TABLE OF CONTENTS
1000-1130:
Culture and communication in the Satellite age - a South Indian perspective Sadanand Menon caricatured the Indian viewer as a ‘ couch potato eating potato chips’ and expressed his concern that ‘ television is introducing us to the impossibility of identity.’ He deplored the lack of influence of consumers on the media. He said there was a need for more participation in the media by smaller groups of people, so that they were able to make their own messages. Arulmozhi admitted that Doordarshan in its pre-commercial phase had found space for a variety of programmes, but he strongly condemned it for not reflecting the realities of South Indian culture, for being paternalistic, and for not allowing certain kinds of artists on the airwaves. A.Natarajan defended Doordarshan and its cultural programmes and argued that it had an important role to play in promoting national integration and family planning. It penetrated into small villages and still had the largest audience of any station in Tamil Nadu. Maalan spoke of the greater freedom of private channels like Sun TV to follow their own news agenda and to make programmes with a more local appeal. Natarajan admitted that DD had been hampered by lack of a clear policy on commercial competition. Sadanand Menon argued that the government’s handling of DD was ‘a distortion of democracy’ and he said something needed to be done about that. 1130-1145 Coffee 1145-1315 Cable
and community in Tamilnadu D.Vidya said that she had envisaged an in-house channel in 1993 but had not been able to develop it, partly because permission to offer a news channel was denied. She had also experienced financial constraints ( partly due to the fact that banks were not prepared to give loans for cable operations) and these had been pushed to the brink by the new competition in fibre optics. Vidya said that cable operators had had no say in the laying of fibre optic cables systems. They had not been able to put up their thoughts on what sort of network they wanted; they were only in a position to broadcast what was given to them. K.P.Sunil, News Editor of Jaya TV, criticised the recent process of consolidation in the cable sector, with Sumangali, a subsidiary of the SUN group, becoming the dominant player in Chennai’s cable systems. ‘It is unfortunate’ he said ‘ that what began with a great opening up is now witnessing a great closing down.’ Narendra Kumar of LINTAS, said Sumangali now controlled 90% of Chennai’s cable systems. But he said, unlike in Mumbai, there was no real local flavour. They had no news team and relied on films because they were cheaper. Elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, where there were more local networks, audiences fared better. Dr V Suresh of PUCL expressed his concerns about the legal milieu in which the media is operating, which he characterised as ‘an undeclared emergency’. Though the Courts had ruled in favour of freedom of the airwaves, there was no institution to enforce that right. There was a Freedom of Information Act but it was extremely ineffectual. It involved going to the courts with writ petitions and it was very time-consuming. Under the influence of liberalisation, the government was actually withdrawing from regulating capital markets and from some of its welfare functions. In the media, there was no accountability. Dr Suresh said in his opinion more bureaucracy was not the answer. ‘We need to find new principles of democratisation. We need to establish citizens’ rights in the media.’ he said. There were ‘a million mutinies’ going on and none of them was being reflected. The media is totally blanking them out’ he said. In the following discussion, several speakers argued that the mainstream media cannot be expected to reflect local concerns or deliver local services. The question was: how does a public forum develop in these circumstances?. Dr Suresh pointed to the significance of the ‘truly historic change’ which had taken place in Rajasthan as a result of the ‘right to information’ movement. 1315-1430 Lunch 1430-1600 Converging
technologies and policy choice Introducing the afternoon
session, N.Ram said that India had inherited the
consequences of a lack of policy and of ad hoc policies in the media
field. Even the new governmental focus on convergence had ‘come in
handy as a means of further postponing progress on the Broadcasting
Bill.’ There was a lot of talk of policy choice but in some sense
there was no choice. N.Ram drew a contrast between the liberal atmosphere
in which the press had operated since 1947 and the ‘less hospitable
atmosphere’ in which the electronic media had developed. Ram criticised
what he called the ‘illiberal and draconian provisions’ of the Convergence
Bill and he welcomed the chance offered by the workshop to generate
further public debate about it. Mahalakshmi Jayaram
looked at some worrying aspects of the draft Indian legislation. She
said Indian and Chinese legislation differs from European and South
Korean/Singaporean legislation in that it controls access to infrastructure
( through licensing) as well as to content. She pointed out that before
the Convergence bill had been passed, Reliance was already laying
cable in Chennai for telecoms, broadcasting and the internet. It is
implicit in the bill, she said, that it allows for data centralisation
and monopolisation or vertical integration. Mahalakshmi Jayaram said
that in the USA, the Americans had established very firm control over
the regulation of technology but not of content, whereas elsewhere
they wanted decentralisation and deregulation. She said ‘Achieving
ascendancy in information is an objective of US foreign policy.’ and
she argued that the Indian press needs to take up these issues on
behalf of the Electronic media. Mr Surana, who had
made a detailed study of the convergence bill, said that it would
‘play an important role in controlling communication’. He said previously
Indians had been ‘political slaves’; now there was a possibility of
them becoming ‘cultural slaves’. Examining the proposed structure,
he said that it was designed to keep control in government hands.
The CEO of the new Communication Commission of India would only exercise
such powers After the presentations,
there was a discussion of the merits of protectionism in the media
field. Sadanand Menon argued that new technologies
were being used to ‘denationalise nations, delocalise localities and
depersonalise persons’. N.Ram was not convinced that
the case for protectionism was as strong in the case of the internet
as it was in the case of the press. In India, the social dispersal
of newspapers was very limited, 40 per 1000 compared to 250 per 1000
in Europe. This was the basis of the argument for the protection of
the Indian press, which was still valid, despite the BJP’s inclination
to open up the market. ‘ We don’t want the Murdochs of this world
monkeying about with our press tradition.’ said Ram. 1700 Showing of ‘Michael Jackson comes to Manikganj’ |