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Suresh E's Blogs >> General The Nineteen People

19 passengers from the bus were forced to line up and then were shot to death. No , this is not an opening scene of a movie , unfortunately not. This is exactly what happened in Assam just a couple of days. The Bodo Army killed all these 19 innocent civilians .( http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/assam-19-civilians-shot-dead-by-bodo-militants-65103 ). This is happening in the 21st century , in a "so called" democratic country.

Just reading this news gave me chills, got goose bumps and i can't imagine what the 19 people had felt knowing that they would be killed and all they could do is simply follow their instructions and line up and get shot at. The helplessness they must have felt, the anger, the frustration they must have felt, it's hard to imagine what they must have gone through.

But this has hardly caught the media's attention. The news didn't even make it to the top headlines. It was just another news. The media, of course, was too busy covering Obama with the next gen , Obama dancing to the tunes of Bollywood music, Obama this and Obama that. The central government hasn't made any official statements in response to these attacks. Both the media and the government are playing blind to this incident. Or is it that they are blind sighted by Obama. It could also be because this incident happened in Assam, the North Eastern states, or the almost Non-Existent states (NE states ) .

The only occasion when we hear about the NE states when such incidents happen and that too for a brief minute or two. There is no pressure on the government from the media whatsoever and neither there is any pressure on the media to highlight these issues, debate these issues and voice the concerns/opinions of the people. The Media is the 4th pillar of the democracy, but given how irresponsible they became in the recent past, they should be relegated to the ordinary entertainment channels, because that's what they are today.

I'm not being critical of the Media, i'm just trying to lay out the facts as is. I don't recall the last time they talked about these neglected states in good light. In the famous movie " Chak De" , there is a scene where the man in charge of the Indian Hockey camp welcomes the girls from the northern easter states as guests, to which the girls immediately respond, that they are being treated as guests in their own country. This one line response sums it all.

This ill-treatment needs to be stopped , only then the incidents such as this can even be attempted to be stopped. The people who carried out these attacks want to prove a point that they want to be untouchables and unless they are proven otherwise, the 19 people can include you and me and may be even the babu's in Delhi. This will be when the Media will run this story 24x7 non stop on all the channels for sure.

The death of these 19 people mustn't go unanswered, their deaths shouldn't be meaningless , only then we could try to stop these from happening in the future.

Ramachandra Rao Nidadavolu

The world is still surviving only because of few concerned people like you... thanks for sharing this! Posted at: 10, Nov 2010 5:43 PM