Body Watch

Body Watch

There is a naggingly familiar, and worrisome, ring to Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj's ire against Fashion Television. The minister is reportedly upset at the telecast of leggy models parading flimsy and flimsier apparel every day, day after day, on the 24-hour free-to-air channel. She is upset enough to put officials at the Central Monitoring Cell on the F-TV Beat. If they find that the channel indeed violates "Indian culture and ethos" Swaraj threatens to refer the matter to a panel of parliamentarians. So upset is Swaraj, in fact, that she has made space in her very busy schedule for a meeting with the French ambassador on the matter within a day or two, the sooner the better. The hullabaloo surrounding Swaraj's latest peeve is fraught with deja vu -- it brings back memories of her prim pronouncements on "proper" and "improper" entertainment in the past, her severe "no reading news in blouses with plunging necklines and slipping pallus" injunction to newscasters during her 13-dayincumbency of the same ministry four years ago. It is worrisome because in an era of open skies and wired homes, Swaraj's agenda may just kick up a hugely wasteful controversy that nobody but the self-styled culture/moral police can possibly profit from.

One can only rue the lot of officials of the Central Monitoring Cell in Delhi's Aya Nagar whose job it currently is to watch and record all F-TV programmes. Apart from the sheer monotony of viewing those singularly unexciting broadcasts -- the unending and repetitive struts down the ramp of a succession of impassive and stunningly similar-looking female models -- there is the matter of the remarkable come-down in their job-description. The Wireless Monitoring Office was set up as a branch of the Military Intelligence in Army Headquarters in November 1939. The Second World War had broken out in Europe, the British Government had drawn India into war operations against the Axis powers, India was a key target for Axis propaganda through the broadcasting medium. The colonial rulers, therefore, devised an organised set-up to keep a watch on foreign broadcasts. Its main task was to keep a security check by listening to news, talks and features broadcast by German and Italian broadcasting organisations. Thematerial was then passed on to the Counter-propaganda Directorate for rebuttal or ridicule through the All India Radio. Over the years, the "nation's eyes and ears" are seeing and hearing different things, the focus and emphasis has shifted in keeping with the changed imperatives of the changing environment, but Swaraj's constriction of its task must surely come as a blow to the veteran organisation's self-esteem.

Apart from which there are those other questions that have been asked before. How can any television channel, much less poor F-TV, be a threat to a self-confident culture? And even if it is, what does the minister propose to do about it? Swaraj has diplomatically lobbed the ball into the Parliament's court but the question persists. Assuming that F-TV is deemed offensive by our honourable law-makers, what then? It is absurd to regulate the most unregulated media arena. That old aphorism makes practical, more than moral sense, today. In a democracy, let the people decide.