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The Rediff Interview/ R V Pandit

'The consequences of our naach-gaana era would be....Kaun Banega Crorepati'

Part 1: 'Rolling back power tariffs in AP would mean embracing populism'

Part 2: 'In the nuclear era, the choice is between being either a fool or a wise man'

Part 3: 'It's now clear that communal clashes in the past were politically motivated'

On the mass media:

Unfortunately, the focus is always on politics, sports and entertainment. There is no evolution in India. In the Western world, they first had the agricultural revolution, then they have had the industrial revolution, then leisure; in India, we have jumped into the leisure world straightaway. We will pay for it. We are living in the era of naach-gaana.

The consequences of this will be....Kaun Banega Crorepati. I happened to watch a segment the other day. And I was shocked! I was shocked at the juvenile questions that were asked. I was equally shocked by the answers. That they failed to answer such simple questions shook me. This kind of programme does a lot of damage to our aspirations.

All these private TV channel owners are merely interested in somehow raising the market capitalisation of their companies. What is Rupert Murdoch's interest in India other than making money? Is he a social crusader?

Leading newspapers have converted themselves into society gazettes, publishing coloured news on who is sleeping with whom, who is partying where and so on. Why can't they focus on problems that hurt us, local governance that debases us? I won't buy this premise that a newspaper is consumer product that has to be sold and hence made palatable or attractive. When the Financial Times of London can focus on serious issues regularly and increase circulation, why can't we? Have our newspapers tried the other alternative of boosting circulation figures via quality content?

On the media's attitude towards AIDS: 'Indian press ignored PM's reference to AIDS in I-Day address'

Abroad, even business newspapers give great importance to problems like AIDS. They regularly cover the subject in great depth. In India, even as AIDS assumes pandemic proportions, and threatens to wipe out large sections of our youth, media is not bothered.

Does the media inform and educate? How many of our problems are taken up by the media in a manner that generates a solution? Outside of subsaharan Africa, Indian newspapers only carry stories about local cures for HIV/AIDS.

And when it comes to economy, finance, business, standards have fallen. What they write about stock markets is all rubbish. Almost every new businessman or company that has disappeared or has cheated the public is inevitably the businessman or the company that was built up by the media. The galaxy of rogues India has produced in the financial world is largely the product of Indian press and fantasy.

Last week, I was very impressed to see on the BBC TV a programme on HIV/AIDS in India. This was three days after Prime Minister Vajpayee spoke about AIDS in his address to the nation from the Red Fort on August 15. The BBC correspondent went to a village in Andhra Pradesh to do the report. The Indian press has not even mentioned that the Prime Minister devoted two paragraphs to the threat of AIDS in his address.

I read or glance through ten newspapers a day. Not one publication, except The Hindustan Times, highlighted this. Only HT said AIDS has now become a political and national issue.

Indian newspapers happily lift a variety of articles from foreign newspapers. But they don't reproduce articles on AIDS which can mean life and death to us.

On AIDS and sex: 'Protectives like condoms take away 20% of the joy of sex'

Already 20 million Indian are afflicted with AIDS. This is my figure and I take full responsibility for it. The numbers are galloping; AIDS is no longer restricted to prostitutes or truck drivers. The middle class is no longer safe. For boys will be boys and girls will be girls. They will make love. Not all of them, but most of them.

When I was 17 or 18, I had a sexual encounter. In a way, I paid for sex. It may not have been in cash. But I bought a drink for a girl. This is when syphilis and gonorrhea were not uncommon. Yet, sex was on my mind. I was not immoral, maybe reckless and weak-willed. But normal. That kind of recklessness can spell death via HIV/AIDS today. How tragic for the current generation.

Today, people are untruthful or hypocrites. ‘We are Indians, we are pure in marriage, saintly outside it.’ We have this pretence, which costs lives. Unlike, say, Americans, we don't face the issues squarely. That costs us lives. HIV/AIDS will destroy 20 per cent of our population in the next 20 years if our attitudes and habits don’t change, and the discovery of a vaccine against HIV remains as distant as it is today.

The US has good, clever awareness campaigns. Our initiatives involve putting some board somewhere, getting a Miss World or a Miss Universe to say a few inane words and a minister for a speech and photo session. The Western world doesn't do this. They had really hard-hitting campaigns for HIV/AIDS awareness that stopped the growth of the menace there.

But thankfully, Chandrababu Naidu has a campaign which exhorts, 'Break the silence. Let's discuss HIV/AIDS in the open.'

AIDS can be prevented, 100 per cent. I'm not a moralist, I won't exhort the youth to abstain from sex. But they should protect themselves. They should not have multiple partners. If AIDS spreads, the generations to come will miss some of the joys of sex that generations before us have enjoyed throughout history. I'm not a sexologist or a doctor, but I do feel that at least 20 per cent of the joy of sex is gone when one uses protectives in sex. And inhibitions dictated by the fear of HIV infection will destroy much of the sex element in marriage. If we don’t want that fate for our young, then we owe them an awareness campaign on a war-footing.

Part 5: 'Good politicians themselves are more disappointed with India than even concerned citizens'

The Rediff Interviews

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