THE TELEVISED PILL

I was a worried man.

After coming back from work I had a sumptuous supper. Then I got worried. Worried about the welfare of this country and its people and finally the population explosion.

I was also worried about something else. What will the cabinet ministers in the UPA govt. (current govt.) bring out from their magic hats to impress their prime minister in the 100 days programme given by the PM.

Kapil Sibal (minister of education) got somethin glitzy to hang on to, and quickly too - scrap the board exams he announced.

(By the way what the PM said, about the 100 day ultimatum, sounded something like -Perform or Perish - the second word was perceived to be silent. Perceptions can always be wrong.)

I was watching the television while savouring my dessert.

Now since the IPL is over , there was nothing eye catching on the telly other than the titillating ads (Hey I dont watch those , honestly, and dont take me to be otherwise.)

Thats when I got deeply worried once again, though in a sleepy kind of way, about the problems faced by India. I decided to retire to bed to contemplate deeply on all those problems.

It was as I switched off the TV, yawning, that I hit upon that brilliant idea, atleast for one of the major problems plaguing India.

But I was shell shocked the next morning , when I saw in the papers that our Health and Family Welfare minister Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad had hit upon the same idea a little while before me on the previous day.

Since that happened - my way of thinking and how I hit upon the same have no relevance here.

Mr. Azad takes over from here.

Mr. Azad reportedly gave vent to his ideas on a telly talk show . Some of those insightful lines are reproduced here. the entire link to the news item is given at the bottom of this write up.

Mr. Azad went some what like this :

"In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they produced so many children. Today, TV is the biggest source of entertainment. Hence, it is important that there is electricity in every village so that people watch TV till late in the night. By the time the serials are over, they’ll be too tired to have sex and will fall asleep"

(Why cant we ask our rural folk to plough till midnight? That way agriculture production too can be increased along with reduction in population. But for city folks , there is no way that they can plough. Any how, unlike the rural folks, they are not sex monsters.)

"Televisions could reduce India’s population growth by 80 per cent"
(How quickly he could calculate all the related percentages, brilliant.)


As the link suggests, with people like Mr. Azad in charge of, health , family welfare, population control etc is India serious about all these?

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It is true that many women in rural India do not have knowledge of, or access to, contraception. Health services are abysmal and women are often unable to exercise any real choice. Of course all women should have the right to access contraception and to have control over their own reproduction. Yet instead of insisting that every village have access to healthcare, contraception, education and electricity in order to enjoy greater comfort, freedom and leisure time, campaigns to ‘stabilise’ the population are driven by an assumption that human life itself is a problem. People are seen as a drain on economic and natural resources and it is assumed that it is just impossible to support so many people. As Azad put it: ‘We need to think that more children means more problems.’
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After this interview of Mr. Azad , I get a feeling (feelings can also be wrong) that these things can happen :

1) Television manufacturers will be elated. The cable guy will be seen doing a hip hop.

2) Condom manufacturers (and other contraceptive manufacturers too) will feel miserable.

3) Medical shops will be seen stocking supplies of television.

4) Farmers will be seen carrying television sets to the fields , just in case they feel something inbetween.

5) The scientific community will have to do a lot of research on whether this is a male contraceptive or a female one or a general one like a general anaesthesia.

6) Marriage registrations (only in rural areas) will now require, signatures + a television set.

7) Finally every year the rural folks will celebrate this day as -'Azadi from Sex'.

Now we can proudly say , "Apart from 'Zero' India has given another great concept to the world".

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7156/