I’m sitting down to write anything after
such a long time that I can feel a certain excitement and nervousness in my
thoughts. It’s surely been a while.
I was home the entire last week, and got to
see after a long time what are the popular television shows that occupy most of
the Hindi speaking households in the North. There are some very well produced
shows, while most are just run of the mill sensationalist and
hyper-melodramatic family serials.
Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate seems to be
doing very well, and while many are very quick to label him an opportunist and
that he is merely repeating the same problems that everybody knows that India
is facing, it is really refreshing to see such an eminent personality bring
them into the national limelight. If it takes Aamir’s superstardom to get the
average television viewing Indian to face the grim realities of our society, he
has all my support.
Indians love patting themselves on the
back, and our collective insecurities and touchiness are stuff of legend. When
an eminent non-Indian personality criticizes our country or our society or any
of our mannerisms, we become extremely offended and our English media goes to
town drumming up its sensationalism. At the other side, when a famous
non-Indian (preferably Caucasian) personality or celebrity praises India or
Indians, it becomes national headlines. Our love for a white man’s praise is
amazing, and so is our hurt when we aren’t liked.
The reason I state this is because when we
like patting ourselves on our backs, we tend to pretend most of our problems do
not exist. In fact, even when they do, they tend to become great media
sensationalist stories. For example, thousands of bore wells are dug across
India without permission and they greatly deplete that region’s underground
water reserves, but bore well stories only surface when a child gets stuck in
them, and after a while, is either rescued or dies.
Last week at home I realized that everybody
is hooked into television for good or for bad. Horoscopes are very popular on
vernacular television, and every Hindi ‘news’ channel has their in-house Pandit
ji or shastri ji or Guru ji with the day’s forecasts, and solutions to various
problems in life.
Looking at television, I have always
wondered how in the world does an average Indian have so much appetite for
politics and news. There are dozens of news channels in every language, and
while many of them have become infotainment channels, most are still content to
simply report every big and small political and human interest story as if it
is the most sensational event in humanity to have taken place at that moment.
The parlays for the election of the
President, the Vice President, and many other office bearers have been
successfully turned into political potboilers by all those involved. For the
media, nothing pleases them more than to see conspiracy theories and
politicians going at each other on each and every decision that needs to be
taken in the country.
The politician themselves, well, we know
love their limelight. It’s actually very sad to see how much Indian politics
has degenerated into something crude, unprofessional, and very unbecoming of a
country that doesn’t stop boasting about its largest democracy. I am beginning
to realize that when it comes to our democracy and political systems, I think
all our lives we are fed with superlatives, such as our human demographics, our
voting systems, our election structures, but I doubt if a vast majority of
Indians have ever looked objectively at our political system and ever tried to
understand it. Children have a subject called civics, clubbed with history for
the most part, that is supposed to teach them about our political structures,
our rights and responsibilities, our constitution, our national bird and animal
etc, but I do not think we have any understanding of our political system. For
example, India’s stance on foreign trade, GM foods, IPR, international relations
etc, are things that are best left to a select few in the Government, and most
Indians aren’t even aware of what they mean. In fact, for the most part, being
a part of democracy, many times what the politicians think the people want goes
completely against what the country needs.
Indian diplomacy is one area where I feel
there is a glaring and dangerous gap between what is right for the country
versus what the masses think is right. For one, the political class of India
has a deep seated belief that Indian Muslims sympathise with other Muslims even
if they are tyrants and enemies. I really believe this is not true, but there
are many instances where the Government of India puts the safety and security
of this country at grave risk only because it believes that it is appeasing the
sensibilities of Indian Muslims.
However, for the national media, I think
national security has become a game, and given the fireworks that the average
Indian gets to see on television, I really doubt they even fathom the gravity of
putting our national security at risk. We are used to being killed by
terrorists, but if the enemies or traitors of this country manage to wipe out
not hundreds but thousands in one go, then what’ll happen? The politicians will
begin operation blame game and operation clean up, and the media will pull each
other down like crabs in trying to grab the juiciest morsels while shouting
itself hoarse, and the common man will discuss it with family and friends and
express anger and then wish for God to step in.
Yes, God, that was the other big debate
that went on in my head constantly as I saw more and more depressing stories of
human trauma and injustice. I’ll leave that for another post.
