Things That Bang

Games like Grand Theft Auto may not be legally available in India soon. Video game players may shrug this off since most aren’t dumb enough to buy legal games when pirated ones are available at less than half the cost of their legal brethren.

The point though is, who wants the Indian government to play au pair to our children? Mrs Pataudi reportedly bought her grandkid a Sony PSP, and helped him get a game he had been wanting for ever from the US and let him merrily hack away on his PSP without blinking an eyelid. But once the lady realized the game, Jigsaw Killer, was banned in UK, she decided to act as Bharat Mata and drafted a proposal to censor and regulate the kind of games that enter into the Indian market.

And now the government will debate over this matter .

This does not come as a surprise to most of us. Censorship comes easy to our politicians. Ban pornography, ban books, ban people (at least rap them on the knuckles and say  I told you so as they did to Taslima and Hussain) and become the custodians of Indian morality.

The anti-obscenity law could easily have stifled the creative spirit in India but Indians, being enterprising folks, always find ways of getting what isn’t legally available; pornography, books, movies, electronics and even video games are easily available even in the smallest towns of India.

As with Internet usage, parents need to make their own informed decisions as to which games their kids get to play.

In fact, video games can be great bonding activities between parents and their children and I have frequently seen fathers come with their kids to the local pirates and buy games for their children after much entertaining discussions.

Does censorship really work in India or is it just a paper tiger? 

Since when have we let these Bollywood actors and socialites dictate what the citizens of India can or cannot do? Maybe it’s time Mrs Tagore sorted out her own house, paid more attention to the kind of games her grandkids played especially when the games have big letters saying MA printed on them instead of urging the government to baby sit the nation’s children at the expense of the tax payers hard earned money.

Why should others pay for her blatant ignorance and negligence?