The piece of news that does not exist

[I am getting aggressive on posting blogs these days, and that's primarily because the equipment using which I do most of my research work has been down for repair, giving me plenty of idle and jobless time. Incidentally, the same equipment allows me to manipulate behavior of electrons (and thus my blog's name Playing with electrons.). So I am no longer playing with electrons for the last one month.]

“Axomi aai rupohi, Gunoru nai hekh; Bharatore purbo dekhot huruz uthaar dekh.”

[“Mother Assam is beautiful, with glory unbounded;

‘Tis Land of rising sun, to India’s east. ”]

Thus sang the legendary balladeer Dr. Bhupen Hazarika in praise of his native state, Assam. The following few pictures from some of the Assamese newspapers published in the last few days depict Assam in all its glory and beauty. We can see how gloriously people are living in this enchanting state which boasts of a majestic Brahmaputra and a rich heritage. With more than a million people rendered homeless in like two weeks time with thousands of children literally crying for food and clean water and with massive damage inflicted to personal property, paddy fields and cattle by the catastrophic floods not to speak of many people being killed, the picture is actually not glorious or beautiful. It is dismal, frustrating, anger-invoking and pathetic.

The floods occur consistently every summer, every year. And every year, a million people are affected. Over the last fifty years, this has been a norm. Every year, properties and agricultural output worth millions of rupees will be infallibly destroyed. And yet, the total effort and progress towards fixing this nemesis has been a big, big zero. So, the government knows and the people know, that, come every summer and a catastrophe is going to bring nightmares. As far as I know, central government does channelize money for flood affected people, but what fraction of it reaches to the unfortunate people after the money goes through layers and filters of you-know-what-I-am-talking-about, is a question that even Gods can’t probably answer. Relief measures are not totally hopeless, but can be certainly improved for sure. But what befogs me and drives my logical abilities to nuts is why are we – government especially – unable to do absolutely nothing about it? Why does the government stare at the floods every year with total surrender for the last fifty years? Is there no plan as to how to mitigate its effects, or is there a shortage of money to implement such plans? And with massive, jaw-dropping figures of corruptions becoming a normal routine in this country, I would rather not say anything on ‘money or funds for preventing floods’. Do we seriously then lack a concrete plan of mitigating the affects of floods? Ok, so for now, let’s accept that one million people are going to be rendered homeless every year, and we will just have to face it.

This piece of news that a not-so-significant place in India called Assam is suffering colossal losses of property and lives right now does not at all exist in mainstream media in India. And why would it? The current headlines of leading media group in India are busy with news as shown below which are of course way more ‘important’ and ‘public-attention-captivating’ than the news of some tribal and ‘backward’ people being killed by floods in Assam.