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.