Chennai, the city which had never seen such disaster and floods that almost damaged the whole city. After a week, now Chennai is slowly getting into its own position. All the organizations, offices which were closed since 10 days are now opened. Thousands of people from all over the country came forward to help the people in Chennai in many ways. Now Chennai is slowly trying to recover from the huge floods.

The national media coverage of disasters that have caused great damage to the country has drawn a lot of criticism from the people who were affected by the disaster. People alleged that the media discusses only a few issues and ignores the need of the people. People in Chennai are on fire on the media’s cold shoulder approach.

Since the floods affected, Chennai didn’t make it to the front-page of the national dailies or even in News Channels. Despite being the fourth largest city in the country, media didn’t do its duty and it drowned for days and no one paid attention. Thus, when India Today consulting editor and journalist Rajdeep Sardesai went to Chennai, he came to know the anger of people on media.

He got some hard and negative reactions from the people. People claimed that the national media was concentrating on Intolerance debate and the Paris attacks, but not about Chennai. Rajdeep when interacted with RJ Balaji, who has been thoroughly involved in rescuing activities, that might have shown him the situation of the common people problems.

Here is the conversation between Rajdeep Sardesai and RJ Balaji:

When Rajdeep was unsure about who is RJ Balaji and looks around to confirm his identity, the RJ drags mic towards him and says: “First thing I want to say is this is the problem. Like most of you don’t know who’s Balaji, what is Chennai. You don’t how Chennai looks or how Tamil Nadu looks? 

After a usual dose of resilience and activeness showered on the people of Chennai by Rajdeep, he asked Balaji if “it required a tragedy and flood waters like this for Chennai to wake up in a sense?”

Balaji replied: “Even for you guys [media] to wake up.”

Rajdeep responded saying that: “I agree and I have conceded it.”