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SMS Mania

Television has become a craze with sobbing soaps, thrilling news, and enticing reality shows. Atleast one family member or the entire family is obsessed with some of the other kind of program. I seriously don’t understand the logic behind the programs like ‘Jhalak Dikhla Ja’ or ‘Nach Baliye’. I mean what is being proved or is it an attempt to find the best dancers in the actors or cricketers. I still would not mind programs like ‘Indian Idol’ or ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa’ or ‘Boogie Woogie’ as they try to search for some talent. But ‘Jhalak Dikhla Ja’ and ‘Nach Baliye’ are a pure waste of time. You must have also noticed that there is not a single program on TV that doesn’t make you SMS for something either to guess the winner or vote for some poll or your views on some news issue. Yes SMS must indeed be a big revenue generator for these programs. However, we unfortunately fail to understand this and blindly keep sending messages to these programs. We are paying the cable bill and also indirectly to the program creators or the channels for watching their shows.

We may spend Rs.100 on SMS in hope of winning something but we may not consider feeding the hungry and poor or helping the needy. Also these dance shows and some of the other programs can not only save time but also money. Assume the kind of money that can be saved and raised if these programs are not done at all. I mean if the producers and the channels have so much money to entertain us, why they don’t consider something that can help the society. May be fund a road construction or take up some cleanliness drive. While these shows and their SMS trick makes me agitated, the foolishness of few people to blindly follow that temptation makes me more restless. Same is the case with news channels. At one time news was to make people aware about the happenings and educate them. But now it’s more of a business and commercialized to the core.
Our country needs funds to put it back in correct order. However, we may seldom think about this as we are to busy spending on SMS trying to guess who will win the dance competition or how many runs would Sachin score or posting your views on some news issues that is overhyped.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Amol I personally feel that what you have written is absolutely true. I mean these shows are 4 entertaining people and these channels are doing nothing but awarding a person a particular title with our money !!! I think we people are just being exploited. Good that u have written a blog on this issue and i support it..


Cheers
Nikhil.....
Health Writer said…
Hi Amol,

Overall you have written a nice and thought-provoking blog. Indeed tv programs like ‘Jhalak Dikhla Ja’ or ‘Nach Baliye’ do not prove anything. In fact, they are not even justified in their attempt to find good dancer couples. It's really funny that many disqualified couples actually get emotional on screen as if its the end of the world - A big issue made out of trivial stuff. Its nice that you brought out this point about such kind of programs.

These programs are definitely a waste of time and money.
However, somewhere you mentioned that "Celebrities get paid to dance" and that "we indirectly pay them and think wow that is so entertaining" is debatable. I think celebrities who dance to raise funds for charity do not get the money for themselves but donate it for a good cause. So such fund-raising-charities by celebrities are always welcome.

It definitely makes more sense to spend on charitable causes and on the poor rather than SMS tricks of exploiting money.

You do write interesting blogs relevant to the current scenario.

Cheers!
Amol Redij said…
Hi Thoughtful Lady,

Thank you for your comment and pointing out something that can be ambiguous. I will exclude those sentences from my post.

Thanks again and keep reading.

Cheers
Amol

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