Entertainment : Inequality

In this age of cut-throat competition, life is full of stress and anxiety. People simply don’t have time to sit back  and relax. Entertainment adds a bit of salt in the otherwise dull and distasteful life and helps in freshening up the tired mind. But the growing concern is that the cost of entertainment in India has risen up significantly.

At multiplexes, the ticket price varies between Rs 75 and Rs 350. Thus a single visit to a movie theatre would dent one’s average income (average income of an Indian being Rs 3700 per month) by anything between two per cent to nine per cent. And a visit with family would burn the pocket of an Indian by six to 27 per cent per se. The average gross collection per multiplex is around Rs 5.72 crore.

Contrast this with prices of movie tickets in the US. Given the fact that an American earns $3400 per month, and the maximum price of movie ticket is $28 (while on an average it’s around $9-$10), a onetime movie visit would cost him merely 0.30 per cent of his monthly income. Even a family treat would not cost more than one per cent of one’s monthly income. Similarly, watching a movie  in London would cost less than one per cent of the average income of an individual, with average income being $3000 per month for a British.

Even a DTH subscription is expensive when compared to other countries. For instance, the monthly rental for a DTH subscription in India is anything between Rs 150-350 a month which boils down to four to 10 per cent of an individual’s monthly income. A similar service in US would cost an American nothing more than three per cent of his average monthly income while in UK it wouldn’t cost more than four per cent. Besides, in India a family of four usually has Indian average income is used to run a family of four while in the US and UK, a family on an average has two earners.

Today, entertainment is not merely entertainment, it's infotainment. TV channels like Discovery, National Geographic Channel, History Channel, and Animal Planet are dedicated infotainment channels available in DTH. Above that, Tata Sky has come up with value added services like Tata Sky Actve (English, Learning, Wizkids, Cooking etc.) and more than 850 schools in India are using Tata Sky Actve Education services to teach children. As Walt Disney once said, “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.” So, the poor people are missing out on these due to the high cost of these services.