The Untouchables - I

Kantipur ad

Currently Kantipur is running an advertisements on its dailies. This advertisements intends to lures its subscribers by giving hundreds thousands [Rs one lakh], which will be given every week, one million [ten lakhs] which will be given every month, and then the bumper prize is, hold your breath, ten million [one corod]. If you are not holding your breath or you are not impressed yet all you have to pay  attention to the fact is that they are giving this big money for spending daily only  Rs, 15 on their newspapers. Last year, Kantipur have announced to hand over  one kg of gold as a bumper prize.

This monthly  and bumper prize is ‘feed to greed’ and this is what pressed me to think about it. How much a media house can lure to its potential buyers to sell its product[s] when the total annual cost of Kantipur and The Kathmandu post, cost only about Rs. 7,000/- [approx]. Even if, the law enforcement allow them to go 10 folds of its total cost, it will not come close to one lakh. The huge money is a bet to catch all the newspaper readers to read only Kantipur. Monopoly that to feeding the greed of mass do not follow any business ethics in itself.  How can a state can watch such advertisement carried out by a media house without a word ? So, the question is when will state step in and interfere on matter like this ? Is this the work of law enforcement or it falls on the press council ? because a media house is acting like a greedy ethicless corporate house. What should be the  their step to control it ?

Let me remind you of a news that was on Kantipur television, a couple of years ago. It was about a family that used to ran their fraud business near by the Pepsi Cola town planning. It was about an old man, who used to run a rice sales depot. That depot was selling rice to public on far lower rate than market. That rate was about 500 - 600 Rs. less per sack than the market value.  No wonder, all the people from many parts of Kathmandu flocked in, to get that rice. Then one family used to take about six sacks at a time hiring a taxi service because they were getting it as that low cost. When Kantipur ran that news, I see this nice old man who looked like saint then, refuted it being fraud or being involved in fraudulent act in his business. He was saying, all they were doing was a social work because they could do it. That old man was so unsuspecting in any way, even to doubt, that he could be involved in something like that kind of big fraud. He had a long white beard which made him looked like very honest and respected man.

That news worked like a free advertisement for them, because when I had visited that place immediately, there were people waiting in long line to get the rice. Staff were busy doing their work and hardly had time to indulge the new customers and their questions. We have to get all the information from the people, who were on line. In a nearby depot, people were busy carrying the rice sacks which its customer were loading in taxi or on their backs. The depot was about to be run out of rice sacks in just couple of hours. Huge, trucks loaded with rice used to unload about three times in a day, in this family’s two depot. One of it was inside the town planning and the other was out of the Planning are just near by the sun city apartment. They were also talking about starting same service on gas cylinder also. After that, just about couple of months later, when they collected HUGE annual sums from thousands of households from Kathmandu valley, one day there were no trucks loads of rice coming and going in that area. I also heard, there were huge bill to be paid to the rice factory from where they used to order  the rice which they sold at subsidized rate.

I also remember, another news reported in  Kantipur, about a man - who was the agent here to sell those products from India. He sold Dhanalaxmi barsa to the superstitious people here in Kathmandu and other big cities in Nepal. At first, our naive people bought some items; sometimes it was rings and sometimes stones. Hoping, buying such goods will shower money in their life within weeks or months. Until one day, they realised they were duped. So, these very naive people went to police station to file a case against that agent.

If those are the case of fraud, then how come Kantipur should not be not charged with fraud ? Because this offer also open for millions of people and only hand full of people will get it. And if anyone wins it, no one knows, who won that big bumper prize. Some corporate insider say that, like the reality TV shows are scripted one, those bumper prize winners are also bought on couple of hundred thousands Rupees, to keep the mouth shut about such big prize.  Otherwise, why Kantipur does not give us the follow up news of those winners how do they spent such huge lottery  ? or why such winner vanish overnight ? How come we don't read about them in that other newspapers ?

So, who will say Kantipur what you are doing is lacking ethics in its core value ? Because its a media house, what it does will be copied by other corporate houses also. So, when you try to make a rule for them, they will ask you back, how can this is wrong when I do it and why its not wrong when a media house is doing it ? There will be more copycat to feed the greed to public, offering them big money to sell that cost about 15 Rs to one family a day. So, my suggestion to the - press council - is not to let them exceed those prize money to 100,000 [one lakh] maximum or they should be prosecuted for violation of ethics.

Editorial Conscience : About two years ago, I read a poem Rabindra Mishra had praised and appreciated. It was a ‘curse poem’. There was something in its core nature, I failed to appreciate it even if it was written by the sr. writer Jagdish Ghimire. He was so fed up with bandha callers then, he wanted to transfer his cancer [ along with other trouble of his] to those bandha callers for calling bandha endlessly. Agreed, bandha is not good itself but a sick person wanting to transfer his disease to other sick people [ bandha callers ] of the society ? Does this mean if one does bad the others even worse can  make it right ?  But Mr Mishra liked this poem so much, he shared it again on his social networking site. This really made me worry. Because he has huge fan following and he is spreading a negativity to this society at free of cost. But, worse I came to know later on, that this poem was already published in Nagarik and so he was just sharing what he liked to vent his frustrations or to show his support to the dying writer.

In a society like ours, which is so deeply gripped in superstition, a senior writer use all his creative brain to infuse all the frustration of his life - the writer was diagnosed of cancer and was given time to die six years before - in that small piece of poem stunned me. Fine, he can pour out his frustrations in that piece but how come a national dailies editor could not see its lasting and negative impact in society. Curse, is a slow poison and we can not get over from its lasting effect. Other thing what made me wonder is how come  he could not think of passing good thought and positivism in society before he die ? Instead he just wanted to transfer his disease to all the bad doers ! who gives him that right ? Sadly the writer died with his cancer and I have not read any news yet, that he was successful in his death wish to transfer his cancer to anyone.

As a responsible citizen of this nation, this poem finding its place on the national daily made me so infuriated with editor. Did he discuss it with his team before they decided to publish it ? Do we fail to see the bad impact because the writer was a respected person in society or they felt sorry for his condition ? or this was approved by the editorial team ? When it came out it found a huge fan like Mr Mishra. This raised another question in my mind, is media means the acceptance of bad my majority or the conscience of 2% people of the society, that shapes the thought of majority of the mass ? I have written a lot about it on my social networking site, still I would like to take the risk of repeating myself ; I wish Mr Pradhan - the editor of Nagarik - have kept his right to disagree with majority for it having a very bad vibe in its core.

Part two will be on next Sunday post

Note : This article has already been published in Samhita, Asar 2072 [June-July 2015]. This is a trimester magazine published by Press Council Nepal.