initially.

MANIPUR SCENARIO

As for the Manipur economic blockade, it's been more than three months since the two lifeline highways in the region have hit supplies of essential items, such as vegetables, petrol, cooking gas and medicines. Reports say cooking gas cylinders are selling at the rate of Rs 1,500 and petrol at Rs 200-400 a litre, patients are buying oxygen cylinders and life-saving medicines in black.

Can one even dream of this state of affairs being unnoticed by the ‘national' media or the political leadership if, say, the Jaipur or Agra highways were blocked for even a week?

As for our ‘national' political leadership, we all know that the Prime Minister of our country owes his Rajya Sabha seat to this very region (Assam). But we are yet to hear of any reaction of concern, leave alone action from him to end the Manipur economic blockade. Of course, his office did issue a condolence statement after Hazarika's passing away.

What's more, it took the Union Home Minister a good three months to wake up to the grim situation in Manipur. Only after news reports regarding the miseries and sufferings of the people started seeping out, did he decide to land up in Imphal in the first week of November! He expressed concern regarding disruption of peace and harmony, inaugurated a mini secretariat, assured action on the report of the District Reorganisation Commission (the agitating groups are demanding a separate district), and boarded the plane back to Delhi.

The matter rests there, even as the blockade continues.

No wonder, North-Easterners in Delhi and other concerned citizens have taken to social networking sites and alternate news sites to vent their feelings against discrimination by those who call the shots in Delhi's corridors of power and newsrooms.

As one blogger put it — for the ‘national' media, celebrities mean Bollywood and cricket. And as for the ‘national' political leadership — the development of the North East speaks for itself.