Occasionally, I come across a news report in DNA or such right-thinking papers about a poor child denied admission in a school in spite of the Right to Education Act. Equally rarely, I chance upon a report about a poor patient asked for money in spite of his admission under the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayi Arogya Yojana  of the Maharashtra government.

But neither of these incidents create a single ripple in the media. The English media in particular works in an insular fashion. It is very clear about its priorities and they dont include the poor. Its readers come from educated families and they are necessarily unpoor. Period. If 70 per cent of the Indian population is poor, the Indian English media will blank them out because they dont read that paper and therefore, their concerns dont count. There are certain understood and accepted norms of coverage:

An accident involving a slum dweller will make it the front page only if the person causing the accident is from the middle or upper class. If the victim is a young person from an upper class family, the papers will have it as a lead or second lead. The farmer comes into news only if and when a union (not state) minister visits him or a relief package is announced at the chief minister's level. 


The old are almost in the same doghouse. They can die on the roads, get battered by two-wheelers or gets killed in hospitals. If they dont pull the pursestrings, they can be stepped past.


The two policies- the RTE act and the health scheme-are meant for the poor,. But there is no way to tell if they are working. Reporters are simply not interested. Most private hospitals are unwilling to be a part of the health scheme (naturally named after the only Gandhi who has done something for the country, apart from Indira Gandhi) but they wont be harassed for their version of story as they would had they refused to admit a VIP patient.

If the media is so patently and shamelessly unfair,  what's the hope for the common man?