We unfortunately are living in a society where jokes are treated as serious affairs and serious affairs are treated as jokes. It all began on 9 February 2025, when podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia, one of the panellists along with standup comedians Samay Raina and Jaspreet Singh, YouTuber Ashish Chanchlani and Influencer Apoorva Mukhija, on the show India’s Got Latent, had asked a contestant a very “controversial” question which was “Would you rather watch your parents have sex every day for the rest of your life or join in once and stop it forever?”. Little did he anticipate how this one question would bring a massive storm in his life. This particular clip from the show went viral in no time and all hell broke loose.
After seeing such a level of massive outrage across all media platforms, it actually makes one wonder if there is anything as absolute Freedom of Speech in India or not and does comedy have a safe space in India or not as the government authorities also took these remarks quite seriously.
Who would have imagined that this one controversial remark would also end up making its way right into the Parliament, where the leaders of our country who are otherwise supposed to find solutions for our national issues like illiteracy, religious and ethnic violence, unemployment, hunger, poverty and rape etc, are discussing such not so important issues as if the future of India depends on it.
One of the reasons why the India’s Got Latent issue had become a big fiasco is also because of the extensive minute by minute media coverage behind the same.
Unfortunately, while the entire media and the public’s focus was on this controversy, there were many real issues that our country was facing which genuinely deserved more coverage in the media.
While India is a home to people across varied religious, regional, linguistic and ethnic communities and is known for its philosophy of “Unity in Diversity”, but, unfortunately our country has also been facing turmoil on these very grounds in the form of brutal violence, which genuinely deserved more coverage in the media.
In the past couple of months India has been going through several real and serious issues.
Some of them are:
- The President’s rule being implied in the state of Manipur on February 13, 2025 followed by the resignation of its Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, due to ethnic violence between the Meitei community, the Hindu majority group and the Kuki community, the Christian tribal minority group, that has been going on in the state since the year 2023.
- Clashes in Nagpur over right-wing Hindu groups demanding the removal of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb’s tomb, post the release of the Bollywood film Chhaava, on February 14, 2025 is Chatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj’s biopic, who was brutally tortured and killed by Aurangzeb. This shows the on-ground reality of our nation that is still deeply divided and biased on the basis of religion.
- The gruesome gang-rape of a 19-year-old woman at Varanasi, who was brutally assaulted sexually and filmed over a period of six days by 23 men from March 29 to April 3, 2025 clearly speaks how women are still not completely safe in India who unfortunately become prey to such heinous acts, in spite of awareness programmes like “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao”.
- The occurrence of riots in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal from April 8 to April 13, 2025 followed by protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, which was passed by both the Houses of Parliament to bring changes in the legislation and administration of the Waqf properties, caused a deep sense of unrest amongst the Muslim communities.
- The terrorist attack on tourists in the Pahalgam region of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025 that killed 26 innocent civilians, who were mostly Hindu males is considered to be one of the deadliest attacks since the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. This attack has now further fuelled the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan leading to both the nations taking some serious measures against each other.
Although we are currently living in the 21st century and call ourselves to be a modern and advanced society, our way of thinking is still age-old, traditional, patriarchal and conservative, which is why rapes and riots continue to occur in our country till date.
Not giving enough coverage to such serious issues shows the harsh reality of media in our society wherein the news channel’s key focus is providing sensational headlines in order to grab a greater number of eyeballs and increase their TRPs and subscriptions instead of bringing the truth to light to the public in a neutral and factual manner which is what should be emphasised by them as per true journalistic standards.
While we accuse the media of offering a biased and half-baked perspective, we also can’t deny the role we play behind the same, as we are only interested in nothing but mere gossip and sensational headlines, which then compels the news channels to prioritize events like the India’s Got Latent controversy over issues that actually matter.
It is now up to us to decide what we want to prioritize. Real and relevant issues or mere controversies.
