INSIDE a nondescript and dank two-storey building on the outskirts of Delhi, a gaggle of frazzled middle-aged men huddle around old 14-inch colour television sets, surfing channels. Their job: spotting 'lusty' advertisements. One that they are looking for is the hippy new Wrangler jeans spot in which a leggy siren takes off her jeans and uses the denim to extinguish a fire in a haystack even as three hunks stand agape. This is just one of the ads which is outraging Information and Broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj these days.
So the 'monitors' at the Central Monitoring Service of All India Radio (as the unit is, a trifle anachronistically, called) are hard at work spotting ads and sending the 'offending' tapes to the minister. They are Swaraj's rag-tag, reluctant vigilante squad, keeping tabs on "moral corruption" on her orders. "It's an absolutely crazy state of affairs," says a senior official. "It's debasing a critical monitoring service of the country."
Back in the building, the smut-spotters are frenziedly debating the semantics of the Wrangler spot. "If the jeans are taken off for fire-fighting, you can't condemn it, can you? After all, it's a good cause," quips a casual 'monitor', whom the government pays Rs 325 for the grinding six-hourly routine for smut-spotting. "But you can look at it another way," jibes another, "the girl might be setting the men on fire as well after taking off her jeans."
The next on Swaraj's hit-list is the new Close-Up toothpaste spot where a smartly-attired alluring jailor girl has a frenzied kissing session with a prisoner on his way to the gallows as his last wish. "They indulge in some close-up face kissing," exclaims a monitor. There's also a silly new lml bike spot which, according to a witty 'monitor', is all about the 'symmetry' between the "the physique of a woman and the physics of the bike. The bike reminds him of his beloved," he says. "Then he rides it."
Don't smirk, this is serious business at the monitoring service these days. Last month, bleary-eyed 'monitors', as employees keeping track of news and pictures are called, watched Fashion Television, the round-the-clock ramp show channel, for a week and recorded 20 videotapes of 'offending portions.' Then they put them together in one tape and sent it to Swaraj, who in turn showed it to a group of excited parliamentarians. This week, the ftv honchos were ticked off by Swaraj to tone down 'nudity' on the channel to cater to Indian tastes. Then the minister banned the Close-Up ad because she found it "vulgar". The fate of the other two ads now hangs in balance.
Advertisers and cable channels beware. Big Mama's watching you. And she's using the depleted, downsized, demoralised, resource-starved monitoring service to do the job. Never mind if the prime function of this 62-year-old service is to monitor radio and some prime television news broadcasts from around the world. Till six years ago, the service used to monitor some 45 radio stations. Today, with 14 'monitors', including just five permanently employed ones, the service barely manages to monitor 14 radio and four television stations.
It's a sorry tale of neglect of a critical information arm of the government. The service has just two foreign language 'monitors' today recording and translating Arabic broadcasts. For the last eight years, it has not been able to follow any Chinese, Russian, Burmese and Pushtu broadcasts, considered important for India's foreign policy and strategic interests. The Jammu field station of the unit has a casual 'monitor' tracking Arabic broadcasts from a clandestine radio station in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. But there is nobody to monitor broadcasts the station makes in other foreign languages. There is, of course, none to monitor French, German and Japanese broadcasts. Swaraj's obsession with holy television has meant that the few remaining 'monitors' are being diverted to watching slinky models and sexy advertising on television.
It's not that the service has outlived its actual raison d'etre. Sometime ago, it sent out a questionnaire to various ministries asking them about the kind of broadcasts they needed to keep tabs on for policy making. "There was a genuine demand for recording various radio stations, especially from the external affairs ministry," says a senior i&b ministry official. But nobody cares. "The mind boggles. Why should broadcast monitors become a moral vigilante group?" asks the irritated official. Sure, 'smut' watching has never been so serious.