And now, all the women newscasters in Hindi on Aaj Tak, Zee News, Star News and, occasionally NDTV India, have started speaking at supersonic speed. So fast do they speak that sometimes the sound can’t keep pace with their lips and poor viewers find it difficult to make out what the speed fiends are saying.

The loser is the news, which is a very serious business and it seems strange that producers of news programmes are not checking this unforgivable practice, which is nothing short of frivolous.

What makes it all appear all the more racy is that reporters speaking from outside speak at a slower and clearer pace. This, however, makes no difference to the P.T.Ushas in the studio. They race on regardless.

Another practice which was started, I think by Star News, and has been copied by the sheep on other channels, is to bring an expert into the studio, whether on sport, defence or politics, and make them stand in the studio. And they are more or less left standing. A classic example is what they do, for instance, to former Indian test cricketer Saba Karim. After the anchor has announced his presence in the studio and the subject under discussion, the anchor holds forth on the subject at length.

Then the anchor calls in a reporter who is outside somewhere to give his report on the same subject. All this while Saba Karim is off screen and when the camera returns to him, without his having said a word so far, we find he is standing in exactly the same place. In the end, the anchor speaks much more than the expert, who is also sometimes cut short in the middle of a sentence. Why have him in the studio at all, one might ask. And how does making him stand help the discussion?

Another practice which is increasing is Hindi anchors and all Indian anchors putting on severely cut mannish pant suits in the studio. Indian dress, whether sarees or salwaar kameez, has an identity of its own and is admired all over the world. Some of the anchors in pant suits (only the tie is missing) look comical when speaking shudh Hindi for a shudh Indian news item like, for instance, Durga Puja or Karwa Chauth.

I can understand Sonali Chander wearing western clothes when reporting on sport. But reading the news in the studio is something different. And don’t tell me you can’t do TV in a saree. I have reported from outside the studios on everything from film festivals to children’s sports in a saree. I have driven a jeep in a saree. You just have to tuck it in front in stormy weather. But in a studio, it lends grace and identity to Indian women, as do salwaar kameez, the Assamese mekhla or Khasi dress, in their own regions.

But matters have reached a stage where Indians, in the press, are themselves referring to Indian sarees and other Indian costumes as “ethnic” because some foreigner used the word when speaking to us about our dress, which is no doubt ethnic to them.

Now would we ask an American if jeans are his ethnic dress? Or a European woman if her skirt or her hat is ethnic? Come on now young Indians who wear pant suits in the studio when broadcasting about things Indian in an Indian language.