Irrelevant & Mediocre

Channel Surfer

By

Randeep Wadehra

On 21 December 2012, TV debates on the Delhi gang rape stood out for two things – mediocrity and irrelevance – which makes naming names redundant. Mediocrity first. There was not a single suggestion from learned panelists that has not been aired before – be it about poor policing or punishing the guilty. There was a lot of stuff that could be described as emotional but impractical. Yes, the police should have stopped the bus that was not just plying illegally at that time and place but was also violating a number of rules, regulations and laws pertaining to traffic and vehicle accessories like having tinted glasses etc. But the police does not stop and check routinely because – as the Police Commissioner remarked in an interview to a TV channel – it is not possible to do so because police cannot be everywhere. This argument can be taken further to include every possible alibi, viz., you cannot stop rapes because it is not possible to do so because police cannot be everywhere. You cannot prevent child molestation because… In short, the police are neither omnipresent nor omnipotent. A statement that can be treated as an equivalent of shrugging shoulders. But, then, you cannot blame the police who, since the Raj days, have been primed for “VIP duties” and trained to treat the aam aadmi as fit for lathi charges and other third degree treatment. Policing, in its essence, has never been a part of our governance culture.

Getting back to the debate. What else was heard from various panelists? Apart from the “Hang them” cry, there was plenty of finger pointing. Of course, there were familiar targets of popular ire like our politicians and the police, but there was mutual recrimination too. As a woman politician tried to explain that her party was not keen on politicizing the issue there was a loud titter – bordering on guffaw – from a fellow woman panelist. Why? Because she thought that the issue was being politicized. From then on, the debate digressed from “how to prevent such crimes” to “whether the issue should be politicized.” But what is wrong with politicization per se? In a democracy, it is politics and its various dynamics that hasten, or should hasten, the process of decision-making. The objection should have been to the quality of politicization. Coming on to the streets, making emotional speeches and even the demand for death sentence should have been a subtext to the main text – viz., a prompt and thorough re-look at the entire machinery of governance by both the houses of our parliament. This is overdue, actually.

The need is to update our laws, reform the structures of governance, refashion the tools of delivering justice, and renovate – if not rebuild – the entire superstructure of governance. Something that remains a pipe-dream, given the manner in which our parliament functions. Well, not that our parliamentarians are too concerned. They love their own sound-bytes. Moreover, there are quite a few of them who care too hoots about human dignity and other such niceties that go into the making of a civil society. You only have to watch TV where a Congress MP makes snide remarks about a female BJP MP, to get the idea. One did not get anything to hear on structural reforms because... politicians are too busy with you know what. What, however, one got was a skein of mealy-mouthed homilies, insincere verbiage and competitive melodrama.

Now, to the second notable trait of the TV debates, viz., irrelevance. The debates would have been relevant if they had, however temporarily, halted the rampaging crime. But even as the debates were raging on the small screen, news reports of rapes and molestations from different parts of the country, including New Delhi, crashed onto our sensibilities. The debates obviously did not make an iota of difference to anyone. Every minute new perpetrators are targeting new victims. 

So, what was the point in holding debates that had the quality of upper class drawing room tut-tutting. Or, was it tu-whit tu-whoo?