Differing Media Priorities At Imphal And New Delhi
If there is someone who, out of necessity or curiosity, makes it his business to search for and collect news relating to Manipur (or even the northeast excluding Assam) on a daily basis in the New Delhi-based newspapers, he may either end up happy, or frustrated. Happy, because there rarely are news reports to work on and hence, lots of leisure. Or frustrated, because most of whatever little news he obtained will be negative news. And if he takes the extra trouble to make a comparison of the regular headlines in Manipur newspapers and those that appear in the national newspapers, he will probably be flustered by the extent in which the two differed, in terms of priorities and news selection.
So, while the noisy daily protests over the integrity issue in the Imphal valley regularly gets top-billing in the Manipur dailies, the national papers usually do not reflect that sentiment. On the rare occasions in which Manipur is in the news, it usually is about the moral policing by insurgents: dress code for students, ban on shades in restaurants or beedis etc, the scourge of AIDS, Armys counter-insurgency operations, AFSPA or NSCN-India talks (not necessarily in that order). A cursory glance would also reveal that among the northeastern states (excluding Assam, which is in a different category altogether), Meghalaya seems to have obtained the most attention. Maybe, the cosmopolitan character of Shillong, the capital, and personalities like PA Sangma have something to do with it. Even the tiny Mizoram seems to be better-placed than us in terms of media coverage. And most of the news from there are positive news- World Bank financing projects, progress made in bamboo harvesting, its promotion of handicraft works or the governments initiatives to counter the bamboo flowering menace etc. In fact, sources from the government here said that the Mizoram government had already presented a detailed plan to tide over the coming food crisis to the Centre. If there is any major negative news about the state, it is the Reang issue which is one very emotive issue from an outsiders perspective.