South Asia is hooked on satellite television and what it gets is an eyeful. But there's nobody looking out for the public interest as commercial channels swamp the airwaves.
Zaibunissa Sheikh is a mother of three in Bombay´s Colaba slum. Her husband´s alcohol habit eats into the family income, but with a cleaning job, the children´s contributions and by hawking prawns in the market, she makes 650 rupees a month. All costs, for food, clothing, keeping the children at school–everything–are taken care of with this money. Her narrow one-room house has no running water, and the family visits a community toilet nearby. Life is a grind, but there, in one comer of her room, a television blinks to life and is quickly tuned to MTV.
Zaibunissa´s household is addicted to satellite television. The connection charge is INR 110 a month. Mother and children, and the father when he is home and sober, watch BBC World´s Food and Drink (with the latest on this season´s Bordeaux wines), The Clothes Show´s couture fashion tips, re-runs of American soaps like The Bold and The Beautiful, and several channels of 24-hour, wall-to-wall Bollywood movies and film song compilations.
Up in Jomosom, in the arid rain-shadow region north of the Himalayan range in Nepal, the flat-topped mudroof houses are all decked with a year´s supply of firewood–a symbol of wealth in this semi-Tibetan society. Incongruously, satellite dish antennas peer over the rooftop woodpiles. With a micro-hydropower plant nearby providing the electricity, the locals take their pick of the same programming that is available from Dubai to Hong Kong.