Someone has rightly said, “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan”. This quote has universal applicability when it comes to our society, we affiliate our identity with those people in our relationships who have success stamped on their faces and in our local milieu success is considered synonymous with getting a government job, no matter at what level you are working in a departmental hierarchy. A class-IV government employee will always have more societal acceptance than a well-ranked private sector employee anytime, any day and anywhere. In Kashmir, if a local stranger has to introduce himself to you, this is how he will introduce himself to you; do you Know Mr X (DySP Y), he is my cousin, do you know Mr Y ( DC Z), he is my mamo (maternal uncle), Mr. Z (Professor KU) blah blah blah and the story goes on and on, and finally if you remind him then who are you, he will answer with confidence, “I’m their relative”, with no personal identity of a government job. This is what we have reduced our identity to.
Last Friday, when the results of the much-awaited J&K civil services were declared, many people discovered their bygone relatives in the selection lists in the form of cousins, brothers and sisters, although till yesterday they even didn’t know them by their name. When success had licked the feet of these selected lot now, everyone was busy affiliating themselves as their kissing cousin ( idiomatic far-off relative) or a teacher in their school days on social media platforms. Social media was literally inundated with congratulatory status updates, for a moment KAS selectees had hijacked the social media platforms in the valley. The most disappointing thing in all this virtual festivity atmosphere was how the media fraternity was projecting these achievers. That afternoon all the roads of foot soldiers of journalism were leading to the dwellings of these achievers and in this mad rush of interviewing them first, ethical journalism lost its race, emotions took over rationality and the news turned into noise. How much the standard of media has ebbed to the below-normal level can be gauged from this scene, after taking a selfie and sharing sweets with the family of a KAS achiever amid live streaming, a reporter starts reporting while pointing his hand towards a hijab-clad girl shying away from the camera, “YE HIA WOO LADKHI HIA JIS Ne WOO KARNAMA KIYA JOO ABHI TAK KISE NAHI KIYA (This is the girl who has done something which nobody else has done before)”. Let us stop for a moment and remind this reporter, has she bought stars from the sky or turned iron into gold? No, she has simply achieved what hundreds of others have achieved before her and fifty-odd girls achieved the same goal as her. But in this era of breaking news journalism, no editor will stop this reporter from airing factually wrong content on air as most media houses want to sell their news like a pancake first, to get maximum views in order to maximize their revenue and in this business of getting maximum views our reporting objectivity goes for a toss. For many years now this has become an obsession of even credible media platforms to project every achiever as ‘First’ in the field without doing prior research on the story.
Now cutting the long story short and coming to the point, I want to stress along these lines, have you ever wondered why the aims and ambitions of our students are programmed like a computer to be either doctors, engineers, or civil servants in the future? The main reason is the unnecessary hype created by the media around these careers. In earlier days only toppers used to get headlines on media platforms now we are living in an era of information boom, and every layman with a camera and mic is roaming as a self-proclaimed journalist, now even a person who has achieved this feat of qualifying JKAS just because of his or her undeserved EWS certificate that he or she has managed to get by greasing the palms of authorities is being projected as ‘ACHIEVER’ on social media platforms.
The second adverse thing about this hyped round-the-clock coverage of these selectees is that it is becoming a source of depression for many people, as the majority who are battling with unemployment for years have to face the brunt of their parents and society in the form of passing comments like; look three siblings have managed to qualify this prestigious exam together and you are not able to qualify simple JKSSB exam from years. How can you make a layman understand, there is something called an individual difference and everyone can’t afford to crack this hard nut? This hype has created unnecessary competition in our depressed society and competition is the law of the jungle where the fittest survive and the weak perish. Let’s give some breathing space to those people who haven’t managed to cross the line even after being so close to the crossing line.

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Malik Javid