Is India Shining?
Last week, the editor of a TV channel took pains to explain that these channels are driven to focus on single scandal stories per day because of the tyranny of TRPs. Editors, these days are too busy taxing from seminar to seminar while their journalists are PR fed and feted and given handouts. TRPs he says rule the roost and decide the story and the TRPs reveal that people only want gossip about celebrities and little else. Obviously he was unable to explain why TRPs only reflected the tastes of selected households whose opinions were created to give legitimacy to the decisions taken by channel editors et all. Does this channel preoccupation with celebrity gossip and the issues of the well heeled to the total exclusion of the Other India or Bharat as they tend to call it, not sound very much like India taking a steep downturn? History is replete with examples of great cultures which are struck down soon as the ruling elites become too preoccupied with their pleasures, pastimes and lu...