Wrong questions???

What really puts me off nowadays are the late night news channel programs that analyse the latest developments of the day. You have prominent (and not so prominent) members of political parties, NGOs etc and a few representative citizens dissect the topic that has grabbed the attention of the Editor of the news channel.

While open forums for discussion are critical for democratic nations like ours, the objective that these discussions ought to achieve is identifying an alternate way to deal with the issue debated. However, when they start serving other masters (like, TRP ratings) the very purpose of strengthening the polity is lost.

A rather annoying example happened the other day, when reviewing the sad state of affairs in the Parliament after the Budget was announced. Members of the opposition and the leading party each defended their stance. However, while a lot was debated, little was clarified.

The opposition talked about 'saving' the 'common man', decreasing his 'burden', meeting his 'expectations' and 'rampant' corruption in the leading party, the member defending his government's stance merely did some mud slinging by asking the opposition what they had done during their time in power.....

To add a little fuel to the fire, the anchor asked the opposition member, whether they were right in walking out with - an ex-ally of the ruling party or bitter enemy of both, i forget which - an embarrassing question for both members.. This led to another revert on the sufferings of the common man.

Such a sham. The critical questions - why is the fuel price rising, who are the losers if you increase/ dont increase the prices, is there an alternate to this - were completely ignored. Not a mention about how the current price rise will affect India's economic future. Instead what was achieved is a little by the way of cheap entertainment - mediocre celebrities taking pot shots at each other.

Why the channel aired this useless diatribe is above my intelligence to understand. A word of caution to the news channels "you can fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time".