Telescope

But let8217;s take nothing away from the endorsement itself. It8217;s pretty indisputable that television has played a significant role in changing the modern world: physically and mentally.It is great as an information-source, a revolutionary and an entertainer besides being the most trivial pursuit in the universe given the complete passivity it demands of those who pursue it.

You have only to think of last week8217;s highjacking to appreciate its role as the first information reporter of all major events, especially accidents, disasters, major assassinations, etc.. And if you consider channels such as Discovery, you know how much you can learn from it.

Television: it has helped pull down walls Berlin, bring down governments USSR, East European and discredit political systems communism; it has helped make average men into famous Presidents Ronald Reagan and successful Presidents into little men Bill Clinton; it has transformed the ordinary into the mythic Princess Diana8217;s car accident and the terrible into the beautiful wasn8217;t the bombing of Baghdad, a Diwali fireworks spectacle?.

Television: the hidden persuader, the most persuasive promoter of the cause of capitalism, themarket economy, the consumer society, the West8217;s mind, manners and morals, movies, music and madness. And above all, of its pop-corny culture. And now its doing the same for our films, music, mind, manners8230;

If sports is the best brand name in the world, blame it on television. If sports is the greatest unifier, attribute it to television: more people, across the universe, watched the last soccer World Cup than any other event. To think of soccer, cricket, tennis, basketball, the Olympics, the other World Cups even golf, chess and rubgy is to think of television.

Singlehandedly, the box has shifted the sports arena from the playing fields to the squatting couches: games are what thousands play and billions watch.Television: it has shrunk the world small enough to fit into a 12-inch TV screen; it reduced the concept of time and space to the meaningless before the Internet was conceived: live broadcasts from the outer space or any where on earth, ensure that experiences can be instantaneous andsimultaneous.

Need we say more? Television has become the site for everything: if it didn8217;t happen on television, it didn8217;t happen. Therein lies its other significance: it has excluded all that it does not include which happens to be the better part of the world: billions, every where, may enjoy access to the remote control metaphorically speaking but they do not control what is shown. Media barons do. Perhaps television8217;s single, gravest shortcoming is that it is mass only in its audience. A bittersweet irony: television, which has been a liberator in more senses than one, which has helped establish or defend democracy, is undemocratic. Undemocratic even in its variety:

which is limited to the same programmes in different language. Television had the supreme power of public service because it crossed over the barriers of literacy as easily as geographical boundaries. In Britain, then Europe and many developing countries thereafter including India, it was promoted as the medium of change withhigh-minded purposes: to educate, to inform and through the two to transform societies and mindsets.

That was always going to be a bit of dream: can a medium which is technologically expensive and complex be deployed for community service? To serve the needs of ordinary people, without material recompense, when it can be exploited for material gains by a small group of people who control it?

In India, we awoke to the possibilities of television like a late-riser. And committed the same errors the pioneers did but for different reasons:we centralised television control; we placed it in the keep of governments and bureaucrats. We didn8217;t place the camera in the hands of the average man or woman and let them decide what they wanted to see through the lens. Neither did we leave it to those who may have had the power to educate: the Rays, the Ramans or the Radhakrishnans.

Instead, we let it lie moribund, allowed commercial interests to propel it into the entertainment business. Into the same stuff Publicservice broadcasting has become a boring word, and television can be anything but boring. Never that. Give us Bollywood and Tellywood8217;s dream sequences any day that8217;s entertainment, that8217;s television. But as events have proved this year, it is also information: the Lahore bus ride, Kargil, Orissa, elections8230; It8217;s said that the next century will belong to those who dot their names rather than their i8217;s or forehead; that the Internet will fulfill the unrealised dreams of television: it will be truly democratic, it will place its power and potential at the fingertips of the cerfer. Maybe.

In which case it will join television, literally in terms of the convergence of the two technologies and in its broad-based mass appeal. But for some time to come, they will remain discrete. As of now, Internet is a private affair, television nothing if not public. The first appeals to me8217;, the second to all of us. Maybe that is what the next century will offer us: unity in diversity. Happy new year.