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Some weeks, watching Indian news feels like attending a family gathering where everyone is arguing about trivial things while the house quietly fills with smoke. Literally, in Delhi’s case.
Every winter, the capital’s AQI climbs from “unhealthy” to “please-don’t-breathe,” and yet it rarely earns the attention its severity warrants. Schools slip into hybrid mode. Morning walks turn into indoor chores.
The sky becomes a uniform shade of beige. But on TV, the bigger concern is often a stray political remark delivered with bad acoustics. The toxic air settles silently; outrage gets the primetime slot.
While the house quietly catches fire in the background. No one notices the smoke; everyone is too invested in the dessert.
Ladakh, for instance, spent the year asking a simple question: Can we please have a voice in our own future?
Protests happened. Promises were made. Promises were broken. People stood in the snow holding placards that didn’t trend. And why would they? Statehood agitation has never produced the kind of choreography that a celebrity gym sighting can.
Down south, the Western Ghats continued to erode, forests chipped away, rivers stressed, and landslide warnings became a seasonal routine. These are quiet changes, the kind that unfold without cameras, without crowds, without hashtags. They rarely get a corner of a screen, let alone a primetime debate. After all, landscapes do not raise their voice on-air.
Rural health workers in several states protested over delays in salaries and impossible work conditions. Many travelled for hours to reach the district headquarters, stood patiently, and submitted memoranda. But patience is poor television. Cameras prefer urgency, even if the urgency is manufactured.
Water scarcity crept into farming regions like it always does, not as an event, but as an accumulation. A borehole that goes a little deeper every year. A canal that doesn’t fill the way it used to. An entire season that feels slightly off. It’s a slow sentence written over decades, but slow sentences don’t scroll dramatically at the bottom of the screen.
Even the scientific community faced its own silent disruptions. Funding hiccups, stipend delays, stalled projects. Nothing visually dramatic, no courtroom steps, no police barricades, no shouting matches. Research collapses quietly, like a page torn from a notebook that no one notices missing.
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In Manipur, families remained displaced, waiting for stability long after the headlines moved on. The news cycle had already found fresher conflicts; long-term suffering rarely competes well with newness.
A few political issues surfaced, too: land acquisition disputes, local democratic concerns, and laws being quietly tweaked. None of them made it to the nightly theatre. They lacked the essential ingredient: spectacle.
It would be unfair to say the media doesn’t report these things. It does, briefly, politely, often in a corner, after the 20-minute panel discussion on a comment made by someone at a rally no one remembered attending. The stories that shape the country most are the ones delivered with the least urgency.
Perhaps that’s the joke, if there is one.
The news isn’t lying. It’s simply busy. Busy turning public attention into a tight, efficient beam, pointed exactly where it needs not be.
If something truly important happens, an ecological shift, a rural crisis, a scientific breakthrough, it will still be covered. Eventually. Somewhere. Quietly. Right after the commercial break, if there’s time.
Until then, the country will keep unfolding off-screen, in slow, significant ways. And the camera will keep waiting for something louder.
Sources: Blogger’s own opinion
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: media accountability, indian news, india issues, Delhi AQI, air pollution crisis, rural india, climate india, ladakh protests, western ghats, environment india, indian politics, journalism in india, news analysis, public interest, overlooked stories, ignored issues, opinion india, civic awareness, democratic rights, breaking news india, policy india
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