society. Take incidents of acid attack which,
according to a rough estimate, have gone alarmingly
very high with India recording more than 1000 cases
every year. No effort was spared to highlight the plight
of victims of acid attacks. Tribulations of Laxmi, an
acid attack victim whose determined fight to make
lives of other girls less dangerous were well
reciprocated by the media when she filed a PIL in the
Supreme Court. Without being insensitive to her
existential interest, both electronic and print media
presented how Laxmi who has turned 23-year-old
now, has been made to suffer a tortured life after
criminals threw acid on her eight years ago. Her face,
arms and other body parts were disfigured in the acid
attack. Her life turned into a hell. Yet her indomitable
spirit which media untiringly highlighted, propelled her
to take the acid attack case to its logical end. And
this she did by filing a PIL in the apex court, which
slammed the Centre for failing to take adequate
measures to stop the sale of acid, the worst source
of making thousands of women pariahs in the society.
Following this the government took some prohibitive
steps-first, it listed acid in the category of poison then
issued order that sellers of acid would need a licence,
keep record of sales and it should not be sold to
minors. Besides, illegal sale and purchase of acid has
also been made a non-bailable offence. The media
promptly swung its cameras and brought before the
world all this without being lax and casual. And again
shouldering its responsibility towards the society, it
drew public attention towards the apex court’s
judgement which asked the government to pay Rs 3
lakh compensation to acid attack victim, one lakh to
be paid within 15 days of incident.
government body, dailies maintained alarming drop
that marked the women employment in rural areas in
the past two years. Playing a role of conscience
keeper, news outlets put in public domain a sordid
picture on a staggering 9.1 million jobs loss among
rural women. That women are getting a raw deal in
both long and short term jobs in rural areas despite
their being highly vulnerable section of the society,
created a wave of shock across the nation, thanks to
the media. In fact, in dealing with women issues a
marked responsible behavior by the media has
become a regular observable fact. It can be seen in
the recently published content of the Hindu, an
English daily which brought out cruelty of adolescent
girls’ marriage and its aftereffects in India, the country
which claims to become the third largest power of the
world by 2030. The daily citing a report from the
United Nations said that in India, four million
adolescent girls aged 15-19 years give birth every
year. They account for 16 per cent of all births and
nine per cent of all maternal deaths. This was not
alone, the daily highlighted how every hour, three out
of seven deaths among adolescent girls occur due to
complications from pregnancy, child bearing and
unsafe abortions. Thus there has been no sparing on
the media’s part in taking to the public problems that
affect women. Human trafficking of which women
become a major target by traffickers, has been dealt
with comprehensively at times by the dailies and
news channels. In Uttarakhand where recently
combined fury of cloudbursts, floods and landslides
devastated thousands of life, media persons
sacrificing their personal safety, put their cameras on
the sufferings of people, especially women who were
at the receiving end of social, economic apathy. The
media showed women's vulnerability at the hands of
their own family members some of whom found it
easy to sale their wives and daughters to make up the
loss they suffered in the nature-triggered devastation
in Uttarakhand. Yet there are a lot which go
unfocussed and uncovered and for this media,
keeping in mind the large public expectation from it,
can’t be excused.
Yet critics say media’s dealing with stories on women
problem has largely been in the mould of hit and run
cases, where an editor publishes what suit his
master’s interests. To an extent, they are right. But
process of churning in the media has started with
emphasis on women-centric contents getting a buzz
at the editor guild's regular meetings. In this
background one should not forget how some dailies
made a dip in women’s employment in India their top
news story of the day. Highlighting the surveys of
National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO), a
(The writer is a Delhi-based
Free-lance Journalist)
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