Eat More, Watch TV, Procreate

'A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read thepapers' 

Alber Camus

In an age when idiot box psephologists and sundry political pundits crythemselves hoarse about the primacy of the BSP factor (Bijili, Sadak, Paani, orElectricity, Roads, Water ) in any election in New India, the DMK, in itsmanifesto for the forthcoming elections in Tamilnadu, has done remarkably wellto balance the modern with the medieval. 

Going by the three promises which DMK chief M. Karunanidhi chose to highlightwhile releasing the manifesto today, it is clear that the Camus sentence hasundergone some changes, and the message for the state's electorate is clear: eatmore, spend more time watching TV (preferably Sun TV) and, procreate. Everythingis on the house. Dr. Kalaingar, it seems, has had some consultations with theSwedish Social Democrats (who spend more than 50 per cent of the country's GDPon welfare sops) before setting out the party's agenda for the state.

In this populist slugfest, chief minister J. Jayalalithaa had announced ascheme to provide free bicycles to students in the state, and her cash dole ofRs 2,000 for each flood-affected family across the state seems to have ensuredmore votes. Not to be outdone, the DMK promises to install a colour televisionin every home and give a monthly allowance of Rs 1000 for six months to pregnantwomen, besides providing superior quality rice at Rs 2 per kilogram through thepublic distribution system. While the Rs 2 rice scheme is a time tested vote harvestersuccessfully employed by both NT Rama Rao and later his son-in-law N.Chandrababu Naidu, the first two promises have disaster and deceit written allover. 

By offering a pregnancy allowance, Karunanidhi has made a mockery of familyplanning campaigns on which the country has invested significant energy andresources. If the DMK comes to power, the septuagenarian leader could as welldisband TN government's various family planning departments. If he does indeedcare so much, could he not, for example, have provided for medicare orincentives for the first two pregnancies? Although one can dismiss the proposalas an election-time bout of lunacy, the plans to provide free colour TVs deservegreater attention. While the rest of the world looks at literacy and sex ratios,tele-density, electricity, hospitals and doctors per 1000 people as developmentindices, in DMK's lexicon television seems synonymous with development. The onlypeople who bother about television penetration so much are media planners atadvertising agencies, and television makers themselves. DMK is neither. So whythe fuss?

Karl Marx termed religion as the opium of people. Karunanidhi has realisedthat television is the opium for Tamils. There are nearly a dozen Tamilsatellite channels for a state's population of just over six crore and the SunTV network run by the Karunanidhi family with a bouquet of five channels. In theTRP ratings for Tamil programmes, Sun TV shows occupy almost all the top tenspots. Recently, media analysts have pegged Sun TV's valuations at a whopping Rs3000 crore. You can picture the channel's vice-like grip over the popularculture and imagination of the state when Vaiko, an erstwhile alliance partnerof DMK, who has now joined hands with Jayalalithaa, cited his"blackout" on Sun News as one of the primary reasons for the fallout.

Karunanidhi's detractors allege that he is more interested in expanding thefamily's media business interests. His "vision" of increasing thetelevision density would most definitely mean greater revenues, not to speak ofunmatched political and advertising clout for the Sun Network. Just a back ofthe envelope calculation shows that Karunanidhi's latest freebie scheme wouldcost the exchequer Rs 5000 crore. The average penetration of CTVs in India isaround 27 per cent. In the case of TN, it is higher at 30 per cent. Consideringthat there are 1.2 crore households in the state, nearly 70 per cent or 8.5million (10 million are sold in the whole of India annually) of them still don'town a box. Even if you put the average cost of a CTV at Rs 6,000, TN's nextfinance minister could be looking at setting aside Rs 5100 crore.

Chennai is perhaps the only metropolis in 21st century India which relies onsub-Saharan hand-pumps for the supply of drinking water, and it will continue tobe that way for the foreseeable future. But what the heck, the state will havemore idiot boxes than the rest of India. Perhaps those who have no houses oraccess to electricity would be forgiven for hoping that they would get thesebasic necessities as well, so that they could use these TV sets? Or has thecanny old politician figured out that it would never come to that, given how theelectoral odds are weighted against him?