Service and public sectors



Everyone knows that I'm an ardent advocate of privatisation. Though many evangelists of public sectors can't push their defense powerfully against us, they always think they win over a point. That public sectors are socially inclined, which means they are 'service' minded as against the 'evil' minded profit-driven private sectors.

For instance, who will loan those poor farmers but the public banks, who will run buses to those remote places but the public transports, etc.,

I saw one movie last night which made me think heavily on these lines. I was idly flipping channels and suddenly, when I moved to DD National, the unmistakable frame made me stop there. Pather Panchali was being screened in DD National. I stopped surfing and started watching. It was around 11.15, and I guess I must have lost around half-hour of the movie. Nevertheless, I sat on.

Alas, the joy didn't last long. I had seen the movie several times before and I remember most of the dialogues. The one I saw in DD didn't have proper dialogues. Subtitles kept skipping and often they were wrong. And I don't know what was wrong with telecasting, but half-inch of the top and left portion was cut, so you can't see the faces of the characters if they were standing. And the subtitles were plain white so if there's a pale background in the movie, the subtitles vanished, making it difficult to read. To make things worse, the huge blue logo of DD stood like a monster at the top left corner against the faded film print as a constant irritant.

The version I saw earlier was a DVD from Sony Classics. It was digitally remastered so the picture was crystal clear. The subtitles are well-timed to sync with the dialogues and were clearly understandable. The letters in the subtitles were given a soft brownish yellow outlines so that they didn't merge with a pale backgrounds. And there was no other logo or anything so you could clearly enjoy the movie.

While I said all that I understand very well that one had to dish out $16 for that flawless copy while the DD version was beamed to you for free. But I wonder what's the use of beaming it for free if no one's going to use the service? I have seen that movie several times before and I know how valuable it is. Even I found it very difficult to sit and watch the 'free' version. Then imagine a someone who's being initiated into Satyajit Ray? I can bet that the person can't last five minutes into the movie.

This arises out of carelessness, arrogance and disrespect. I don't believe that the people in DD beamed the movie because they respect it. I believe they didn't have anything else to do. In the bad old days DD used to play Nirod commercial during long breaks. Now the breaks are getting longer because DD isn't getting quality content from elsewhere and hence I suppose Pather Panchali has replaced the Nirod ads.