Disliked the biased documentary on Kolkata on CNN IBN by Nilanjana Bose

brown concrete dome building under gray sky

Today I watched a show on CNN IBN. I love the channel for it's straight forward and informative approach on any topic. But today I watched a program that was showing a documentary on Kolkata the city as a whole. The reporter was Nilanjana Bose. To start with, I am a Calcuttan myself.

This is with a lot of regret that I am having to say that the program seemed to revolved around the mindset that the negative image of the city needs to be highlighted at all costs and dimlight the achievements and existing prospects (not to talk of the future prospects which were appropriately shown in terms of the IT sector and industrialization).

Kolkata
Kolkata

The views of the Presidency students or the 'guy who walked the same lanes for 21 years at College Street' seemed fine. Though it is not so that the education system in our state is such at present that students 'must' go outside to pursue higher studies. There are a lot of good institutes both technical, engineering and arts that provide one of the finest qualities of education. To get feedback from some B.Com. students to say that there is no job here and let the image of the city take a blow is simply surprising! It should be understood clearly that job demands some qualification and you can't crib that there are no jobs when you do not deserve it. What the show should have highlighted is that there needs to be some more opportunity for the less qualified. That's where I pointed out that the show's mindset seemed disturbing to me.

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Another scene is where a priest has been shown who now wants to come into acting, and his brother, who wants to pursue mba outside this "dying" city. I wonder how come you portray such people who do not represent the masses of the city. I guess a stockbroker who doesn't want his son studying here doesn't  portray the whole scenario. Apart from an IT professional in CCD, there wasn't a single positive vibe.

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Adding to this is the translation from Bengali to English. A rising Tollywood actor said professionalism here is a little less, which was translated into "professionalism here is terrible". If you have scripts ready and want to place them on the mouth of actors, it doesn't stay real, does it?

Author: Rahul Bhattacharya

Rahul is a journalist with expertise in researching a variety of topics and writing engaging contents. He is also a data analyst and an expert in visualizing business scenarios using data science. Rahul is skilled in a number of programming languages and data analysis tools. When he is not busy writing, Rahul can be found somewhere in the Appalachian trails or in an ethnic restaurant in Chicago.

4 thoughts on “Disliked the biased documentary on Kolkata on CNN IBN by Nilanjana Bose

  1. Portraying a negative image of Kolkata and Bengalis at large has been an obsession with CNN-IBN. I had earlier heard derogatory statements from Rajdeep Sardesai about Bengalis being conservative and old-fashioned. It's high time we put a stand against these parochial treatments.

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