Doling out money to the needy struggling in dire circumstances and food to the hungry with no means of assuaging hunger, invariably as charity, is a time-honoured practice in the land, but a tradition that is on the wane. The slogan “There is no free lunch out there,” common in the western countries, dominated by materialistic and self-serving attitude, has apparently driven the practice of charity out of contention, except where one reads in the dailies about good-natured members of society and organisations, few and far between that they are, doling out help in cash and kind to their unfortunate fellow citizens in the land.  Of course, such reports, almost always, get space only in the inside pages of dailies of all hues. However, in case the dole is from the government of the day, that act is bestowed wide publicity in public domain, for reasons everyone knows.

The line dividing news and reports in the dailies, that should normally be bold and clear, is tending to get thinner by the day. Thanks to the utterly morphed outlook to life nowadays on the part of people at large, marked by intolerance and avarice, their all-too-familiar despicable acts, Police including them under the category of crime, dailies report them as news. That is the daily dole that we are familiar with.

All one has to do to get a broad yet clear picture of what is engaging more people to fall into the law-keeper’s net on a scale like never before is to give a speed- reading as it were of what appears in print, whichever daily one is patronising. To bring home the point, one has to reproduce a few headlines taken from just one issue of one of the widely circulated broadsheets on a day last week (some on the front page and others on inside pages of the daily). “In a first, Supreme Court orders 6-month jail term for Justice Karnan,” “Manual Scavenger hired to clean septic tank electrocuted,” “FSSAI turns heat on junk food,” “Student ends life fearing PU results,” “Farmer leader booked for damaging school property,” and so on, never to ignore the daily dole of news originating to rape, chain-snatching, fatal road mishaps, highway robberies, murder for gain as well as settling scores, fraudulent acts of well-marked individuals in society, everyone knows who.

Carrying matter such as vainglorious and uncalled for disclosure by some individuals in public life about their non-belief in God may tickle the readers of dailies at large. That also passes off as news. How about  not allowing free and fast movement of ambulances on the roads of Bengaluru for facilitating motorcades of Ministers? That is also part of the daily dole from the dailies.