As developments relevant to the rape and murder of the doctor at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata recedes to the inside pages and diminishes to passing mentions, we will do well to sit up to a seemingly innocuous appropriation of the incident. This subtle leveraging of a horrific event by TV news media outlets in Bengal took place during the 2024 Durga Puja.
It must be said that this appropriation was less crude than many presentations that pass for news on TV channels today. However, such an appropriation of a news event into a festival has its roots in the need of the media-corporate nexus to be ahead in the race for viewership.
Billboards featuring build-up campaigns leading up to the festival played on the word ‘Durga’, ostensibly to celebrate independent women. In a series of ads by one such TV news channel, a woman doctor was featured on one such billboard, along with women following other white-collar professions.
Another one had a similar message but sans the doctor. It said that Durga Puja means celebrating the ‘Durgas’.
Perhaps the boardroom brainstorming was around the urgency to do something that would not irk the already furious public further and rake in the views. Many believed people to be ready to shun festivities and thus shake the economy.
Hence, boldly posing before the camera were actors playing the roles of ‘successful’ women in ‘respectable’ professions to make a statement around the fact that women are no less, that they deserve the respect of the society and so on.
The women were in neat clothing, lest the brands associating with them be thrown off. Anything that might even remotely lead the audience to think deeper is best avoided. Playing up stereotypes around the ‘cultured Bengali’ keeps the audience in good humour.
A Durga Puja installation depicts the R.G. Kar trainee doctor who was raped and murdered in August. Photo provided by author.
It is okay if society tends to normalise sexual assault on women with “questionable moral character”. It is okay for us to feel a tad less outraged at such a crime happening to a poor woman – a pavement dweller or someone belonging to a poverty-stricken rural household. It is okay that such stories barely make it to the front page or become a breaking news, unless there is a potential for sensationalism.
The bottom line of all this: come and join the noise of news that is heavily dependent on advertisements. Noise is the indispensable currency by which you can satisfy the compulsion to preserve the stereotypes around rape in our society: dishonour to the woman, victimisation of the victim, and worth our attention only when it happens to a ‘respectable’ woman.
Whatever the majority gravitates to dictates corporate strategy. That the ruling party in Bengal swept the by-elections in November indicates at a possibility that rural or semi-urban people could not identify fully with the outrage of the tragedy. These are the people who suffer more due to the lack of access to quality healthcare. Many among them nurse a grudge against healthcare providers too. This explains why an eco-system was working overtime to erect a slur campaign against the protesting doctors. The urban lens of the media-corporate nexus fails to see such intricacies.
Also read: R.G. Kar: Five Lessons From an Urban Power Struggle
But more importantly, what are the ramifications of a media having complete disregard for nuances? Can a media’s role solely be driven by profiteering? What degree of compulsions can lead them to create an advertisement around a gut-wrenching tragedy that shook the conscience of the people?
The larger section of the so-called mainstream media propels itself into action whenever there is a glimmer of an opportunity to get more audience, irrespective of what it is – a tragedy, a win in a cricket match, or an opportunity to drum up cosmetic patriotism. Who wins in this race seems to win the game of garnering more viewership. They do it because they know that it is this kind of stuff that the larger section of the society laps up. Social media had anyway been flooded with posts on the woman doctor mentioning her real name and expressing sympathies in a tone symptomatic of patriarchy and exhibitionism. Catering to that very instinct made good business sense, forget the responsibility to question the people or show a mirror to them.
No wonder that we even have a channel today to give us ‘good news’ only, something quite akin to George Orwell’s 1984.
The viewership of these media outlets grows by the day. The algorithms of social media help the cause – flooding timelines with whatever keeps on triggering fear, hate and greed. The audience of this comprises even the Rabindrasangeet loving Bengali, who require just a little nudge to believe any number of rumours about the doctor’s ‘murderers’ and discuss the religion of two of the people apparently involved in the crime.
While the protests had given hope, the displays of insensitivity point to the rot.
Biswapriya Nandi is a marketing communications professional.
