FOUR ESTATES

In my earlier post I referred Media as the Fourth Estate. One of the comments on that post included "What is the Fourth Estate in the title refers to?".....I thought of posting it on my blog instead on the comments window....So here we are....

I remembered this word from my social classes during my high school. I know that there are four estates implemented in a democratic system for the proper operation of our society. The first estate isLegislature, Second comes Civil administaration, third comes Judiaciary and fourth is the Press. I found an interesting article on this over the Internet which expanded on the details of Estates....
 

"There are multiple estates of government each of which has a check and balance on the other.The first estate is of course the legislature which is elected by the people, and can enact laws.

Then comes the executive. Which is the civil service/bureaucracy; selected meritocratically.
But what prevents the executive and legislature from colluding merrily?

In come the stern judges with their stuffy wigs and robes. The judiciary; who are supposed to ensure that the laws enacted by the legislature adhere to certain "norms". These norms are typically encoded in something called a constitution.

When you look at the rampant corruption in many democracies, in India for e.g., caused by the collusive escapades of the legislature and executive, you are basically looking at the problem of a weak judiciary.

Ok, assuming one has a strong judiciary, is that enough?

Let's suppose the legislature and the executive collude. Even though the judges with their snazzy robes and wigs might be strong and bold, how would they come to know about the wrongdoings?

In comes the fourth estate: the press. While this does not have the status of an official estate, it is as important to the functioning of a democracy providing the necessary be-a-good-boy-you-naughty-legislature checks and balances.

So, we see that the proper checked-and-balanced functioning of the four estates listed above, are necessary for a democracy to succeed.

The above four estates are not all that exist in a democracy. There are two more.... in fact these two are more powerful than the first four put together. The Army and... the People. The army is an estate that has snazzy weapons like missiles and Donald Rumsfelds, and can thus rule over the country by force after declaring the constitution void on some pretext. 

This brings us to the last estate --- the People. Nobody believes this estate actually exists, and so are taken aback when confided in that they are a part of this estate too. This People estate has the ultimate power --- to throw away any and all forms of government and install any and all forms of government. It could thus reinstate a democracy by overthrowing the existing monarchy/military autocracy/etc."


Unfortunately, we have the corruption deeply rooted into all those estates which is totally changing the very cause of forming them.....

Media..."The Fourth Estate"!!!!!!!

This is the article that I have came across written by Dr. Abdul Kalam about Indian Media 

"Why the media in India so negative?

Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements?

We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

We are the first in milk production.

We are number one in Remote sensing satellites (I never knew that).

We are the second largest producer of wheat.

We are the second largest producer of rice.

Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.

I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The glory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news. 

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.. Why are we so NEGATIVE?"

Never gave a thought to this.... It is always important to higlight the bad and sick going around us.....but does that leave a positive impact on us?? I never knew that a man named Dr. Sudarshan existed ever....Such kind of news we only see in sub editions some where in the corner... It is so sad that today's newspapers and channels are obsessed with circulation records and TRP ratings...The so called "Fourth-Estate" is now interested only in sensational news that can just provide mere entertainment to the viewing public and nothing else....Case-in-specific:Chiru's daughter's marriage...How does Chiru's daughter marriage has to do anything with the good for the public??!!!But that became the main point of interest for media for almost a month....There are so many trusts and welfare associations in the society that are fighting against major problems such as poverty, backwardness etc.....We hardly see about them in today's news papers....As Dr. Kalam said, if every news paper in India could highlight the good deeds done by such people in the front page, that definitely leaves a inspirational impact on us....


But contrarily, we really need to think about our contribution for this very situation of media....I mean how many of us are really interested in reading such philanthropic activities....Given a choice reading between burning problems in the society and life history of a famous personality, How many of us really go for the first one....Well in that perspective, it is obvious for the media to highlight the hot news.... Otherwise their very existence is put under question.... it's definetely not a secret that media has become a major commercial industry. And, while they try to serve the ambiguously secondary responsibility of keeping the general public informed, their primary obligation is, of course, to make money....Though one might question the virtue of putting profit before public service, this prioritization is, in a simply logical sense, practical. In order to fulfill this intrinsically "moral" responsibility, media have to stay in business, and to stay in business they have to make money. So, it's not just a bunch of newspapers and tv channels that has corrupted the power of media....it is the very "WE" that has done that whether it is a major or minor contribution....


Well change should occur in everything and in everybody right from the common man level....

Contentment in Life!!!!

Every one in this world is definitely a goal oriented person.... We always set our eye on a goal and strive hard for self improvement....Once we have achieved a goal, we start looking for another.....If we, the human race were content and we were happy with what we had, we wouldn't have been what we actually are today.... I mean we wouldn't have enjoyed any of the comforts that we have today....But we often read that contentment in life is really essential for a man to be happy.... being content with what we have and who we already are decides if a man is a happy person or not.....

So isn’t that a contradiction with the very human race being ambitious? Doesn’t that seem to indicate that we are not content with our lives? I had all those questions in my mind until I read an article and that goes as follows....

"we need to accept that we are a type of person who will always be striving for a goal, the type of person who enjoys a challenge, and who enjoys the journey. It’s not the goal that matters to us....it’s the journey to get there that is so important. And we are content with being in that journey....."

So contentment isn’t a matter with being content with our situation in life and never trying to improve it. It’s a matter of being content with what we have but realizing that as humans, we will always try to improve, no matter how happy we are. If we don’t, we have given up on life.....but on the other side we shouldn't be devastated when we couldn't make it to our destination and try harder to reach them.....after all that's the essence of being CONTENT......