the Media Revolution

If one believes the news channels, especially the private ones, India seems to be in the throes of revolution these days. Antics of some self appointed representatives of the society has been elevated to 'the second freedom struggle'!

I have always maintained that this one is a mere photo-op for many, and a political stage for some.The 'kewl' generation wants it's own 'revolution', and so would clutch at any straw. The anger of the nouveau riche, who believe that they should, by default, own the country, at finding themselves as equal as anybody in dealing with the state, has been dubbed as the people's grouse. What's essentially a nice, harmless way for this anger to be vented, has been conveniently termed a ‘revolution’!

Well, they are only belittling the word ‘revolution’. Revolutions are not everyday shows. Revolutions occur when the troubles faced by the large mass of people become so bad, that defying the state authority and suffering the consequences is better in an absolute way. Based on the last statement, nothing about the current freak show is a revolution – for one, it is not a large mass of the nation, just a lakh or two of glory hunters and political axe grinders in a nation of 1.2 Billion. For another, they are not actually defying the state, though they may have made the government pretty uneasy. Nor are they suffering any consequences for their efforts – ask these ‘twitter freedom fighters’ whether they would be able to stand it if our largely benevolent state also started to play its part in their ‘revolution’ and started behaving like the colonial state. Finally, their ‘problem’ is not so bad. In reality, their ‘problem’ is just about enjoying the thrill of “Revolution lite”. Even if we take their claims at face value (that they are fighting ‘corruption’), still, their troubles are not the worst in the country. Those crying over graft on the internet can never really feel the actual trouble of the large body of people eking out a subsistence very precariously, without any sort of security in life. It is their revolution that we need to fear, as their troubles are already past the consequential costs of an uprising.

Then what about this ‘second freedom struggle’. Well, they hold annual “Civil War Enactments” in the United States – although they do not have the audacity to name it the ‘second’ civil war – they actually respect the Civil War heroes enough to not try and place themselves on the same pedestal. So, we might say it is something of that sort. Given the ease of having such ‘struggles’ in an internet connected, media covered era, we might soon have third, fourth, fifteenth freedom struggle. Just switch on the TV, and relax with a tub of popcorn. Revolution is here in your parlour!