Where are India's TV comedy shows?

We will, we will mock you

(Published on June 17, 2017 in Buiness Standard)

I’ve wondered for years why we don’t, in India, have a thriving equivalent of the American late night comedy shows, like The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (a worthy replacement for the magnificent Jon Stewart), The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Real Time with Bill Maher, or Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. These people tear into the powers that be with a savagery that takes your breath away, but only because you’re laughing so hard. They serve takedown, send up, and unvarnished insult, on a bed of truth, garnished with profanity. They are whip-smart, merciless, and hilarious. And they do it all on mainstream television, protected by the First Amendment. Before the American news media stopped pandering to Trump, got its act together and renewed its commitment to the job, it was the comedy shows that held fast to the single most important function of journalism: to speak truth to power. They always have.

And they do it with a wit as entertaining as it is flaying. A good satirist will skip around poking you with a stick, then pull down your pants, slip a knife between your ribs, and skip away, leaving you filled with admiration and the desire to buy him or her a beer. How do American politicians respond? They appear on the shows. There’s no better way to earn public respect than to take an ego-walloping on the chin.

India is bursting at the seams with comedy gold. It’s so pervasive that, often, a straight-up news report is ridicule enough and needs no further comment. But there’s plenty of material waiting to be mined by a good satirical show. The Internet, bless its soul, performs the same function at individual peril. Newslaundry.com does scathing critique with the kind of damning before-and-after audiovisual clips that work so well to demonstrate contradictions and lies, and goes after not just politicians but media itself. 

But it would never find a slot on television. Mainstream media companies stay far, far away from anything but the gentlest poke in the ribs. Cyrus Broacha, who hosts The Week That Wasn’t, is the first to list all the things he can’t talk about. Acts like Aisi Taisi Democracy and All India Bakchod, as well as individual comedians, provide scathing takes, but they don’t enjoy the brand reach of television, and are perpetually in the crosshairs of offended sentiment.

I’m dying to see some aggressive, no-holds-barred comedy shows on Indian television, instead of the multiple tragedies unfolding every night in the name of news debates. I’d much rather watch Mr Modi submit to a chat with Varun Grover or Aditi Mittal. But our politicians’ egos are too fragile. They respond to mockery—and sometimes to regular news reports—by unleashing court cases, sackings, censorship, and financial penalties upon their tormentors. The enemy, today, is truth—truth that hurts electoral prospects, truth that debunks propaganda, and truth that adjusts projected image to reflect reality. And among truths, there is no greater enemy than irreverent truth.

Democracies deliberately place the seat of power in the white-hot light of public scrutiny, subject to relentless public opinion, feedback, and resistance. The idea is transparency, accountability, and responsiveness, not opacity, insulation, and stonewalling. Not all forms of power submit to critical review; autocracy and totalitarianism famously disapprove of it. But in a democracy, the powerful are raised up high not to be worshipped, but to be better examined and judged publicly. Yet, India treats power like a throne, not as an administration of peers, by peers, for peers.

People will never, and must never, stop sticking pins in overinflated egos. Everyone does it privately, many people do it publicly. Secure politicians appreciate satire, and the clever ones might even give it back in good humour. Average politicians ignore it. Only those baring their fangs and looking over their shoulders are provoked by mockery, and the more they are, the stupider, more insecure, and less legitimate they look. By the same token, media houses have to develop an irreverent backbone and be willing to sign up the funny talent. And the courts have to back freedom of expression and stop admitting frivolous cases.

The Indian internet and stand-up spaces will continue to serve the nation in their own ways. My dream is that one day India will have not just excellent mainstream television comedy shows, but also institutions modeled on the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, at which the press roasts the administration, and the Administration roasts the press right back.

But then I remember that we live in a country where television censors words like ‘bra’ and ‘beef’ (shame on you, Indian television, you slavish arm of the nanny state). So for now, the wealth of untapped comedy all around us is either an opportunity tragically wasted, or one that is going to be a very long while coming.

Zika virus and the unimportance of some people

All is not well with the government's response to public health

(Published on June 3, 2017 in Business Standard)

Of the Prime Minister’s many annoying acronyms, one stands out for being positively the most dishonest: EPI, or “Every Person is Important”. Phooey! Nobody who thinks Every Person is Important would compare people getting murdered to puppies getting run over. Plus, it’s the exact opposite of majoritarianism. Here’s an example of its dishonesty. 

In November 2016, a case of Zika virus was detected in Gujarat. This is the virus that, when it rampaged through Brazil last year, was declared an international public health emergency, and almost derailed the Rio Olympics. Zika is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito — the same vector that will soon be bringing dengue and chikungunya to a nasty puddle near you — and has likely been hanging around India for decades, so, as the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, an eventual outbreak here is inevitable. It can also be transmitted sexually, remaining in semen for months. 

Symptoms, if you develop them, include fever, rashes, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. They’re fairly mild, require no special treatment, and go away in a few days. But the Zika virus is a huge health hazard because if you’re pregnant, there’s a good chance that your baby will be born with microcephaly — a head smaller than normal, with an underdeveloped brain. The condition is associated with seizures, a shorter lifespan, poor brain and motor function, and dwarfism. 

Even unimportant people don’t want that for their kids. 

The Zika virus can also trigger Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), which causes rapid-onset paralysis that can be fatal unless it’s treated. 

Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that might motivate people to be more careful about wearing long sleeves and insect repellent, keep their environment clean, and screen themselves if they’re sexually active. It’s definitely the kind of thing that people, even unimportant people, have the right to know.

By January 2017, three cases were confirmed in Ahmedabad. Three is not an outbreak. But you can’t be complacent about serious disease; Singapore had a few isolated cases, and then an outbreak months later. So the Indian government swung into action, scanning for the virus, testing over 34,000 blood samples and over 12,000 mosquito samples (more since then). It got the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to increase disease surveillance. It mobilised health workers to identify vector breeding spots and disease. It monitored for microcephaly. All good steps.

But guess what it didn’t do? It didn’t tell anyone that we were dealing with Zika. It didn’t tell state and local authorities. It didn’t tell the health workers. And it didn’t tell the public. It said it was investigating malaria and dengue, not a new and dangerous disease unfamiliar to the Indian public. The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme disease maps did not mention Zika. The health ministry responded to a question in Parliament saying that one case had been confirmed (when in fact three had been), that the states had been advised, and that a travel advisory was out.

But Indians only found out about all this at the end of May, a full five months later, when the WHO posted its report on its website — having waited two months for the government’s replies to its questions.

Why the secrecy? How can an administration withhold a serious health hazard from the public, and the international community? How can it ignore disease control protocols? It hasn’t yet even finalised, according to the WHO report, information and communication materials for the public.

The silence wasn’t born of incompetence or oversight. Chief Secretary of Gujarat J N Singh said it was deliberate, to “avoid spreading panic”. To say that it was just saving Indians from their own chicken-headedness is contemptible government paternalism at best. But there’s a more grotesque and more likely explanation: According to The Hindu, the government hushed up Zika partly because the Vibrant Gujarat Summit was just days away. It wasn’t going to jeopardise millions of dollars just because of a few small-headed Indian babies birthed by a few dispensable Indian women. 

The government has refused, so far, to waste its valuable time holding a press conference on the subject so that we can better understand why it failed to disclose, to citizens, a health threat to citizens. Health Minister J P Nadda also refused to address Zika, and the odd five-month silence about it, in an interview published a few days ago about three years of the Narendra Modi-led government. At least this demonstrates the worth of another of the PM’s acronyms: ART, or “Accountability, Responsibility, Transparency”.

To summarise, it is obvious that EPI is total hooey and should be binned. I’d like to offer a usable replacement: USP. As in, this government’s USP is the Unimportance of Some People.