Sunday, August 2, 2009

Television - killing your vision

Television (TV) are commercial available since 1930s, though in India they became available only in 1980s. Ramayana, Mahabharata (Indian epics) and 1982 ASIAN games in Delhi made it popular among the masses. Almost three decades since its inception, from one single channel "Doordarshan" to more than 200 channels now, from a boon to curse, TV has travelled a long distance. It has become the single largest reason of us losing our ability to think and develop vision.

From 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM, Indians spend most of their time watching TV, be it news, sports, daily serials, cartoons or be it whatever. A friend of mine who returned / shifted back to India about 2 years back often complain that his parents are most busy watching TV. "They just keep watching the idiot box, for anything between 6 to 10 hours a day", said he. He is now worried that how his kids are getting addicted to this idiot box. What's going on, where we are putting our energies on. On an average, 6 hours a day, we park our brains, decide not to think beyond what's shown on TV and forget the real world. The damage is not limited to the time when we watch TV, but gets extended to hours when we don’t watch TV, discussing what we see. The damage is not just limited to individuals or families but to health of society in large.

Obama recently appealed to the American kids to spend more time with books and less in playing video games. The increasing influence of Indians and Chinese in corporate world in US is growing concerns among US diplomats. Don’t we need to worry on similar lines, isn’t TV eating up our ability to think? Are we as a society losing our ability to have vision for coming generations?, and all this damage by choice and not by force.

It nips me when I see the way we as a society are losing our ability to have vision. We cannot think beyond what we choose to cover our eyes with. The next great Indian revolution will be when we Indians learn to distinguish between entertainment and addiction and then decide to dump this addiction, and when we start having vision for self, family and society.

1 comment:

  1. i think eveny one needs to read this and relaise how they re harming themselves.

    ReplyDelete