Quality Television

On Monday, a new television channel was launched in India, a channel that will take us into the heart and lives of our beloved politicians and telecast their sojourns on the Parliament floor.

Named 'Lok Sabha TV' or LSTV, it will broadcast live proceedings of the Lower House of the Indian Parliament. This is just one, but the main, aspect of the channel's bouquet of offerings. In addition, according to their ad in the newspapers, "LSTV brings you:

* Value added programming including "Know Your MP", "Review By The Chair", "The Issue of The Week", "Village Voice" etc.
* Cultural programmes such as music and dance, plays especially staged for LSTV, fortnightly film and more....
* Programmes on our national heritage and culture."

So thats the quality television line-up we have for you citizens of India. Now we can see our politicians BS on live TV! Like they say, you can't beat technology. Now we will get to hear our Home Minister about how our 'misguided youth' are busy killing innocent citizens but we should not do anything about it because they are only kids.

Now we will get to see our dear Education Minister tell the nation about why we should destroy our higher education sector so that the Con'gress can maintain its grasp on power and if things turn out right, maybe Her Majesty can make him her next Prime Minister.

We will get to see the collective Congress leadership sprawl at the feet of Her Majesty and profusely express their love and admiration for her. Oh, and also dilligently pass the Office of Profit Bill so that Her Majesty can be protected from the boomerang which turned back to hit her instead of her opposition. Tsk tsk, so much work, so little time.










This is the logo of the new television channel. The motto is "Asato Maa Sadgamaya", which in English means, "take me from lies to the truth". This is the hope I have from this channel too. With increased focus on the working of a politician, there will be more discretion and responsibility shown by the politician. Perhaps they will realize that with potentially lakhs of us watching them, maybe its time they cut out the bull shit and actually make sense.

Its not that Parlimentary proceedings have never been broadcast before. The main channel of Doordarshan always relayed the live proceedings of the Zero Hour, but thats just one hour of quality tv, and its Zero Hour, where real issues and the current bills are not the main topics of discussion.

The channel has already been soft launched since May 10, and is a brain child of our speaker, Shri Somnath Chatterjee, one of the stalwarts who would have lost his job if it was not for the Office of Profit Bill to be brought into the house.

This channel is only for the Lower House, so what about the Rajya Sabha? Hey, I want to see the Rajya Sabha too, because as Unny from the Indian Express says, "They must telecast Rajya Sabha too. We miss Jaya Bachchan’s last laugh."

New channel to bring Lok Sabha closer to people

While public broadcaster Doordarshan will continue to telecast the Rajya Sabha's proceedings, the new channel, called Lok Sabha Television (LSTV), aims to show people how their representatives function.

'We are striving to meet the people's right to view proceedings,' said the channel's chief executive Bhaskar Ghose, who is also the media advisor to Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.

Parliament's lower house meets for a total of about 90 days a year. 'How we keep the channel going for the remaining 270-odd days is a huge challenge,' he said.

'To meet that, we will go beyond the proceedings - to the streets to get the public reaction, to the constituencies of the members to see how parliament is perceived and how funds allotted are utilised,' Ghose told IANS.

The channel would not confine itself to parliamentary proceedings, but also tackle current affairs, take up current issues in and outside parliament and carry out analysis. 'We will go well beyond the proceedings,' he said.

LSTV would be a bilingual channel - using English and Hindi in its bulletins and commentaries.

While BBC telecasts the proceedings of the British parliament and C-Span, a consortium of cable operators report the US Congress, senate and the meetings of its various committees, India's new initiative is billed as arguably the world's only non-partisan channel that is not owned or funded by the government.

A result of Chatterjee's efforts, the channel would be, in a sense, a kind of birthday gift to the Lok Sabha speaker who turns 77 Tuesday.Chatterjee is the custodian of the channel, which is funded by the Lok Sabha secretariat.Some advertising revenue could also be generated if public sector enterprises take up sponsorships on the channel, Ghose said.
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The interesting piece of news is that the channel is not funded by the government, funded instead by the Lok Sabha secretariat, but at the same time one will have to be very skeptical of the channel being non-partisan. Successive governments of India, like most governments everywhere in the world, increasingly try to bring their bias and agendas into media programmings, and for a government as given to agendas as the Con'gress, I highly doubt this channel will be without its influence.

But its a start, and yes, let the circus begin, now with its own dedicated 24X7 channel.