The prime time

Nowadays the word that raises anxiety the most is ‘Financial reforms’. The reason is simple. If an Indian FM is speaking of reforms he simply means to sell off the public property to a private hotshot. He will use some much used sentences to fool the people. They will sound like attracting more investments, to bail out the company running at loss, more opportunities. There is this famous saying of the then disinvestment minister, Arun Shourie, while he sold off the Modern Bread ‘It is not the job of the government to make bread for the people’. Only the famous Mary Antoinette could parallel this in its notoriety.

I lean a bit to the left and I am of the firm view that if there are more than one player in the field vying for a bite for the same pie, it is not necessary that competition resulting will lead to an improved efficiency. As humans we will be thinking of bringing the other guy down rather than to improve our performance.

Last day I was watching a debate on television on something regarding the serials being aired on TVs. The anchor asked a sweet, small child about his opinion on the sops in TV. He said ‘Aunties in TV wear heavy makeup and designer dresses even when they are in their home and even go to bed in their makeup’. I remembered a verse from the bible which is somewhat like this ‘You have poured wisdom into the mouth of babes’.

Some years back Dooradarshan re-telecasted the serials from the good old times like ‘Buniyaad’. It is then I realized how much we have missed out. When our homes opened up to private channels, they churned out tear laden serials one after another. In order to stay at top of the TRPs script writer is asked to fill each and every episode with some of the most despicable twists and turns. In order to keep us glued the character wears designer clothes, travel in luxury cars, and lives in big houses and conducts lavish marriage ceremonies. The good thing about corporate investment is that the industry becomes more professional and accountable. The bad thing is that industry will be in constant pressure to perform. So you will lose the finer things in life.

People make almost all their decision based on what they see in visual media. The influence can be direct or indirect one. Whatever you see in the TV lies impinged in your mind, ultimately influencing your decisions whether you want it or not. Knowing this very well the powerful have invested in the media sector for their vested interests

It is just not about the tear jerker sops, all the programmes in our channels have lost the connectivity with the common masses. If you say the common people forms the biggest chunk of audience, yes they do. The characters in TV has become what the common man looks upto rather than what he can relate with. The viewers are filled in with half cooked news, false sense of values, in the end we lose our power to discern. So the sad part is when a programme with value comes up it will not be able to hold on to the competition with the crappy ones and is pushed to god forsaken hours. Why? Because we cannot decide for ourselves what is good for us.
The recent Indian general elections was a demonstration of this. A weekly dubbed this election as Election of non-issues. If the visual media had dedicated some more of their quality time towards the real issues the election results would have been a bit different and better.

I hear channels like Colors are taking up more people relevant issues and doing programmes on them. That is a bit of good news. Hope this trend continues……