Evil of TV: Fast Forward to Trouble

Four years ago, Bhutan became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. Soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences.

CRIME WAVE
April 2002 was a turbulent month in Bhutan. One of the remotest nations, perched high in the snowlines of the Himalayas, Bhutan suffered a crime wave. The 700,000 inhabitants had never experienced serious law-breaking before. Yet now there were reports from many towns and villages of fraud, violence and murder.


The Bhutanese had always been proud of their incorruptible officials - until Parop Tshering, chief accountant of the State Trading Corporation, was charged April 5 with embezzling 4.5m ngultrums. Every aspect of Bhutanese life is steeped in Buddhism, yet on April 13 police began searching for thieves who had vandalised and robbed three of the country's most ancient stupas. Three days later in Thimphu, Bhutan's capital, Dorje, a 37-year-old truck driver, bludgeoned his wife to death. In Bhutan, family welfare has always come first; then, on April 28, Sonam, a 42-year-old farmer, drove his in-laws off a cliff in a drunken rage, killing his niece and injuring his sister.

SATELLITE DISHES
Why was this kingdom falling victim to the kind of crime associated with urban life in America and Europe? For Bhutanese, the only explanation seemed to be five satellite dishes on the outskirts of Thimphu. In June 1999, Bhutan became the last nation in the world to turn on TV. The King lifted a ban on the small screen as part of a plan to modernise his country, and thousands signed up to a cable service that provided 46 channels of round-the-clock entertainment, much of it from Rupert Murdoch's Star TV network.
Four years on, those same subscribers are beginning to accuse television of smothering their culture, of promoting a world that is incompatible with their own, and of threatening to destroy an idyll where time has stood still for half a millennium.

SECRET VALLEY
A monk created this tiny country in 1616 as a Buddhist sanctuary. By the 1930s virtually all that was known of Bhutan in the west was James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon. He called it Shangri-la, a secret Himalayan valley. In the real Bhutan, there were no public hospitals or schools until the 1950s, and no paper currency, roads or electricity until several years after that. Bhutan had no diplomatic relations with any country until 1961, and the first western visitors came only in 1974.
But none of these developments has made such a fundamental impact on Bhutanese life as TV. Since the April 2002 crime wave, the national newspaper, Kuensel, has called for censoring TV (some even suggested that foreign broadcasters be banned). An editorial warns: "We are seeing for the first time broken families, school dropouts and other youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime like shoplifting, burglary and violence." Every week, the letters page carries columns of correspondence: "Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country... it controls our minds... and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent."
Can TV be accused of weakening spiritual values, of inciting fraud and murder among a peaceable people? In Bhutan, thanks to its isolation, and the abruptness with which its people embraced those 46 cable channels, the issue is clear-cut. How the kingdom is affected by TV may help to find an answer to the question that has evaded us: have we become the product of what we watch?
Sangay Ngedup, minister for health and education, concedes that there is a gulf opening up between old Bhutan and the new: "Until recently, we shied away from killing insects, and yet now we are asked to watch people on TV blowing heads off with shotguns. Will we now be blowing each other's heads off?" The small screen was prohibited in Bhutan. Faced by recriminations, government relented and Bhutan's Olympic Committee was permitted to erect a giant screen in Changlimithang stadium. A TV screen in the middle of Thimphu was a revolutionary sight.
The current king's father initiated a programme of modernisation that saw his people embrace material progress: education, modern medicine, transportation, currency, electricity. However, he attempted to inhibit conspicuous consumption. No Coca-Cola. No advertising hoardings. And no TV. On June 2 1999, Bhutan’s new king announced that now they could watch TV. Sigma Cable is the most successful of more than 30 cable operators. Together, they supply the entire country. Rinzy Dorje, Sigma's chief executive, defends cable TV: "Look, we can't pretend we're still a medieval, hermit nation."

EVIL INFLUENCE
Have Bhutan's values been corroded by TV? "We are entitled to watch what we want, when we want, if we want. And we are quite capable of weeding out the rubbish." he retorts.
Leki Dorji, deputy minister of communications, admits that, in its haste to introduce TV, the government failed to prepare legislation. There is no film classification board, no regulations about media ownership. Companies such as Star TV are free to broadcast whatever they want. Leki Dorji says his ministry is planning an impact study, but he does not believe cable TV is responsible for April's crime wave. Whether truck-driver Dorje was influenced by something he had watched on TV when he began smoking heroin or when he clubbed his wife to death has yet to be established. We will not know whether the death of Sonam's niece had anything to do with the impatient, selfish society promoted by TV until the study is completed. But a wealth of evidence points to TV being a critical factor.

MARIJUANA
The marijuana that flourishes like a weed in every Bhutanese hedgerow was only ever used to feed pigs before TV, but police have arrested hundreds for smoking it in recent years. During the Bishwa Karma Puja celebrations, a man was stabbed in the stomach in a fight over alcohol. A boy is serving a sentence after shooting up the ceiling of a local bar with his dad's gun. Police can barely control the fights at the new hip-hop night on Saturdays.
An independent group of Bhutanese academics carried out an impact study and found that cable TV has caused dramatic changes to society, being responsible for increasing crime, corruption, an uncontrolled desire for western products, and changing attitudes to love and relationships. Dorji Penjore, one of the researchers in the study, says: "My children are changing. They are fighting in the playground, imitating techniques they see on World Wrestling Federation."
Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel warns "The government underestimated how aggressively channels like Star market themselves, how little they seem to care about programming, how virulent the message of the advertisers is." Kinley Dorji believes Bhutanese society is in danger of being polarised by TV. "The ordinary people, the villagers, are confused about whether they should be ancient or modern, and the younger generation don't really care. They jettison traditional culture for whatever they are sold on TV."

CHILDREN
For the first time children are confiding in their teachers of feeling manic, envious and stressed. Boys have been caught mugging for cash. A girl was discovered prostituting herself for pocket money in a hotel.
What do you like about TV, we ask a school class. "Posh and Becks, Eminem, Linkin Park. We love The Rock," they chorus. "Aliens. Homer Simpson." No one saw BBS’s documentary on Buddhist festivals last night.
A new section entitled ‘controversies’ in the principal's annual report describes "marathon staff meetings that continue on a war footing to discuss student discipline, substance abuse, degradation of values in changing times". Violence, greed, pride, jealousy, spite - are some of the new subjects on the school curriculum, all of which teachers attribute to TV. The principal, Karma Yeshey, whose MA is from Leeds University, says, "Our children live in two different worlds, one created by the school and another by cable. Our challenge is to help them understand both, and we are afraid of failing."
Children by the dozen, abandoning their ghos (traditional robes) for jeans and T-shirts bearing US wrestling logos; on their heads Stars and Stripes bandannas. On the mud wall of the ancient crematorium, they crawled in charcoal a message in English with swear words.
In one village so many farmers were watching TV that an entire crop failed. There is something depressing about watching a society casting aside its unique character in favour of a Californian beach.

ROTTEN RESULTS
Bhutan's isolation has made the impact of television all the clearer. Consider the results of the impact study:
One third of girls now want to look more American (whiter skin, blond hair).
A similar proportion have new approaches to relationships (boyfriends not husbands, sex not marriage).
More than 35% of parents prefer to watch TV than talk to their children.
Almost 50% of children watch for up to 12 hours a day.
Is this how we came to live in our Big Brother society, mesmerised by the fate of minor celebrities fighting in the jungle?
The King underestimated the power of TV, perceiving it as a benign and controllable force, allowing it free rein, believing that his kingdom's culture was strong enough to resist its messages.
But TV is a portal, and in Bhutan it is systematically replacing one culture with another, persuading a nation of novice Buddhist consumers to become preoccupied with themselves, rather than searching for their self.

Guardian Unlimited 2006