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Media
has just finished covering the mini-general
state assembly elections and the ministry
formation. It is for few days engaged in
promoting medico protests against second dose of
Mandal reservation and police excesses. Many hot
issues that it was pursuing have gone in
background or got miniaturized in some corner
column. Even the hottest summer with
unprecedented power failure is of little
importance. Many a times I feel the media could
do a better job by being consistent on some
issues. Why power shortages and government
actions on this vital infrastructure problem of
the country can’t be one of the issues of
national importance? Why can’t media take a deep
look into the problems and the solutions of the
power shortages and outages and present it to
all the stakeholders consistently till
conclusion? Why can’t it provide few pages for
rural India that gives livelihoods to 700
million people? Why can’t it cover news from the
labs of our scientists and the design studios of
our engineers?
Media is today the only strength of our
democracy and we shall all like that it get
strengthened further. However, it appears that
media misses some of the priorities. Bharat
Nirman is one such national project that can
change the face of rural India significantly and
add considerably to the economic growth of the
country. It is not very difficult to imagine the
change that it can make. Imagine this for a
moment. Every village of even 500 persons gets
connected with an all-weather road with the
outside world; every village gets electrified;
every village will have a telephone connection;
every village will get drinking water for every
one; and canals will be added to bring in one
crore hectares of land under irrigation. This is
the dream project of our great Prime Minister
Dr. Man Mohan Singh. Surprisingly, the project
is to be completed before 2009. It means in his
tenure as prime minister. He is an honest
economist and administration. And the whole
country will be looking for the successful
execution of at least this project.
It becomes thus one of the duties of the
responsible media to see that happen. Instead of
covering the world cup (football) in pages after
pages, why can’t it design a clock for its front
page for all the five development
parameters-roads, rural electrification,
telephones, irrigation canals, and drinking
water of Bharat Nirman? Media must come out with
a properly designed clock or scoreboard on its
front page that provides the progress of all the
parameters of Bharat Nirman on daily basis for
the people of India to know. It will be a great
service to the nation.
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Comments: |
Media’s Bharat Nirman clock is a
good idea. But it will require great
deal of work by the media. It will
require collection of volume of data
from different places, compiling it,
and then arranging it in a
presentable manner. The media will
instead cover world cup, where with
minimum effort it can cover pages
after pages.
Successful execution of Bharat
Nirman Project will be like dream
come true. Villages well connected
by road, having telephone, power,
drinking water and better irrigation
facility, will give new impetus in
the development of the rural sector.
With all these facilities, minus the
hustle and bustle and pollution of
cities, village could become ideal
place for living, especially for the
older generation. But when the
government is not able to handle the
power crisis in places like Delhi,
Mumbai and Kanpur, it will be very
challenging for the government to
provide electricity in villages.
This can be made possible only by
setting up new power plants on
priority basis, and strictly
checking power theft and power
misuse. - Prakash Gupta, Kolkata
- May 20, 2006
It is not difficult to have the
Bharat Nirman clock implemented by
the media. The data are already
there on the Bharat Nirman site. Say
for road it is
http://omms.nic.in/ASPNet/citizens/NAT/12BN/BharatNirman.aspx.
It for the local media to pick up
from there and keep on updating on
basis of progress made. Say, TOI or
HT edition from Patna can very well
do that for Bihar. Telegraph and
Statesman of Kolkata can do that for
Bengal. It will keep the
implementing agencies and ministers
on their toes. I wish PatnaDaily.Com
does that for Bihar. - Indra -
May 21, 2006 |
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