Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi has been a busy minister. There he was, agitated about Shilpa Shetty’s ordeal on British reality television, advising the actor on how best to deal with it: just run to the Indian high commission. PS: In future let the big guys in government/ high commission know before accepting a foreign assignment that could turn sour, ‘embarrass’ a whole nation. There he was again, decapitating a whole channel for two months, protecting ‘public morality’ and ‘good taste’ and ‘decency’. From Big Brother to Moral Policeman all in a day’s work, Dasmunshi was in fine fettle.

As the minister waves about his stick, we need to ask ourselves: do we need him to do this? Do we need the government to tell us what we and our children can and cannot watch on our TV sets? Do we need it to watch over us when we go abroad? At the heart of the matter is this question: as a society and a democracy, are we adult enough? The I&B ministry’s

recent exertions speak of the puritanism that takes over ministers who take charge of it. But surely, they also say some terribly disrespectful things about us. They tell us that we cannot be trusted to choose and to discriminate, to self-regulate or simply switch the channel. They tell us that we need the state, police and the censor board to define ‘obscenity’. Or to bail us out of the bad situations we sometimes choose to land ourselves in.

... contd.