Are We Done With Promoting National Integration?

See, the banter's woken up for good now. So you have to join in. :)

Recently I saw a live performance on Mile Sur Mera Tumhara by a bunch of kids at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. While the performance itself was impressive, it made me nostalgic and I YouTubed the video out.

I know there is a new Bollywood advertisement that goes Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara.  But I don't consider it worthy of my banter. The reasons will need a blog or two in themselves.

Anyways, nowadays whenever I listen to or watch this song - one question bugs me. Why don't we have this song anymore on TV or Radio? The original idea seemed to be to promote national integration by making regional superstars and Bollywood stars sing the same couple of lines in different languages. When it used to be telecast way back in 80s, Punjab (Khalistan and 84) was a burning issue, every state in Northeast seemed to have a secessionist movement going, Babri Masjid was still standing, terrorism was limited to Kashmir, and Sachin Tendulkar(I can't engage in banter without mentioning Him once) was just terrorizing Mumbai (oops Bombay) school bowlers. So national integration needed to be promoted, more so on a linguistic basis.

Today, the Naxal movement is as secessionist in nature as Khalistan, nothing much has changed in Northeast, Babri Masjid has been demolished, and terrorism has reached each and every metro in India. Obviously a few positives have also emerged: India's economy has grown and is growing, infrastructure has been developed (yes, cell phones work in parts of Kashmir and Northeast too), and Tendulkar is loved across the country.

But can we say that national integration has been achieved? When Thackerays beat up North Indians in Mumbai, when 1 million people (plan to tomorrow) march in their own state to demand a new state, and when a large number of oppressed-for-years people are abducting random bureaucrats to demand this or that. I think there's still a long way to go in achieving national integration so complete, that it be taken off the media agenda completely.

The reason why DD used to telecast it in 80s and early 90s was to reach out to those for whom the idea of their villages, khaps, and castes was stronger than the idea of their own country and its unity. We can safely assume that the target audience included the literally illiterate populace and the ideologically illiterate populace. Today, literal literacy has increased but so has the base so we still have 350 million who cannot read and write but can access visual or audio media. The ideologically illiteracy has increased unfortunately.

May be not on a linguistic basis, but still we are all pulling in different directions due to our economic standing, our ethnicity, our education, our gender, or whatever divide you may want to consider. The idea behind promoting national integration (Hindi, Khaadi, movement against untouchability, the independence struggle itself, or an orchaestrated Mile Sur) was to make all of us overlook these divides and pull the nation in the same direction - front. The idea still holds true.

The idea needs to be conveyed just like other such ideas like AIDS awareness, polio eradication, and literacy promotion are being conveyed.  Through the media that most of India has access to. And for such an important idea, excuses such as large number of private channels and depleting DD viewer numbers should not matter.

The current generation of kids, earners, grown ups, and the elderly needs a reminder every now and then, just like they needed it 20 years back. They also need a song to be nostalgic about 20 years henceforth.

PS: Like most who will read this, I do not watch DD much. So if such a campaign is on there, I wouldn't know. But to cover the ideologically illiterate, such a campaign needs to cover all channels and not through Bollywood ads.

Evil Cricket Eats up Tweet Space Meant for CWG

Yes, it is cricket once again that has woken me up from my slumber. These days Ramayana is pretty popular, so I will forgive you if you compare my blog to Kumbhakarna – he too used to wake up after sleeping for 6 months. Bad one! I know.

Ok so, yesterday, I read a few comments in the light vein from some of my friends deriding cricket, across various social media forums:

“Die Cricket Die”

“…I have programmed myself to ignore all cricket and focus on watching/reading all things CWG next 2 weeks…”

The triggering event for this was that on 5/10/10 sometime between 14:00 and 15:00 hrs, VVS Laxman shouted a few expletives at Pragyan Ojha, threatened to beat him with his bat (rarest of rare events), and won a cracker of a test match for India. It was as if he was commemorating his awesomer feat from 2001. How awesome these feats and some of the others that Indian cricket team has pulled off in between them needs the space of a book and not a blog. So let me just say that, yesterday at the aforementioned time, I was deliriously happy and so were the 200-400 colleagues jumping in the office cafeteria and shouting “India, India, India”.

Obviously so were a lot of Indian twitterati, because hashtags related to Laxman and VVS were (globally) out-trending all pop singers, Jerome Kerviel, “premium” viral trends, and CWG. Yes, Indian shooters and wrestlers were busy winning 5 gold medals (a very rare feat indeed) and a few silvers and bronzes at that same time.

So cricket out-trended other sports in India again. Anything unexpected? More importantly, anything unfair or wrong about it?

Now why does cricket need to die for this or why do people need to shut themselves away from such great cricket moments? Such comments and ideas always remind me of a story I heard long back – about a teacher drawing a line in sand and asking a student to make it smaller without touching it, and the student drawing a bigger line under it.  Cricket hogs tweet space, TV space, and mind space, because no other sport does that for us Indians. It is not right or wrong, fair or unfair, it just is.

Consider this:

1) BCCI did not spend $3 billion on hosting this series with Australia. The richest board in the world even cited cost problems for not using UDRS.

2) Most of those that thronged to the PCA stadium, to TV sets in cafeteria, brought down the Cricinfo servers, or just kept tweeting, had schools to attend, homework to complete, reports to write, vendors to pay, orders to fulfill, and bosses to appease. Yet they prioritized the culmination of a game rambling on for last five days over all other priorities in life. And they have been doing this for last 30 years at least.

3) And for VVS it was just one more match to turn around, one more challenge to thrive in. At least when the day started, he definitely needed less support than those wrestlers for whom the medals were once in a life time event.

Still more eyeballs and wishes focused on him, because he was playing the sport that Indians love. Why?

Perhaps because as Ram Chandra Guha says in “Wickets in the East”, Indian cricket resembles the ethos that is India; perhaps because India has been more successful at cricket than at other sports; or perhaps it is sinister BCCI’s sinister plan.

I don’t know why it is so, but that it is so, is for everyone to see. Personally, I think it is the hope of success in a high-quality contest that drives the audiences. If interest in a sport can be measured historically, I believe that we would see huge spikes in 1971 (Gavaskar, India’s first away victories over WI and Eng, highest run chase of the time), between 1983 and 1987 world cups (victory to a pathetic semis exit), immediately after Nov. 1989 (God happened), and definitely after March 2001 (Kolkata). At all these times, the quality of cricket went up and hope of success surfaced or strengthened. I believe, we would also see negative spikes between 1987 WC and Nov 1989, in 1999 and early 2000, and during 2007 WC.  In all these times hopes were dashed and quality of cricket played by India spiralled down. Perhaps what sustains Indians’ interest in cricket between these spikes is the factor that Mr. Guha talks about – in some ways – both good and bad, cricket in India does reflect India. I do not have any statistical evidence for this composite theory, but its just a thought.

So for CWG or any other sports event to trend higher than cricket, Indians would have to do well at it, against the best opposition, and it would have to have chaos of Indian life muddled into it. Simple task of drawing a longer line.

I personally don’t have anything against the CWG. I beamed with pride all throughout the opening ceremony and happily tweeted and retweeted whenever an Indian won a medal. But when there is a masterpiece being etched in a cricket match, it is difficult for my mind to focus on anything else, not in the least on CWG. I guess it was true for a lot of people yesterday.

In the end, I would like to thank my friends, whose status messages and comments got me thinking and woke my blog up.

May CWG XIX live long! :)