इंडिया टीवी जिंदाबाद

The enclosed piece was reported over and over again on India TV. Not sure if it was classified as breaking news or not. But if you go by the past record of India TV when saas ne bahu to chappal se maara has been breaking news, this incredibly hilarious news item would have been a day hogging breaking news as well.

Sit back, relax and enjoy!

May be this is based on this 'news item' that was aired on channel 9. Guess someone on the content team of India TV saw this and has become a source of 'sensational' humour for compulsive channel surfers. [I wanted to write - surfers on the boob tube. But the flat panel/ LCD TVs have taken away the most pleasing way of deriding the television].

India TV was at its crass reporting best when they showed some sonographic imprints claiming them to be of the unborn foetus that was in the recent abortion controversy. I guess all this and the Talwar episode would make the News channel develop some kind of self-regulation. I am all for free journalism but this make me feel that some regulation (Self??) might be of help. Hope the present state of freedom in news reporting will not be used by the government to put a regulator in place.

Its high time that the channels wake up to the events and people behind all the breaking news and put some kind of guiding journalistic ethic in place!

Lage Raho

As I type this there are at least three online petitions trying to garner, what else, support. The petitioners are pitching the case of Munna Bhai to our government. The underlying motif being that the guy who preaches Gandigiri cannot be bad. He should not be made to serve his (excessive) sentence. Have we lost it totally? I would want to think that the answer to that is NO! However I seriously doubt the sanity of the 148 and 4300 people who have signed it on gopetition.com and petitiononline respectively.

Here’s an excerpt from the petition on petitiononline.com (You will have to read the comments to believe them with some comparing Sanjay Dutt with Valmiki)

Sanjay Dutt has already suffered 14 long grueling years waiting for the verdict… He has served 18 months in jail as an under trial….He has already repented a lot more for a mistake committed in his youth… As far as I can remember we all have always been taught that the reason a person is jailed is in order to make him a better person .. a more reformed individual fit for the society… And in no way is a person jailed just to punish him…. So why jail a person who has already repented and gone through so much of anguish and pain in the last 14 years of this trial ..Why jail a person who is already reformed? Why jail a person who is in no way harmful to the society… And anyway who are we to punish some one for his mistakes … Just like Jesus Christ once said “Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone”

I never knew that Law aims only to reform and not to punish. Whatever happened to the good old idea of setting a precedent and acting as a deterrent to any deviant behavior! Another argument put forth is that if a person has asked for forgiveness and apologized for the ‘mistake’ he should be let off. Would we be willing to do that in the case of a normal thug?

May be I should not be reacting to this. May be it is too childish… just a simple case of confusing the screen identity for all that the person stands for. May be it is just a belief that future should have a smaller weight attached to the past. But that does not mean that one can get away from his past. And that is the way things should be! It is important to set this precedent so that public personalities understand that they are not above the law. Hope that the budding Salmans, Pataudis, Nandas and others with the financial muscle would take a lesson from this and would sincerely try not to side-step the law all the time.

Quiz Show : Re-visited

KBC seems to be in the hot seat. The Delhi High Court has directed the MRTPC (Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission) to probe into the way the Quiz show is conducted. It was a story that has been in the making for long. People and more importantly the media, feel that KBC for celebrities is easier than it is for the normal participants. The impression gathered critical mass as the celebrities started winning hefty cash prizes. As murmurs grew into noise, we had a Mr. Anuj Kumar Bharti filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) with the Delhi high court. Apparently, general junta seems to be surprised at this!

This is a repeat of the Federal Communications Commission Vs American broadcasting Company Inc. case that played itself out in the United States in 1950s. The 1994 movie Quiz Show captured the drama on celluloid. The show in question was Twenty One. The participant had to answer more questions than a competitor to get onto a total score of 21 before the competitor to win the big cash prize. This continued week-on-week till a 'Challenger' got to the magical number of 21 before the original participant.

The final judgment in the case under discussion was in the favour of the defendant (ABC et al). The argument being that the show was an entertainment show. It was not supposed to be an educational program. The defendant’s lawyers went on to compare the show to a ‘give-away’ on TV – only to add a qualifier that it was a slightly involved kind of a ‘give-away’ with a huge cash sum involved (Click on that link above if you need to know all the details). All the participants in the US TV show, Tewnty One, signed an agreement with the firm that made them a willing party to the photo-op.

The argument might hold true in the Indian Case as well. Though, a big difference being that Airtel made a lot of money from SMS and Phone Calls to the KBC dedicated lines. I am guessing that Star and Mr. Basu’s firm Synergy will admit to rigging the show and claim that there is nothing wrong with it. I happen to agree to this as well. After all, it is not more than a comic act at best. Also, it might be compared to a lottery. However, in India, a company needs a license to run a lottery. Plus, many states have made lotteries illegal. So the show might be on the wrong side of the law not because of the MRTPC regulations but for running an illegitimate lottery! May be some smart lawyer would compare it to a lucky draw or give-away again (taking a cue from the US case) with a large cash prize attached to it! And may be the Star TV Network and Synergy will get away with it.

Of course, the news channels will have many days worth of breaking-news from this tamasha. As far as the Indian public is concerned, we will do the usual collective loss of memory and continue to enjoy the shows and fancy the prize monies.

PS: On a totally un-related note (which incidentally is my most favorite of notes), don’t you think that 1994 was one of the best years of Hollywood with films like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption, Léon and The Lion King! This list remains small as I am not including the popular hit movies like The Mask, Four Wedding and a Funeral etc. in this list.