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Saturday, May 15, 1999
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Saturday, May 15, 1999 |
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Chandigarh:
more than a war of words
NATO
ACTION |
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Print media’s bid to compete
with TV
DD
leaves viewers high & dry
In
defence of unfair means
Notes
and Comments |
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Chandigarh: more than a war of words THE current tug of war between the Inspector-General of Police and the Home Secretary, Chandigarh, can be seen in terms of the larger police versus bureaucracy syndrome. It can also be viewed as a clash of personalities between two assertive but honourable government functionaries. Each one has her own style of working and administrative mannerism. Mrs Kiran Bedi is a high-profile police officer who makes her presence felt and asserts her authority wherever she is posted. She has a mind of her own. She knows her job and believes in transparent functioning for the good of the police force and society at large. Her popularity is directly linked with her reputation as a no-nonsense person and a doer. Small wonder that within a few days of her posting in Chandigarh, she struck a rapport with the varied sections of the city's population. Mrs Anuradha Gupta is an old-timer in the City Beautiful, having served the place for over three years. She is invariably sure of her targets and goals and goes about her task in a subtle but determined manner. She is obviously familiar with the entrenched power trappings and power settings in the Union Territory headed, as it is, by an active Administrator who also happens to be a titular head of a neighbouring state. Things have now reached a flash point with Mrs Bedi sending an open petition to Lt-Gen B. K. N. Chhibber (retd) on behalf of the police force, seeking an independent inquiry into the functioning of the Home Secretary. Mrs Gupta has pooh-poohed the whole petition as an attempt to intimidate the Administration into reverting the suspension of five police officials alleged to be guilty of forgery and related misconduct. Mrs Bedi has, in turn, charged Mrs Gupta with unduly interfering in the police working and "usurping" the powers of the police authorities. This is a serious charge which does require a thorough and independent probe. Notwithstanding the reported cooling down of tempers of the two officers, the basic issue raised by the new police chief remains as relevant as ever. Should the policemen be led from the front by their own officers or should they be subjected to the operational control of the bureaucracy? Not everything is in
order in the Administration. There have been allegations
and counter-allegations of all sorts. Even the media has
not been spared. The whole administrative setup is marked
by incohesive functioning and misplaced direction. This
is mainly because outsiders often influence the
decision-making mechanism of the Administration. We
expect the Administration to work for the good of the
people of Chandigarh rather than act at the prompting of
vested interests. The City Beautiful needs a cleaner and
more accountable administration. Perhaps, the time has
come to revert to the system of having a chief
commissioner to professionally run the affairs of the
Union Territory as was the case prior to the days of
militancy in the region. |
Retail political bazaar IN the recent political drama, which could have been called a farce had the consequences been not so grave, the spotlight was on the smaller parties and they enjoyed their temporary "eminence" to the hilt. What they lacked in numerical strength, they more than made up by way of lungpower and nuisance value. When the balance of power is so poised that even one or two MPs can tilt the scales, the antics of the kind witnessed, to the mortification of all sensible persons, are almost inevitable. Nor is this a one-time freak phenomenon because all learned predictions point to a similar fractured mandate in the September-October general election. In such a dismal backdrop, the call of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, to bring about electoral reforms so that the political parties getting less than 10 per cent vote are derecognised makes eminent sense. The nation has already suffered a lot and the sooner the necessary corrective measures are applied the better. The number of parties taking part in elections has kept pace with the runaway population explosion. As many as 650 of them are registered with the Election Commission. During the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, seven "national parties", 30 "state political parties" and 139 "registered unrecognised political parties" took part in the election process. The state parties are those which attained a prescribed degree of presence in the foregoing Lok Sabha elections; those which failed remained unrecognised political parties while a "state party" which attained a presence in four States or more earned the designation of a national party. From the category of "registered unrecognised political parties", 127 secured no seats at all. Out of 871 candidates sponsored by these 139 parties, 744 got their deposits forfeited. The more important point is that some candidates of the "state political parties" and "registered unrecognised political parties" did manage to win a few seats and later used these as bargaining chips. The question before the
country is whether it should allow a few of these
flippantly elected people to blackmail the entire polity
in the name of providing freedom to everyone to contest
an election? Surely, this right cannot be absolute. Only
recently, the Election Commission put certain curbs on
Independents. Such checks are all the more needed on
political parties. The demand that has now been raised by
the Prime Minister had earlier been voiced by many lovers
of democracy. Veteran social activist H.D.Shourie has
posed some vital questions to which the country must find
answers: When the category "national party" has
been defined on the basis of specific criteria, why
should any party other than a national party participate
in the Lok Sabha elections, which are on a national
scale? And why should "unrecognised political
parties" be allowed to participate in the elections,
either to the Lok Sabha or in the States? His Common
Cause has also suggested a way out. If any state party or
unrecognised party wishes to sponsor candidates for Lok
Sabha elections, it should join forces with a national
party of its choice. Of course, "independents"
who do not wish to join any party will continue to have
the right to contest elections. While electoral laws like
the Representation of People Act of 1951 can only be
amended by Parliament, the Symbols Order of 1968 can be
amended by the Election Commission itself. One hopes that
the Election Commission will have the determination and
the next government the numerical strength to do the
needful. |
Benazir in a bind AS the Americans would say, the game seems to be up for former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Her dwindling flock of supporters may not quite agree with the Supreme Court's reasons for rejecting her appeal against the conviction on corruption charges. However, the apex court of the country has not rejected her petition for want of merit. The appeal challenged the judgement of the Lahore High Court sentencing Ms Bhutto and her husband Mr Asif Ali Zardari to a jail term of five years besides disqualifying them from holding any public office. Mr Zardari, who too challenged the conviction, was allowed to retain the membership of the National Assembly till the disposal of the case by the Supreme Court. Ms Bhutto has not been given similar relief because the Supreme Court's rules framed in 1980 require the appellant to surrender first before the designated authority for the judicial process to be set in motion. Ms Bhutto, who was in London when the Lahore High Court pronounced her and Mr Zardari guilty of the charges of corruption brought against them, is currently on an extended stay in Dubai with her three children. To be fair, Ms Bhutto's reaction when the news of her conviction was broken to her in London was that of someone having at last been found out. If she is innocent, she
has thus far acted otherwise. She should have taken the
first flight to Pakistan, after the ill-tidings were
conveyed to her, to defend herself and her family's name.
As leader of the main opposition party she should have
shown more faith in the country's judiciary instead of
questioning the integrity of the Judge who sentenced her
and Mr Zardari to five years in jail. In her absence the
Pakistan People's Party is on the verge of falling apart.
Even those who had respect for the Bhutto name have begun
to turn against a leader who is willing to abandon not
only the political party founded by her father but also
her husband, who is being made to wear prison clothes
after the Lahore High Court's verdict. She has only two
choices after the rejection of her appeal by the Supreme
Court. One is to put the children in the custody of
friends abroad and return home to challenge her
conviction and resume her political campaign against
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members by
producing legally tenable evidence of the acts of
corruption they are allegedly involved in. She does face
the additional risk of facing the same fate that befell
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late seventies. The other
option is to settle down with her children in whichever
country is willing to provide her political asylum. She
must, however, remember that flight is invariably
interpreted as admission of guilt. The Supreme Court
order has indeed put Pakistan's former Prime Minister in
a bind. |
NATO
ACTION THUNDERING fighter jets and fire streaking Tomahawk missiles over Serbia may make an impressive picture on a TV screen, but the suffering humanity due to these war machines makes an equally shocking and appalling picture for the right thinking minds all over the world. The medium of air was the last to be included as the dimension of war through which one country imposed its military will upon another. After the first flight of an aeroplane, its military utility was a foregone conclusion, and as it became the most effective weapon in the hands of the belligerents, it became the most destructive force for the humanity. With the rising awareness of the world towards the humanitarian laws and the supporting Geneva conventions, the world became more and more aware of the destructive potential of the flying machine, and its weapon systems. By the end of World War II, it was very much evident that not only an aircraft’s capability to destroy was phenomenal, but its susceptibility to create unintentional and collateral damage was also very vast. Thus the aircraft came to be feared as much for its inaccuracy as for its destructive powers. With scientific advancements the accuracy of the weapon systems now has taken the form of state of the art, and both air launched and ground launched systems form a new generation of weapons called the precision guided munitions. A target which required a wave of bombers releasing a vast amount of ammunition all over with doubtful results, can now be destroyed by a single aircraft, releasing a single bomb with pinpoint accuracy. So also is the case with the ground launched weapons, specially the missiles, which unlike the earlier ones like the V2s and the Scuds now have remarkable accuracy over vast distances like the Tomahawk. These developments naturally impose an increased amount of responsibility on the users of such weapons, to cause least or no harm to the civil population while they go about their business of bombing, as was required during the Gulf war and now in the air war over Yugoslavia. The most relevant requirement in armed conflict as far as the war in Yugoslavia is concerned is to appreciate the principle which differentiates between the civilian and the military targets, without ignoring the other principles of armed conflict like limitation, proportionality, avoiding unnecessary suffering and military necessity. This aspect becomes even more important as the war continues more or less in the urban zones. Geneva convention in its conduct of operations has clearly laid down rules regarding aerial bombardment concerning civil population. Article 24 of Rules of Air Warfare, Hague (Feb 1923) states 5 for example: “In case the military objectives are so situated that they cannot be bombarded without indiscriminate bombardment of the civil population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment. This is one such example with various connected rules to this. This rule was written in 1923, when the free falling bombs launched with primitive aiming devices could fall anywhere. The state of the art weapon systems have changed all that tremendously. But now with the advance war systems available, it comes as great shock to the world to witness the NATO war planes, bombing innocent civil property and people each day. It is but human for any soldier or an airman, to create as safe a fighting environment for himself and his force as possible, and this explains the reason for the NATO pilots flying at 15000 feet or more, or flying at night so as to avoid the ground fire. This, however, puts the pilots in a natural handicap. Their visibility is reduced tremendously along with their capacity to differentiate between the military and the civil targets in spite of the so-called state of the art weapon systems with them. In the light of this fact one must view the incident of NATO pilots bombing the row of tractors carrying civilians. The pilots were fully aware of the fact that the height from where they were operating limited their target identification. They were also aware of the fact that their area of operation was urban with an unending stream of tens of thousands of refugees constantly on the roads. In such circumstances sheer humanitarian reasons demanded that attacks should have been called off by the commanding authorities, or more detailed verification of the target carried out through advance sources of intelligence available to them like photo recce or satellite imagery in real time if the responsible commanders had so demanded. With JSTARS and airborne C3 systems available with the NATO, this requirement could have been easily met and the location of both static and mobile civilian bodies could have been indicated along with the target information. This would have gone a long way in highlighting the humanitarian concern of the NATO forces. At this juncture it must be understood that the subject of conduct of operations in the Geneva conventions also states that while carrying out bombing close to human dwellings care should be taken to keep the direction of bombing and the timing of bombing in mind. This is more so in the case of the missions being carried out with the help of free falling bombs devoid of the precision guidance or in the case of night attacks. All the members of the NATO are operating out of their own individual country and hence their is no such emergency to their own nations which requires them to throw all the care and caution to the winds. More importantly, the NATO fighting forces are operating practically with no air opposition. The NATO forces are thus enjoying near-total air superiority, with no ground battles to support at the moment. This further should enable them to plan out their missions with more care, specially from the humanitarian point of view. With regard to the incident of attack on the Chinese embassy or the destruction of a passenger train, one must fully understand that in present age with the precision guided munitions, “WHATEVER IS SEEN IS HIT”. It is again the failure of intelligence and information, as admitted by US Senator Richard Shelby, which however is not acceptable with present super information technology available, with the war planners. However, it is to be borne in mind that a thing like this can also happen if proper care is not taken while selecting a weapon for the attack. The selection of a proper weapon should be left with the commander in charge of the operations rather than with an interfering politician or a bureaucrat from the top, for it is the commander only who would be able to decide upon the selection as per the requirement on the spot. A deep penetrating bunker buster missile is any time more effective against a hard target like a bunker or a pillbox than a weapon system with an area effect like a cluster bomb, which not only would fail to destroy the target but would also create collateral damage to the surroundings and harm the humanity around. Or for that matter when a target close to human dwelling is bombed with free falling bombs rather than with the precision guided ones like the Laser guided GBU 12s, the free falling bomb is bound to play havoc with the lives and property around. Cases similar to the ones quoted above have taken place and senior NATO commanders have brought such political interferences from the White House, in weapon selection to the notice of their respective high commands this was also reported in the media. Speaking to the press on this matter, Senator John Mc Cain, a former Naval Aviator, clearly stated that the responsibility to choose a required weapon system should be left to the commanders in the field who have been trained and paid to do so rather than to a person who is untrained and ignorant of the whole thing.The tragedy in Yugoslavia is not only due to uncaring attitude of the NATO forces, but the Serb forces are equally to blame. Being on the defensive, it is the duty of the Serb commanders to locate the defences away from the populated areas. As stated in the subject of conduct of operations in the Geneva Conventions, the defences have to be so located that the attacking forces do not hit the civil population or the property in the process of their attack and the weapons of defence do not affect own people by friendly fire, as happened in the case of Patriot missile when fired to intercept the Scuds during the Gulf war, and the falling debris hitting the friendly population below. Even if the NATO forces
have full concern for the Serb and other civil
population, the subtle points of the Geneva conventions
will have to be kept fully in mind not only because the
members of the force are signatory to the conventions,
but to avoid further misery to the already suffering
humanity. |
Managing foreign loans IN today’s financially turbulent world, each country has to look out for itself to prevent falling into a financial abyss. The different kinds of foreign capital have to be identified and dealt with. There is need to carefully manage foreign loans, and the need to identify and prevent the kinds of manipulative and speculative funds that caused so much turmoil in Asia and elsewhere. In devising a policy for foreign loans, a country has to remember the brutal fact that the loans (whether obtained by the public or private sector) have to be repaid, with interest, in the specified time frame, and in the foreign currency denominated. This can be done only if the borrower has invested the foreign loan in a project or activity that yields a net revenue sufficient to service the debt. But whilst making sufficient profit may be enough for an individual company or agency to repay its foreign loan, that’s not enough from a national perspective. That’s because the loan has to be repaid in foreign currency. For all the loans to be thus repaid, it implies that the loans as a whole have to be invested in activities that together yield sufficient foreign exchange earnings to enable the debts to be settled. This is often a tall order. For a government agency or a private company to use the loan wisely enough to ensure its repayment is often hard enough; but for the loans as a whole to earn sufficient foreign exchange to service the foreign loans can be a special rather than a general achievement. This is why many countries fall into a debt trap: it may be easy to get a foreign loan (at least the first few times!) but it is much harder to be able to service it satisfactorily. Thus, developing countries have to devise prudent policies on foreign loans. Governments should limit the amount of foreign credit they themselves should get and make sure that a large part of it earns (or helps the country to earn) foreign exchange. Just as importantly, developing countries should place strict controls over the private sector’s foreign loans, and not leave it to each company or bank to decide if and how much it wants to borrow. The Malaysian Central Bank’s ruling that private companies can only take foreign loans to the extent they can show the loans would yield foreign exchange for debt servicing is an example of control that should be considered by other countries. Finally, there is another category of foreign capital that needs especially strict controls: the funds that are used to speculate in and manipulate local financial and capital markets. Foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, foreign loans and credit, and highly speculative funds are the major categories of foreign capital that flow in and out of a country. Since developing countries like Malaysia are too small to be a big player on the global market, they can be very vulnerable not only to the decisions of the big institutions that determine the volume and timing of the flows, but also to the manipulative activities of some of the global speculative players. However, developing countries can take some defensive measures, and must urgently formulate a comprehensive policy to deal with the different kinds of capital flows. Such a framework may include a selective policy towards attracting foreign direct investments of the right type; a careful policy on portfolio investment that welcomes serious long-term investors but keeps out the damaging short-term profit-seekers; a very prudent policy towards public and private foreign loans; and measures that prevent the manipulative and speculative activities and funds in the financial and capital markets. Even with the best intentions and plans, there is no certainty that a country can be shielded from the adverse turbulent effects of global capital flows and financial operations. The national policies
have to be augmented by international regulatory action,
which is still absent. Until that comes about, if ever,
each nation should look out for itself in this predatory
world. (TWNF) |
In
defence of unfair means PERHAPS copying in the examination is as old as examination itself. But instead of cherishing and nourishing it as a valued tradition; it is deprecated and despised. Invigilators are appointed, flying squads are put in service, a strict vigil is kept to check and curb this age-old practice. And those involved are prosecuted, penalised and punished. I am one of the aggrieved persons facing the charge of using unfair means in the examination. Intrigued and inspired by the venerable Leelas and Lalithas, Rais and Raos, Yadavs and Mishras, pleading innocence from the docks. I take this opportunity to put forward my defence against the aforesaid accusation. It may or may not cut any ice, but then, who cares for that, these days? My contention is as under: All dignitaries use papers while delivering a speech. All lawyers proudly read out from volumes while pleading their case. All singers, musicians and poets use their notes and notations in their performances. All learned teachers, leaving aside a few pretentious ones, use slips in the classrooms. The reputed visiting Professors during their extension lectures use transparencies as teaching aids. Then why this fuss and furore when we, the perspective professionals, by way of rehearsal, practice or training, employ “aids” while taking examinations? When it is widely admitted that “ends justify means”, it is not fair to call “unfair” the means applied by us with the sole motive of getting through an examination and securing good marks. Any means whatsoever, adopted for so noble an end, should be considered fair and fine, just and justifiable, especially when these means and methods do not damage the interest of anyone else. If students like me are blamed for not having put in any labour to bear the palm: it is totally erroneous and misleading. To prepare the material to be used in examination is not an easy task. One has to burn midnight oil to tear out pages from helpbooks, sort them out, and make an index marking the places of various chits to avoid delay and confusion. It involves lot of labour, time and intelligence. Not only that, one needs to be acquainted with sophisticated communication gadgets as well, because it is no longer a simple business of chits and slips hidden under sleeves or collars. We have to keep pace with the emerging technology. As such pagers, cellular phones and cable networks are also put into use. To cite a case in my favour in Uttar Pradesh, a couple of years back, a popular government, in its frenzy to root out this practice, enacted the anti-copying law providing prosecution under the Indian Penal Code against the students found guilty of using underhand means in the examinations. A number of humble practitioners of this art were put behind bars. But soon the inconsiderate and unscrupulous rulers had to eat a humble pie when the succeeding government in a single stroke of pen not only freed the detainees, but also repealed the repressive legislation forthwith. It should not be taken as a mere political reversal. Very recently, in connection with the Khalsa Tercentenary celebrations even academicians and educationists heading a renowned and sacred university took the thoughtful and humane step of granting absolution to the guilty of so-called unfair means. The above instances clearly vindicate my stand. Last but not the least, there is the Biblical parable about the young widow who was being stoned by the villagers on the charge of adultery. Jesus Christ, passing by, told the villagers that the malefactor must be punished. But, he added, only he should pelt the first stone who had never committed a sin in life. Need anybody tell, what unfair means are being applied by respectable citizens of Great India in different walks of life? If teachers, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, industrialists, businessmen, etc. etc. are not debunked and debarred for employing underhand means and methods, why the poor pupils are punished for their harmless act of copying during the examinations? Why cannot they be allowed to go scotfree like their senior counterparts? My humble submission is let justice be equally blind to one and all. It is scandalous that
when the copying in examinations has assumed the status
of a “mass movement” and is woven into the very
fabric of society, it is being denied its rightful place.
In the coming elections I would call upon my brethren to
vote and support only those persons and parties who
promise to protect and promote the ancient art of copying
in examinations. |
Print media’s bid to compete with TV
AMITA Malik’s autobiography comes at a time when, as I pointed out in this column last week, it’s about time for the Indian press to spend some time looking at itself in the mirror. Since the arrival of private television channels there have been all sorts of changes in the print media and, alas, not all of them have been good. In most countries television arrived at a slow and steady pace giving newspapers and magazines more than enough time to discover how they could compete. In India we have been yanked, television-wise, from the tedium of unwatchable, state-controlled programming to 21st century technology in so short a time that the print media has not had time to think. So, most newspapers have tried to compete with TV, not by giving us more analysis and better journalism, but by giving us special, colour supplements that supply mainly a diet of fashion, sex, cinema and society gossip. This has given birth to a new breed of journalists who thrive mainly on voyeuristic, or keyhole journalism. Most of them never have to go through the usual paces of struggling their way upwards from reporting flower shows to more serious, investigative journalism. Our misfortune is that television has fared not much better. So, instead of having serious journalists involved in current affairs programmes what we see are mostly young kids without any real experience of journalism. The result is that most current affairs programmes lack weight, authority and depth. Against this dismal backdrop comes a book that reminds us that there was a time, not so long ago, when there was another kind of journalism. A kind of journalism based on hard work, integrity and a desire to tell the truth as sincerely as possible. Amita Malik is one of India’s first women journalists to really make a difference. Those of us who followed in her wake owe her a debt of gratitude for paving the way, for laying new ground at times when almost no editor took women seriously in what was considered a man’s world. Even those of us who came into journalism more than 35 years after Mrs Malik can recount endless stories of editors dismissing us as “social butterflies”, or worse, mere passengers waiting on a platform for the marriage train to roll in. I can remember being told any number of times that it was better for women to find softer professions because by trying to enter journalism I was depriving some hard-working man of a serious job. The fact that Mrs Malik fought to hold her ground has made her, virtually, into an institution. It came as no surprise then that the release of her autobiography, at the Maurya Sheraton on May 3, drew a galaxy of stars that included VIPs like L.K. Advani, M.S. Gill, Satish Gujral and a long list of celebrated journalists. It was a tribute to Mrs Malik’s place in Indian journalism and a tribute well deserved. Her book tells the story of a full and colourful life and tells it with charm and humour. And, through Amita Malik’s story we also get the story of Indian broadcasting from its early state-controlled, cottage industry days to the arrival of Rupert Murdoch and the satellite channels that came with him and changed India’s electronic media forever. It is the story of those early days that is most fascinating if only because they come as a sharp reminder that the only solution for Doordarshan is to privatise it. Mrs Malik, whose husband was an executive with All India Radio, makes no attempt to hide the incompetence and sheer idiocy of the officials and small-minded bureaucrats who have controlled Indian radio and television for so long. Among the many stories she tells is one about how Doordarshan inexplicably destroyed all traces of an interview she did jointly with Marlon Brando and Satyajit Ray and a roundtable discussion she conducted with four of cinema’s giants — Elia Kazan, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray and Michelangelo Antonioni. “Never before or since had this brilliant quartet met on television. Appeals to successive ministers, secretaries, DGs and every conceivable authority have failed to locate these two special programmes. These are as irretrievably lost as a TV dialogue between the two queens of that elegant genre of light classical music, the thumri, Rasoolan Bai and Siddheshwari Devi. As also my interviews with Trevor Howard, David Niven and John Masters, the loss of which I discovered when they died and I suggested to Doordarshan that the interviews be used as obituaries. I did not even bother to enquire about the fate of my interviews with Greek actress Melina Mercouri and several other film and media people of national and international fame, because there did not seem any point”. It Pramod Mahajan or any future aspirant to the post of Minister of Information & Broadcasting reads this, we can only hope that it will come as a reminder that Doordarshan’s only route to survival is through privatisation: nothing else will work. But, there is a lot more to Mrs Malik’s biography than broadcasting. There are tales of walking in the moonlight with Brando and travelling to China with an Indian film stars’ troupe which included Balraj Sahni and Prithviraj Kapoor; there are accounts of her interviews with David Lean and Ingmar Bergman. A collection of anecdotes that makes the book more than readable. For me as a political journalist if there is a problem with Mrs Malik’s book — it lies only in her having lived through times of such major political change and remain unaffected by them. There is almost nothing about how India must have changed when the British left, about the Nehruvian years, which laid the foundation stones of the shoddy, second-rate India we now inhabit or about the Emergency when Mrs Gandhi extended censorship, perennially imposed on the electronic media, to include newspapers and magazines. But, then Mrs Malik is not a political journalist and her importance lies in her having managed to become one of the country’s best known journalists without taking the easy route: politics. Where writing about cinema, television and radio are concerned she remains hard to match.
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DD leaves viewers high & dry
PITY the poor viewer in summer, except for those who escape to the hills or other cooler climes or those who live there permanently. For those of us who stick it out in the Capital, there is the problem of power cuts. From TV to computers, everything goes dead. And usually in the middle of a tennis or cricket match. If Doordarshan is relaying it, there are further cuts as they cross over to news or a political programme and leaves the viewer high and dry. In the absence of any exciting new programmes, one is stuck with two steadies: cricket and the elections. I recall angry letters from viewers who are not cricket fans saying their usual programmes should not be taken over for cricket. They certainly have a point, because they were being treated like second-class viewers as opposed to cricket lovers. If DD’s much-publicised sports channel had really gone to town on cricket and given us all the matches, then non-cricket lovers could have been left in peace like on ESPN and Star Sports. But having had its own bureaucratic arrogance when it was a monopoly, DD does not seem to realise it has to pull up its socks to ensure that the terrestrial viewer who cannot afford satellite channels gets equal treatment. Because the terrestrial viewer still forms the biggest viewing public and also deserves the best. But the last-minute bickering which went on over DD’s telecasting rights and fees over the World Cup seems to indicate that lucre is more important to DD than the viewer. And so we come to the forthcoming elections. The daily panel discussions and interviews which clog every channel are becoming a colossal bore. Surely there will be very little left to argue about, come September. Then it will be a challenge for hard news and reporting skill. While on the subject of reporters, I must give a pat on the back to Sanjay Ahirwal who has matured into one of our best TV correspondents. He is consist, balanced and equally fluent in Hindi and English. He has a good voice and a pleasing screen presence and I hope he will keep it up. I wish that the politicians who pop up on TV every day were as professional. I gather and BJP is arranging for proper training for those party members who appear on TV. Other parties are bound to follow suit. Already our MPs and legislators have become conscious of their clothes and haircuts and the women are coming far better groomed. It shows the increasing power of TV for influencing votes and if some vote against those who misbehave on the floor of the House they will only have themselves to blame. Tired of all the cricket and election forecasts and speculation, I started channel surfing for something different. And I found it on TVI on Tuesday. I have no idea if it was a repeat, which is true of most of its good programmes, but I was seeing it for the first time and found it very interesting. It was about children suffering from various prejudices and how it affects their behaviour and sometimes their entire life. There was this little girl who did not want to got to school because she was dark and had been made to feel it. Foreigners often remark that there is more colour prejudice in India than Indians realise and after seeing this programme, which also explored other prejudices, one is inclined to agree. I have also found interesting on TVI its now oft-repeated programme. Against All Odds, which interviews such people as single mothers, or couples who prefer to live together rather than marry and people who adopt children. Tail-piece: I found
distasteful and at times sadistic Simi Garewal’s
relentless interrogation of Zeenat Aman in Randezvous,
last week. There is a limit to the kind of probing
personal questions one can ask of someone in such
emotional torment and at times close to tears. I felt it
was simply not decent and several viewers agree with me.
I also could not help but notice the harsh lighting used
for Gayatri Devi in contrast to the much softer lighting
used for Ms Garewal. It wasn’t fair, and this is not
the first time this sort of thing has happened. |
Notes
and Comments WE have no hesitation in saying that in calling upon the leaders of the Satyagraha movement in Vykom to furnish security for good behaviour on the ground that the movement was likely to result in a breach of the peace the authorities put the wrong men in the box. There was absolutely no risk of a breach of the peace because the Satyagrahis were asserting what they claimed to be their lawful right. If such risk was there at all, it was because on the other side there were fanatics who might use physical force to prevent the Satyagrahis from asserting their right of using public roads. In the circumstances logic as well as commonsense would suggest that the proper men to be served with orders for furnishing security for good behaviour were not the leaders of the Satyagraha movement, but those of the orthodox section of the people from whom a breach of the peace was actually apprehended. It is true that custom
as well as the authority of an executive order were
against the Satyagrahis in this case, but this was no
ground whatever for apprehending a breach of the peace on
the part of the people who had deliberately declared it
to be their sole object to court arrest and to cheerfully
go to prison, so that by their suffering they might win
victory in the struggle. |
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