"Nothing can describe the Confusion of Thought which I felt when I sunk in water; for tho' I swam very well, yet I could not deliver my self from Waves so as to draw Breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me a vast Way on towards the Shore, and having spent itself, went back, and left me upon Land almost dry, but half-dead with the Water I took in."
Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe defines a very pertinent human condition. A condition we can sympathize with, but can not fathom. We need not to fathom it. Our responsibility is not to analyze how much pain one (or all) felt when they suffered at the hands of water. This is done. People are left "half-dead." Don't need our analysis. They need our understanding. The question is how to understand. The instrument of understanding is naturally our heart and mind. It is being fed through information. Information that comes through different sources. One being the modern mass media. Media brings sorrows and pleasures from distant, and also not so distant, lands into our immediate presence. But media always brings in bias with it. It prioritizes one happening over the other. It helps and blurs our vision of reality at the same moment.
There are but other human faculties that help us understand the sorrows of the ones who are "left upon the land almost dry." The best instrument is identification. Identification is the human faculty of putting ones being in other's position. We cease to remain human once we are unable to empathize ourselves with the ones whom we consider our own.
The people who are left in the lurch by the existing disaster are a resilient genre, since "Pakistani society is a pain absorbing society", a German TV channel commented at the very beginning of the disaster. The aids to our perception, namely the media of mass communication, are but an important instruments in this struggle against the inevitable. Natural disasters can not be stopped. These are the testimony of power of nature over the struggle of man to survive. But disasters could be managed. This could be done through preemptive training or post disaster management efforts. The time to preemption is no more. It has already been lost. reasons are numerous: inability of state and society to understand the meaning of interactive, community based, responsible, humane structures could be cited as the main reason. All the talk about corruption, inefficiency, and many many other ills could be brought to one point: non-participatory, vertical system of social interaction, in simpler but more elusive terms absence of grass root democracy; democracy whose natural outcome is responsible attitudes, not only in the political sphere, but more importantly at the social level, down the very grassroots.
This is the problem lying at the heart of all problems of relief and reluctance of the world to come forward with hearts and minds to help a disaster clearly accepted by the world as one of the worst in recent history.
Media could be used in two ways in the present crises. One is the mainstream media. This could be used in a proper manner to cover the disaster. Here, despite the intensive debate on the issue, a coherent understanding of the issue is absent. Anchors with urban bias reaching a devastated site, camera focussed on them most of the time, their will be done all the time, people shown as third world miseries, while the guy sympathizes with them, isn't any service to the people at all. Now if we turn to the other side of the equation, we see the same overdressed, unpreparedness in the newsroom. Guys this is no Eid transmission. Be human. Try to empathize. Your images are being floated for years and all the viewers appreciate your appearance and mannerisms. This is ensured. Now let humanity flow through your body, your word and your body language. No training can teach it. It is you who can unlearn pretensions, harmony with the hapless will naturally flow through you and become an integral part of the image world. And believe me you all will look much prettier, once you become more humane.
The other important media is altogether missing in the present episode. Not that it has been snatched away or swept away by floods. It never existed. This is community media. We do have FM channels, FM radio. The anomaly between cheap and handy broadcasting and community service has shown itself at the worst moment of our history. The times when this country needed this mouthpiece of the poor it doesn't have it. FM community radio stations went through many phases in Pakistan, but never reached the destination. From hobbyists, to militants, to the money mongers, to aid aspirants; but never to community journalism.There is a dire need to instal FM radios in the camps or in the immediate vicinity. Many would think of this idea as a mad man's dream amid such a situation where people are suffering in all possible ways.
I can understand this and also empathize with the feeling. But at this moment of dearth of resources we should not underestimate the role of this cheap and handy instrument of communication, this voice in the neighborhood, the voice next door. At a moment when we have least resources, this handy media could help managing them through bringing awareness among the affected people. Health and hygiene, helping the people through trauma, information about what is available and what is not, and why, wether updates, and update on conditions at the homes they left. All this could be done most easily through interactive broadcasts on community channels. How will people listen to them, how will they respond? Mobile phones helped people to keep in contact with their near and dear. Every villager buys a phone that could catch FM radio. This job has already been don. What is left is the government's (PEMRA's, to be precise) earliest decision to draft a contract structure for issuing community radio licenses. PEMRA can do this, They are neither struck by the disaster nor are busy in relief. Their bit would be to make it possible for the ones left high and dry to get a taste of grassroots democracy. To get the best gift in the worst times.
3 comments:
"If only we could unlearn pretensions".... I think you analyzed the problem and provided the answer in simple phrase. To empathize and to understand the unlearning is important.
Pemra had issued emergency licences for FM radios in the wake of 2005 earthquake. And those FM radios had done a good job. I don't know why this apathy this time.
But you are right, Sir, that the absence of grassroots democracy and the pretensions of the mediamen are part of the problem. They are 'analyzing' the floods from another planet and show the stricken people as denizens of another world.
Tabassum. Is it Ruhi??
Thanks for the compliments. I think the roots of all lie in our individual decisions to be the human beings we try to be.
Faiz. This time around the fear is that of abuse of community radio licenses, I believe. And if we look at the use of these radios after the emergency was over, it doesn't seem good. I think there is need for a plan. I just came back form home after eid. I think I can write something about this also. We both can.
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