Editor's Round Table

Today was the day when I for the first time went to the campus of ISB. For the past couple of years I've heard and read quite a bit about the facilities and infrastructure that the campus has and as always there is nothing like seeing and experiencing it in real. I must admit that it has an awesome campus and gives the real feel and motivation once you are in there to achieve greater things in life. I never knew till date that the looks and atmosphere of a place could have such a tremendous effect on ones mental psyche. The campus I heard is about 200+ acres and is situated right opposite Infosys and besides Microsoft and located in one of the peaceful and less noisy outskirt of the city.

Net net let me return to the subject matter of what I am supposed to write about, I'd primarily been to the campus to attend a Editor's Round table which had eminent who's who from the field of journalism and editing. Before I spell out who were there in the panel, who moderated the discussion and who were the audience let me tell you guys what the topic was all about. The topic that was discussed was "Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth? " . Now I guess this topic of discussion is a straight aftermath effect of the movie "Rang De Basanti" or a later after shock of "Yuva" 'cos I don't think anyone really thought about youth being a part of politics and striving to make a change if not for these two movies. There could be other petty teeny weent reasons but the ones which are obvious and are the real cause are these movies .

Now the group was moderated by Mudit Kapoor who is a PhD, Economics, University of Maryland at College Park and the panel included the following speakers. Ms.Kaveree Bamzai - Exec Editor of India Today , Mr.Kumar Ketkar - Chief Editor of Loksatta , Mr.CRL Narasimhan - Associate Editor of The Hindu , Mr.Alam Srinivas - Business Editor of Outlook and two students from ISB which included Mr.Ali M Potia and Ms.Disha Rustogi. The audience for this round table included current students from ISB and working junta like me who didn't want to aimlessly spend a Saturday afternoon either sleeping or watching some goddamn sports channel.

*Vicky pats himself on the back * - 'Cos he's managed to remember the names correctly !

The round table happened in this way where every speaker was allowed to express his/her opinion on the topic for 12-15 Mins approx and then the Moderator doing a pot pourri of the views from the speakers and not to forget add his own thoughts too and then this being followed by the Q&A session. Am not going to express my learning's from the session instead I'd reflect my thoughts on how effective these kind of sessions turn out to be and does it real effect even a minor change in the thought process or the final outcome . To be very honest I don't think it does or for that matter any talk show in NDTV/CNN IBN/ any such news channel does. Now am asking myself why do you think so and what is the real objective behind holding such a forum and discussing a topic does.

1) - * Is it just to showcase and improve upon one's oratorical skills ?
2) - * Is it to find a real time solution to whatever be the topic of discussion be ?

If the answer is Yes for question#1 then I'd say great job done, instead if the answer for question#2 is Yes I'm sorry to say none of the aforementioned type of forums serve the intended purpose. I agree its next to impossible to arrive at a solution within such a span of time especially with people who have divergent viewpoints. Then why the heck conduct it in the first place ? I know its tough to arrive at a solution to what India's approach towards Pakistan be in a discussion like this , but the info discussed and pros & cons analyzed can at least be put to some practical use which I don't think is quite happening . I agree everyone has time constraints but I've seen it hazaar times in The Big Fight where the argument seemed to heat up and one party trying to put across his point and exactly tell why the other party is wrong when the moderator would say * Its time for a commercial break and when we come back we would discuss blah blah blah * where the blah blah blah would be to discuss the topic from a totally different angle. Now whatever happened to what was discussed,

Did one speaker convince the other ? - No
Did the audience get a clear picture of either sides viewpoints ? - No
Was a solution or at least a remote one achieved ? - No

One of the two good things about the whole show is that audience are confused about the whole topic and that the news channel was able to fill up its time slot and get some commercial value. At the end of it the ones who has a viewpoint remain the same with some additional arbit funda about the divergent side which really does not have much value at the end of the whole show.
Now just to emphasize on how exactly it is at the end of the time spent n discussing is like me having told my viewpoint now not saying the solution to what is to be done for it to be corrected which is precisely what I am going to do :D !~!

As they say there are lots of people with Opinions but how many of them are knowledgeable ..!

Adios !

Ps:These are truly my own thoughts and there is every chance I might not be right but thought I'd pen down whatever thought straight out of my heart as well as head.