ISSUE 30 September 15, 2015

News In Brief Patel versus Modi, the reservation bout beginsSubhasish Mitra

Given the title of ‘Patidar Hriday Samrat’ by his followers, Hardik Patel has garnered a lot of media attention towards him since organizing his first rally in Visnagar, Gujarat on July 6, 2015. Fighting to secure an OBC status for the patel community, he is seen by many of his followers as the next Narendra Modi and has even been compared with the “Iron man of India” Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Reservation has become a major issue in India. So much so that it was the central plot of the 2011 Bollywood drama Aarakshan. Brought into action in 1979 by the Janata party government under Prime Minister Moraji Desai, the Mandal commission aimed at identifying the socially or educationally backward people to consider the question of seat reservation and quotas of these people and to help in redressing caste discrimination. The current situation though, is a slap across

the face of that model. People of India have started using and abusing the reservation system according to their own will.

Courtesy of reservation, many deserving people are denied opportunities which go to the people of the reserved quotas. This absolutely puts in a negative image about reservation in the minds of the young. Reservation is about helping and in turn eliminating caste discrimination which is still very much prevalent

at large in India. It is about upholding every section of people of the country and somehow, all that has managed to seep

inside the people is ‘reservation m e a n s seat’.H a r d i k Patel, the man who has very m u c h b r o u g h t back these sentiments to the lime light claims “Patels in

Gujarat has 56-inch chests and know how to make government oblige to them on their demands”. He also claims that his sister not getting a scholarship even after “topping her matriculation exam” is the inspiration behind his struggles and the major reason he cites behind the protest of the patidars is that the patels have

run out of options. Agriculture is not able to sustain them and so they sell off their lands in order for their children to get admission in the private colleges where they are offered job oriented courses. Hardik even laments the fact that Patels in the other states are knows by Kurmis who are classified as OBC or SC. Parochialism can be one way of putting it. Not knowing entirely whether it is Hardik who is controlling the movement or someone else is controlling Hardik from the back without coming at the FOREFRONT can be another way of putting it. If the system of reservation continues to identify people based on their caste and not on their economic backwardness then the ideology is bound to get exploited by people with vested interests and Hardik will be deemed just as a pawn of the complicated middle game of Chess. No doubt the pawn is currently playing well.

Whistle blown, Modi calls to end Bihar ‘Jungle Raaj’ Avijit Das

After Trinamool Congress Supremo Mamata Banerjee gave out calls of Parivartan ahead of the 2011 West Bengal Assembly Polls, now it’s the turn of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President for the same ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls. With the dates of the election being declared by the Election Commission of India the whistle has been blown. Bihar elections to be held in five phases on 12 October,16 October,28 October,1 November and 5 November and final counting on 8th November. Polling will be held in 49 seats in the first phase, 32 in the second,50 in the third,55 in the fourth and 57 in the fifth phase. With the rising power of BJP in the state since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the 2015 polls is expected to be a mixed show of the politics of caste and religion where veterans of BJP including

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah will be locking their horns with once arch rivals Nitish Kumar of JD(U) and Lalu Prasad Yadav of RJD. Foes have turned into friends and an alliance has been formed b e t w e e n the two rival parties along with the C o n g r e s s which has been rapidly declining in popularity ever since the previous general elections. It will be a tough fight for the BJP where the local veterans are expected to become a nightmare for the central leadership of the BJP. Steeping up the attack on the JD(U) the RJD, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a massive Parivartaan Rally on

July 25 at Mujaffarpur district of Bihar where he called on the people of Bihar to end the Jungle Raj prevailing there. Referring to JD(U) and RJD, he

even termed the JD(U) as ‘Jaanta D a m a n U t d p i r a n and RJD as Rojaana Jungle Raaj Ka Daar. While the

statements of the Prime Minister faced harsh criticism from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar while Lalu hit back at the BJP calling it Bharat Jalao Party. The JD(U) with dalits being one of the strong pillars of its strength in state, may lose out a considerable number of votes to the opposition with the forced resignation of former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram

Manjhi not going pretty well with the Dalit community. Manjhi, the Dalit leader and once trusted aide of Nitish Kumar was bestowed with the responsibility of the Chief Minister after Nitish Kumar resigned following the debacle of the JD(U) in 2014 Lok Sabha polls in the state. He was expelled from the party after he refused to resign and make way for Nitish’s comeback to which he refused. He formed a new party of his own named the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and has joined the NDA camp. Also, the appointment of BJP leader Ram Nath Kovind, a dalit, as the Bihar Governor was not welcomed by Nitish Kumar.So, with the elections inching closer with each passing day, it is now a matter of time as to how the rival groups tackle the swinging moods of the Bihar populace and have the final smile.

NIMD binds their teachers with the loop of memories

East Bengal defeats Mohun Bagan

Imagine, all of a sudden you are thrown into a land glowing with unknown facets of something known as ‘knowledge’. Isolation lingering through the veins with no guide to clear the passage would have made things ultra terrible for existence.The day was 5th of September, 1888 when one such benevolent teacher had visited this earth, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, an Indian philosopher and the second president of the independent nation. A statesman

who had the perseverance to incorporate influences of western idealist philosophers into Indian thought, had marked a revolutionary change in the educational structure prevalent in ‘primitive’ India.To commemorate his bountiful deeds, the Indian government decided to make his birthday, the Teachers Day. They embrace you in severe distress, for you might have to become the watershed moment for the rest. Our beloved college NSHM

Institute of Media and Design has been bestowed with such jewels who have kept no stone unturned in making every student a stalwart among the industry

professionals. Recognizing their endless contributions ever since the inception of the campus, for the first time ever, the under graduate and post graduate students of the department had organised a two hours scintillating programme, sparing zero minutes without foot tapping.Students grooving to

some of the biggest chartbusters and trying to drool the audience with their voices had in fact forced two of the most loved

professors, Debanjan Banerjee and Jhuma Basak to sing a few lines of an ever nostalgic, Rabindra Sangeet. Certificates of excellence along with handmade paper bags were gifted to the teachers which added some extra slices to their bar of happiness. They donate us what their almamaters had induced in their minds.Dear teachers, thank you for all the patience you had while making us what we are today. A very Happy Teachers Day to all our loving professors.

Sreetama Karmakar

East Bengal crushed Mohun Bagan by four goals and went on to be the champion of OC Blue Calcutta Football League Premier Division. This is their successive title with a record of 37 overall.

Pele to visit NSHM Kolkata Campus

Brazilian football legend Pele would be visiting Kolkata soon as a guest of honour for Atletico De Kolkata’s first game. Pele along with Sourav Ganguly will also visit NSHM Knowledge Campus to address the students.

Steve Waugh enters Indian real estate

Former Australian cricketer Steve Waugh has launched a property portal waughglobal.com to cater specifically to the needs of Non Residential Indians searching for property in India. The platform will sell premium properties in India to NRIs and people of Indian origin

Paes, Hingis clinch US mixed doubles

Veteran Indian tennis star Leander Paes scripted history by notching up the US Open mixed doubles title with Swiss partner Martina Hingis to become the format’s most successful male player in the Open era.

Sania and Martina lift US open doubles

Wimbledon champions Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza captured their second consecutive Grand Slam women’s doubles crown defeating Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova 6-3, 6-3 in the US Open final. Mirza and Swiss veteran Hingis did not drop a set in becoming the first top-seeded duo to win the US Open women’s doubles title since Cara Black and Liezel Huber won the 2008 crown.

ISSUE 30 September 15, 2015

The Team: Adriana Eternity Hazra, Anshu Dubey, Avijit Das, Indrajit Bhattacharjee, Koustabh Das, Lahari Basu, Madhushri Banerjee, Sananya Datta, Santanu Ghosh, Srotoswini Sen, Sohini Majumdar, Sreetama Karmakar, Shubhasish Mitra, Subhecha Mitra, Sushobhita Kar, Sanjana Sharma, Tapatrisha Das Design Team: Tanisha Bandyopadhyay

Chief Mentor: Dr Buroshiva Dasgupta Mentors: Debanjan Banerjee, Reshmi Naskar, Bhaswar Bhattacharyya, Sourav Basu, Barnali Ray,Ankita Ash

Campus Buzz!

Tapatrisha Das

Professor KM Shrivastava, the senior-most professor at Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), passed away in New Delhi. He was 63.Shrivastava was professor at IIMC for more than 25 years. His contribution to the national mass communication institute has been enormous. He held various media courses for the Indian Army and the Territorial Army in IIMC. The author of books like ‘News Reporting and Editing’, ‘Public Relations in the Digital Era’, ‘Social Media in Business and Governance’, ‘Broadcast Journalism in the 21st

Century’, happened to be the indispensable pieces for media

students, professionals and media educators. A former journalist with a long stint with news agencies and newspapers, Prof. Shrivastava collapsed at the Nizammuddin Railway station, where he had gone to board the train for Bhopal, soon after returning to Delhi from IIMC-Jammu. He was rushed to AIIMS Trauma Centre where he was declared dead.Shrivastava, a bachelor, is survived by his mother and four sisters. His mortal remains were kept in the IIMC premises for people to pay their last tributes. Later in the evening his mortal remains were flown to Bhopal-

his hometown, where his last rites were performed.Prof. Shrivastava joined media education in Patiala University at the peak of terrorism in Punjab. He later served at Makhanlal University before joining Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He was also the course director of the special SAARC workshop for media persons organised by the Kathmandu based SAARC Information Centre (SIC) at IIMC-New Delhi, last year.Prof. Srivastava’s demise is an irrecoverable loss for media students, professionals and media educators.

Author: Anna ErellePublisher: HarperCollinsPrice: Rs. 350Number of Pages: 240

With the increasing number of French teenagers leaving for

Syria to join ISIS, Anna Erelle, a young French journalist was researching the online propaganda that is used to lure these teenagers towards religious extremism. That is when, through simple Facebook messaging, she came into contact with Abu Bilel Al-Firanzi, a high ranking ISIS officer. What started off as research for a magazine article on online ISIS recruitment networks would soon turn her life upside

down and result in her having to go into hiding. In In the Skin of a Jihadist, Erelle chronicles the chilling details of her interactions with this dangerous individual and attempts to give us an

insight into the minds of the youth that find their purpose in life as fighters for the notorious terrorist organization.The book focuses heavily on the conversations Erelle’s online persona, Mélodie, has with Abu Bilel, and the effect it has on Erelle and her colleagues. While this makes for an interesting read, it does little to enlighten the reader about the inner workings of ISIS. These conversations often mention the network of underground tunnels that connect Turkey and Syria and several other pieces of information that Abu Bilel carelessly mentions while attempting to woo the woman he thought was 20-year-old Mélodie. But they hardly go into detail about any of that, choosing to focus on the invented backstory for Mélodie and the juxtaposition between the reactions of the

fictional young adult and the very real journalist. Although this approach seems sensationalist to a certain degree, it can be justified considering that the basis of the work is the very teenagers that Erelle has modeled Mélodie after. In fact, as she tells the story, she often draws examples from the stories of such young people whose families she had spoken with during her research.While the book may not be highly informative in terms of information about the conditions in Syria or in terms of the functioning of ISIS, it does provide an insight into the recruitment tactics of the organization and the effects of online propaganda on the youth. Other than certain snags in the pace due the translation, In the Skin of a Jihadist makes for a riveting read and is one of the most essential reads of this year.

Today’s media headlines and airtime is dominated with stories of violence, murder, disasters, terrorism, crime, scandals corruption, curfew and rapes. Most news we see and hear is negative. All the leading dailies, nowadays, are heavily packaged with negative news stories and only a small sections devoted to positive stories (development/achievement based). Does the media create that negative news bias or does it respond to our preference for negative news over positive news? Is Indian media being socially responsible by doing so? Campus Buzz of this issue (through proper surveys conducted) explores readers preferences of media content.

Sananya Datta

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” - Malcolm X Media is a blooming business that will never see a downfall, and preciously this thought has today led to the nobility of this profession bite dust as news losses its value and only remains to sensationalize rather than inform and educate. Today we are greeted by murder and gore with the morning cup of tea. How a mother killed her daughter, incestuous relationships, and gruesome murders are all that seems is of utmost importance. Balance and the nuance of creating a wholesome news package seem to have lost its magic with time. Every media house is today busy making money by making

any thing a BREAKING NEWS. Not that we deny that these crimes should go unreported but dedicating whole pages of a newspaper and conducting

never ending talk shows about them is going over the top. And this trend of negativity constantly dominating our only source of information is leaving its consumers more dejected than curious.

Recently one of India’s leading dailies wasted a significant amount of white space in reporting what a certain Vidhi Mukherjee, daughter of an accused Indrani

Mukher jee in the S h e e n a Bora murder case, was wearing and eating when she went to visit her mother. In a newspaper where a pint of white space is considered

important, such shallow reporting was chosen to waste some. The endless documentation on real life crimes into television series or the elaborate essays printed on the first page that kept the horrific details of the Kolkata

skeleton case does more than just informing us about the happenings.The media uses the ideology of negativity bias to arrest the attention of its consumers and thus gain more business. Negativity is like an attention magnet; our psych registers it more than good or positive news. This simple yet corrupt ideology is used in day to day journalism to arrest attention. Thus no matter how much positive news we read in the latter part of our day, the impact made by negative reporting stays on. It’s like finding a cockroach in an otherwise delicious meal, which renders it inedible.Crimes and negative stories have to be reported, but alongside the positive developments in our lives and economy also should get priority, the ethics and canons of journalism always advocate this.

The murkier the better

Would you prefer positive s t o r i e s ( d e v e l o p m e n t /achievement bases)to negative stories(murder,violence)in Indian media?

YES - 90%NO -10%

Is Indian media being socially responsible by doing so?

YES - 35%NO - 65%

Is regulation adviseable for content check?

YES - 80%NO -20%

Obituary: Prof. K. M Shrivastava e

BOOK REVIEW: IN THE SKIN OF A JIHADISTAdriana Eternity Hazra