Tv information: The impunity of irrelevance

Some are born irrelevant, some obtain irrelevance and a few have it thrust upon them. To say that our TV channels have reached the peak of irrelevance is to state the plain. What’s extra galling is the impunity with which they peddle their junk 24/7 and the affront to the widespread sense of the viewers. Extra about that later.   

There may be yet another gifted class. The one which raises irrelevance to an artwork type. The discourse of our Prime Minister in his Mann ki Baat belongs to this uncommon class. It’s so charmingly disarming that it comes wafting throughout from the Himalayas with a way of Nirvana untouched by the truth of right here and now.

On August 30, the Prime Minister waxed eloquent about ‘Sophie’ and ‘Vida’ — two educated canines of the Indian Military that had been bestowed the Chief of Employees’s ‘commendation playing cards’ for his or her distinctive obligation in defending the nation. He then exhorted the countrymen to undertake Indian breed canines such because the ‘Mudhol hound’ or the ‘Himachali hound’, ‘Rajapalyam Kanni,’ and so forth. In case you are questioning the place the PM was going with this, it must be shortly added that aatmanirbharta (self-reliance) was his focus. Nonetheless, how the adoption of an Indian canine would make both the canine or his grasp aatmanirbhar was misplaced on the harmless listener.  

Earlier than that, the PM had dwelt at size on the deserves of our indigenous toy business and the way India may grow to be a ‘toy hub’ for the world and seize a sizeable market share. This was once more a pitch for Aatmanirbhar Bharat. Purchase extra Indian toys, he exhorted. Final yr, the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries acquired the British toy-maker Hamleys for round Rs 620 crore.  Any coincidence was fully unintended.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s touching concern for our struggling toy business appeared a tad out of sync with actuality when the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economic system had revealed, a number of weeks earlier, that 12.2 crore employees within the MSMEs and daily-wage earners had misplaced their jobs in April 2020. That was the interval of the Nice Lockdown. That was toying with no matter little aatmanirbharta that they had of their lives.

Quickly, when GDP numbers for the primary quarter had been introduced, the nation learnt that its financial progress had dived into destructive territory of unheard depths to succeed in -24%. The Worldwide Labour Organisation had a grim warning. It mentioned that “about 400 million individuals working within the casual sector in India are liable to falling deeper into poverty as a result of coronavirus, which is having ‘catastrophic penalties.’” However allow us to not get distracted. Actuality is so boring!

Mann ki Baat is so soothing and calming. Because the title suggests, it’s straight from The Coronary heart of the Nice Chief to thousands and thousands of little hearts. He’s within the ‘Guru’ mode — instructing, guiding, cajoling and persuading the listener. The tempo of his phrases and the voice modulation are so meant as to move the viewers right into a make-believe world away from their humdrum worries, similar to lack of jobs and incomes, incapability to pay rents or college charges or the EMIs for a scooter mortgage or residence mortgage. In fact, all that may wait however hearken to the Nice Chief. There’s a Talisman for everybody. Aatmanirbharta. Now buddy, you might be by yourself. 

In the event you nonetheless don’t get it and are burdened by your issues, swap on the TV. There may be 24/7 protection of an enchanting suicide/homicide thriller of a Bollywood actor. Each twist and switch within the investigation is revealed by the businesses to TV channels that present a ‘Breaking Information’ each hour. And this has been on for over 100 days and counting. What else does the nation need to know?

Poor Indira Gandhi needed to censor the media, after declaring Emergency in 1975. That appears so gross and medieval now. At this time, ‘somebody’ has to easily throw a  juicy bone to the media they usually run after it like ‘Sophie’ and ‘Vida’, tripping each other on the way in which.

If distraction and irrelevance is true in your face 24/7 and on such a mega scale, the little man feels misplaced and out of sync with actuality, particularly when he can not participate within the one and solely nationwide pastime. The little man with no job and revenue begins to wonder if he belongs to the identical nation.

Each 4 minutes somebody on this nation ends life. Final yr, 129,000 individuals ended their lives. Who cares? However there may be one suicide that retains the nation glued to the TV, or no less than that’s what the managers of media imagine and we, the individuals, need to eat no matter garbage they provide.  

If one starlet is arrested, then add one other’s story – Kangana Ranaut compares Mumbai to ‘Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir’. This angers the ruling Shiv Sena. Her ‘illegally constructed’ workplace is razed to the bottom by the Municipal Council. She takes on Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and one other media circus begins. 

What’s unfolding right here is that neither Rhea Chakraborty nor Kangana Ranaut matter. It’s the circus that issues, and that should go on. The query is, who’s the ringmaster? We don’t know, however the guidelines of the sport are clear. Don’t discuss in regards to the financial system. And don’t even point out China.

Our digital media has lastly realised its mission in life. That it ought to at all times stay, at the beginning, a supply of leisure. The State can not provide you with bread however certainly, the media can provide you a circus. The idiot-box has conquered us all. The fool will not be within the field however outdoors.

(The author, a former Cupboard Secretariat official, is a Visiting Fellow on the ORF, New Delhi)