The DOWNside of UP!

 

The crime rate of UP is lesser than that of Bihar and MP..!

This statement is a dialogue by the CM-to-become MadhuriDevi in the second season of Mirzapur, the most popular web series. An otherwise unknown town in UP is in the limelight due to this current gory drama. Just like Hathras, the small village in UP came in national news due to the gory incident where a 19-year-old girl was allegedly raped by four dominant caste men. The rape victim succumbed to injuries in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital and it sparked protests and anguish across the country. All four accused she named were arrested by the Police after the incident. However, her dead body was cremated near her home in Hathras in the dead of the night with her family alleging they were forced by local police to conduct the last rites.

Although the incident is now forgotten by the mainstream media and the Web-series watching public that would have heard the name of Hathras for the first time. For the binge-watching viewers, the Hathras incident also would have seemed like a story plot based in Uttar Pradesh or a nearby area in the web shows. However, as the interest in the plot dies down at the end of the series, the sensitivity of the public has also died down by now. Some TV channels are adept in taking advantage of this phenomena and they immediately start running political agenda in the disguise of justice. Such media trials have become so common that the audience has started watching these news channels for entertainment than the content on TV or web shows.

As they say Cinema (Read TV/web-shows) is the mirror of society. And the content that’s being shown in crime-based web-series predominantly is what we see in the news coverage from the regions like UP/Uttaranchal or Bihar. Due to the characters and picturization of the sequences, the content looks so real that the viewers start believing that this is the reality. Unfortunately, the incidents happening in the northern part of India makes you believe in the web-series like Mirzapur, Patal-Lok, Jamtara, Bhaukal, Raktanchal, Apaharan, Undekhi or Ashram. It is mere coincidence that the Chief Minister of UP is planning to construct a Film city in Uttar Pradesh.

A decade back, I had a chance to visit multiple cities in Uttar Pradesh for official purpose. Being an avid traveller, I tried to stay like a local there. I found that people are very good and polite when they were with their family or relatives. However, they used to offset that behaviour while interacting with strangers. The real downside was the caste divide, which was evident as soon as you leave the main city. The aspirations seemed limited to good clothing and hi-fi living. In the mind, it might be the same thinking for the septuagenarian and the teenager. Few of the IIT and Stanford studied intellectuals might be having a different mindset. But they also didn’t want to stay there because an average guy there thinks that ‘Hard Work is more important than Harvard,’ which means there is no place for logical or intellectual thinking when it comes to power and traditions.

After ten years now, I don’t find much difference in the scenario. Rather I find this mindset being expanded through the social media trolls now. And people are embracing the characters of Kaleen Bhaiiyaa or Guddu Pandit from the downtown in UP, in reality. Moreover, they believe that these characters are the result of their circumstances and being powerful is the ultimate goal. Even if it means becoming a Bad-Man for some people to become a God-Man. That reminds me of the next Chapter of the Godman played by Bobby Deol in Ashram is releasing on November 11 😊