A VIEW OF THE TIMES

Pardon my obsession with the ‘most selling English newspaper’ (MSEN) of the country, as the content of it will be under scrutiny once again. On Friday, March 30, 2012 the front page of the New Delhi edition of The Times of India carried the news that a local court has waived the jail term of a man who attempted suicide under extreme economic duress. It reported that the court has observed that a person who attempts suicide due to impoverishment should not be further punished with imprisonment. That is the news in a nutshell. The object of analysis in this article is the ‘MSEN View’ which accompanied the report. It ran as follows:

MSEN “has consistently maintained that punishing someone driven to the limits of despair, so much so that he attempts to kill himself, makes no sense. We are happy that this court has taken a similar view. However, this is an issue that must not be left to the views of specific judges or courts. The legislature needs to see the logic behind decriminalizing attempted suicide and amend the laws suitably. What a person in such a situation needs is sympathy and help in the form of counseling and perhaps medication for depression. Society would be better served and suicides hopefully reduced if the authorities were to take concrete action to increase the number of medical health professionals and to make their services available to those most in need.”

The ‘MSEN View’ is not general reportage but editorial comment. It reflects the position of the newspaper with regard to a particular issue. It does not accompany the ordinary, but is reserved for the significant. The ‘MSEN View’ just quoted appears to reflect the assumption of an empathetic position. It rejects the punishment of the tragic, the censure of pathetic compulsion. It also appears to engage in ‘social activism’ by suggesting that changes to law must be affected so that the verdict of the trial court becomes the norm rather than the exception at the mercy of specific judges or courts. So far the ‘MSEN View’ furthers the image of journalism as serving the aam aadmi. However, what follows proves that public advocacy is merely an illusion that news organisations construct to justify their place as the ‘fourth pillar of democracy’. In reality it is far removed from it.

The ‘MSEN View’ expresses happiness at the verdict of the court on the issue of punishment for suicide. But what makes me cynical is the solution offered with regard to the treatment of the victim. It suggests that the victim should be subjected to psychiatry and treated for depression. Thus, the editorial position of the most popular English daily locates the problem of poverty not in the social and economic structures within which the individual is situated, but within the individual himself. In most cases, poverty is hardly the outcome of the efforts of the individual. Rather, it is the effect of the policies crafted by the state to forward the economic interests of one class, which controls it anyway, at the cost of the other. Unsurprisingly, the ‘MSEN View’ censors this logic and therefore misinforms the reader.

For instance, farmer suicides are not the result of any specific way of thinking. Their large number indicates that the problem is not peculiar to the individual and hence is not psychological. The problem resides in the political economy in which lack of land reforms, capital intensive agriculture, and introduction of scientific seeds – all upper class privileges – are constituents. By denying such rationality to readers, the ‘MSEN View’ prevents any resistance to the political economy which generates such skewed policies.

The act of suicide has the potential to stir emotions and unite people. It compels reaction because the cause of death is not natural but social and economic. Unlike nature, the social and the economic are human creations and therefore can be subject to change especially when they are forcing people to commit suicide. The event of such change involves alteration to structures that produce suffering. Implicit in the ‘MSEN View’ to discipline suicidal tendencies in psychiatric institutions, is the suggestion to discipline the source of resistance and change. It is deeply conservative because it does not recommend any structural resolution to suffering, but instead suggests that such suffering should be made invisible to society and to the victims themselves. Such advice is akin to religious sermon. The following hymn continues to perform the same function:

“The rich man in his castle

The poor man at his gate

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate.”

It implies that the rich-poor divide is ordained by the divine and therefore should not be challenged. It does not resolve suffering but only makes it palatable. The function is crucial for the maintenance of status quo in society. The poor must believe that their suffering is not unusual, else they will revolt.

To conclude, the position of the ‘MSEN View’ is political. Nothing unfortunate about it for the ‘apolitical’ does not exist. However, what is regrettable is the nature of the politics in which the newspaper engages itself. It is not just any business organisation but a news organisation. It has undertaken the task to inform society so that the public can provide an informed response to matters of policy. However, what it does is the exact opposite – mislead the public. At first, it sedates the critical faculty of the reader by supporting the suicide victim against penal action. ‘MSEN View’ then uses the moment to slip in the ideology that suffering must be silent either under the care of drugs or within the confines of psychiatric custody. After all, the noise of suffering must not be heard for it has the potential to generate a rumble which can upset those paid to manufacture silence in news organizations, and also those who ensure the manufacture of such silence through advertisement. This article is yet another attempt to highlight such politics.

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