Other than Anna Hazare’s fast, nothing else mattered in India for the past two weeks. Since then, there has been a surplus of media induced anger against politicians, though one is not sure if it will be sustained now that the show at New Delhi’s Ramilila Ground is over. As if it were not enough, the somewhat cocooned world of blogs and social media also went on overdrive following Arundhati Roy’s thought-provoking critique of “Team Anna”. Roy raised some valid issues in her Op Ed piece in The Hindu, one of which I would like to take up for consideration. To paraphrase her, the media, big business and so-called voluntary sector (funded non-governmental organisations), have all been enthusiastic supporters of the fast undertaken by Anna Hazare. She asks, pertinently, just how these institutional universes have come to represent “the people” in this campaign and keep themselves outside the purview of the proposed bill to check corruption in public life.
The role between big media and profiteering corporations is a well-known fact in contemporary times. As a matter of fact, corporate control over print and electronic media was seen as a welcome relief from state-controlled media in the latter part of the 20th century in India. Hence, the media as we know it – print, television and radio – have always had to serve either profit (corporations) or propaganda (the state) in some way or the other. In countries like the United States, civil society came upon the idea of ‘public broadcast services’, or a broadcast system that tried to keep away from the pitfalls of the two polar positions and was funded by money that was raised publicly. This third layer of the media has been challenged by the development of new media technology, especially in the form of the Internet, in recent times. With the growth of communication technology, new media has become more dynamic in soliciting opinion and participation from citizens and has turned the whole audience-as-consumer paradigm that traditional media rests upon, on its head. Our public sphere is more varied today than it was a decade ago and we can thank communication technology for this.
Having said that however, the recent road show on Anna Hazare’s fast shows the pitfalls of confusing the media as an institution with journalism as a vocation. Many commentators used their positions as media professionals to transmit their partisan views in support of Anna, even going to the extent of equating his fast with the idea of renewing the nation’s lost spirit. In doing so, they bypassed the stringent editorial codes required of people in their position. There is nothing wrong, per se, about journalists taking on the role of the activist and using the media to air their views. However, those who chose that route often do so with a caveat that alerts their readers/listeners to the complexity of the issue at hand. Unfortunately, in the recent fast, there was a disturbing convergence of individual political positions and what is perceived to be a public sphere, where other alternate points of view exist.
Even as the mainstream media followed journalists who had made a decision to make the fast the only story in India’s chaotic democracy, some called for sober consideration on other struggles, only to be berated and chided, mainly by bloggers and those who use social media. This does not bode well for the future of protests and public opinion in India, because we risk conflating opinion with issues, thereby reducing our complex realities to one, large national grid that speaks only in polemical tones. Anna Hazare’s fast has come to an end and it would be only expected that the media professionals will follow the next big story. Those who are hoping that it will be an ethical pursuit of justice – perhaps dwelling on the militarisation of Northeast India – are likely to be disappointed. That, unfortunately, is the nature of the public sphere in India today.
Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora
xonzoi.barbora@gmail.com
