There are those who cavil about the waste of finite resources entailed in the latest TV serial in town. Others dread its soporific properties which have the potential to put an entire nation of continental proportions to sleep. But these objections have been brushed aside. Tuesday saw the launch of two dedicated channels that will bring you the proceedings of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha — live, minute by precious minute. The camera’s gaze, which had hitherto been confined to Question Hour and Zero Hour, will now be expanded to encompass every gesture made and every word uttered in Parliament’s hallowed precincts.Here is a cast of hundreds, men and women who have flourished in the public space. Some are veterans of the screen, professionally trained by Bollywood to capture mass attention. Men and women like Sunil Dutt, Hema ‘Basanti’ Malini, Garam Dharam and the like. Others have had professional training thrust on them. People like Dilip Singh Judeo who have already displayed their powers of dialogue delivery before hidden cameras. Others still are natural orators. An Atal Bihari Vajpayee who can be depended upon to pluck a shair out of the stormy air or unite a divided House in a frisson of laughter; a Jaipal Reddy with a thesaurus inside of him who once gave the Lok Sabha the word “humongous” to digest; a Laloo Prasad Yadav, his impromptu skills of mimicry and repartee utilised as an armour against the splashes of taint paint that have come his way; a navjotcomelately, threatening to drown Parliament in a sea of Siddhuisms. Then there is the glamour quotient to consider: Sonia Gandhi’s winter wear, Shivraj Patil’s safari jackets, Manvendra Singh’s Rajasthani pugrees, Sushma Swaraj’s splendorous silks and Renuka Chowdhury’s gorgeous georgettes.Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has voiced the hope that television 24X7 will make our parliamentarians more responsible and their debates more purposeful. Our expectations are less lofty. It would quite suffice if our MPs give those execrable sindhoor serials that are proliferating on TV screens around the country, a run for their money. It’s M(P)TV. Enjoy!
