-The Hindu
Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, argues
that the media has a very important role to play in helping the country
make the transition from an old feudal society to a modern industrial
one quickly, and without much pain.
The Role the Media should be playing in India
by Justice Markandey Katju, (former Judge, Supreme Court of India), Chairman, Press Council of India
To understand the role which the media should be playing in India we have to first understand the historical context.
India is presently passing through a transitional period in its history,
transition from feudal agricultural society to modern industrial
society.
This is a very painful and agonizing period in history. The old feudal
society is being uprooted and torn apart, but the new, modern,
industrial society has not yet been entirely established. Old values are
crumbling, everything is in turmoil. We may recollect the line in
Shakespeare’s play Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”. What was
regarded good earlier e.g. the caste system is regarded bad today (at
least by the enlightened section of society), and what was regarded bad
earlier, e.g. love marriage, is acceptable today (at least to the modern
minded persons).
One is reminded of Firaq Gorakhpuri’s Urdu couplet:
“Har zarre par ek qaifiyat-e-neemshabi hai
Ai saaqi-e- dauraan yeh gunahon ki ghadi hai”
In a marvel of condensation this sher (couplet) reflects the
transitional age. Zarra means particle, qaifiyat means condition, e
means of, neem means half, and shab means night. So the first line in
the couplet literally means
“Every particle is in a condition of half night”.
Urdu poetry is often to be understood figuratively, not literally. So
this line really means that (in the transitional age) everything is in
flux, neither night nor day, neither the old order nor the new. Also, in
the middle of the night if we get up we are dazed, in a state of mental
confusion, and so are people in a transitional age.
In the second line, saaqi is the girl who fills the wine cup, but she is
also the person to whom one can confide the innermost thoughts in one’s
mind. The poet is imagining a girl, to whom he is describing the
features of the transitional era. ‘Yeh gunahon ki ghadi hai’, i.e. it is
the time of sin. In this transitional age it is a ‘gunahon ki ghadi’
from both points of view. From the point of view of people of the old,
feudal order it is a sin to marry according to your choice, and
particularly outside one’s caste or religion, it is a sin to give
education to women, it is a sin to treat everyone as equal. At the same
time, from the point of view of modern minded people the caste system is
a sin,denying education to girls is a sin, and love marriage is quite
acceptable. Thus old and new ideas are battling with each other in the
transitional age.
It is the duty of all patriotic people, including the media, to help our
society get over this transition period quickly and with less pain. The
media has a very important role to play in this transition period, as
it deals with ideas, not commodities. So by its very nature the media
cannot be like an ordinary business.
If we study the history of Europe when it was passing through its
transition period, i.e. from the 16th to the 19th Centuries, we find
that this was a terrible period in Europe, full of turbulence, turmoil,
revolutions, wars, chaos, social churning and intellectual ferment. It
was only after passing through this fire that modern society emerged in
Europe. India is presently going through this fire. We are passing
through a very painful period in our history.
Historically, the print media emerged in Europe as an organ of the
people against feudal oppression. At that time the established organs
were all in the hands of the feudal despotic authorities (the king,
aristocrats, etc). Hence the people had to create new organs which could
represent them. That is why the print media became known as the fourth
estate. In Europe and America it represented the voice of the future, as
contrasted to the established feudal organs which wanted to preserve
the status quo. The media thus played an important role in transforming
feudal Europe to modern Europe.
In the Age of Enlightenment in Europe the print media represented the
voice of reason. Voltaire attacked religious bigotry and superstitions,
and Rousseau attacked feudal despotism. Diderot said that “Man will be
free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last
priest”. Thomas Paine proclaimed the Rights of Man, and Junius (whose
real name we still do not know) attacked the despotic George III and his
ministers (see Will Durant’s ‘The Story of Civilization: Rousseau and
Revolution’). Louis XVI, while in the Temple prison saw books by
Voltaire and Rousseau in the prison library and said that these two
persons have destroyed France. In fact what they had destroyed was not
France but the feudal order. In the 19th Century the famous writer Emile
Zola in his article ‘J’ Accuse’ accused the French Government of
falsely imprisoning Captain Dreyfus in Devil’s Island only because he
was a Jew.
In my opinion the Indian media should be playing a role similar to the
progressive role played by the media in Europe during the transitional
period in Europe. In other words, the Indian media should help our
country get over the transition period and became a modern industrial
state. This it can do by attacking backward, feudal ideas and practices
e.g. casteism, communalism and superstitions, and promoting modern
scientific and rational ideas. But is it doing so?
align="justify">
class="body" align="justify">
In my opinion a large section of the Indian media (particularly the
electronic media) does not serve the interest of the people, in fact
some of it is positively anti-people.
There are three major defects in the Indian media which I would like to highlight.
1. The media often diverts the attention of the people from the real
issues to non issues. The real issues in India are socio-economic, the
terrible poverty in which 80% of our people are living, the massive
unemployment, the price rise, lack of medical care, education, and
backward social practices like honour killing and caste oppression and
religious fundamentalism etc. Instead of devoting most of its coverage
to these issues the media focuses on non issues like film stars and
their lives, fashion parades, pop music, disco dancing, astrology,
cricket, reality shows, etc.
There can be no objection to the media providing entertainment to the
people, provided this is not overdone. But if 90% of its coverage is
related to entertainment, and only 10% to the real issues facing the
nation (mentioned above) then there is something seriously wrong with
the media. The whole question is of proportion. In the Indian media the
sense of proportion has gone crazy. Entertainment got 9 times the
coverage that health, education , labour, agriculture and environment
together got. Does a hungry or unemployed man want entertainment or food
and a job?
To give an example, I switched on the T.V. yesterday and what did I see?
Lady Gaga has come to India, Kareena Kapoor standing next to her statue
in Madame Tussand’s, tourism award being given to a business house,
Formula one car race etc. etc. What has all this to do with the problems
of the people?
Many channels show cricket day in and day out. Cricket is really the
opium of the Indian masses. The Roman Emperors used to say “If you
cannot give the people bread give them circuses”. This is precisely the
approach of the Indian establishment, duly supported by our media. Keep
the people involved in cricket so that they forget their social and
economic plight. What is important is not poverty or unemployment or
price rise or farmers suicides or lack of housing or healthcare or
education, what is important is whether India has beaten New Zealand (or
better still Pakistan) in a cricket match, or whether Tendulkar or
Yuvraj Singh have scored a century. The Indian media so much hyped up
the cricket match at Mohali between India and Pakistan that it became a
veritable Mahabharat War!
Enormous space is given by our media to business, and very little to
social sectors like health and education. Most media correspondents
attend the film stars, fashion parades, pop music, etc. and very few
attend to the lives and problems of workers, farmers, students, sex
workers, etc.
Recently ‘The Hindu’ published that a quarter million farmers
committed suicidein the last fifteen years. A Lakme Fashion week was
covered by 512 accredited journalists. In that fashion week women were
displaying cotton garments, while the men and women who grew that cotton
were killing themselves an hour’s flight from Nagpur in the Vidarbha
region. Nobody told that story except one or two journalists locally.
The media coverage of the education field concentrates (if at all) on
the elite colleges like the I.I.Ts, but there is very little coverage of
the plight of the tens of thousands of primary schools, particularly in
rural areas where education begins.
In Europe the displaced peasants got jobs in the factories which were
coming up because of the Industrial Revolution. In India, an the other
hand industrial jobs are now hard to come by. Many mills have closed
down and have become real estate. The job trend in manufacturing has
seen a sharp decline over the last 15 years. For instance, TISCO
employed 85,000 workers in 1991 in its steel plant which then
manufactured 1 million tons of steel. In 2005 it manufactured 5 million
tons of steel but with only 44,000 workers. In mid 90s Bajaj was
producing 1 million two wheelers with 24,000 workers. By 2004 it was
producing 2.4 million units with 10,500 workers.
Where then do these millions of displaced peasants go? They go to cities
where they became domestic servants, street hawkers, or even criminals.
It is estimated that there are 1 to 2 lac adolescent girls from
Jharkhand working as maids in Delhi. Prostitution is rampant in all
cities, due to abject poverty.
In the field of health care, it may be pointed out that the number of
quacks in every city in India is several times the number of regular
doctors. This is because the poor people cannot afford going to a
regular doctor. In rural areas the condition is worse. The government
doctors posted to primary health centres usually come for a day or two
each month, and run their private nursing homes in the cities the rest
of the time.
In ‘Shining’ India, the child malnutrition figures are the worst in the
world. According to U.N. data, the percentage of under weight children
below the age of 5 years in the poorest countries in the world is 25 per
cent in Guinea Bissau, 27 per cent in Sierra Leone, 38 per cent in
Ethiopia, and 47 per cent in India. The average family in India is
consuming 100 kilograms of food grains less than it did 10 years ago
(see P. Sainath’s article ‘Slumdogs and Millionaires’).
All this is largely ignored by our media which turns a Nelson’s eye to
the harsh economic realities facing upto 80 per cent of our people, and
instead concentrates on some Potempkin villages where all is glamour and
show biz. Our media is largely like Queen Marie Autoinette, who when
told that the people have nobread, saidthat they could eat cake.
2. The media often divides the people: Whenever a bomb blast takes place
anywhere in India (whether in Bombay or Bangalore or Delhi or anywhere)
within a few hours most T.V. channels starts showing that an e-mail or
SMS has been received from Indian Mujahideen or Jaish-e-Muhammad or
Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam claiming responsibility. The name will always be
a Muslim name. Now an e-mail or SMS can be sent by any mischievous
person who wants communal hatred. Why should they be shown on T.V.
screens, and next day in print (the T.V. news at night often sets the
agenda for the print media news next morning)? The subtle message being
sent by showing this is that all Muslims are terrorists or bomb
throwers. In this way the entire Muslim community in India is demonized,
when the truth is that 99 per cent people of all communities are good,
whether they are Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Christians, and of
whatever caste, region or language.
India is broadly a country of immigrants. About 92 to 93 per cent people
living in India today are descendants of immigrants, and not the
original inhabitants (who are the pre-Dravidian tribals or adivasis,
comprising of only 7 to 8 per cent of our population). Because we are
broadly a country of immigrants there is tremendous diversity in India –
so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups, etc. Hence it is
absolutely essential if we wish to keep united and prosper that there
must be tolerance and equal respect to all communities living in India.
Those who sow seeds of discord among our people, whether on religious or
caste or lingual or regional lines, are really enemies of our people.
The senders of such e-mails and SMS messages are therefore enemies of
India, who wish to sow the seeds of discord among us on religious lines.
Why should the media, wittingly or unwittingly, become abettors of this
national crime?
3. The media promotes superstitions
As I have already mentioned, in this transitional age, the media should
help our people to move forward into the modern, scientific age. For
this purpose the media should propagate rational and scientific ideas,
but instead of doing so a large section of our media propagates
superstitions of various kinds.
It is true that the intellectual level of the vast majority of Indians
is very low, they are steeped in casteism, communalism, and
superstitions. The question, however, is whether the media should try to
lift up the intellectual level of our people by propagating rational
and scientific ideas, or whether it should go down to that low level and
seek to perpetuate it?
In Europe during the Age of Enlightenment the media (which was only the
print medium at that time) sought to uplift the mental level of the
people and change their mindset by propagating ideas of liberty,
equality and fraternity and rationalthinking. Voltaire attacked
superstitions, and Dickens criticized the horrible conditions in jails,
schools, orphanages, courts, etc. Should not our media be doing the
same?
At one time courageous people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote against
sati, child marriage, purdah system etc. (in his newspaper ‘Miratul
Akhbar’ and ‘Sambad Kaumudi’). Nikhil Chakraborty wrote about the
horrors of the Bengal Famine of 1943. Munshi Premchand an d Sharat
Chandra Chattopadhyaya wrote against feudal practices and women’s
oppression. Manto wrote about the horrors of Partition.
But what do we see in the media today?
Many T.V. channels show astrology. Astrology is not to be confused with
astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition
and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no
rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and
whether a person will die at the age of 50 years or 80 years, or whether
he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer. No doubt most people in our
country believe in astrology, but that is because their mental level is
very low. The media should try to bring up that level, rather than to
descend to it and perpetuate it.
Many channels mention and show the place where a Hindu god was born,
where he lived, etc. Is this is not spreading superstitions.
I am not saying that there are no good journalists at all in the media.
There are many excellent journalists. P. Sainath is one of them, whose
name should be written in letters of gold in the history of Indian
journalism. Had it not been for his highlighting of the farmers suicides
in certain states the story (which was suppressed for several years)
may never have been told. But such good journalists are the exceptions.
The majority consists of people who do not seem to have the desire to
serve the public interest.
To remedy this defect in the media I have done two things (1) I propose
to have regular meetings with the media (including electronic media)
every two months or so. These will not be regular meetings of the entire
Press Council, but informal get-togethers where we will discuss issues
relating to the media and try to resolve them in the democratic way,
that is, by discussion, consultation and dialogue. I believe 90%
problems can be resolved in this way (2) In extreme cases, where a
section of the media proves incorrigible despite trying the democratic
method mentioned above, harsher measures may be required. In this
connection I have written to the Prime Minister requesting him to amend
the Press Council Act by bringing the electronic media also under the
purview of the Press Council (which may be renamed the Media Council)
and by giving it more teeth e.g. power to suspend government
advertisements, or in extreme cases even the licence of the media houses
for some time. AsGoswami Tulsidas said‘Bin bhaya hot na preet’. This,
however, will be resorted to only in extreme cases and after the
democratic method has failed.
It may be objected that this is interfering with the freedom of the
media. There is no freedom which is absolute. All freedoms are subject
to reasonable restrictions, and are also coupled with responsibilities.
In a democracy everyone is accountable to the people, and so is the
media.
To sum up: The Indian media must now introspect and develop a sense of
responsibility and maturity.That does not mean that it cannot be
reformed. My belief is that 80 per cent people who are doing wrong
things can be made good people by patient persuasion, pointing out their
errors, and gently leading them to the honourable path which the print
media in Europe in the Age of Enlightenment was following.
