Are we used to the violence?

The Gujjar community in Rajasthan has been protesting for the past few days and the violent nature of the protests has already claimed more than 60 lives.

About a week or so back blasts rocked the pink city of Jaipur.

Both these incidents happened less than 250 kms from where I stay… But they don’t induce a sense of fear or insecurity in me anymore and not in anyone around me either. Have we become insensitive to the plight of others? Or, have such incidents become so commonplace that they don’t matter anymore? I don’t think we’ve become insensitive. We feel sad we do… but somewhere deep down we say ‘Thank God I wasn’t there.’

For news channels that are multiplying by the dozen, such incidents are ‘revenue.’ To some extent I think these news channels are responsible for inducing that element of insensitivity in the way they report these incidents. This reminds me of something I saw on a popular news channel and I realised that news channels had reached the peak of commercialization. Almost a week ago a 14-year old girl, Aarushi Talwar, was brutally murdered in her house and the murder has been shrouded in mystery ever since. Crime is something that evokes human interest without effort and crime news always has a ready audience. News channels went berserk reporting this incident covering every possible detail and drawing up every possible theory. However, this particular news channel (Star News) went ahead and actually made an ad based on this incident. The message of the ad was something along the lines of we bring you every detail of the Aarushi murder case the fastest!

It left me stunned.