It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the whole world is in dismay and bewilderment these days. The cause of such is a Pandemic named ‘Covid 19’. “A Pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region.”
There have been many challenges for every government, since the independence of India, but these days our nation is witnessing a tremendously awkward, fatal situation in the form of an invisible, destructive virus. Although it is not like that it is our country alone, that is battling against the pandemic. The whole world is panting in its efforts of fighting against the evil covid 19 virus. But quite amazingly we find our country, is being swerved between the critical utterance of national and international media houses. There has been a lot of challenges before the central government during its fight against the novel coronavirus. Population wise we are the second-largest country in the world. At this time of the pandemic, we find that our medical infrastructure and other associated necessities are not enough to fulfill the much-needed requirements. But how one can be sure that any other nation had treated their much less numbers of citizens quite effectively and scrupulously?
Since the dawn of a new central government, the whole nation has become a target of vicious remarks from inside and outside of the country. It appears surprising, and an eye-opening gesture for those who had passed a long phase of their life smoothly by glorifying their country’s achievements. We were united in our strife against the virus. There was criticism regarding the policies and the sudden implementation of lockdown inside the country by a varied group of media houses inside too. Their evaluation had become a generous source of discussion which is quite acceptable in democratic circumstances. So when in the month of March 2019, when our honourable PM declared the lockdown and invoked support from the citizens, the whole country hold up and stood tenaciously against it. The whole country was following the notion “when it rains, look for rainbows, when it’s dark look for stars.” We were managing the crucial time as a country. But unfortunately, a new type of stinginess appeared on the horizon. We found that the international media had been painting the Indian panorama with their morbid, gloomy, and biased writings around the world. Being outlandish in its approach, the international media discussed the issues of migration of peasants, several pictures of sufferings of crying men and women with their puny kids, long troublesome wanderings of labourers, covering the distance from their land of earning towards their respective birth abodes, etc, had been portrayed with full shameless vigour and resented vivacity. Their writings were derogatory and their judgements were not poised.
There were deaths in all European and Asian countries and in other continents as well. Not a single individual could assert that they had not faced the trauma of the covid 19 virus. The pain was transgressed. The people were haunted by the increasing number of deaths around the world. But the foreign media had shifted their scrutinized vision from the European world and focused on the floating dead bodies in the holy river Ganga. They were not aware of the fact that in the certain ideology of Indian religion, the last rituals are still being completed in the holy river and they don’t believe in funeral but they merge the bodies inside it.
Their representation of the evidence had been so preponderous that the whole world found the medical system of our country collapsed. But they were not sincere in revealing the exact statistics of the covid19. The International print media did not take even a small hiatus in diminishing the fame of our beautiful country. They were solely focused on “India and the India ” alone.
Right now the covid 19 is affecting more than 220 countries and their territories. There are 185, 857,140 total cases till 8th of July 2021 around the world of which 34, 643, 902 cases are from the United States Of America and 30, 709, 557 cases are from India.
The United States remains the world’s most affected country, with deaths exceeding 190,000 and cases exceeding 6.3 million, whereas the Indian toll increase from 3.97 to 4.07 lakhs on 8th July 2021. So where does the comparison stand?
We are struggling with a population of more than 130 crores. It is our strength and weakness at the same time. In spite of the cumbersome challenges before the government, our system fought with the pandemic quite efficiently and the death ratio is still much less with regard to our population. Then what could be the reason for such double standards of the international media?
Presumably, the reason resides in the enormous amount of money which has been offered to the journalists every now and then. There is another reason why the antagonisms of international print media against India are more envenomed in comparison to other European countries. Their public is too small to support their great number. We have a public of more than 130 crores: and they have, one of, maybe 30. There is plenty of room for every publishing/print media houses. You may never have heard of him, but if they have a gift at all, in any direction, then they can turn the whole assumption accordingly, in their own interest.
But one should be cautious about drawing straight line conclusions about the effectiveness of any government responses to the virus from the case and death counts alone. We must understand that the scientific community has not found satisfactory answers to important questions about the heterogeneous impact of the virus around the world. However, given the speed of disease onset and progression, the timing of each policy decision made by the Indian leaders has had a significant impact on outcomes. A lot of lives had been saved during the first wave of covid19, due to the proposed lockdown of the government. Even with a huge amount of people, the central government had managed the traumatic situation and got succeeded in managing the peace. But the international media did not applaud the good impact of this lockdown.At the same time in France on 12th or 13th march, the cases were rising exponentially. Presumably, France has also suffered serious public health costs that are as yet impossible totally. As for the French economy, the lockdown caused an immediate and severe recession that was far more significant than in those countries that were able to pre-empt or suppress the virus, such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. In the same period, the Indian economy was not as devastated as other European countries. The Indian Government was taking strenuous measures to control the situation When the whole system had been locked and the sole motto was to save the lives of the people, the international media was appearing cantankerous in its treatment of the Indian scenario.
The contorted stinginess in their approach hurt the sentiments of Indian People worldwide. Indian people had disgruntled, amazed, and were quite unable to understand why the international media was butting in? The print media around the world had forgotten that “it might be stormy now, but rain doesn’t last forever.” They didn’t admire the government for their efforts rather they kept themselves busy in rebuking our world. They liked and hired those people who were anti-government and interested in poking their fingers in their own sore wound.
Such treatment of international media reminds us of the controversy related to the picture” The vulture and the little girl. “It is also known as” The struggling girl and is a photograph by Cavin Carter which first appeared in the New York Times on 26th March 1993. It is a photograph of a frail famine-stricken boy, initially believed to be a girl, who had collapsed in the foreground with a hooded vulture eyeing him from nearby. The child was reported to be attempting to reach a United Nations feeding center about a half-mile away in Ayodhya, ( South Sudan), in march 1993. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography award in 1994. Carter took his own life four months after winning the prize.
In the above case, there could be the reminiscences of guilt in the photographer but the unjust and brutal description of present days international and national media has gone beyond the limit. This international attack is a merciless conflict in which various dispersed international printing houses give violent battles against India. This heinous, picturesque, verbal brutality has been so immense that India, as a country must be always on our own guard against the snares of our enemies, and in which, indeed, we can never be quite sure that a friend will not knife us in the back. It has been one against all and as in some forms of wrestling, anything is allowed. It is an attack of bitterness, envy, and treachery, of malice and hatred. With a morbid avidity, the international world portrayed India in their papers as a verisimilitude of a third-world country.
We must understand that it is not essential that we always keep bellowing. Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying ” I will try again tomorrow” This year has certainly not been a normal one. But then again as science journalist, Ed Yong elegantly put it, “Normal led to this”, and not the contemptuous hearts.
By:- Dr. Pallavi Sharma Goyal
(The writer is an Assistant professor of English on Govt. S.M.S.P.G. College, Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh)