Any link?
Are we lacking in culture and good behaviour in public? In our governance sphere?
Are protocols for the people or for bureaucratic bungling? See how the film awards are distributed!
The controversy over the President’s film awards! Why are these mismatches over the protocol in ensuring all get the awards from the hands of the President? Should media follow some etiquette and manners?
Many media outlets, print and electronic reported the controversy in not an elegant manner. We seem to be becoming a not evolving cultured society but a sort of a shameful one. See the amount of time spent on debates on such damaging stories on rape, violence and many other irrelevances. Cricket reporting is big business and so much money and energy is wasted. We leave it to experts to debate our distorted set of media priorities.
Yes, we as a nation are film crazy people. But as the Oscar Award winner Resul Pookutty said as to why the national film awards this year got into a controversy because the President denied the one minute glory to the rest of the technicians and others to get the award from the hands of the President citing lack of time! It was very much resented by the film industry.
The talents in culture needs to be nurtured and fostered and the cine artistes, not just the glamorous faces of actors and actresses by the men and women behind the cameras, the technicians, one like the Oscar winning Resul Pookutty, who had come out with a scathing attack. Cultures is such a vast impactful area and let us not repeat this practice of following the wooden rules of protocol but display some creativity and originality and win over the most vital springs of culture and decency. Are we improving or the reverse is happening? It doesn’t cost much to ask some questions, right? The many freedoms we take for granted like freedom of speech, writing and expression, in fact are not the freedoms we forget to be used and practiced in our everyday life.
The global media watchdog, Reporters without frontiers(RSF) has put India at the 138th country out of 180 countries. Anybody has spoken about this shameful state of affairs, asks one Newspaper editorial(Deccan Herald).While we write these lines there is almost non-stop electioneering in Karnataka where the Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi and even the former Prime Minister Deve Gowda are fighting for a place in the sun, so to say. But none of the top leaders had commented, let alone press freedoms but also other events, local and international.
So, India as a country and a society and more so as the world’s biggest democratic state, has simply come down to street fight for a few states to form the state government. And what spectacle we see? The much controversial persons, the Reddy brothers for instance share the dais with the PM who promises to clean the society and polity.
But the language we use to clean up the system is far from a language of freedom and culture and refinement. How do we hope to serve the country in this fashion?
It is very distressing that even the minor courtesies, even minor protocols and ways of doing the business of the government seem to be uplifting for the common citizens. Which ministry must be worried over the deterioration of standards? Obviously, there is the ministry for information and broadcasting. Why we seem to be still struggling to fix things up like giving India a public broadcasting system on the lines of the BBC?
Everything can’t be done with a profit in mind. Indian TV news channels industry is exploding, if that is the right word. You have to evolve a culture of governance. Do propagate the government schemes but do it in a non-partisan way. So too honouring the artists and intellectuals. The National Film Awards ceremony was held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan but done in a clumsy manner.
The President’s protocol doesn’t give the President more than one hour so he skipped midway, it seems; the awards were then presented by the controversial Smriti Irani. Of course, she did in some style. But let us realize even the very strict protocol has to be further practiced so that everyone concerned feels uplifted. Indian TV news industry is neither a cultural experience or has any other educational or other values. The news that the President’s event to distribute the national awards for the 68 film industry personalities was boycotted by these artists is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in such a national perspective.
It looks from what we see on the TV screens that the industry seems to be booming. More channels are joining the channel waves and this in an ideal scene must be much more enriching our viewer pleasure and must be creating a more elevated sense of purpose and leisure content. But alas! We see the reverse. The same old tired face or faces from some ageing actors projected as the brand ambassadors. Are not people a bit tired of seeing the same face every day and also in every other ad? And , oh, the cricketing fraternity and the gambling instinct turning the cricket game also into a high stake gambling.
In Bangalore for instance, the other day or why for a few days the very Chinnaswamy stadium was packed with long queues, most of the fans, why the every crowd is from youngsters with very few signs of any sort of formal education or even the knowledge about who were the stars, Indian or foreign and yet the stadium was overflowing. And to cap it all, the very owners, the BCCI is having a stiff fight with the authorities about democratic or transparent administration.
And for the quality of TV news culture or other forms of entertainment, the less said the better. There is now in the media space, all sorts of uncomfortable news or scenes and sights are aired. And, what is really galling is the sort of India, the Indian society and events that are highlighted. All news are news breakthroughs.
So much noise, so much cruelty or cruelties in society, the violence, the accidents, the rape stories make us, we believe, to see ourselves as a sick society. A society which has no order and restraint and we see the new generation leaders, of course we mean the political leaders holding forth on some very funny topics, from science and technology in Ramayana and Mahabharata and also opinions on Charles Darwin and other luminaries who according to these lightweights were right or wrong depending upon how they are brought to link with the puranas and ithihasas!