Opinion Campaign Mode
TV occupies the moral high ground on domestic abuse,superstition and unemployment.
Every year,some TV channel goes to a village near Ujjain to cover an archaic rite in which men lie face down on a road to be trampled by the cattle of the community. All the cattle,in ceaseless motion,like sheep in the waking nightmares of insomniacs. ANI did the story in 2012 and this year,it was the turn of News 24. It is apparently an ancient practice,the locals declare that they are hugely satisfied with it,but the media decries it as an embarrassing throwback. Why is the administration a mute spectator? demanded News 24. Stop this superstitious tamasha! Why? The big story here is that India has an event like the running of the bulls and the palio which have helped to make Pamplona and Siena huge tourist destinations,and Incredible India probably doesnt even know about it.
India is taken up with the running of the mad cows. The case of an air hostess,who had locked up her underage domestic help and gone overseas,broke a week ago and now,a BSP MP and his wife are in custody for allegedly torturing domestics,one of them to death. Demanding ethics in the home,Sagarika Ghoses Face the People wrested the moral high ground from its owner Arnab Goswami,who was more taken with the idea that two MPs had been arrested in 24 hours the other being the BJP MP Dinu Solanki,in connection with the murder of the Gir forest activist Amit Jethwa.
The idea also engaged Ghoses guest Kiran Bedi,who spoke of the poor quality of people who come to the legislatures (Isnt that class by another name?) but the host kept the focus on the abuse of domestic workers. She wanted viewers to take a pledge to make their homes sites of exchange and caring,rather than engines of class differentiation. The programme concluded that the yawning gulf of class allows the incredibly powerful to prey upon the incredibly powerless. Extremely well-meaning but,as @tehseenp tweeted ironically on the show,many viewers probably engaged underage help.
Of course,TV has little time for such stories. Its busy putting the country in campaign mode. Even India TV,which is usually preoccupied with sundry astrologers,resplendently jewelled snake oil salesmen and surprisingly interesting shows on the countrys lesser-known pilgrimages,is on the campaign trail. Its Ghamasan Live show from Gwalior had all the lineaments of a WWF wrestling fixture,with cameras swivelling wildly amidst a screaming audience,but they turned out to be unemployed people and embittered entrepreneurs. With voters feeling financially embattled,making a living will be a live wire issue in the coming election. India TV did the show in its own high-strung way but for once,it was actually sober programming.
Times Now was shockingly sober on issues raised by former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair about the Mars orbiter mission which,he believes,was rushed and will not deliver value for money. One would have expected the channel to regard a space mission as a patriotic venture and to demonise its critics as traitors,but the response was surprisingly restrained. Goswami sweetly asked Nair if he was not being too harsh on his former colleagues,thats all. Meanwhile,IBN7 located some of the 8,000 Indians who have signed up for Mars One,the one-way mission from the Netherlands scheduled for 2023. While the people interviewed seemed to know what they would face,a scientist scoffed that they had picked it up from social media. This is just the beginning of a story that will develop over a decade. Lots of time left to learn.
pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
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