Post Script - Why Media Push This Story

The battle lines are being drawn about something frivoulous on one level and very basic question of right on the other - do upper class and other well off young women have a right to go drink at pubs in western states of India?

Some channels won't let it go, and keep harping on this one. It is irritating and one wonders if they really care about what country they are in, what the people of the country care about.

One would like to hear about what level the investigations are at in grisly murders of women in Delhi on their way to or from work, or even about the man with a young family who has been beheaded by Taliban for a ransom of US $50,000.00 - a sum that could feed half a million people one sumptuous meal where he came from. But no, these channels, one especially, is like a dog with a bone to dig up - they won't let the pubs and women story be scaled down to where it belongs.

No matter that in Lucknow railways station a married couple walking towards the town just fresh from the train have a local male push his hand casually in the woman's crotch and look back with victory as the shocked couple looks back in rage. He can run, while they are unlikely to be able to catch and beat him up. It is his town.

No matter that in Allahabad a woman cannot go shopping for vegetables for her home in her neighbourhood without being similarly handled on the go by another local guy. She is dressed conservatively and is middle class, with no make up and no nonsense. Being a woman is one thing she cannot escape however she dresses, hence the manhandling is a factor of life unless one appoints a servant for the purpose with all its ensuing problems.

In short, these incidents - common, although no woman would admit to them publicly since the shame would be considered theirs, and they might just be beaten up by their own families for being looted of their honour for having stepped out.

Delhi is the worst unless you are a woman with a car, a driver, and a powerful male protector, preferably a husband rich and powerful. If you are middle class and walk to the market instead of having your husband take you or even better, send a servant - or the ultimate, phone in the list and have it delivered so you cannot look and shop around - you are fair game.

The media couldn't care less.

People by hundreds dying of multiple blasts on trains, buses, and other places middle class and other normal people frequent, are mere unfortunate payoff for one building (while hundreds of others are going up ever since everywhere else) to be blamed on the very convenient party without support from outside.

Women of middle class and poorer than that being abused, raped, murdered on regular basis in states north of the Vindhya is a mere fact of life, who cares, they are not the glitzy ones in pubs spending mucho dollars on drinks, they are merely trying their best to survive and take care of themselves and their families in their regular activities of work, shopping, and little else.

In the western states however the women are free to study and work and shop and go out and are relatively free of fear, until the recent murders - and even then televisions did not pick up on the women being murdered while they were at home, the blitz was short and it was about a couple of IT workers on night shift. That made news because they could go after good sturdy multinational companies and ask if women should be discouraged from working night shifts.

No one asked - what about the ordinary women being murdered at home?

And now, the whole hoopla about the pubs. Why - why is right to get drunk in public more important than right to be safe at home?

It isn't.

The whole point is, when a woman stays home, she is not spending on alcohol and so there is no vested interest involved. No one pays the television channels to go on a blitz to publicize the poor middle class women whose only fault was opening the door when someone knocked - they had been used to being fearless, living in the safe western states, you see.

So the pubs story about the right of women to go drinking in western states being given far more importance than any rights or safety issues of women as such, is not about women or their rights or safety at all.

On a small scale it is about hitting out at anyone who happens to bear the names that are not from outside uness you are shamed of that name and all it implies, and are deprecatory about it.

On a large scale it is about the importance of getting people to spend on things like alcohol where one gets into danger of life as a value received for money, since there are mucho sellers and producers and importers and fraudsters selling non imported in name of imported, in pubs .

If you buy from a shop, it is cheaper (German practical sense about drinking) and also you might check on the brand, the price, and not pay unless you are satisfied. And then you might not drink stupid and drive over a few innocent people, but instead have a little peg quietly at home and go to bed, safely.

Pub drinking however is about socialising mixed with drinking, a very dangerous beast. You are ashamed to question the brand and the honesty, ashamed to say no to begin with or as long as the server or your peers say come on have another one. And the rates are likely to be ten times as much as you would spend on comparative quality by shopping and taking home a bottle.

But anyone who drinks only at home and stays sober and safe is unlikely to promote a crowd of others to join. And there are billion people in India, all potential customers for liquor industry. The pay for channels to keep the pub story alive cannot be small.

Hence the lopsided amount of importance given to rights in various states for various aspects of life making it seem like drinking in pubs in western states is far more a fundamental right than being unmolested when going to school, college, university, work, or grocery shopping in northern states.

Just wonder - do these people want the billion people of India to live Angela's Ashes? Or worse, is it they couldn't care less as long as the get their payoff from the liquor industry?