Role of media in social reformation

Naorem Nishikanta Singh *

Manipur Journalists take out Rally against threat to Media persons in Jan 2012 :: Pix - Bullu Raj

"I would rather live in a country with newspapers and without a government, than in a country with a government without newspapers". This statement given by Thomas Jefferson, a pioneer of American colonial press, during the era of American Revolution (1775-1783) began to prove with different paradigm shift in our society day by day. The fourth estate of democracy became a powerful tool to sculpt a society or a country to a fine and splendid form from a ditchwater society. Media plays a significant role in our society today and without it, people in the society would be isolated from the rest of the world. A man live with broken communication is one who is paralyzed in all senses.

Media as social revolutionary

A glance in the history of media, say newspaper in the last half of 18th century, the political unsettlement in the 13 colonies of North America led to an uprising from different sections of society led by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and Isaiah Thomas in Massachusetts etc., to converge their ideologies and principles so that the draconian law of the British would be uprooted from the colonies. Media could surpassed boundaries of class and connect merchants, farmers, policy makers, officials, sailors, women, marginal workers, and all other members of the society. Hence the colonies joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America.

In early 19th century India, scholars and statesmen used media as an excellent weapon to reform our downtrodden society. Social evils like Sati, Caste system, idol worship and animal sacrifices etc. were strongly opposed by Raja Rammohun Roy and his newspapers approved the intellectual thoughts against all odds. In the context of Manipur, a communication bottleneck, mere population inhabited by valley and hilly people of varied small communities speaking different dialects/ languages, in last decade of 19th century, Hijam Irabot pioneered in the social reformation fighting against political subjugation, economic exploitation and religious oppression of the mass by the British imperialists and the Brahmasabha patronized by the king. Several movements led by Neta Irabot provoked the already victimized people in the demand for self rule of Manipur against the British Government. He published Meitei Chanu probably in 1922 as the pioneer in the field of journalism. He went underground in 1946 AD and died in 1955 AD in Burma.

Now the advanced age of media, say the digital age still struggling for a social reformation. Earlier our society was divided into i.e., poor or rich according to their purchasing power but now it is digital divide. So what we draw the attention here is the expansion of the conditions of a society is solely depend upon the media or advanced media. The e-governance's provisions make able a person to explore his or her capabilities without much muscle or money power. Now we can not even check the price list of commodities but also buy it through internet or network of networks. Thus media contribute a lot to change the trend of living standard in our society.

Media as cultural preserver and developer

Every society or community has its own culture which has been co-existing with the society. With the advent of media the world's cultures have been disseminating in global level. Here it must be worthy to remind about the term "Global Village", the term was brought up to the light by Marshall McLuhan, elaborating the idea, it says that the world is shrinking day by day with the evolution of new media and its broadening nature to the horizon. Cultural diversity can be seen in every developed or developing country and the reason is media which promulgate the spirituality and uniqueness of the cultures.

Thus media tries to bring up any culture to the mind of individual level even though it is forgotten from another individual's mind. The food habit of China and Chinese food recipe is what the world follows, as do the Indian ayurvedic, yoga, meditation etc. The cultural activities like dance, drama, songs of different section of the society are broadcasting and telecasting in different channels or stations and such programmes are mean not only as a schedule of the day but a way of preservation and development.

Harold Lasswell claimed that media performs four basic functions for society: surveying, correlation, entertaining and transmitting culture to future generations. The influential capability of media arises itself to a more valued state than the message which interweaves the multidisciplinary information. Marshall McLuhan's famous maxim "The Medium is the Message" focused on the mass media which brings the audience Achilles Heel and compelled them to intake the message. Here it is either strong influential factor of media or aesthetic quality of media that falls on the conclusion that media is self-promoter.

The study in 1990s predicted that the influential habit of traditional sources like family or church discourses had declined by 10% between 1991 and 1996 in Australia. Other report from Times Mirror Center manifest the declination of church as source of influence in Canada, France and Germany rated lower than television and newspapers as a source of guiding and influential information. Supporting the leading group of society in hegemony, precisely elaborating the Cultural Imperialism Theory by Herb Schiller in 1970s the culture is disseminated top-down i.e., from dominant group to dominated group. As such the western nations dominate the media around the world which in return has a commanding impulse on third world cultures.

Media as Social educator

The countenance of education system keeps on changing with the advance in media. The formal education system in the society began to rely partially on in-formal and non-formal system of education. The motto of media is to inform, to entertain and simultaneously to educate or to impart knowledge to the society, as we saw in this last decade of 21st century, an evolution in the education system of India. We all are aware of The Right to Education, Right to Information and Adult Education etc. through media, beside media strengthen our senses towards new stories from hell to heaven. The social awareness programmes on Sanitary, Child marriage, Child labour, Family planning, eradication of Polio, hygiene, HIV AIDS and so many are becoming an obligatory episode in main stream media.

Media put the foundation to bridge the gap between literate and illiterate in our society and the most interesting part is the multidisciplinary role of media being an entertainer it educate, it makes us alert and ever ready to consume what it says. There won't be any mistake to follow the Bullet theory-the passive audience consume the message inject by the source, until and unless the media carries irrelevant information. Thus media has a vast responsibility to steer the journey of society towards development and reliance.

Leaning to the Indian history chapter of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, we have heard about abolition of Sati and other social stigma. The thoughts and ideas of social education and social reformation of Tilak were represented in his publications like Kesari and Maratha. Apart from Tilak's contribution in social reformation Mahatma Gandhi occupied a gigantic space in Indian Political Science which carve the right path of policy makers and plan-breeders of our government. Gandhi's principles and ideologies were so unique that those who follow are die-hard and few are dare enough to go beyond. His teachings encourage us not to hesitate to do our own work so that we can learn many things to tech something. This is what the media do, collecting information to disseminate the relevant one.

Media: Watchdog of society

Every day we are watching media to gain information so that we can keep ourselves up to date of the happenings around us. At the same time media watches us, our society and our government and so on. Media let us know the development programmes, provisions and their implementation. For instance the discussion schedule after the morning news in radio clarifies our doubt against the important issues based on either government centric or civil centric. In addition to that the commercial programmes depict briefly about the corruption in departments and red-tapism etc. The ad scene of Tata tea, "aaj se khillana band pillana suru" is a touching ad awarding the society about the mistakes which we commit most of the time. Media scoops out the hidden issues that undoubtedly must red-tapped by the government in favor of few political leaders for easy money.

Highlighting such incidences we had heard about 2G Spectrum allocation, Aadhaars Housing issue and Indian accounts in Swiz Bank etc. The main stream media give a chance to society to bring them into right path, for instance the Social leader Anna Hazare's Lok Pall Bill, Right to Information are the weapons for shaping a well-structured society. Media open the door to the society welcoming the grievances to evaluate for a fruitful result. Right to freedom of speech and expression hearten us to express our delight or unsatisfactory freely and fearlessly.

The reason why media is said to be the fourth estate of democracy is its knack, preciseness and support of the society. Care should be taken here when the media turn up towards the goodwill of some group or party. During Emergency India (1975-1977) Ms. Indira Gandhi used Doordarshan in favour of party in power to disseminate propaganda.

Press at large became a tool in government hands, news was moulded purely to serve the party in power under the Censorship of 1975. The restrictions and limitations imposed to the newspapers turmoil the society to a more besmirched state than it was before the emergency. Reporting the fact of Parliament proceedings on July 21 was censored so the story of the Opposition members voted against the resolution approving Emergency and walked out of the House was in darkness. It was only from the Western media, that the world came to know about the fact. So when the power of media is underhand of someone or a party, the image of media distorted and at such moment media may de-educate the society.

Media in western endow with sensitive erotic elements because it leads larger audiences but in India and some religion influenced country such elements are highly censored and media are expected to encourage development by serving an educational function. Implies that media watch the society and they work in the side of society.

Media in Social Economy

Media nevertheless took up as a partial of social construction. The communication theories so far developed in the field of mass communication always try to explain the necessities of media in framing the society to an information society. Comparing the western countries India is far behind from becoming information society as 25% of workers are engaged in service occupations, 60% are farmers and the remaining 15% work in factories while in information societies, information workers are more numerous than such workers. The government policies and plans alert on revolution of media now after Green revolution in 1970s focused on agriculture innovations led by Everett Roger and family planning programme in 1980s and 1990s.

Before 1990, India did not favor any foreign industry or firm to extend their hand towards us and that reason may be the culprit to kick-down the development of our country. But after the Prime Minister-ship of P.V. Narasimha Rao during which the Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, an economist educated at Oxford and Cambridge architect the India's New Economic Policy. It paved the way to move the countrymen from being an agrarian society to information society which stipulate to fast and easy economy. The liberations in international trade, relation and exchange of information push up our economy from a downtrodden state to a standard level but not for whole of India.

States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka had blessed by information innovations of IT. The faith of other states is in the hand of both the Central and State government. Chandrababu Naidu, C.M. of Andhra Pradesh in 1990s already implemented four e-governance initiations:

a. CARD - Computer-Aided Administration of Registration Department.
b. APSWAN - Andhra Pradesh State Wide Area Network.
c. APSSCAN - Andhra Pradesh State Secretariat Campus Network.
d. TWINS - Twin Cities Network Services Project

This is the gift of liberation in international relation and the inexhaustible labor of country-man. The Indian are so restless that nearly 130,000 skilled Indian professional live in San Francisco Bay area, of which 80,000 works for Silicon Valley high-tech companies in Northern California. Indian cyber-workers are all around the globe where IT has strong influences due to big packet of salary or unemployment in mother country but India can never be an Information Society even though some cities are well equipped with Internet Community Centers (ICCs).

Now the faith of the people in the society is either Information-rich or Information-poor rather food or land security. The entire Africa Continent has fewer telephone lines than the city of Tokyo. The media became an asset now, whoever having much proximity to media and information is a rich man in the society. The economy of a society became dependence to media.

Conclusion

Media has a strong potential to steer the voyage of a society towards sustainable development. For advance application of e-governance, distance education and e-commerce media is the hub of all such activities and without which it is impossible. Framing a good society is to make available all the basic necessities when demand and the duty of the media is to guide them to get their demand. Challenging poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, illiterate and bureaucracy is the ultimate duty of media. The media and those who create the tune of media should follow the ethics of journalism for the reason that our society plays in the melody of media.