The medium is the political message
In the good old days when the Congress virtually ruled both the national political stage and the national television screen, there would have been really no need for an institution like Jai Hind TV, which the Congress president has just dedicated to the citizens of Kerala. Doordarshan would then have done the job of projecting Congress news, views and values to the farthest reaches of the land. Alas, no longer.
Even tiny Kerala has a dozen private television stations. Therefore the state must find space for the 13th. One that the Kerala unit Congress president, Ramesh Chennithala, characterises as “independent” but which nevertheless is permitted to be partial to the party. As they say, independent is as independent does.So Kerala is now all set to follow Tamil Nadu in the joys of political television or televised politics, as the case may be. It now has two private channels to project its two dominant parties: Kairali TV for the Left Front and Jai Hind TV for the Congress Front, each with its own committed film superstars — Mammooty emotes for the former, Mohanlal for the latter. But Tamil Nadu is still a hard act to follow. Once it had just Jaya TV and Sun TV.
This made the PMK feel somewhat lonely, so Makkal TV came about. Still later the political sun set on Sun TV and Tamil Nadu’s ruling family is now set to rise on yet another television channel, named aptly enough as Kalaignar TV. Imagine if this trend were to cross the Vindhyas, and we get Lalu TV taking on Nitish TV or Uma Bharati TV taking on Shivraj Singh Chauhan TV, or Balasaheb Thackeray TV beaming down on Deshmukh TV? We should really have no problems with all of this. Let a hundred television channels blare forth if they will. But spare a thought for the poor voter left with sore eyes and addled brains.Going back to Jai Hind TV, wouldn’t it have been more apt to have named it Jai Congress TV instead?
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