26 January is celebrated as the Republic Day in India. Every year on this day the Republic Day parade in New Delhi is telecast live on Doordarshan.
Yesterday while watching the telecast I could not help notice the contrast between the parade in New Delhi and the National Day parade in Beijing on 1 Oct 2009.
While the parade and celebrations in Delhi were marred by fog throughout the morning, the Chinese had used cloud seeding to avoid possible rainfall or thick cloud over Tiananmen Square where the ground formations and aircraft passed through during the National Day parade.
The Chinese parade was a spectacular display of military might; the parade in India did not have as many new weaponry or fighter air-crafts.
Finally the event in India was telecast by Doordarshan. The pictures on the TV were pathetic to say the least. This accompanied by mundane commentary made the whole event a parasite for the sore eyes. In contrast the Chinese telecast was wonderful and was probably aided by the latest technologies in TV broadcasting.
I believe the whole idea of parade serves only two purposes: it takes the citizens on an ego trip . It is also a medium to showcase the nation's defense (read offense) prowess and cultural extravaganza to the outside world, more of the former than the latter.
I do not know the implications of altering the weather conditions by cloud seeding but the government here can at least make sure that the telecast of the event is good. It is time that the event is handled by some professional event management agency and the telecast rights given to private channels.
In case someone missed the parade on TV in the early nineties yesterday's telecast was all one had to watch to bring back the memories.
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2 comments:
Yes truly it took up back to the old 90's parade with similar tableaus of states.
As far as I believe its the level of independence and democracy that the nation provides you as an its citizens is important, Indian Armory may be weak but still the liberty that Indians get is truly remarkable. On the same token China being an autonomous so called Communist government is hiding the independence and democracy from the people
It was nice reading the post.
Who watches the parade anyway?
I doubt if private broadcasters would find any business in it!
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