I tried so hard and got so far.*

**Q: What’s common between a train, a plane, an office and your home?

A: All have people who know all about cricket and insist on letting you know.

With the Cricket World Cup now having reached the semi-final stage, there is little else anyone wants to talk about. And while a sports-challenged person like me would perhaps choose to lock herself in her room after, of course, getting it sound-proofed to keep all ‘cricket’ firmly out of it, work, social commitments and the annoyingly obligatory requirement for Vitamin D means one has to step out almost daily.

Home is where the noise is.

In fact, one doesn’t even have to leave the house for the ordeal to be unleashed by cricket enthusiasts-you can find plenty of them within your family. The past few weeks have been particularly excruciating as I’ve been waking not to the gentle sound of music nor even to the not-so-gentle sound of the rather judgmental cleaning-lady‘s, ‘Wake up, who will go to the office, me?’, but to parents, brothers and uncles discussing the previous night’s match or the relative merits of Indian batting and Australian sledging. 

An attempt to reach for the remote control for the briefest glimpse of the television for potential business stories of the day feels like major breach of cricketiquette as more than one disapproving pair of eyes tell me better than to interrupt (what I’m sure is the fifth repeat telecast of) match reports or discussion.

Caution: Men at work

The scene at the office is only slightly different. In fact, ‘cricket at work’ is even more unnerving because my workplace is full of that special category of evil men who possess the skill and the knowledge to string one intoxicating word together with the next, creating the magical and all-engulfing web of cricket reports and analysis. 

Also called sports journalists, these men, with their God-like ability to prove the same LBW decision both right and wrong, kick-start their day with pronouncements on what to expect from the Wankhede pitch and end it with whether the expectations were met or not. 

Either way, the story is a winner.

Pretending to focus on yet another inspiring quarterly performance report of Air India, I listen to these men and pick from them whatever pieces of cricket wisdom I can. I wait with bated breath for the moment such conversations begin to steer toward what I know, which could be a singular catch or a crucial expensive over that won/cost Pakistan their match. However, what could potentially be my moment of glory comes and goes even before I can clear my throat, because the men can’t possibly linger on the Ghost of Cricket Past and must move on to more important business: The next match.

You can run, you can hide…

It is perhaps this overwhelming world of cricket that I foolishly hope to escape with my trips out of Delhi. Within a short span of a couple of months, I visited Patna, Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Hyderabad, only to realize that it had been incredibly optimistic of me to expect any relief from the relentless and all-pervasive world of cricket. 

My train journey from Delhi to Nagpur, which could have been perfectly peaceful, remained anything but, what with my father, a couple of Hyderabadi gentlemen, a young lad from Haryana and three fresh-out-of-college-about-to-join-TCS fellows discussing cricket till the loud wails of a (by then exasperated) toddler prevented them from going on any further. 

Our day of arrival at Nagpur coincided with the India-South Africa clash in the city, making it absolutely impossible for the taxi driver to not boast about the same and the ones that his city had proudly hosted earlier. 

The bus journey from Nagpur to Hyderabad was characterized by a general air of sulkiness as everyone including the driver, the conductor, my father and most passengers were in a foul mood because by that time, it had become clear that the Proteas will indeed beat Dhoni and Co. 

The flight back from Hyderabad to Delhi was perhaps the most agonizing. A failed TV screen and a fully booked airplane meant there was no way I could have escaped the non-stop chatter of the two boisterous and deceptively emaciated-looking teenage co-passengers, who had enough cricket within them to fill from cover-to-cover the hallowed jubilee edition of Wisden, Sportstar or some such.

If you can’t lick ‘em.

The battle between me and cricket is as one one-sided as an inebriated Canada-Dream World XI clash. Clearly there’s no escaping cricket in India. But if there is one thing that the Sachins and the McGraths have taught me, it is to never give in.

And so, the only option left for a cricket illiterate like me is to take the good old Indian method that sees most of us cruise/pant through the toughest exams-cramming. I have decided to read as much as I can on cricket. I plan to religiously go through pre-match reports, match reports, post-match reports and all other kind of reports that sports media deem fit to be shared with the rest of the world. I will try not to worry too much about Boria Majumdar getting jostled by ecstatic/homicidal fans while listening to him answer in a frighteningly angry voice Arnab Goswami’s mile-long questions after each match gets over. I will also ask my brother, however reluctant he is, to (re)draw, label and explain the cricket ground on a sheet and elaborate on the differences between a hook, a pull and a cover drive.

The effort has to be made because it is not just about the World Cup, which, though seemingly endless, will end in less than a fortnight. It has to be made because it is important that we keep trying to learn new things and explore unfamiliar territory, however overwhelming and noisy it may be. It is important because the brain, God’s most precious gift to human kind, must be challenged constantly to keep it fit and agile.

But mostly, it is important because a seemingly innocuous snore fest of a story on the relative merits of buying advertising rights for World Cup and IPL act as a constant reminder of yet another threatening event looming large.

*The title has been copied verbatim from a friend's write-up for a college mag article. I think her name was Swati, and I am sure she was a computer science student. 

**The blog was first published on the website I work for, www.dailybhaskar.com.

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The Emperors who love their new clothes

CWG: As I see(saw?) it

As the brickbats metamorphose into bouquets, Rising India heaves a collective sigh of relief. For weeks, its women and men got force fed with exactly the kind of ugly news that they had started believing was on its way to becoming a thing of the past. Every morning, television and newspapers nudged another bit of flimsy cover off organizers’ incompetence and rapacity, leaving a foul taste in our mouths, bringing us face-to-face with the truth regarding our sheer lack of moral fiber. How painful it was for clean, well-to-do and tech savvy India to know that the taxes it coughed up so that poor India looked a little less embarrassingly so, were being used to pay the car/petrol/foreign trip/house renovation bill of some remorseless babu, or whoever his favorite private vendor was! The ballooning Commonwealth bill made us groan in bitter agony. The final nail in the coffin was the unclean lavatories that greeted the visiting gora inspectors. Why in the name of buckling bridges, we asked, could we not flush the stinking mess before the world saw it? And why did the overzealous video journalists have to make sure that the incriminating evidence was preserved for posterity, rendering generations of smart, hygienically conscious urban Indians vulnerable to jokes that began with, “What do the Indian, the Pakistani, and the one-year old have in common”?

The embarrassment melted away like a wad of butter left under the post floods bright Delhi sun with the grand opening. The opening was not just any other opening. Heck, it was the mother of all openings. Those who caught the razzmatazz on air declared that it shone brighter than Beijing. Its awesomeness was hailed by the western media that withdrew its earlier criticism and showered praise on the quintessential Indian ability of putting together impressive shows without foolishly bothering to work on it for too long or too dedicatedly. It was an inauguration that looked so gorgeous it did exactly what Kalmadi’s overpriced legal doctor must have ordered: dazzle the country into collective blindness. The television screen had so far offered nausea, heartache, and reasons to stay out of the capital till the ignominious hilarity was over. The opening made many of us cancel that ticket to Simla/Singapore/Saharsa and reassert ourselves as the proud residents of the prettified Delhi.

The average Dehliite, particularly the facebooking variety, could not be prouder of the miraculous turn of events. The ones who managed the arbitrarily priced passes could not wait to ‘update’ the rest of the virtual world on the fact that they are indeed THERE AT THE JLN STADIUM WATCHING IT ALL FROM AS CLOSE AS ONE CAN GET TO WHERE ALL THE ACTION IS (You could almost hear them clap their hands and chirp, “Yaye me!” at the end). Those who sat at home made sure they splashed extra long shot images of fireworks at the stadium, close up shots of food stalls, and mid shots of sparkling clean CWG rooms and even more sparkling clean and now excrement free CWG toilets on their profile pages. Surely, they knew that the pictures were only one google search away from all internet users, let alone the ones on their ‘friend list’, and did not need to be ‘shared’ in the first place. The intention was entirely different, loud, and clear: to let the unpatriotic ones know that they had been wrong all along. True, the bid was won only because a handful of megalomaniacal Indian leaders promised more money to train the visiting athletes than other smarter bidders did. True, the Games came to India in a manner best described as clandestine, with no effort at forming a consensus, or even initiating a broad based discussion on it. True, equipments were hired at many times the price the most expensive of their kind are sold anywhere in the world. True, money was sucked in by a bottomless pit of rapaciousness and depravity that the unholy trinity of the Indian politician, the bureaucrat, and the opportunist private player form. But, at the end of it all, we got magic mehndi, magic tabla (both by kids who neither got nor desired a single tainted rupee), and a shiny, shiny opening ceremony—one blessed by the Prince and the Parker, or the kind of people we like to pretend to be indifferent to and even laugh at, but whose approval we seek anxiously, even if unconsciously.

Isn’t this high level of comfort with misappropriation of our own money something that warrants closer scrutiny? There is a simple test to find the answer. All one needs to do is imagine everything happening in a more personal context. Suppose a burglar comes to your house and tells you, "Look. Give me all your money. I will keep half of it with me. The rest I will spend on throwing a party. I will pay my relatives to be the caterers. Since I am as incompetent as my buffoon caterer relatives, I will take forever to arrange the party. Obviously, the tent decoration DJ wallahs will be arranged at the last minute, so they won’t have a choice but to charge an obscene amount. So, I will come back to you to demand more. We will keep paying more and more till we pay enough to pull the party. And, you will be happy at the end of it all because the guests will be very fussy and sophisticated and if impressed, will pat you on your back and say, “Good job, li’l fella!” Also, we will tell everybody that it was you (cough*moron*cough) who threw the party!”

With the already cleaner parts of Delhi scrubbed further clean, fixed and face-lifted, we can all get ready for the cultural evenings at Connaught Place, smoother traffic for some time and of course, the closing ceremony, the last among which we hope and pray will be glorious enough for future generations to weave poems around. The events (the sporting contests, the matches, the G-a-m-e-s in Commonwealth Games, remember?) will undoubtedly be badly organized; however, that will be okay because as a country that’s still developing poor hungry malnourished, it has created enough shine already. The government, overpaid and underworked as it may be, will have been criticized enough already, thanks to the masters of journalistic overkill, so we will have to cut it some slack. And of course, the success of the real heroes, the truly unsullied, hard working, devoted and highly un-Kalmadi-ish Nehwals, Bindras and Devvarmans will thoughtlessly be associated with the OC, and the memory of the humble and smiling Indian sportsperson at the podium will erase all traces of moral degeneration (governmental, private, individual and collective) that was flung into our unwilling faces for far too long. Nobody will pause to realize that the winners did not win because of the sarkari effort; they won in spite of it. And the culprits, the utterly shameless, who participated in the multi thousand crore scam will get away with a little jeering and booing and no serious punishment, because cases against them will drag till the day editorials will declare the scam too old and inconsequential compared to fresh and bigger ones.

The question that needs asking now is, will we always be okay with this elaborate structure of deceit, procrastination, ineptitude, opacity, high handedness and sheer greed that the smallest to the biggest players with power have created for themselves? Will we ever get rid of our complacency that tells us to ‘relax and adjust’ to the whims and manic fancies of the class of people that was supposed to serve the society and not gorge on it? Will we always be comfortable with the systematic exploitation of the youngest to the oldest among the poor, who are paid peanut shells to create pretty, shiny things for us to feed our enormously inflated egos and visual appetites with? Will our love for shiny always keep us indifferent towards the fate of the atrociously poor living in plastic tents, defecating in the open, drinking water unfit for dogs, and watching their salt and starch-fed kids mutate into stunted half women and men because well, they are just too many and hence, deserve animal existence?

The answer is a frightening yes. We could have boycotted the Games but we did not. We could have taken out marches against the desi plunderers but we did not. The protests ended at sending smart anagram-ish smses and letters to the editors, many of who realized they ought to anger their consumers only to the extent that they do not bid goodbye to the telly/paper subscription permanently. In fact, we ended up endorsing every single act of pilferage that the Old and the Shameless indulged in with brazen callousness. Teary eyed, we saw, celebrated and got choked with pride at the farce of a fantastic opening followed by eleven days of organizational goof ups that could not be hidden by bright fireworks.

One final (and admittedly rhetorical) question: Aren’t we all sick and tired of the insatiably corrupt who have made permanent the wide chasm between the rich and the rotting, something that could have been bridged to a reasonable extent? We are. But perhaps, we are sicker and more tired of the unpalatable truth that dims India’s shine a bit. It is precisely this London Tipton-like weakness for shiny that the cannibal-like powerful in India continue to exploit. Each time death, decay and destruction start grossing out the living and thriving among us, the modern day maharajas put up a show-the party that we pay for unwittingly and grow to enjoy, grudgingly at first, and enthusiastically towards the brainwashed end.

नक्सलवाद: एक गंभीर समस्या

प्रधान मंत्री द्वारा आंतरिक सुरक्षा के लिए सबसे गंभीर समस्या कहलाये जाने वाले नक्सलवाद के मुद्दे ने देश का ध्यान अपनी ओर बड़ी मजबूती से खींच लिया है. नक्सली हिंसा की खबरें और तसवीरें अख़बार के पन्नों व टी वी चैनलों पर अब लगभग हर दूसरे दिन हमें ये याद दिलाती हैं कि इस समस्या की ओर और लापरवाही बरतना भयानक तबाही का कारण बन सकती है. आंकडें बताते हैं कि पिछले पाँच वर्षों में दस हज़ार से अधिक असैनिक नागरिक नक्सली हिंसा की बली चढ़ गए हैं. पिछले तीन महीनों में ही केंद्रीय रिज़र्व पोलिस बल के सौ से अधिक जवान भी नक्सलियों के विरुद्ध भिडंत में शहीद हो चुके हैं. ज़ाहिर है, ये गंभीर समस्या एक ऐसे समाधान की प्रतीक्षा में है जो न केवल वर्तमान में जारी खून खराबे पर अंकुश लगा सके बल्की भविष्य में भी इस तरह की बर्बादी की सम्भावना को जड़ से उखाड़ दे.

लेकिन किसी भी मुश्किल का हल निकलने के लिए उसकी तह तक पहुंचना आवश्यक होता है. हिंसा अचानक ही बिना किसी वजह नहीं भड़कती. इतिहास साक्षी है कि घोर सामाजिक, आर्थिक और राजनैतिक असंतोष ही लोगों को हथियार उठाने पर मजबूर करती है. आज भारत का एक विशाल जनसमूह खुद को दुःख और निराशा के ऐसे जाल में फँसा पाता है जिससे देश की मुख्यधारा से जुड़े अपेक्षाकृत धनी लोगों का कोई सरोकार नहीं है. उदारीकरण के पिछले दो दशकों में पढ़े लिखे, शहरी युवक-युवतियों के लिए सैकड़ों नए आयाम खुलते नजार आये. लेकिन मानव संसाधन विकास के लिए ज़रूरी मूलभूत सुख साधन जैसे पेयजल, खाद्यान्न उपलब्धी, टीकाकरण, स्वास्थ्य सेवा, शिक्षा एवं व्यवसायिक प्रशिक्षण की अनुपस्थिति में देश के करोड़ों लोग भूख, गरीबी और निःशब्दता के शिकार होकर १९९१ से प्रारंभ हुई आर्थिक तेज़ी में भागीदारी से वंचित रह गए. यही नहीं, देश के अपेक्षाकृत मुट्ठी भर संपन्न लोगों की भौतिक सुख सुविधाओं की माँग की आपूर्ति के लिए नए नए उद्योग स्थापित किये जाने लगे. इस तरह के विकास को अंजाम देने के लिए ज़मीन, बिजली, पानी आदि की निरंकुश खपत की जाने लगी. कारखाने खड़े करने के लिए कई एकड़ जंगल व उपजाऊ ज़मीन साफ़ कर दिए गए, खनन कार्य वैध तथा उससे भी कई गुना अधिक अवैध रूप से किया जाने लगा, तथा ऊर्जा परियोजनाओं को रूप देने के लिए कई नदियों को बिना सोचे समझे खतरनाक रूप से बाँध दिया गया. इस पूरे घटनाक्रम में पर्यावरण के विनाश के साथ साथ विस्थापना की जटिल समस्या उत्पन्न हो गयी. किसान तथा जंगलों पर निर्भर लोगों को बिना उचित मुआवज़े, और कई बार पोलिस व किराये के गुंडों की मदद से, अपनी पुश्तैनी ज़मीन व आजीविका से हाथ धोने पर मजबूर कर दिया गया. सरकारी उदासीनता का शिकार होकर लाखों की तादाद में लाचारी महसूस करने वाले ये लोग तब पूरी तरह बेआवाज़ हो गए जब मीडिया फिल्म जगत, क्रिकेट तथा शहरी चकाचौंध को 'कवर' करने में एकनिष्टता से जुट गयी. ऐसे में इनमें से कुछ का प्रकट या अप्रकट रूप में हिंसा की ओर बढ़ना न्यायसंगत नहीं तो कम से कम स्वाभाविक ज़रूर प्रतीत होता है.

कोई भी जटिल समस्या विचारपूर्ण व बहुआयामी समाधान की माँग करती है. नक्सलवाद को ख़त्म करने के लिए प्रभावित लोगों के दिलों से निराशा के साए को प्रेम, सौहार्दता व ठोस तथा शर्तहीन मदद के प्रकाश से मिटाना होगा. सरकार की नक्सल प्रभावित जिलों की ओर ज़िम्मेदारी आर्थिक पुनर्निर्माण की योजनाओं की उद्घोषणा मात्र से पूरी नहीं हो सकती. इन योजनाओं को बिना किसी लापरवाही के तथा जवाबदेही व पारदर्शिता के साथ आकार और अंजाम देना अत्यावश्यक है. ये तभी संभव है जब नेताओं, दफ्तारशाहों और स्थानीय प्रशासन के बीच पनप रहे अनैतिक व नुक्सानदेह संसर्ग पर विराम लगा दिया जाता है. कई गैर सरकारी कंपनियों की बिना यथोचित क्षतिपूर्ति के तथा अवैध तरीके से खनिज, इमारती लकड़ी व उद्योग इकाई स्थापित करने की प्रवृति पर प्रतिबन्ध लगाने के लिए केंद्रीय कानूनों को सुधारने व दृढ़ता से लागू करने की आवश्यकता है.

जहाँ तक सी आर पी एफ के जवानों का सवाल है, हमें ये याद रखना होगा कि ये सचेतन, हाड़ मांस के बने इंसान हैं, न कि बटन दबाते ही चालू हो जाने वाले रोबोट जो अत्यल्प वेतन, हर तीसरे महीने तबादले तथा बदहाल चिकित्सीय सेवाओं की मार झेलते हुए भी अमानवीय परिस्थियों में बिना मानसिक या शारीरिक थकावट के निरंतर देश के प्रति अपनी ज़िम्मेदारी का निर्वाह कर सकते हैं. सरकार को इनकी ज़रूरतों की आपूर्ति बेहतर व नियमित तनख्वाह, पुख्ता स्वास्थ्य सेवाओं, जीवन बीमा, बच्चों की शिक्षा तथा तैनाती में स्थिरता के माध्यम से करने की ज़िम्मेदारी उठानी होगी. मूलतः एक 'कानून व प्रणाली' लागू करने वाली एजेंसी होने की वजह से इन लाठीधारी सिपाहियों को बीहड़ जंगलों में नक्सलियों द्वारा जारी गोरिल्ला युद्ध को समझने व जीतने के लायक प्रशिक्षण अधिकतर मिली ही नहीं. अतः वर्तमान में इनकी पीड़ाजनक व एकतरफा हार पर विराम लगाने के लिए इनके युद्ध कौशल को तत्काल ही सुधारने की, या एक ऐसे नए संयुक्त बल को स्थापित करने की ज़रुरत है जो नक्सली तत्वों में सैनिक भिडंत में जीत के प्रति संदेह उत्पन्न कर दे तथा उन्हें बातचीत व अन्य प्रजातान्त्रिक रास्तों से मतभेद का हल निकालने के लिए विवश कर दे.

विद्वान कहते हैं कि युद्ध में कोई विजयी नहीं होता. ये कहावत नक्सलवाद के साथ जारी संघर्ष के मामले में भी सटीक बैठती है. इस महाभारत में दोनों ओर एक ही मिट्टी से जन्मे लोग शामिल है. सच्ची भारतीय वह है जो हर देशवासी के सौभाग्य को अपना सौभाग्य माने और हर भारतीय आंसू को शोक का कारण समझे. अपने चारों ओर खड़ी स्वार्थ की दीवारों को तोड़कर समाज के हर व्यक्तिकी आवश्यकताओं व आकांक्षाओं को साथ लेकर चलने में ही चिरस्थायी एकता, प्रसन्नता और शांति संभव है.

In search of fun and some God

Recently, I attended a wedding in Deoghar, Jharkhand. The marriage was a splendid affair. I had the time of my life, dancing, chatting with the rather beleaguered jeejajee, and indulging in exactly the kind of silly behavior that always made me roll my eyes at the dimwittedness of giddy onscreen saalis.

The next morning, many of us felt it a duty to go to the nearby Baba Baidyanath temple. Coming all the way to the holy town and not visiting the sacred jyotirlingam didn't make much sense after all.

Suffused with early morning post- breakfast energy and enthusiasm, we decided to walk the distance between our hotel and the temple. The weather had turned pleasantly warm. Moreover, the unsaid agreement among us devoted pilgrims was that shunning the luxury of a car might help us earn 'brownie points' in our race to reach the closest to the Almighty.

The locality in which the temple is situated is quite like any other in the country. The streets become predictably narrower and the crowd denser as one gets closer to the temple grounds. Yet, once inside the mandir parisar, what first strikes any visitor is the sheer number of devotees thronging the place. Women, men and kids- all dressed in their brightest best- seem to converge in this single place of worship. Frenzied pandas sniff out uncertain visitors, materialize before them, and promise "trouble- free" entry into the main temple- the one that houses the Jyotirlingam itself. In return, he expects no less than a few hundreds, undoubtedly a meager price to be paid in order to be able to meet GOD Himself.

The main temple throws up a few surprises of its own. A solitary door acts as both the entrance and the exit. Crossing the threshold, you find yourself in a narrow, claustrophobic corridor, being pushed and pulled at the same time, wondering if this is how you feel just before you say your final goodbye. The corridor leads you into the small area in the middle of which the jyotirlingam is positioned. You look at other (visibly) more experienced devotees and do exactly what they do- fold your hand, throw the flowers and gangajal on the lingam, and then start thinking what will be there for lunch. That is exactly when your sweet, hired- help- of- a- panda hollers into your ears, "YOU NEED TO SIT AND PRAYYY!!" So you sit down and brayyy.

The battle to get out of the mandir is so tortuous and suffocating that you feel like Harry Potter trying to reach the surface of the sea, with the effect of gillyweed already starting to wear out. The faceless mass then literally carries you out and you step out of the intimidating shrine into the sun, breathe in gulps of air and promise yourself, "never again."

And just when you think the worse is over, you notice a beheaded goat at a distance- a bali, an offering to please God and keep Him good humored. The headless goat keeps flailing its limbs, twisting in pain, obviously believing it is still alive. And then you try to recall if it was Einstein who once said he could not conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures.

In today's day and age, religion does not pervade our day- to- day lives, or dictates our actions in as decisive a way as it did, say, a century ago. Yet, many of us still find it impossible to wiggle our way out of the complex web of dated and logic- defying (washing stone structures with milk and honey? Ringing bells to wake God up from His slumber?) rites and rituals. We join hands and bow before idols. We tie the red thread on our wrists. We expect married women to wear sindoor, and widows, white. And we do all this unthinkingly.

So religious rituals still remain the opium of the masses. By masses, I do not mean Asimov's ignorant, gullible and yet- to- evolve multitudes "out there". Rather, it includes educated, scientifically aware, modern young men and women like you and me.
And it is only after we go on a holy pilgrimage ourselves that the true meaning of Marx's words hits us hard. Before any puja or holy trip, we forget that it is simply in the faces of men and women that we ought to see God. And no matter how excruciatingly uncomfortable the experience might be, we emerge out of these with a weird sense of… accomplishment and tell ourselves,

"Ha. Three dhaams down, one more to go!"

Has Indian Media broadened its Reach only to Narrow its Focus?

Small Screen. Big Strides. Bigger Challenges:

The current phase in the evolution of television in India is in many ways an improvement over the one that it followed- the time when Doordarshan was the only channel available to Indian viewers. The owners of TV media have realized that in a country of over a billion, the audience cannot possibly be a homogenous lot. Today, with so many channels already on air and so many more ready to be launched in the near future, the viewer seems spoilt for choices. As rival networks vie with each other to occupy the top spot in TRP ratings, competition between them has intensified and resulted in an inundation of programs. In a way, the attempt of the media has been to cater to the diverse needs and interests of their collective audience. From 24- hour news channels to 24- hour cartoon channels to 24- hour science and technology channels- television in India shows it all. Also, most major private networks have diversified and are running many channels at the same time, each airing programs of a genre different from the other. In India alone, the STAR TV network, for example, runs as many as seventeen channels that include Star Plus, several regional language channels, and Star Cricket.

And yet, there are more than a few voices that have expressed dissatisfaction with the way television in India in shaping up. They say that while the number of programs has multiplied many times over ever since the inception of the cable age in India, the quality of the same has remained stagnant.

The most vociferous protests against the narrowness of focus of TV programs have come against two widely popular genres of programs- News and general entertainment. In a recent interview, Sevanti Ninan, media columnist and editor, the Hoot, said, ”Liberalization has led to the media targeting readers as consumers rather than citizens. There is a burgeoning of frothy supplements, loads of newsprint devoted to non-issues… Media is increasingly targeting the upwardly mobile consumers in their cities. It's a serious issue because agriculture, education, employment and health need more coverage than they presently get. We have lots of space devoted to food as a lifestyle thing. None devoted to hunger which stalks substantial sections of the population.” What applies to print journalism holds true for television too. IIMC professor Pradeep Mathur says,” Television media has actually started catering to the needs and interests of only fifty per cent of the country’s population. Their focus is almost entirely on the middle and upper class, urban and educated people of India, which has rendered invisible the issues and concerns of the vast majority of the poor and the voiceless Indians”. So like the current boom in economy, the expansion of the media’s reach is limited to certain segments of the society. High profile arrests and scandals, Bollywood, cricket and the stock market hog most of the space on television news. In a lecture to the Radio and TV students of IIMS, media personality Suhasini Haider articulated a disheartening fact- the Aishwarya Rai- Abhishek Bachchan wedding got around 1200 hours of media coverage, while farmers’ suicides in Vidarbha, even at their peak, got less than 200. Lifestyle and movie based shows run uninterrupted for the whole year, while the Uphaar Cinema fire, the Kanishka Bombing, and the Bhopal Gas tragedy get media attention only on their respective anniversaries.

Ironically, the coverage of even the few favorite subjects of the media lack critical and in- depth analysis, and remains superficial, predictable and one- sided. Most TV channels fail to focus on more than just a few aspects of a person or issue. Rakhi Sawant is almost always portrayed as a loud- mouthed, shallow opportunist. Shah Rukh Khan is always the adorable, down- to- earth superstar. All of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s directorial vetures are pronounced flawless and average around eight and a half stars out of five in most film review shows. Tendulkar loyalists all but convince viewers of his ability to dominate international cricket till 2038. Very few channels have the ability (courage?) to explore previously ignored angles that might lead to uncomfortable questions to revered individuals or institutions. Most prefer paying lip service to ‘heroes’ while simultaneously entrapping and maligning non- entities like Shatki Kapoor.

Graham Greene once said, “Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism”. As far as news channels are concerned, the mad rush for high TRPs, which in turn result in better revenues, have resulted in many of them focusing less on the authenticity and relevance of news stories, and more on how to captivate the attention of the viewers, even if it means sensationalizing an issue or misrepresenting/ doctoring facts. Investigative journalism that once exposed, say, miscreant politicians or botched government policies, has now given way to cheap, sensationalist sting operations whose success depends upon how well they can stimulate base, voyeuristic tendencies of viewers. The recent Uma Khurana fiasco is a case in point. Today, all know the truth that Ms. Khurana was the victim of a ghastly conspiracy. Yet, what nags our conscience is that the mental and physical torture of an innocent woman could have been prevented had Live India bothered to first check the validity of the accusing reporter’s allegations before airing the false news. In fact, the growing dependence of TV news media on sting operations highlights the disturbing fact that between the challenging path of smart investigation, focused research and objective analysis, and short cuts that involve deceit and entrapment to grab damning audio/ visuals, more and more media people are opting for the latter.

Television news on the whole has become so cluttered with superfluous non- information that the search of a viewer for relevant news on TV often becomes an exasperating exercise. A viewer who switches on his/her TV to get information on, say, the current stand- off between the BJP and the JD (S) in Karnataka might first have to suffer a slew of senseless ‘news’ stories such as those on Sai Baba’s miraculous, self- elongating garland, the ‘reincarnation’ of Kalpana Chawla as a little girl from Khurja, or the existence of ‘ghosts’ in a locked room of a police station in Jaunpur before being obliged with a coverage on the Karnataka government issue.

Amidst this pandemonium of important and frivolous news, true and fabricated sting- operations, and biased and judgmental coverage, the focus on truth or the larger picture often gets lost. The coverage of, say, police’s arrests of sex workers invariably project sex workers as criminals to be shunned, instead of looking into the grim reality of the situation that forced these women to the margins of the society.

American advertising executive William Bernbach once said, “All of us who professionally use the media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.” As people involved in the business of TV programming in India, we need to realize this. It is important for us to get rid of our myopic visions and broaden our reach in the true sense. If we resolve to reach out to the masses of the nation and develop a critical, multi- perspective take on issues, we can rest assured of the present success of television to sustain in the long run.

Anupriya Kumar

Female President:A reason to celebrate?

Why do I, an avowed feminist, not feel ecstatic at the news of a woman being chosen as a contestant for the post of the president of India? Why do I find the assertion made by a normally astute journalist like Vinod Mehta, that the UPA government’s decision to float Pratibha Patil’s name as its candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections is a reason for advocates of gender equality to rejoice, a highly misplaced one?

The answer is simple enough- I do not see this incident as an outcome of any larger, sustained effort on the part of the government, or rather, successive governments in India to bring about meaningful and far- reaching improvements in the life of the average Indian woman. Instead, the sordid reality behind this facade is the UPA’s desire to play a political masterstroke, a clever tactic that seeks to get a low- profile presidential candidate who’ll remain grateful to those who’ve brought her instant fame and, in all probability, might help her secure the most prestigious office of the nation, while also aiming at rendering voices, that are skeptical about and dissatisfied with its (UPA’s) gender related policies, silent. Indeed, it appears that the UPA hopes to use the benign, motherly appearance of a woman, who is nevertheless competent enough to have been the governor of a state, as the pretty wall hanging that hides the rotting patch of wall behind it. The female literacy rate continues to be abysmally low. Female infanticide has become the norm in some of the country’s most well off regions. The passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill seems like a distant possibility that might or might not be realized. A woman presidential candidate will be able to veer public attention away from certain highly disturbing facts as far as the current social, political and economic status of Indian women is concerned.

Or so the UPA thinks. As a nation that has finally arrived at an awareness of the ingenious games politicians play to fool those very people who vote them into power in the first place, we should refuse to be duped by the government’s latest act of appeasement. Let us not allow our politicians to get away with a gesture that only seems grand and noble, but remains, all the same, a mere gesture. A female president is not, and can never be an adequate substitute for equal opportunities in education, jobs and legislature, or freedom from domestic violence and physical and mental harassment at work for women. The personal success and achievements, however phenomenal, of isolated individual women hardly indicates overall prosperity of women in general. After all, if this were true, wouldn’t Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan or Khaleeda Zia’s/ Sheikh Haseena’s Bangladesh have been paradise on earth for women, or at least more liberated than, say the USA, which we Indians keep mocking as a country which has never had a woman as its president?

The Problem with Beauty Pageants

Beauty pageants in the modern times have been a rage with people in countries across the world ever since 1950s. In India, the idea of a beauty contest caught popular imagination in 1994. I clearly recall that as a curious pre-teenager with an infinitely impressionable mind, I had rejoiced at the news of Sushmita Sen becoming the first Indian woman to clinch the coveted Ms Universe title in 1994. The country was still riding the joy wave of the tall and elegant Ms Sen’s victory when later that year, another Indian girl Aishwarya Rai ‘beat’ contestants from as many as 87 countries to take home the Miss World title. Many more ‘Miss Indias’ followed suit. In short, in the period from mid till late 90s, India became the new ‘Venezuela’ of beauty pageants. The Indian beauty, long neglected by the western world, had finally ‘arrived’.
Time shatters many-a-reassuring illusions. As I grew up, I became increasingly aware of the unfair nature of these contests and the insidious effect they have upon society in general and young women in particular. Firstly, while most contemporary, struggling-to-be-politically-correct organizers of beauty contests might shout at the top of their voices that these contests are as much about ‘brains’ as they are about ‘external appearances’, the truth remains that these contests are open to only those women who possess a certain ‘look’. This means that you might be the author of a Nobel- nominated book, winner of an international Sudoku contest, and have an IQ of 169, unless you are tall, slim, and ‘sharp-featured’, you cannot come even remotely close to being considered a potential beauty contestant. And as nearly all beauty contestants are almost equally tall, slim and sharp-featured, they appear to the layperson’s eyes, not a group of individuals with distinct identities of their own, but a bunch of identical clones whose only claim to individuality are their finger print reports. To make matters worse, once a girl enters the contest, she is made to undergo a rigorous ‘grooming’ session by the end of which, she acquires the walk, smile and accent of a kind which is common to thousands of girls besotted with the idea of wearing a silly tiara and an even sillier smile, and waving to a crowd which is wondering,” is this Ms Armenia, or Ms Albania, or just a big Mis(s) take?”
Another worrying aspect of beauty pageants is the shockingly systematic way in which they label a certain look ‘perfect’ for the entire womankind. If the winner of a ‘beauty’ contest is tall, fair, thin and sharp- featured, then the winner of an ‘ugly’ contest will invariably be a woman who is short, fat, dark and, (for want of a better adjective) blunt- featured. This clear demarcation between good and bad looks is reinforced by a certain enormously powerful and influential section of the media, which gets paid in millions by cosmetic companies, weight-reduction and other appearance- enhancing clinics. The average woman finds it hard to remain indifferent to such an overwhelmingly influential marketing propaganda, and develops a sense of dissatisfaction regarding her appearance. Those who don’t boast of the perfect 34-24-36 vital stats are often pushed, consciously or unconsciously, into indiscriminate fasting, excessive and unplanned exercising, or even taking weight reduction pills. Such desperate measures often take a toll on their health, and weaken their bodies’ ability to resist diseases, cause anorexia, fatigue, anxiety and even depression in the long run.
The solution to this problem of course lies in our minds. While it might be easier said than done, we should ensure that our desire to remain healthy takes precedence over the longing to possess thin (mal- nourished?) bodies. Starving yourself to death might ensure you a beauty contest title today, but eating a proper, healthy diet promises a better tomorrow. Also, one must also take heart from the fact that even in today’s materialistic world intelligence, manners, and most importantly, kindness and compassion are respected much more than fair complexions, tall stature, large eyes and sharp noses. You can, even today, choose between Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta on the one hand, and Mother Teresa and Dr.Kiran Bedi on the other as your role models.
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead. Take your pick.