SIGHT & SOUND
TV as tutor in crises
Amita Malik

If TV has served one good purpose, it has exposed our public behaviour for all to see.

For instance, my maid minced no words when she saw a relay of the proceedings in Parliament; "What is this Par-lia-ment?" she asked in Bengali, "it is just a jhagra ghar" and she made it clear that the shouting MP would not get her vote next time. Similarly the antics of both Lalu Prasad and Uma Bharti provide eye and ear-filling fare. Lalu is the best political entertainer on TV, the same class as Jaspal Bhatti. But as a young nephew remarked: "Uma Bharti is a pain in the neck." Thus is public opinion formed.

The cricket audiences in Chennai and Mumbai, where even elderly women are seen discussing the finer points of the game, and "boo" to the noodle-strap fair and lovelies with their ignorance sticking out a mile, are quite knowledgeable. The passionate audiences at Eden Gardens make the rather boorish Greg Chappell lose his cool. "We prefer civilised Australians like Steve Waugh, a great cricketer and who looks after poor Bengali children", said someone on a Bengali channel to set the records straight.

All this came to mind when I saw the chaos surrounding poor Amitabh Bachchan obviously in pain, being carried out of the ambulance outside Leelavati Hospital in Mumbai, and his son, relatives and friends trying in vain to shield him from fans. They were genuinely concerned and mean well, like the crowds which rush in to help when there is a house collapse, but they hinder people who are directly concerned with handling an emergency. On the other hand, look at the valiant villagers who rush to the scene of a train accident immediately and save lives and offer water before official help can arrive. They risk their own lives pulling out people trapped inside wrecked compartments.

Best of all are the ordinary people of different communities who give shelter to their neighbours from the community that is being targeted by thugs. Hindus and Muslims who sheltered Sikhs during the 1984 killings, my maid’s Hindu husband standing steadfast in front of his door protecting his Sikh neighbours whom he was hiding in a back room. Thanks to TV, all these tales of heroism come to light with the audio and visual impact of TV, the audio impact of radio and the words and pictures of the more leisurely Press.

Equally, the three media must play their part in educating and guiding ordinary people on how to behave in an emergency. The British media had played a vital part in determining the behaviour of ordinary people when their tubes and buses were attacked by terrorists. Ordinary people left the road literally clear for the authorities concerned to do their allotted and rehearsed jobs unhindered.

The BBC is carrying out a series of programmes in different countries about the spread of AIDS and how it is being countered. I have so far watched the one on India and it was done with the thoroughness and apt mix of statistics and human interest, particularly interviews, which one would expect. A contrast to their series on the Indian cinema that I frankly found a little too trite for Indians although it might interest other countries carrying the world service. In fact, the eagerness of both the BBC and CNN to heighten Indian interest by offering coverage of different aspects of India often runs into trouble. And I find the surfeit of Chinese presenters on CNN as off-putting as the surfeit of foreign items on CNBC, NDTV’s profit channel being much more Indian-orientated.

I was delighted to see the announcement that Dibang, of NDTV India, had won the award for the best news anchor. His is a saga of hard work and devotion. Dibang come from the North-East, from Arunachal, where Hindi is not exactly a popular language. He came to Delhi when there were not so many people from the North-East in print and electronics media.

Dibang first worked for an English weekly. But once he got interested in Hindi, which he now speaks with total fluency, and TV news, which is a highly specialised aspect of TV, he did not look back. Congratulations, Dibang, your award was long overdue.