Let passengers be

Why on earth do we need infotainment channels on trains?
The announcement that passengers on each coach of the Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi will now have to watch an infotainment channel during the journey reminded me of horror-movie sequels where the dreadful menace returns to prey on the peace of mind of innocent human beings - Jaws being followed by Jaws 2 and then Jaws 3, or Jurassic Park by The Lost World.
I was reminded of how, on a train journey from Delhi to Gwalior in the winter of 2003, the railway officials on that Shatabdi insisted on playing loud music at 6 am on a cold December morning, when all that the passengers wanted was to close their eyes and rest, since some of us had got up at 4 am to reach the station on time. Insofar as i am concerned, having one's ears assaulted by loud music in the early hours of the morning is just as bad as being threatened by the Great White Shark, the T-Rex or velociraptors hunting in packs.
The Indian Railways has apparently forgotten that much of the charm of a train journey is the relaxation that comes from getting away from it all and letting your mind wander or rest. How on earth can the passengers get away from it all if the non-stop chatter of 24x7 news channels is replaced with an infotainment channel, courtesy not one but two LCDs installed in each coach? It's like having snarling velociraptors in front of you and behind.
At railway stations, announcements are loud and shrill, but at least you can move away from the noise even if it is repeated thrice; in the local language, in Hindi and then in English. On a moving train, the passenger is a sitting duck for such noise pollution.
We are told that the infotainment channel will be divided into categories like kids (cartoons?), wildlife, yoga, health, comedy, celebrity interviews, movie clips, documentaries, infomercials. Wildlife and yoga are best enjoyed in tranquillity and not when the volume on the channel has to be increased to drown out the competing noise of the speeding train. The comedy programmes, where judges like Navjot Singh Sidhu and Archana Puran Singh or their vernacular counterparts guffaw loudly, will be even more gratingly loud in a confined space like a coach car.
Celebrity interviews of why an inebriated film star beat up someone in a bar or a restaurant, is precisely what the passenger might want to get away from after being inundated with such 'Breaking News' on the 24x7 news channels at home. And children, in any case, are watching too much TV; the whole purpose of a train journey is to take them away from the reel or virtual world into the real one.
If the Indian Railways insists on compulsory viewing of an infotainment channel, one solution would be to have the sound transmitted through earphones so that those passengers who want to rest can do so. However, going by my experience on that Shatabdi train from Delhi to Gwalior in the winter of 2003, leaving the passenger alone does not seem to be much of a priority. When i had then suggested that passengers be allowed to rest and not be forced to listen to loud music first thing in the morning, the response was almost as if i was trying to make redundant the job of the person appointed to play audio cassettes.
It's like overnight bus journeys where passengers are not allowed to sleep but are forced to watch one movie after another until they finally arrive at the destination with a terrible headache. The compulsory infotainment channel on train journeys could perhaps be sponsored by the manufacturers of pills and balms for headaches.