Site Story

Fragments of this song by the Eurythmics is playing inside my head this morning

'da--da-- are made of these, who am I to disagree... I crossed the world n the seven seas...'

and it goes on to say 'some people use you, some people abuse you... and also something like some people like to be used... and like to be abused and so on...

A few months ago, a couple of well-meaning guys floated an idea of putting up a news-based website that would showcase progressive Bihar, and in a spirit of social service, I enthusiastically joined in, and contributed a lot of content, encouraging my students to chip in, pleading with my friends to contribute the odd article. All this was done gratis, a labour of love. The reason why I joined I the project as the editor, was to bring to Bihar, especially the young people, a site that would truly reflect Bihar and give space to all the ethnic communities that contribute to it.

Then the worm entered the apple in the form of the Babri Masjid judgement. The Hindi segment of the site started carrying articles and comments that were inflamatory and abusive of 'sickular' media and journalists. [It's anyone's guess as to the sort of people who use that sort of terminology]. The 'CEO' was ecstatic with his Hindi columnist because the guy's post received 'over 4,000 hits'. The new 'star' of the website. Then objections began rolling in. First complaint was when I deleted some of the more obnoxious comments of the 'supporters' of that particular line of thought.

Then the 'CEO' tells me that he's been receiving several telephone complaints of 'Christian bias' - it seems 'people' objected to the story of the Jharkhand Anglo-Indian MLA, 'people' protested  when we carried a story on the visit of the Archbishop of Cantebury to Ranchi, people 'protested' about a citizen journalist piece from Kudra about a Catholic priest and two seminarians dying in a road accident, and of course, these 'people' also protested that a lot of the other people who spent their precious time writing content or responding to articles were either Christians or pro-Christian. Interestingly, none of these people posted comments, or emailed the editor, they just called up the CEO. [Three articles, and  a city guide post on a Church!]

Holy Moses, ME, biased? This struck at the very root of my self esteem, my professional pride, my sense of fair play. [Looking back, I think what caused the 'protests' was my Western name, 'cos I certainly ain't no Holy Roller!]

It was after yet another tasteless incident, that I realised that any article, with even the remotest 'Christian' connection would be objected to by the people who, unknown to me actually pulled strings behind the website. So, I took a decision. I sat down and deleted every article that had even the remotest reference to Christians and Muslims that I had ever posted on the site. About 40 posts out of  about 700. Trashed them all.

This got the CEO agitated.

There was no fig leaf of  to hide behind. The fig leaf got smart..

You can imagine that that action caused quite a reacton.

I then told the CEO that I had no wish to be a 'co-partner' in his project.

I shouldn't be missed.

I'm quite sure he'll get a new editor who'll ensure that a dedicated cadre will give the site 4,000 hits a day and take it to the top of the charts.