Historicising Media in India and Northeast
- Part 1 -

Khorjei Laang *

Collection of Press card in October 2009

Pradip Ninan Thomas, in his book, Political Economy of Communications in India: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, writes:

"The issue today is of course the pace, tenor and texture of globalisation and whether it can be moulded to achieve distributive justice in the economy and culture and communications. The legacy of modern communication bequeathed by the British has had a lasting impact and also imperial communication primarily aided the imperial cause, its cultures have persisted and those schooled in this tradition have exerted considerable influence in Independent India."

It was during the British rule that the project of modernity was introduced using systems of communication. Thomas says that the telegraph, press, radio and films were introduced primarily as a means to reinforce the colonial regime. However, the print and folk media and, to some extent, the radio became a way to express the emergent national consciousness and anti-colonial stance till India achieved independence.

The seed of communications in India in the postcolonial phase was sown during the colonial phase. This foundation of communications in India was accompanied by a system of regulations over ownership and control of the media specifically from a "governance" point of view. The convention was durable enough to last even after the post-colonial phase getting support from the ruling elites in India. While the rules of the game did not change dramatically, the newly formed state retained the imperial role played by exercising control over national broadcasting in India.

In the post-colonial phase, it was primarily the private firms that were interested in the business of the print media. The Tatas were already into the printing and publishing business from 1931, consumer electronics from 1940 and information technology from 1968. Other family-based business groups which had media interests include the Birlas who owned the Hindustan Times, the Goenkas who owned the Indian Express, Tamil Dinamani and Andhra Prabha and the Mammen Mappillai group in Kerala who owned Malayala Manorama. Other media based business firms with similar interests are the Bennett Coleman who owned the Times of India and the Kolkata based Ananda Bazar Patrika who owned the Telegraph.

Quite distinct from the private interests, the state took control of radio first, followed by television. Between 1947 to the late 1980s, the state showed great interest in acting as the regulatory body that had swayed over private media. The state's seriousness of expanding the media under its control stems from the fact that in 1947, there were only six radio broadcasting centres in India. By 1983, the number increased to 86. Towards the end of the 1985, 95 per cent of the entire population was covered by the radio. Thomas says that the expansion of television had been the most "dramatic".

From being an experimental project in the late 1950s to the formation of a separate division in 1976 there was a country-wide expansion. By 1982, almost 100 per cent of the country's landmass could receive the Indian television network. However, by the mid 1980s, radio was "marginalized" to a great extent in favour of television. This was evident with the massive viewership that the Ramayana series had. During this time, the national television network is reported to have earned Rs. 23.7 million through advertising.

With the change and opening up of the Indian economy to the logic of liberalisation, the Indian "skies" too opened up to foreign television channels. The satellite broadcast of the Gulf war by CNN literally sparked the cable television revolution in India and brought about unprecedented changes in the broadcasting rules of the game which was for long in the hands of the state.

The changing nature of politics and shift in policies are also credited with the satellite and cable television revolution in India. The consolidation of regional political powers as evident from the rise of linguistic, religion and caste-based politics too had its bearings on the media revolution. It was Ramakrishna Hegde, the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, who raised the issue of the need to have an autonomous broadcasting centre at the state level in 1986. So the setting up of private region-based television channels became popular.

The Sun TV in Tamil Nadu was established in 1993 by the Maran family who are not only related to the Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi but also shared the same party line despite occasional hiccups. Hence, even at the regional level, the politics of power and patronage seem to make sense in enterprises like running private television networks. In Andhra Pradesh, it is Ramoji Rao who owns the largest circulated Telegu newspaper Eenadu and 12 television channels. His proximity to the Telegu Desam Party (TDP) is well known.

In Kerala, the two main parties, the Congress and the Communist Party of India, Marxist or the CPI (M) also own and operate television channels to further respective political party lines. Congress owns Jai Hind, while Kairali, We TV and People are owned by the CPI (M).

An increasing number of states have private television channels. However, there are some news channels which have been called "national" news channels by virtue of their wider reach, the nature of wider coverage of news from across the country and also the language in which they broadcast the news. These channels include, DD News run by the national broadcaster Doordarshan, NDTV 24x7 under Prannoy Roy, Aaj Tak and Headlines Today by The India Today Group under Aroon Purie, CNN-IBN, Turner Broadcasting & Global Broadcasting News, Star News of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Times Now run by Times Global Broadcasting Co. Ltd of the Times of India group etc. Most of these channels operate from the National Capital Region or from Mumbai and have bureaus in all the metropolitan cities of India.To be contd...

One vital question many have failed to ask is: is it a deliberate ploy by the media monopolists and corporate led industry to hook and capture the required TRP in specifically targeted segments? Is this done to achieve the circulation of wealth from the profit within those who wield and exercise economic power? To what extent does the market play a role in determining the content of news broadcasts? Going back to the fundamental principle under which communication was supposed to have been based, i.e. on democratic consensus, it would be worthwhile to evaluate the 'marketplace of ideas.'

Noam Chomsky argues that the media have only been able to feed the beliefs and ideas of the elite while "subverting the ideological and cultural independence of the lower classes". In the Indian scenario, who dominates the "marketplace of ideas" and allow their ideas to shape the country's perception of socio-political reality is yet to be properly assessed. Have the metro-based media managed to eliminate the information deficit, especially on marginalised regions and peoples in India? Are metro-based media apathetic toward regions that hardly matter in the number based parliamentary democratic system as is alleged?

These questions can be addressed through looking at how media houses based in Delhi have covered the Northeast over the years. In doing so, there is a need to discuss not only the quantum of media coverage of the region but also the form and content of the coverage itself.

Before embarking on the form and content of media coverage of the Northeast, there are two questions that need to be addressed. First, what is the nature of the region's state's relation with the media and to what extent these state's views are left unquestioned. Second, is this phenomenon sustained by the flow of "capital" that benefits the representatives of the state and the media as a profit making enterprise rather media as representative of the people?

To be continued...