There has been a raging debate in the Indian media about immoral reality television programs being shown on prime time. The I&B ministry wants t.v channels to shift these programs for the late night slots but the "seemingly" liberal brigade believes that it is unnecessary meddling by the government as children these days don't sleep at 11pm!
In all this ruckus one fails to understand what the general public is coming to. They are behaving just like the reality t.v programs that they watch and naturally, people seem to love them. It makes me nostalgic to think of those days when t.v channels showed some good old Indian cinema which families used to look forward to on weekends.
Those were the days when t.v was in its nascent stages and there were just a couple of good serials that too with limited episodes. There were programs like Chitrahar which showed some songs from Indian movies that people eagerly awaited every Sunday morning. Most importantly, there were movies from the bygone era that the people looked forward to watching.
Movies like Pyaasa, Do Bigha Zameen, Mother India, Jaagte Raho, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi and several others were regularly telecast on t.v. Even less known art house cinema like Pushpak, Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, Janne Bhi Do Yaaro etc were regularly shown on t.v. Today's generation is exposed to crap that is supposed to be comedy. How many people in their teens today have seen movies by great directors like Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt,Dadasaheb Phalke, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and the likes. I am sure they don't even know who these people are, and I am not even discussing less known Indian auteurs or foreign auteurs.
The biggest problem that we Indians have is that we don't respect our own culture and history. We spit on monuments just like we spit in our bathrooms. Movies are hardly considered a work of art; it has become a way to have a nice time and spend excess money for the generation X, Y and Z. I myself belong to this generation but sadly cannot relate with them. Even people from the older generation seem to have forgotten the great cinema that has been made in the bygone era.
India can never reach greatness in art if it doesn't respect its history. Sadly, every parent wants his child to be a technocrat, doctor or an entrepreneur and children entering this mindless rat race have no time to think or appreciate works of art.
All this takes me to one conclusion and that is that the world is going intellectually backwards. We are now in the reverse gear and will eventually grow tails like our ancestors. Incidentally, I can think of the Mike Judge movie called Idiocracy when I think of the world of tomorrow. Judge, like Nostradamus has predicted the world in the future and unfortunately we must agree with him.
