{"id":122384,"date":"2022-01-25T16:46:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T23:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=122384"},"modified":"2022-01-25T16:46:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T23:46:27","slug":"negating-pso-culture-among-media-persons-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/01\/25\/negating-pso-culture-among-media-persons-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Negating PSO culture among media persons in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Nava Thakuria<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Guwahati: Should the journalist-editor-proprietors\ncontinue to have government sponsored personal security officers (PSO) even\nthough they do not have visible threats to their lives ? Are PSOs slowly\nbecoming status symbols for many celebrated media persons in India ? Should\nnot  they withdraw the policemen at the\nearliest and hire private security personnel (meaning paid by themselves) if\nthey need them desperately?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, why should the authorities pay for someone\u2019s\npersonal luxury?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are among few questions, lately floated in public\ndomain, as Assam government in northeast India had lately decided to reduce the\nnumber of PSOs from 4000 to nearly half of it. Notably, over 2000 PSOs are\npresently engaged with leaders of different political parties. Quite a number\nof PSOs are also protecting many State-based journalists, editors and\nproprietors, who are seemingly powerful, glamorous and also threatened (even\nthough the common people may find it difficult to realize what kind of risky\njournalism they adopted in their lifetime).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate immediately started with the announcement of\nState chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who insisted on developing Assam with\nthe PSO-free culture. Sarma, also in charge of State home portfolio, had\nalready directed the police department to create an environment, wherein no\nindividual need personal security officers in the coming days. He also urged\neveryone to move away from the culture as the police would start countering all\nthreats to the society through a strong intelligence and monitoring system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A scribe\u2019s organisation also came forward asking the\nconcerned media persons  to voluntarily\nabandon the government security cover, so that those personnel can be engaged\nin other important works. Appreciating Sarma for the decision to use PSOs\njudiciously to important individuals only, the Journalists\u2019 Forum Assam argued\nthat the security cover should not be used as a status symbol by any one\n(including among the media). It supported the government proposal to allot PSOs\nonly for those in constitutional posts and in positions that require security\ncover subject to regular screening by the review committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northeast, once known as an insurgency-stricken troubled\nregion in India, has now returned to a peaceful zone, as most of the militant\noutfits have joined in peace talks and many of the hardcore rebels were\nneutralized by the security forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations in\nthe region, adjacent to troubled neighbours like Myanmar and Bangladesh. The\nState police forces have also been empowered to deal with the situation emerged\ntime to time with patronages from anti-social and anti-national elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For records, the year 2021 ended with no incident of\njourno-murder, the trend that has been sustained for the last four years in the\nregion. It witnessed two incidents of assassination of scribes (Shantanu\nBhowmik and Sudip Datta Bhaumik) in Tripura (2017) for the last time, whereas\nthe country as a whole continues to lose 5 to 15 journalists to assailants\nevery year. Tripura also reported the assassination of three media persons\n(Sujit Bhattacharya, Ranjit Chowdhury and Balaram Ghosh) in 2013, where all of\nthem were killed in a newspaper office inside Agartala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assam and Manipur witnessed the murder of scribes for the\nlast time in 2012, as Raihanul Nayum and Dwijamani Nanao Singh fell prey to\nperpetrators. But till then, the region \nwitnessed the killing of nearly 30 editor-reporter-correspondents since\n1991, where Assam accounts a major share of the victims. The saga of\nsensational journo-murder began with the brutal killing of veteran Assamese\nfreedom fighter turned journalist Kamala Saikia. The Septuagenarian teacher was\ntargeted by the armed members of  banned\nUnited Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa) for his critical media columns against\ntheir disruptive activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years later, the murder of human rights activist\nturned journalist Parag Kumar Das in Guwahati also created a massive public\noutcry. The executive editor of Asomiya Pratidin was apparently targeted by\nsurrendered armed militants as he used to write strongly against them as well\nthe governments in New Delhi and Dispur for anti-Assam policies. Other\njourno-victims from Assam include Punarmal Agarwala, Pabitra Narayan Chutia,\nDipak Swargiary, Manik Deuri, Nurul Haque, Jiten Sutiya, Ratneswar Sarma\nShastri, Dinesh Brahma, Prahlad Gowala, Mohammad Muslemuddin, Jagajit Saikia,\nAnil Majumdar, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately, an Assamese satellite news channel broadcast a\nprogram where it boldly asked the beneficiary journalist-editor-proprietors to\nwithdraw the PSOs and go for private services to enhance their security\nmeasures. A large number of social media users termed them \u2018surrendered\nsentinels\u2019, as they had hardly questioned the men in power for anti-people\npolicies or even raised voices against the militants even when it was a real\nnecessity. They urged the authority to withdraw the PSOs from everyone, who\nsimply want it as status symbols. A decisive public opinion indeed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author is a northeast India-based journalist and\nmedia commentator<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Nava Thakuria Guwahati: Should the journalist-editor-proprietors continue to have government sponsored personal security officers (PSO) even though they do not have visible threats to their lives ? Are PSOs slowly becoming status symbols for many celebrated media persons in India ? Should not  they withdraw the policemen at the earliest and hire private security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nava-thakuria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}