Why do we care more when NRIs go missing?

“Concern is growing for a 20-year-old Indian-origin man who has gone missing since the early hours of 2 January from a place in Manchester, which is less than 16 kilometres from where Anuj Bidve was killed on 26 December. Gurdeep Hayer, who is based in West Bormwich, travelled to Manchester on 31 December to celebrate New Year’s Eve with friends. He stayed with friends in the Fallowfield area of Manchester,” reports Hindustan Times. Hayer’s story has been reported extensively in India media – including in The Economic Times. While it is tragic when anyone goes missing in circumstances such as Hayer has done, what is it about Indian news media that causes them to believe that it’s a story when an NRI goes missing (or is beaten up or mugged or raped or killed) but not when a similar incident happens within the country? How many Indians in India are missing? [caption id=“attachment_177738” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“What is it about Indian news media that causes them to believe that it is a story when an NRI goes missing (or is beaten up or mugged or raped or killed) but not when a similar incident happens within the country? AFP”]  [/caption] According to missingindiankids.com, “In India no exact figures are available, however, according to an article in an English daily, the number of runaways is 10 lakhs per annum, ie every 30 seconds a child runs away from home. If you add the number of missing, lost and abducted children the number of missing children is phenomenal.” One runaway every 30 seconds? That’s one more missing as I type this sentence? That’s one more worried family, one more set of distraught parents every 30 seconds? Why don’t we read about these missing kids? Why aren’t they flashed as ‘breaking news’? Why don’t ministers hold press conferences on kids missing in Raipur and Tambaram and Bolpur? Our fascination for all things foreign forces media to find convoluted connections to India. “A New York private detective has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for raping his Indian-origin girlfriend (Seemona Sumasar) and then implicating her in a series of false armed robberies for which she was wrongly jailed for seven months,” reports NDTV. “Ms Sumasar, 36, is the daughter of an Indian taxi firm owner from Guyana and had previously worked as a Morgan Stanley analyst,” the NDTV report goes on to say. What about rape in India? “The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says rape is the fastest growing crime in India, with a spike in the number of cases reported for January and February 2011. According to the NCRB, a total of 21,397 rape incidents were reported countrywide in 2009. There were also more than 25,000 cases of kidnapping and abduction of women, aside from cases of molestation which numbered more than 38,000,” says a report. That’s almost 60 incidents of rape per day; more than two per hour – and that’s just the reported number. “According to the statistics, released by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday, the number of murders has shot up from 9,802 in 1953 to 33,335 in 2010; rapes by 791.5% (from 2,487 in 1971 to 22,172 in 2010); kidnappings and abductions by 630.7% (from 5,261 in 1953 to 38,440 in 2010),” reports Tehelka. These are all appalling numbers, especially when one sees the upward trend in all crimes – and, I underline, these are only reported crimes. News media in India has done a commendable job in highlighting incidents of crime committed on Indian (or Indian origin) victims abroad, resulting in pressure on the Ministry of External Affairs to intervene and take up the issues with foreign governments. Yet, the same, powerful media does little to highlight similar crimes which occur in India. Indian victims are second-class victims in their own land, unless the victim or the accused is high-profile. It’s the quality of the crime, not the quantity, that Indian news media finds newsworthy, and that’s an unfortunate truth.