Populism has hit the airwaves in TamilNadu: Karunanidhi(a leading politician in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu) is promising a TV to every family that doesn't have one if he's elected to power! That's supposedly 5.7 million TV sets that are going to be given away by the government. I'll not even mention the other poll promises he's made, like rice at Rs.2/kg. Of course, to be fair, I haven't read Jayalalitha's(the incumbent Chief Minister of the state) promises yet, and they're likely to be at least half as bad.

To rehash information known to all Tamilians, the Karunanidhi family/party(which are indistinguishable presently) owns the most popular TV channel in Tamil Nadu, Sun TV. So this move of his might seem a clever, if crude, attempt to be populist as well as ensure that he can brainwash illiterate and poor people thru his TV in the future as well.

But I think that might be "mis-underestimating"(a Bush-ism to the uninitiated) the ability of people, however low they might be on the socio-economic ladder. Since many of them are illiterate, they would hardly get to read newspapers. So TV would be an ideal way for them to learn more about the world - a world which has currently left them behind with little to hope for, and this might increase aspiration levels amongst them! This will boomerang upon Karunanidhi himself(if he sticks around another 5 years) in the future, where he will really have to face an electorate much more in the know than ever before.

Again, media makes opinions and brainwashes people, even in(or especially in) the US, like we saw before the present occupation of Iraq, but that has been gone into in some depth by better commentators than I.

There's a drive on to enroll people for the "Bangalore Graduate Constituency". This would apparently qualify to elect a representative to the legislative assembly(or at least, that's the goal). Sounds good! But a little exclusivist, don't you think? Well, I'm just an opinionated guy sitting on the sidelines, so let me place on record that I hope the organisers of this drive acheive their objectives. For an "educated voters constituency drive", the request for enrolment was surprisingly short of details on how they planned to acheive their aim(whether it was permissible under the constitution etc.).

I at least have an idea for improvement of driving conditions. In India, the convention on the road is that if you flash your headlights, you're warning the oncoming traffic that you're planning to steamroll ahead. This could lead to a dangerous misunderstanding: both could flash simultaneously and could forge ahead until they are too close for comfort. This also breeds agressiveness in drivers. I say lets invert this convention: from now on, anyone flashes their lights, they're telling oncoming traffic "You come on, I'll give way!". This way, people also cultivate the habit of providing "space" to others voluntarily, and also they can feel good aboud themselves for having done something of a good samaritan act.