Why are the largest-circulated newspapers and magazines and the most widely-viewed television channels so focused on what is happening first in the metros and then in the larger cities, to the almost near-exclusion of developments that impact rural areas? There has to be a major natural calamity (flood, famine or fire) or some unspeakable atrocity (gang rape, stripping of a woman in public, a couple getting lynched for having a relationship outside their caste and so on) before Bharat enters the antenna of our media organizations.

At a superficial level, this city-centric insularity among media personnel