Penblunt & Hogwash

Indian Discovery

A couple of weeks earlier, I was at the Discovery office here attending a pre-launch sneak preview of the Travel & Living series on Indian cuisine.

This was followed by a film show by National Geographic, a film on Polynesian wayfinders, by the Nat Geo Resident Explorer Wade Davis. The film was one of the four on the relatively unknown societies and their intellectual prowess as well as survival techniques.

Superb becomes a euphemism on such occasions, and neither show was any exception.

That brought me back to my eternal pain and quest: why is it that our channels are not able to churn out such stuff?

Why, pray!

Take the series on Indian cuisine.

It has the most erudite hog, foodie Vir Sanghvi, and being a sort of chef myself, I am jealous of his fantabulous knowledge on the subject, from foie gras to chana masala to chai.

The magic of the series is that it does not have the what-have-you-Kapoor cooking in the kitchen and telling you how to make missee roti and sarson da sag. Take this first, mix a bit of that, light fry it in a shallow pan and deep freeze it in a backburner kind of ridiculous routine.

Sanghvi’s knowledge and Discovery’s attitude takes you through the magic of living Indian cuisine, not just eating it.

Discovery has broken the basic theme into sagas, like that of the Tandoori Chicken, which episode is titled “The Migratory Bird,” what with the stuff emigrated on to foreign menus without passport or visa.

In the episode on Indian Chinese, which Sanghvi calls a distinct Indian contribution to the global carte, he takes you into Tangra, China town in Calcutta, makes you go through the Chinese New Year festival with dragons and lights and all…

And then he takes you to meet the legend who created Chicken Manchurian sitting in Tangra, just to suit the Indian palate and yet, retain something of the original Chinese.

The Rajasthan episode is with his former history teacher at Mayo College, and his family, which has reinvented old Rajasthani cuisine and created an entirely new category of tourism.

Biting sarcasm, history, culture, witty chats with the likes of tea legend Makaibari’s magician Rajah Banerjee… fantastic landscapes magical photography… just takes your breath away.

I asked the Discovery senior managers what they would do when a famous Indian English news channel launches its lifestyle channel with a lot more of Indian stuff. They couldn’t care less.

One reason they would like me to have is that the cost of one of their 60-minute episode comes to $80,000 to $100,000… “which is about the entire running costs for six months of some of the Indian channels”, they said.

But that is not true entirely, I feel.

It is the attitude. It is a ‘re-run of the news channel’ attitude… come, shoot, scoot and dump it on the audience… maal to mil hi jayega advertisers se!

In all humility, I was part of making a documentary film on a most esoteric subject, the Buddhist Lama Dances of Sikkim… hardly a thing most filmmakers would dare touch. Or if they do, it would be the come-shoot-scoot-dump routine.

This film was made with four years of research into it, intricate research by a passionate scribe, and then 21 days of shooting while living in the monastery, eating their food, and finally, about 200 hours of non-linear digital editing of nine hours of footage.

The result, all to the credit of director Manas Bhowmick, has been anything Discovery could produce. The cost? Rs 2.20 lakh!

So money is not the issue. Passion for excellence is, craving for getting facts right is, competing with the best is….

We could have spent another Rs one lakh on the film, but we saved because we stayed with our crew at the best hotels in Sikkim all of 21 nights without spending a penny, because the researcher is so loved for his commitment.

This is what passion can get you: extraordinary shots inside a monastery even while rituals are on, which has never been allowed, for even still photography is forbidden inside monasteries!

If the people are convinced you want to do a good job on them, they will give you their best. In fact, a family actually faked their New Year rituals in their alter room, something they would normally shuddered to think, this faking!

But for that one needs to stay behind, be with the people, love their lives and see the rich meaning beneath their apparent simplicity.

That is where our channels lack completely. I haven’t seen an Indian channel doing a documentary without muttering F***ing S**t about once every few exhalations.

By the way, our good old but forgotten DD is showing a revival series called “Earth Matters”, on ecology, environment and societies, by Mike Pandey, and must say that it is way out. Costing Rs six lakh an episode, Pandey has shown what it takes to do a world-class environmental documentary series.

But that is because he has passion for the subject, desire to compete with the best and set standards.

Must see this series, friends, for a dose of revival of our national pride.

Scare Scenario 101

Iraq's Tryst with Freedom

In My VIew

French political ménagerie

History, as it seems, is harsher on the Marxists. And if history is considered a parable of popular dynamics, then it is them, the people who are the harshest judges. In most of central Europe and the Balkans in the years between Wars; or in post-Lenin Soviet Union, once the people found the Marxists floundering, they handed down a justice that robbed the Left the ability to make people dream, their most powerful weapon. First round of French presidential elections has proved that tenet once again.

After the results came in the end of last week, one could say that the Fifth Republic is fraying. While the rightist candidate, Nikolas Sarkozy of the Union for a Popular Movement (UNP) has appealed till now to the basest instincts of race and xenophobia; the representative of the so called Left, Sogolene Royal of the Parti Socialiste (PS) has followed a marginally softer line of jingoistic nationalism. This, in a presidential poll that is considered a milestone for the future of the French republic, has bypassed all the issues that are crucial to the French people.

These issues include what the nature of the French economy would be in the face of an onslaught of the neo-liberal European Union; whether the society of France would be closed to external influences of globalism as opposed to globalisation; and whether French labour would continue to have the protection of the government. On all these issues, ironically the French Left failed to define the issues. Be it the PS or the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) or the Trotskyists have failed to lead the debate and instead were found on the defensive mode, reacting to the attacks of Sarkozy.

This was despite the severe race riots of 2005 that had little to do with ethnicity and more to do with the conditions under which the immigrant labour had to function; or even the huge labour and student demonstrations of 2006. Even then, as now, both the PS and the PCF had shown their flat footedness in providing political leadership to the mass upsurge of discontent. As a result, the political class seemed as much discredited then, as now.

Having said that, one has to acknowledge that the French are civilised people. Unlike the US electorate in 2004, they have not sought to douse their insecurities by externalising their problems and blaming the world for their woes. They have instead sought to grasp the nettle of the issues afflicting them and seek to deal with them in a manner they know best – by pitting them in ideological terms and taking a view from each side.

At the end, if France chooses to join in favour of the finance capital-driven globalisation’s discourse of the ‘New,’ they would do so knowing that Capitalism is not a halfway house where you can be one of the richest country in the world without the exploitation of labour. This indeed is the contradiction of social democracy, ever since it emerged on the horizon.

So the ‘New’ policies of Sarkozy or Royal would clearly have to choose from the smorgasbord of neoliberal policy prescriptions that could remove many of the safety features protecting labour in France; or even the welfare state. And rightly so, because France would have to move forward from the logjam of the mid-2000s to maintain its leadership position in the world.

But the real story is how the Left is losing the battle for the heart of Europe. Be it the New Left or the old Left, the Marxists have failed to join the discursive process of the ‘New’ essentially because they have been to amoral in power. Take the case of France itself, when Francois Mitterand became the president of the country in 1981 he had to form his government with the support of the French communists. But the latter were found to be partners in his strategy of deciding against his mandate, when he embraced neoliberalism with great gusto.

Even as late as 2006, they failed to take a position when a substantial section of the French were out on the streets agitating against neoliberal onslaught on the people’s lifestyles; or even when the French voted ‘Non’ for a more integrated European Union. To the people, the Left seemed incapable of providing an alternate vision that could challenge the growing hegemony of global capital; for they seemed too convinced that the progress of capital-driven globalisation was irreversible.

So at the end, the people have voted with their feet. They left the Left block in droves. For the people of France as in other parts of the world, obviously it is not enough to enjoy the status quo of safe livelihood, but for the increasing numbers of young people thronging the work life, it is important to have new opportunities. Those opportunities are not being found in the traditional capitalist model. So they want change. But they do not know where to go. And the Left is not showing the path. It is indeed ironic that a crisis of Capital is sucking the Left in its vortex.

India in the coming decades could face some of the same problems, unless of course the country and its people prepare to stave off the eventuality.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pianki63@dataone.in

In My View

In Bangladesh, all hands on deck

For a visitor to Dhaka this spring, it is exciting times, especially if the person has an interest in governance, nay forming governments. It seems while the neo-cons in Washington are showing signs of a waning interest in regime changes ‘for freedom’, all the interest groups in Bangladesh have joined the game of making regimes and breaking them with great vigour in the name of ‘good governance.’

Sometimes, for a person unskilled in the ways of Bangladesh it may feel strange how a self-respecting country can allow extra-Constitutional or even extra-territorial players to dabble in the country’s domestic political scene to the extent of setting directions for its polity. But that is only half the story.

Many would sigh at this stage and shake their heads, lamenting the fate of aid dependent LDCs (Less Developed Countries). But hang on! Hasn’t Bangladesh’s economy grown over five per cent consistently in the past decade? Isn’t there an untold and a rare story of a macroeconomic success notched up by the Word Bank (Bank) and International Monetary Fund (Fund)? So how is it that individual government like the USA, the UK or even India has the ultimate leverage to change Bangladesh’s heads of government?

As the folklore in Dhaka goes, the sequence of events leading up to the regime changes of ‘caretaker’ governments showed signs of a starkly different script. This time the usual suspects for the role of ‘change agents’ in Bangladesh – the army – did not want to become so proactive. Till they received an epistle from the venerable United Nations (UN) threatening their tax-free lifeline of personal riches through peacekeeping and peacemaking operations in more troubled areas of the world. Now, here is the kicker. That letter supposedly did not originate in New York where the UN is safely ensconced currently under the care of the South Korean champion of democracy, Ban Ki-moon.

The letter had apparently originated from the office of the country director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – normally the UN’s plenipotentiary in any developing country – in Dhaka. The UNDP head had at hand the US ambassador, Ms Patricia Butenis and the UK High Commissioner, Anwarul Chowdhury egging on.

Once the army was activated to pave the way for another government, this time headed by an economist, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, who had worked 22 years in the Bank, an open season was declared in Bangladesh’s politics. Talks abounded about how the two contending political families of the country will be exiled; how a new party would be formed comprising civil society cohorts out to do good; and how happiness would prevail in Bangladesh ever since they adopt the ‘Citizen’s Charter’, duly vetted and approved by the Bank-Fund combine. Of course, there is this little matter of the US government playing the pied piper to the venerable multilateral financial institutions.

So, what does all this lead up to? Consider this. Bangladesh is a country of 150 million people, an overwhelming majority of whom are Muslims. This is the only Muslim nation which was created not on the basis of a common religion but on the basis of a common ethnicity. It has a majority population, which is poor and illiterate. Decades of malgovernance has not allowed the growth of lasting institutions that could foster the independent spirit of the people and harness it for national progress. Post-9/11, the country is on the throes of embracing Islamic militancy, which could quickly transmute into Islamist terrorism, destabilising the South Asian region.

In this complex reality, lay the seeds of a picture perfect potential for an attempt at benign and orderly nation building that was denied to Paul Wolfowitz in Iraq when he was the US deputy secretary of defence. As the Bank president, the temptation must have been too much to resist. In other words, Bangladesh seemed ripe for some intervention from parts of the world that have globe girdling interests, fighting a ‘War on Terror’.

Such had been the abject failure of the domestic political forces of the country, that when those extra-territorial interests really played their cards, people of the country felt relieved. Even the president of the Bangladesh Communist Party (BCP) felt it difficult to criticise the Emergency that was declared; for he felt that the political impasse reached in December, 2006-January, 2007 was unbreakable without this intrusion.

Yet, now that the country has reached an important crossroad, the next task is choosing the correct bivouac. Should it be the same Bank-Fund model that has made Bangladesh into, what one of its leading economists, call a ‘monocultural economy?’ Almost the only manufacturing the country does is of readymade garments. And the only crop of significance it produces is paddy. Someone less experienced in the Bank-Fund ways could ask, why? Because the all powerful Market demands that Bangladesh remains mired in a 19^th century economic model.

So during the rule of General Hossain Mohammad Ershad, when Bangladesh fully embraced the Bank-Fund model of economic growth in its entirety; state-owned enterprises in jute and textile sector were privatised at throwaway prices so that their assets could be stripped and their owners enriched.

In these circumstances, when India faces the prospect of being categorised as an imperialist power by the otherwise minuscule BCP, thus situating it in the exalted company of the USA and the UK, it would be interesting to watch what policy alternatives New Delhi developes to guide its relations with a proximate neighbour. It should keep in mind the warning of the BCP president told to this writer, “Please remember about the Bangladeshi belligerence, which when aroused could throw any experimentation in the deep end of the Bay of Bengal.”

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. And he can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in

Been there, done that!

Penblunt & Hogwash

Truth stranger, than... well....'Truth'

Penblunt

Those who profess that their profession is to protect and uphold truth… make their money by lying.

I am talking about the TV channels.

Everyone is on top.

Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya… and satyameva jayatay and all that… that is for their kids to learn by rote.

They tell the advertisers that they are on the top and feeling lonely… “It feels lonely at the top,” as the cliché goes.

But if everyone is at the top, what is the bottom line in this industry? How long will the hoax stay alive?

Game’s up, guys, and CAS has done it. One ‘pay’ news channel has already spouted abuses at CAS and said it was migrating into the Free To Air arena because of the stupid, inefficient CAS thing. Other skeletons will shortly be up and walking in the frontyards of TV channel offices soon.

All because of CAS.

A friend of mine, a bombed out scribe who is somehow trailing the last part of his career masquerading as a media specialist, tells me that the subscribers in the CAS mandated areas have rejected pay channels.

Let’s get this clearly understood.

Under CAS the subscriber gets only those channels s/he pays for, along with some other Free To Air channels, because their owners (like DD) do not want subscribers to pay, but have a different revenue model.

CAS has given the subscribers the choice, dictatorial powers to say which channel they prefer, but also, CAS has inbuilt software called SMS, or Subscriber Management System.

This means that each set-top box has a chip in it. This chip, while stopping the subscriber from viewing channels s/he has not paid for, also notes everything that every single set top (STB) boxe does.

It notes every time your TV switches on a particular channel and how long you watch it, and hence a collective pool of data from SMS of each of the STBs could clearly show… ahem…. the truth about which is a popular channel.

And that is happening, shattering myths about channel popularity.
See, when the initial days of cable TV came, the broadcasters (channels) said the cablewallahs and the multi-system operators (LCOs and MSOs) are “under-declaring the number of households they are catering to.

The latter would have to pay a certain amount of money for each household the channels are showing, hence, to fleece the channels, the LCOs and MSOs are hugely fudging the exact number of households they are accessing and keeping the lion’s share of the subscription revenue, the channels said.

It was not far from the truth at all, one must say, for most LCOs were rogues.

So, the broadcasters wanted an addressable system, where things would be transparent, including exact number of households that are viewing the channels.

Meanwhile, advertisement revenue had to be garnered and the channels showed the data of a certain TAM organisation, which had a few thousand boxes to sample the 70 million cable TV homes and tell the advertisers where best to put their clients’ monies.

That TAM is a sister concern of a certain broadcaster, mind you, and that particular broadcaster stayed on top most often. TAM got to be accepted because there was no other organisation doing similar work and, you know, when lies are uttered a hundred times, they seem close to truth.

But it is different with CAS, the addressable system that the broadcasters wanted and are now so desperately trying to shoot in the leg now, because with CAS, satyameva seems to be winning.

The primary data from the SMS would immediately show, if nothing, how many households from the mandated CAS areas in southern climes of Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi have opted for which channels.

It has, my friend the bombed out media specialist masquerader says, and that is a revelation for the advertisers, a damaging indictment of the claims of the channels as to all of them being at the top and still feeling lonely!

And there is more to come.

The ‘universe’ as the term now goes, meaning number of households, in the mandated CAS areas of the affluent southern climes is small: a total of 15 lakh. The government is on the verge of extending to the entire areas under these metros, which would expand this universe to about 80 lakh.

If the affluent of the metros have largely ignored the pay channels, I do not expect their suburban cousins to settle for more pay channels than their richer brothers.

This is why many broadcasters now want CAS to go, or stumble and perish, or some miracle to make it vanish.

Because truths that are not controllable by them are dangerous for business!

They sure are creating pressure on the government, but the people’s pressure… 80 lakh to start with, and then millions from other 35 cities soon to be declared CAS areas, is something even the most corrupt politician would be unable to ignore.

Come to think of it, it is not the red vanguards of the janata but a bourgeois government that has unleashed people’s power!

Penblunt & Hogwash

Indian Market drives non-News

PENBLUNT

Being a scribe for a little more than two decades has advantages.

You could call up someone and ask: Hey, you got a job for me?

The Q&A then goes: What kind of job, mate?

So you spell it out.

I always wanted to be an environmental journalist, which at one time I was.

The thing about being an environmental journalist is that you feel so passionately about the environment and LIFE that you really do not care about the language. It ought to be carried in all languages.

In fact, in an Indian situation, you must do, because you know that everyone NEEDS to know this and understand this… so better if it is in an Indian language.

Thus it is that at a certain level of penury and joblessness, I asked a very senior person in a Hindi channel, a peer and friend: Sallay, naukri hai kya? (Brother, do you have a job for me?)

He went on predictable lines: What kind of job, mate?

Something to do with the environment, I said… may be not a job… may be you commission me a few programmes and pay for that… or may be a job dealing with your environmental programming…?

Nope, he said?

Why? Was he against helping a friend, as many a person is, relegating past to the back-freezer!

“Nahi ray…: he said haplessly… Hindi channels care nothing for environmental stuff…. Market nahin hain, yaar.

Friends, watch the special series on Climate Change on BBC now, this April, back-to-back with the global warming report released by the IPCC and American machinations to deny the hard, fast hotting reality, which the US wants to cover under a thickening carbon blanket.

Lest any of my unadmiring readers start thinking this is a surrogate autobiography and a tale of woes of a frequently-jobless scribe, this is really about something else.

The Indian media (TV) is having a field day… never had so many succulents been laid out on the table at once…. Supreme Court giving a controversial verdict on caste reservations, Sharad Pawar playing to the off side with Indian cricket and burying it, UP elections with a sting operation, a la Tehelka, showing all UP politicians (it did not have any Congress candidate on the hang list, though) as corrupt…and the rest of the rape… bribe... corruption menu, inter alia…

All of last week, BBC, or for that matter CNN and other international channels have been battering the air waves with programming on global warming, and especially how India, with others of our ilk suffering the worst effects of global warming.

Yet, let alone the Hindi TV media, the so-called most respected Indian English TV news channels have been sleeping with their pillows over their heads on the issue of global warming.

I know CNN has been doing a lot, but the BBC’s series on global warming has reconfirmed my faith on it as the global leader in sophisticated, scientific programming that has a pro-poor bias, clearly, a bias that can only be heart-warming.

The farmer in UP will have to shift his wheat field upwards, where there is no water… vegetation shift due to global warming…

The BT cotton farmer in Andhra will die… commit suicide…

Four years ago, a scientist in Shillong had told me that warm weather birds are not seen there anymore. Disastrous... because there is no food for those kind of birds in Meghalaya.

Did you know that chillies are not hot enough because chillies do not gather heat unless the rainwater ferments the soil underneath, from which the chillies draw their calories?

So all of the time till it rains, and IF it rains at all… there will be no chilly worth its name available…. And so the chilly growers, who have taken daadan, or blanket selling rights with top notch masala manufacturers, would have no market and may also commit suicide…

Nothing to consider… no heart… only TRP…. Sachin, Chappel… Saurav… Shastri… combinations of old and young, without understanding if a young has a dying heart (Dravid), or old hearts have the racing pulses (Sachin and Saurav), or empty hearts with schemes of eliminating India before it could confront Australia…

Nothing, from our hallowed Indian TV channels on the fact that we, as humans, have killed off our environment and are dying with it….

Nahi ray… market nahi hai yaar!

God curse! Ye Indian showmen and showmen who make money out of showmen!

WHAT WE CALL THE NEWS

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Penblunt & Hogwash

Vulgarity of the Beholder

PENBLUNT

In a previous edition of my column, I had supported the Information & Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi for his bold step in getting DD the signals for a major cricket event from a private channel.

I had supported his contention that this was an issue of patriotism.

But I guess that between me as a freedom-loving citizen firmly settled on accountability, this uneasy support system can best be said to be what in political horse trading is called “issue-based.”

Priyada’s Congress has not been able to do much to the ‘rule by might’ of bete noire CPI-M in West Bengal, so he has perhaps, in a rather Freudian manner, decided to run his ministry as his private stable, … sacking jockeys, jockeying for lackeys, and so forth.

In February he suddenly hacked AXN channel. It was banned till March 31.

Why? One does not know, because one has never been told, and now it has become unimportant, because AXN has been freed from the shackles and is on air once again… why? Once again, one doesn’t know the why of that either.

But hey, all the channels cannot go on showing all the time can they? So wham! Another channel, FTV, has been shut down.

But why? One does not know, because one has never been told, again.

This April, may has become a big word, although the month is a full 28 days away.

The government may ban other channels as well, and three more victims have been short listed but not named. One doesn’t know why they have been made targets, though, but it may be because of salacious / anti-women / vulgar / pornographic / obscene / national security threatening / unpatriotic content.

Any of these may apply, because the I&B ministry does not think that it should I people about B issues. In long form: the ministry should I-nform people about b-roadcasting issues and decisions on them.

This is a fundamental responsibility of the ministries, especially a ministry whose job it is to inform.

But why FTV? In the absence of any information on the basis of the ministry’s decision, one may speculate that it is all those curvaceous women romping on the ramps with more open than under clothes.

But this is not fair.

A bit of boobs and bums and a little more than just outlines is expected in a fashion TV channel. But what about the crass vulgarity of some of the ads showed on news channels?

I remember an ad, in which there is a male brief hanging on a clothes line, and suddenly out of the blue, a costly panty flies in and not only lands on the same clothesline, but with curious but muted lovemaking noises on the background, it glides to touch the male counterpart.

Wasn’t that crass? Wasn’t that vulgar?

The ministry under OD is considering a watershed system of allowing adult content on TV, that is, allow such contents after 11 pm and till 5 am.

They have argued that this is meant for the poorer sections of the populace who cannot afford to buy a ticket for watching a movie and yet, should have access to that kind of stuff.

I have supported that, a sort of democratisation of adult content access in a welfare-state country. But that is not the point.

Who decides what is adult content? Our puerile politicians? God bless!

The margin between adult and obscene or vulgar is very thin. And to top it all, what is vulgar in Bengal is just good meat in another state and vice versa. So why not set up a national commission on vulgarity to decide on exactly what is that content that goes beyond being adult.

Not a bad idea, but the government may not like it…

It is another thing to apply rules of pornography, for they are fairly well laid out. Nudity is not and shall never be pornography in itself unless there is what we call an element of ‘penetration’ in it.

A standalone nude image of a male or a female could be an object of art or a pornography, provided the artist does not want to portray sexual intercourse, either mutually between two people or masturbatory.

That is on the static images, but what about moving images? There are scores of films that show a man and woman (or any two humans) in sexual communion, which are intrinsically related to the issue in the film.

They do not show the individual organs out of context merely to titillate, but titillation is a state of the mind. Some of the avant garde films have fantastic artistic value despite a lot of sex in them. So ban them now in India, or at least, on Indian TV channels?

And yet, let panties sneak up to men’s briefs on clotheslines?

So, anything that does not violate that code of pornography can be treated adult content. The government cannot be a moral police

For that has always been the job of society and its intrinsic consensual system.