Letter to the Hoot: innovation from MP

IN Opinion | 28/09/2006

One of the roles of media is to provide an opportunity for voices of the communities to be heard, and giving vent to the opinions and views of people. Many possible options are available; letters to editor is one of them. One can use it to raise an issue which was in media or express your opinion on the story, or even to highlight issues which may have got missed in regular reporting. 

But when you feel strongly about an issue or have an unresolved problem, you may feel the need to draw the attention of the chief minister, who is supposed to be the highest in the rank of the elected representatives. This is possible in the state of Madhya Pradesh wherein two newspapers Dainik Jagran and Raj Express offer that opportunity for their readers.

For sometime now they have started an additional column in their edit page which is titled letter to The Chief Minister. They call it by different names: one calls it ¿Letter to Mr. Chief Minister¿ and other one says `Paati Mukhayamantri ke naam` . One uses a photograph of the Chief Minister at the head of the column while another uses his caricature.

Both offer an opportunity for people voice to be heard. If one looks at kind of the letters which appear in print, they are  diverse in nature. I am not sure how many are received by them and how many are published, and do they censor the content or not ? But if one analyzes them  a few inferences can be drawn. The  issues they raise are diverse, letters are normally written by individuals or sometimes by groups of individuals, and they come from various parts of the state, including interiors of the state. At present this is a feature which appears twice or even thrice in a week.

If one does a dip stick assessment of the content it reveals that issues of education, problems of state government employees, salaries, unavailability of water, electricity, roads, non accessibility of schemes initiated by the state, maternal deaths, the failure and weaknesses of the health system,  and the issue of eve teasing appear more frequently. Perhaps these are issues which impact people directly. Regarding  education, issues such as lack of building, teacher absenteeism, and vacant positions do come up quite often in these letters. One does not know many of them are being responded to. 

There is some indicatio that people find this way as an easier way to reach eyes of the Chief Minster rather than approaching CM House directly. The  Department of Public Relations which does media tracking for the state does track many of them and the same is evident from their website, wherein they scan and display the press cuttings tracked by them, indicating that at least some people get a bit of say in the system, with the help of media. May be this needs to increase.

Anil Gulati
Bhopal,

September 12