I had become a fan of Nupur Sharma
after I first read about her. Her name was announced by the BJP as its
candidate during Delhi Assembly Election 2015 against the big name of Arvind
Kejriwal. I wondered who she was and searched the web to read about her. She
had got splendid credentials. Born and brought up in Delhi, she studied
Economics at the Hindu College of Delhi University and later completed her law
degree (LLB) from faculty of law, Delhi University. Then she completed her
Master of Law (LLM) from London School of Economics (LSE). This was enough to
understand that she was a woman of great talent and intellect. But why was she
in politics?
I read that she was involved in
student politics from her Delhi University days. She was a member of ABVP and became
President of Delhi University’s Student Union (DUSU). That was some feat. She
has since then held several positions in the BJP, being associated with BJP’s
youth wing and a member of state executive committee of the BJP Delhi.
Way back in 2009, she was featured
among the “Top 10 Most Inspirational Women in India” by the Hindustan Times. If
we look at above credentials, it was a place well deserved. You can read more
about her here on Wikibio, or check her
profile on LinkedIn. If our country has to become a developed nation and a
nation of our dreams, we need well educated and honest people like her in
politics too.
Now I will come at the reason I am telling
about her. Yesterday, I got to know through News that a fellow politician from
AAP shouted at her and verbally abused her during “Live” TV debate. You can
read about it here
or here.
The leader from AAP was claiming that the BJP was using Shri Ram for political
gains; when Nupur Sharma intervened and then the man lost control and started
abusing her. Nupur Sharma has said that she would be taking legal action against
him for defamation and character assassination. This episode “broke the
internet” and last night, #WeStandWithNupurSharma was trending on Twitter as #1
trend in India.
These days, I have been increasingly
getting annoyed with the needless “controversies” breaking on the internet and
on the TV news media. Anything and everything become prime time news and
discarded after a few days once another controversy-worthy news comes out. This
is a never-ending trend and creates unnecessary stress in our minds.
I was thinking about how to end this “media
mess”. I think we have too many TV News channels and they are continuously fighting
among themselves for “breaking news”. In this competition, truth becomes a tragedy.
I was reflecting on yesterday’s controversy and wondered how to prevent such
incidents from happening in the future. I noticed that this issue happened because
the debate was a “live” debate. Had this been a pre-recorded debate, the TV
channel could have edited and cut out that portion when the man went berserk. You
may ask what the benefit is of “hiding” things and an abuse is an abuse, whether
it is shown on TV or not. If the channel hid the abusive portion, would it not
be unfair for victims like Nupur Sharma? I think, even if the clip is cut out
from being aired to the viewers, the portion would still be recoded and hence
if the victims want to take legal action, they could still do it, because they
were defamed and abused in front of a larger panel and their peer and that
amounts to insult. But it would at least avoid bringing out the controversy in
front of the public, save them from some stress and avoid wasting their time hearing
or discussing about it. Overall, it will save productivity and energy of the
viewers if we ban such content.
Therefore, I was thinking that all TV
channels could avoid “live” TV debates. If channels don’t do it, government
should ban live TV debates because all such programs become too risky to air. If
the show is “live”, anyone among the panelists can always abuse the platform
for fulfilling stupid or evil goals. “Live” debate can be misused to spread a
false anti-national propaganda, or to defame and harm the image of an important
person or organization, for example.
Apart from the risks involved in airing
“live” content, this controversy on social media also highlighted how
"online abuse" is often tolerated by the same set of people, but if
the same incident happens on TV, those people are furious. It proves that TV as
a medium is still so powerful, perhaps since it is more "personal"
and online content is still taken lightly. If you are on social media
platforms, you would notice that people use abuses very frequently while commenting
on famous people’s tweets. No action is taken against such people. But if something
of that kind happens on TV, it has serious repercussions.
I think that at some point of time we
should start making such controversies as “examples” to make real systematic
changes in our country. One Nupur Sharma filing a legal case against one stupid
man won’t change anything. But if TV channels are made responsible and held
accountable for showing bad content to the public, that may be a really
beneficial change. The ideas I shared in this blog post may not be perfect. But
if we start trying to find ideas and solutions to fix systematic problems, we
may create a better future for our country.
What do you think about it?
- Rahul Tiwary
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