Face the nation or face the mindless rubbish

We all know India’s biggest problem. Not population, not poverty and not illiteracy. It’s the ever growing, garguantan or whatever that word is which conveys gigantic proportions problem of rubbish. Yes, if you didn’t know it you better stock up on the handkerchiefs to stuff your nose with. The piles of slush, sewage, plastic and human waste is rising so fast that soon it will slowly engulf us all. No, it’s not a fantasy. It will definitely drown the mean shopkeeper you cant stand and the auto rickshawala who refuses to take you (serve them right) but it’s also coming after you. The government knows it but nobody has any concrete plans to tackle it. You only have to look around you to see the piles of trash that are slowly growing- like a smelly cancerous living tissue without any bounds. Well, if I haven’t freaked you out already let me tell you something else. If you can somehow shut out the physical rubbish there’s this constant barrage of mindless rubbish that is bombarded at us every night on primetime television that takes the cake. Take CNN-IBN for eg. Everyday in Face the Nation they will take up some ridiculous and totally irrelevant topic and flog it to a skeleton. They have their favourite panellists- the goodlooking but arrogant Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari- the guy who looks like Rajesh Khanna in his superstar days, the permanently hoarse voiced Swapan Dasgupta (I always reach for the ear buds when he speaks because I feel there is something stuck in my ears), the annoying Jayanti Natarajan who you want to pull out of the screen and give a proper spanking because she never admits to any fault of the government and the pollster and man of all topics and all seasons Yogendra Yadav who fills in the extra chair for anybody who got stuck in traffic I guess. With this rag-a-tag panel they go about analysing anything and everything under the sun and grandly declare dangerous trends and situations that are sweeping the nation. Then they show their phone in polls as proof (always the percent never the number of votes mind you). Murders, bombings, shootings, scandals, scams are at your door. Run for cover. Run Run. The world’s ending if you believe them. Or better, do what I do. Hit the channel change button and make them disappear!