Today is Vishu in Kerala, the festival commemorating vishuvam (summer equinox). Traditionally it is an occasion of light and joy being bang in the middle of summer. Questions like what’s the business of celebrating equinox is mid-April is not relevant in Kerala. We’re like that from the very beginning. We cling on to some beliefs and ideologies which are proven outdated and corrosive elsewhere in the world. Likewise, complacent time keeping pushed Vishu to mid-April, if the slipping goes unchecked, the month of Medam may fall drenched in monsoon rains in a future era (at a rate of 1 day in 72 years). When will a person of the calibre of Gregory XIII appear in Kerala?
However this post is not on the astronomical relevance of the local calendar. It served only to show the I-am-different attitude shown by its people. From March 20 onwards, newspaper agents are on strike demanding higher rates of commission and incentives and other facilities and what not! After passing time lethargically for a few days, the newspapers kicked in to provide alternate channels of distribution, which is the most meagre. You can’t expect people to go out early morning each day to buy a newspaper from a nearby store. Even the people who do it now would later postpone it to a more convenient time, which would turn out to be very late in the end. Popular habit of having the newspaper before breakfast has long gone astray, but surprisingly, people are taking it in their strides. Should such a situation is allowed to continue for long, we would lose the custom and end up depending on visual media to step into the shoes of the print media.
Frankly, newspaper agents’ demands are outrageous and should not be yielded to. Most of them covertly ask the newspaper establishments to increase prices and pay them higher rate of commission. It was only a year or so they began fleecing the subscribers to pay service charge – a practice unheard of anywhere in the world in newspaper delivery! The paper companies need to look for alternative delivery mechanisms to provide the daily paper at the door steps of the customer. You’ve to push the paper to the readers, since you can’t expect them to pull it for long. Or otherwise, if you plan to buckle under the agents’ pressure, do it fast and keep the papers flowing once more.
Newspapers and journalists are the watchdogs in a democracy, to keep it from the greedy machinations of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Where are the watchdogs in Kerala now?
