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Options this year
SEVANTI NINAN
IF the media seriously bothers you, you are probably one of the following: over 40/over 50/ a Leftie/a pseudo secularist/a Hindu nationalist who gets high blood pressure when a certain male Star TV duo starts asking questions of a studio panel/a killjoy/a human rights type/a pseudo intellectual/someone who is allergic to music videos/someone who is allergic to mindlessness in general (do you realise how much you are missing?) or someone who's just plain depressed at the state of the world.
Whatever you are, you are not a member of either the Now Generation or Generation Next neither of whom would dream of complaining of too much media. It's almost their only frame of reference. My 17-year-old firmly believes that the most effective way to study for the 12th boards is to have HBO or Star Movies or Frasier playing on the side, sound on or off depending on how much concentration is called for. You are also not likely to be real oldie, because then you would be addicted to your daily dose of melodrama on Star, Asianet, Sun TV, ETV Marathi or Alpha Bangla. As most of our parents-in-law are.
People complained about the media in the year gone by because it was just there, big, bad and visible, asking to be bashed. In the 1980s we complained about the government. Then came reforms with a big R, and media with a big M and the government shrank somewhat in our consciousness. But there is really no need to complain so much. You can switch it off, you know, or just stop reading the newspaper. As for the Internet, if you have a computer at home you probably have a kid as well, so that takes care of your access to it. And if you have a dial up connection that sucks, that takes care of the kid's surfing too. The media is as manageable as it is available. Much more than the men in public life who ruin our happiness.
And in its abundant availability it gives you everything you can ask for. Cricket and movies to escape from Bush or Modi with, or bad news aplenty if you are a masochist and insist on watching the news.
You might complain vociferously about how they peddle sensationalism, but Aaj Tak wouldn't have become the Sabse Pehle, underwear-sponsored channel if no-one was watching it. Nor would it have the resources to clone itself in English.
The more depressing real life gets, the more you can get away from it on the idiot box. We are spoilt for choice. Imagine, just staying at home on New Year's eve you could choose between Aretha Franklin, James Bond, Leonardo De Caprio, the "Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham" brigade, the Viranis and Aggarwals quizzing each other, and a documentary on U.S. Presidents and Air Force One on National Geographic. And more. When your favourite serial gets intolerably depressing you can switch channels and watch Cyrus hamming on MTV. Or "Tera Chehra" for the millionth time on Channel V. If you choose to just complain instead, it's your fault.
Because even if the media was doing things right, do you really think it can change the way things are? Heck, it can't even kill off a character in a TV serial without getting serious flack. The Indian Express may practice Journalism of Courage, but its heroics often bounce right off its intended victims these days.
To vent your frustration there is the World Wide Web, on which all the activists on the planet have pitched their tents. Feeling helpless at how a flip-flop Prime Minister and sundry saffron thugs have hijacked what you thought was the country's secular agenda? Feeling enraged that the meddling NGOs and James Michael Lyngdoh did not do enough to pour balm on the Hindu Hurt? Feeling impotent about your likely inability to prevent war on Iraq? Just find the relevant website and click on the "act now" option.
At last count, there were some 300 sites determined to save secularism in India, some 600 given to preserving the Hindu Rashtra, a 1,000 or so on getting Sadaam, and another thousand dedicated to getting Bush. (Okay, I cooked up those figures, but you get the picture.) There is even one called Mediaworkers Against War. You cannot complain of lack of choice. And if you would rather just worry about the poor getting poorer, no problem. Lots of web activism options there too. You've never had less reason to feel helpless.
Here then, is rough guide to surviving the media.
Watch news on Doordarshan instead of the other three.
It's better for your blood pressure. Watch ads instead of serials, they are increasingly less painful. Watch Aamir Khan ads instead of those pasty-faced men in the Hindi sagas, and the curly haired, over made-up men in the Tamil serials. If you think Simi is soppy, try Vir Sanghvi. They get the same studio guests any way. If you think Ally McBeal is getting weirder and weirder watch Helen Hunt instead in "Mad About You". And there's always "Seinfeld" and "Friends" to cheer yourself up with. If the lunacy of the West depresses you, stop watching BBC and CNN. When the gore level rises on Indian news, switch off. That carries its own message. You do have a choice, you know. You can't say the same about the men who rule us.
If you want to try and change the world around you, become a Net activist. It's easy, and its fashionable.
And finally, one last little innovation that 2002 paved the way for. Media is increasingly something you will be able to influence, with a little plain cash.
Paid news is here. You could buy election coverage if you were contesting last month in Gujarat. And with the country's most profitable English newspaper leading the way, you can now procure yourself a spot of limelight in the city supplement which everybody reads. See, more options than ever before, in 2003.
E-mail the writer at sevanti_ninan@yahoo.co.in
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