Every TV channel in India is today encouraging viewers to SMS to participate in polls, contests, shows and what not. However they do not tell the viewers that he SMS sent to the channel will be priced differently than a normal SMS. In some cases the SMS would cost Rs. 6, which is about 1/8th of a US dollar.

However NDTV has gone a step too far. They are running a campaign for a retrial of the Jessica Lal murder case. They want their viewers to send SMS in big numbers to voice their protest. So under the guise of a noble cause the channel is making thousands of rupees every hour. The poor mobile owner sends an SMS believing that he is either being charged a paltry sum and that he is helping a noble cause, but hat’s really happening is that he is making NDTV richer.

The channels do show a small caption that the SMS will be charged differently at Rs 5 or 6 or whatever, but you blink and you would miss the small line flashed somewhere in a remote corner of the screen.

Like cigarette packets have a statutory warning “Injurious to health”, it should be made compulsory for TV channels to show a caption “SMS being charged at Rs x” that takes up at the least 20% of screen space for more than 30 seconds. I intend to write to the information and broadcasting ministry, but if you are reading this and know someone who is addicted to SMSing TV channels, please make him/her aware.

Although I like early mornings, I very rarely manage to get up early. Today was one of those rare days. As the newspaper had not come in, I switched on my TV set and had a look at some of the early morning religious preachings being aired on various channels.

While many channels had people talking about religion and god, there were some that also aired a mix of Yoga and religion. I do not remember the name of the swami I watched but I was impressed by the way he held the audience and made them do various yoga poses.

TV swami’s have become very popular in India and some like Baba Ramdev have become even more popular due to some recent controversies. The one thing I like about these swami’s is that they ask the listener to do good. The yoga swamis I think have had a good impact on society as Yoga today is more popular in India than it might have been in 100s of years.

I too was fairly ignorant of yoga until a few years back and used to associate yoga with PT drills that we had in school. Yoga is nothing like Physical Training (PT) and the mind plays just as important a role as the body.

Anyway, teaching yoga is fine, but preaching religion to 1000s of people through the medium of TV however I don’t think is such a good idea. Religion and mass media is a very dangerous combination.