Matter of Concern

The happenings in the Northeast are very painful and pose a danger to the diverse culture of this country. But the real cause of the problem still remains elusive. Various commentators and political parties have blamed the changing demographic profile of the region arising out of the illegal immigration from across the border, while some other commentators and political entities have maintained that the change in the demographic profile is due to natural processes and is consistent with trends in the rest of the country. All these people have based their arguments on the data of the last three or four censuses. Political parties and others have interpreted data in accordance with their own ideology and interest. However, in all this one has missed the actual data. The role of the media, print as well as the electronic, has been disappointing in that they have not highlighted the accurate and unadultrated data for their readers to enable them to draw their own conclusion and question the politicians and other biased persons on their stand on the burning issue of illegal immigration. In my view, there is a general lack of accurate unbiased information for the enlightened citizens to judge for themselves the various issues and take an informed stand on these issues. It should be duty of the media to disseminate accurate and unbiased information and duty of each one of us to learn to interpret data accurately and free of bias and not fall prey to herd mentality so that future conflagrations of this type are avoided.