Melamine in milk
Melamine has been detected in many brands of baby milk powder. It has become the talk of the city and may be the country. The test reports are conflicting. The newspapers, TV media are hugely covering this news item since it has tremendous news value. People are 'eating' the news coverage quite voraciously. All the mothers are very worried, so are the fathers, brothers, sisters and so on. People are bewildered. They are at a loss what to feed the baby. In the mean while, so called 'fresh cow milk' sellers are making windfall profit from selling their 'cow milk'. A few years back, one 'dudhwalla' was supplying fifty litres of milk from a few cows. A friend of mine got curious and followed him to his house. He found that they were mixing powder milk in water, boiling it and later on mixing with fresh cow milk. It was sold as “Khanti gorur dudh'!
As usual, our media is not always very responsible. There is dearth of stories. They jump at any story. And this is a 'jolly good' one. Scaring people is very good business. It started with Y2K. Media hyped it so much that everybody thought that the doomsday was imminent! Interestingly, nothing happened after '2000'. Then mad cow disease scare, followed by bird flu scare. So many fowls were culled. So many people became paupers. A lot more people die from malaria, tuberculosis etc every year. I am neither defending the powder milk producers, nor condoning them. But I am very much against creating panic, scaring mothers, driving them crazy and insecure through media hype.
A judicious coverage in the media will be truly beneficial for the stakeholders.
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