Reality TV

So they finally hang Kasab! Almost 4 years to the date, this is a fast-track of the justice system that is quite alien to India…in a good way. We should extend this determination and alacrity to the corruption cases – now that would be something 🙂

It’s great we didn’t get caught up in false moralizing, fake democracy and convoluted diplomacy. The man was part of a terrorist group that attacked, injured and killed scores of people on Indian soil. He was the only one to be taken alive. Interrogations confirmed what we’ve known all along – that the ISI and the Pak sponsored terrorist outfits are behind all such attacks. He was found guilty, all appeals rejected, presidential pardon not granted, hanged.

Simple, straightforward, direct, final!

As always, with all things Indian, we must have some complication. That we are terribly argumentative as a nation has been well documented and is apparent on news television each night.

There has been much hullabaloo about the US$5-10 million spent on Kasab’s incarceration. Firstly, whatever the correct figure, it had to be done. We had to keep him alive and well protected to complete the investigation to reveal the real culprits. There was no question of just killing him as soon as we caught him. So the money was spent, rightfully so, despite the media and do-gooders trying to sensationalize the expense as wasteful.

Now another issue has cropped up. It turns out that commandos who were part of the operation that successfully resulted in killing all of Kasab’s accomplices and ending the terrorist siege haven’t been taken care of, haven’t been given medical benefits, etc. Shocking! But interestingly, we never heard of this till the day after he gets hanged. Maybe we did, but definitely not in as shrill a manner that we are now.

The grandstanding position now is: we can spend $5 million on keeping a terrorist alive but cannot spend half a million dollars on providing medical benefits to the commandos who helped catch him? The IAC has promptly jumped on to this bandwagon, again with dark insinuations about government corruption. But more about IAC another time!

It struck me – they could have recovered the expense on Kasab’s incarceration, given that money to the victims, survivors and injured – and given the nation a supremely cathartic experience in the process!

How? Reality Television!

The government should have sold the rights to televise his hanging…had an auction and got rival broadcasters bid for the telecast rights. The date could be conveniently fixed for a Sunday. The winning broadcaster would then promote the hell out of the ‘blockbuster event’ and build huge anticipation for it. D-Day would be a 24 hour live countdown to the final moment, a blow by blow account from prison duly interspersed with past footage, shrieky, excitable commentary and fierce debate about morality.

Like a freaked out Big Brother meets The Truman Show, with appropriate ad breaks filled by patriotic advertisers who love the ‘apna Bharat Mahaan’ positioning, the nation would be glued to their television sets, making this a must watch spectacle. Macabre maybe, definitely not for the squeamish, but a spectacle nonetheless! Okay, maybe the entire nation doesn’t watch, but a large enough section would (we’ve just seen the television potential of live funeral telecasts) – and when you consider telecast rights prices of Hindi Movies, the incarceration cost of Kasab converted into the live broadcast rights for his hanging seems cheap.

Too gory? Too horrific? Too barbaric? What an absurd and ridiculous suggestion?

Hmmm 🙂 The Hunger Games veered dangerously close to this idea as have numerous other book and movies. In ancient Rome, ‘prisoners’ were fed to the lions in the circus arenas in front of thousands of screaming, blood-lusty viewers, for their entertainment. What’s so different? Maybe sometime in the future…