Many have their loved ones fighting there. And so some bits and crumbs of reality might fall from the broadcasts of the opposite side, heavily larded, of course, with propaganda and tendentious untruth. But it is something and it has been crassly unwise to ban television signals from Pakistan. We have been through three full-scale wars without any banning. Jamming and banning with viewing or listening punished by fines, imprisonment or worse were practised by Vichy France and totalitarian dictatorships like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Democratic countries abjure such throttling.
Its effect is invariably counter-productive. Most disappointing is the realisation that those responsible for taking such decisions are totally unaware of the nature and power of broadcasting. It is immensely more powerful than Bofors guns, aircraft carriers and Stealth bombers. For after all we are getting into the homes, parlours and chabutaras of people across our borders. Pakistan may be engaged in a proxy war but we have become a proxy democracy.