Absurd media story on fall in flow of tourists in post-prohibition Bihar
Soroor Ahmed
When even the BJP ruled Gujarat government and arch-rival like Pravin Togadia of VHP are appreciating the new excise policy of Bihar––though there are some genuine shortcomings in it––state BJP leaders and some journalists are working overtime to find fault with it.
It may be a debatable issue. But this does not allow any newspaper––or TV channels––
to come out with fantastic and self-contradictory ‘facts and figures’.
For example one of the newspapers carried a story on fall in number of tourists visiting Bihar in the month of July 2016. However, in the same paragraph the concerned journalist, perhaps inadvertently cited the figure which shows that actually the number of tourists have increased in previous month, that is, in June 2016.
Carefully go through this paragraph of a news report:
“In June 2015, about 6.5 tourists visited Bihar, while over 28.6 visitors were recorded in July of the same year. However, in June 2016 over 8 lakh people visited Bihar. In July, the number reduced to 15.5 lakh in comparison to the same month last year.” (The journalist failed to mention lakh, so it was 6.5 lakh and 28.6 lakh tourists.)
How can one build a story on decline in tourists’ inflow in just one month?
Such comparison can only be made with the help of figures of at least six months or one year as several factors cause this fluctuation: change in marriage season (lagan), flood, festival, changing date of melas etc.
What the said journalist is perhaps not aware of is this that the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Govind Singh is due later this year and tourists flow is bound to increase rather than decrease.
Criticising the government’s stringent law on prohibition is one aspect, but filing such fantastic and self-contradictory story is another.
The report does not stop here. It says:
“Furthermore, it has been noticed that foreign tourists have not been avoiding viisting Bihar as much as Indian tourists are.”
What does it suggest? Is it that most of the Indian tourists who come to Bihar are drunkards while foreigner are teetotalers.
The truth is that many of the domestic tourists come with families and are pilgrims who avoid drinking. In Gaya, Bodh Gya, Rajgir, Nalanda, Vaishali, Vikramshila, Sultanganj etc most of them come either for religious purpose or for some study. There is no scope of sight-seeing or sun-bathing in beaches in these places.
Readers of newspapers and TV viewers have enough of such cooked up stories about Bihar in the last about a quarter century. Sometimes the same figures are projected to highlight something and sometimes to paint some policy of the government in the blackest of colours.
As the major opposition the state BJP has every right to speak against the new policy, but it is these journalists who are losing credibility. There is no dearth of people who may dub such stories as paid-news––of course paid by liquor lobby and not necessarily by political rivals.
