What is the minimum knowledge a college educated Indian should have?

This is not much of a post - just a little question I'd been pondering .. 

There was a Telugu TV game show hosted by film star Prakash Raj which ran for a few weeks. It is kind of a quiz show, with a bit of betting involved. There are two contestants and two celebrity guests. The contestant chooses a guest. Prakash Raj poses a question to the guest and gives two alternatives as answers. The guest picks one answer. All that the contestant has to do is to correctly point out if the guest's choice is right or not. It is an interesting game.

It struck me, after I watched about 3 episodes, that all the questions fell into two categories - films (particularly Telugu films) and Puranas. On the very few occasions (limited to the first two episodes) a question from any other topic was posed, the contestants confessed not knowing anything about it. So, I guess the producers of the show quickly came to their senses and restricted the questions to the above two topics.

Since then, I paid a bit of attention to what kind of questions were being asked on these game shows - 99% are film and film star related. And any time the question was from any other topic, inevitably, the contestant did not know the answer. That got me thinking ...

History - Geography - Current Events
What is the minimum knowledge we can expect a college educated Indian to have?

Comments

Now a days we can only expect Current affairs from the youth. But not all educated youth are perfect with the current affairs as they are busy with their work, or twitter and facebook. Many dont even read the newspapers fully. They just chek the first page and cricket... ( this happens with my kids too) If anything sensational news is there my son asks me what happened and what are the details..
Mauli said…
what is the difference between movies and puranas :)

Just an interesting story with diff incidents,charecters and a moral of the story at the end, in both the cases


any way it is just an entertainment show.
Kottapali said…
Jyothi, That certainly happens with the news of the day, flavor of the month. However, I feel that there is (should be) a minimum amount of knowledge.
Mauli, That's perhaps true.
Vasu said…
"99% are film and film star related. And any time the question was from any other topic, inevitably, the contestant did not know the answer. "

May be that's the reason TOI and papers like TOI are a hit in India :)

Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckzsh9SpUAQ
Kottapali said…
ha ha ha .. good one, Vasu. thanks for sharing
Instead of Prakash Raj, if Siddhartha Basu were the quiz master, the kind and quality of programme as well as the participants would surely have been different. The sole purpose of such programmes (the one being discussed) is to attract mass audience whose life revolves only around movies. Obviously, we cannot have great expectations from such programs.
Kottapali said…
Telugu Bhavalu - yes, I did recall Siddhardha Basu's quiz shows from yesteryear. Those were certainly for people with specialized interest in quizzing (they never appealed to me, I must confess). Also, as Mauli garu pointed out above, this show is an entertainment show - I do not deny that. Yet still ..