“It is not the headline-making political events but the seldom-reported social transformations that have the most lasting significance.”

It is up to the media to give widespread publicity to a particular type of event and maybe ignore the other events taking place, but the bottom-line is that both political events and social events have the most lasting significance. Politics has long held the imagination and interest of the masses. Whenever there is any news related to political events, it is eagerly lapped up by the masses. However, events related to social transformations are equally important. Therefore, none of these events can undermine the significance of the other.

The political events that gain publicity may be related to the bills being passed or the elections to the national assembly. In either of the cases, these will appear as headlines and they will be regularly followed by the public. These events do affect the lives of people as the bills that are implemented will have a direct effect on their daily life and the ruling party that is elected to power will also directly affect their well being and happiness. Apart from the political events mentioned above, there are other events like scandals involving the politicians or events happening in the lives of people related to well-known politicians. This news also finds its way into the national headlines. Does this news have any significance in our lives? How is the marriage or the love-life of the President’s daughter going to affect the lives of the citizens of a country? There are events like these that are publicized to a large extent, but they have no long lasting significance. These events will probably be forgotten the moment the politicians related to these events are out of power.

While these political events take up all the space in the front pages of national dailies, there may be other events taking place that are far more important. For instance, there may be an agitation going on in some part of the country that is fighting for an environmental or educational cause or there may be a single person spearheading a national movement to revamp the existing system related to racial or caste discrimination. These events may not hold the interest of the citizens of the country, as they are not publicized by the media for various reasons. One reason is that such agitations or movements are generally against the policies of the center or state governments. Therefore, these events are seldom reported as major events though they do find space in the inside pages of the newspapers and they are also mentioned by the news channels. Just because these events are not reported does not mean that they are not important. These social events will determine how people lead their lives if the movements succeed in achieving their aim.

However, despite the low awareness about these social transformations, one cannot ignore the fact that these events probably have a more long lasting significance than the political events that gather more publicity. On the other hand, it is not necessary that the political events that appear as headlines are of no significance. Barring some of the political events related to scandals, most are directly related to the life of the common man and therefore, they also have a long lasting significance. Hence, neither of these events has an edge over the other as far as their significance is concerned.