Media has a strange way of covering incidents. They make beats out of each story. So, there is the beef beat, there is the communal incident beat and now there is the politicians fighting with Air India staff beat. What it means is if one story works on television and people are glued on to its development, then the reporters will find some other incident to draw a pattern that doesn’t even exist. Take for example the huge uproar over TMC MP Dola Sen delaying a Kolkata-Delhi Air India flight by almost half an hour. Now, obviously, you cannot behave in that way, whether you are a citizen and or a public figure. But the Sen’s case cannot be and should not be compared to that of Gaikwad. By clubbing these two incidents we are in fact, giving Gaikwad the benefit of “aisa to hota hi hai” argument.
By comparing the two incidents we will almost give Gaekwad a clean chit because the Shiv Sena leader almost killed an Air India staffer while Dola Sen’s trigger was much different. Dola wasn’t fighting for her comfortable seating arrangement. She had wheel-chair bound mother. Imagine any of us in that situation. We would ensure that our ailing mother travels in the most comfortable way. According to media reports, she even paid extra for the required seat but apparently didn’t mention her mother was wheel-chair bound. The issue here is making her travel comfortable. If any other ordinary passenger would have made a noise about this, #AirIndiaNotDisabledFriendly would be trending by now.
Yes, our MPs and politicians are an entitled lot. But what Gaekwad did and the support he got from his party was not just about entitlement but about Shiv Sena’s tendency of justifying and inflicting violence. Sen must be pulled up for misdemeanor but she cannot be compared with the criminal act done by Gaikwad.
