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Anyone who complains about the tabloidisation of news channels in India- and that includes me-ought to have watched CNN's Oscar-style coverage of the wedding of Arun Nayar and Liz Hurley. Call it the Breaking News Effect but the channels chatted endlessly about Hurley's dress, her weight, tea towels,etc-etc.

It our country, it takes a sometime victim like actor Shah Rukh Khan to articulate it. According to him, viewers can now instinctively distinguish between real and commercial news. Perhaps real and surreal is more precise. How else do you describe a business news channel which showed us every bit of Abhishek-Ashwarya's engagement?

Everyone knows that's entertainment It's not so much about manufacturing consent (almost every news channel has a particular point of view in India, and thank God for it)as manufacturing content. That's because real stories are becoming difficult to do, or at least to sell. A lot is going wrong between the Government and the party that leads the UPA coalition but because Congressmen live in mortal dread of being caught saying the wrong thing, we are led to believe the problems are limited.

In the absence of any substantive progress on Kashmir, frankly, I can't wait to hear about what General Pervez Musharraf is going to have for breakfast. Lunch. And dinner.