The fourth Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2009-2010 got under way across the world on Tuesday, 10 November 09. The Network of Women in Media, India (www.nwmindia. org) is coordinating the project in India.
Ammu Joseph tells us that 22 volunteers (including some men) from different walks of life, located in different parts of the country, are monitoring 26 newspapers in 10 languages, 13 TV channels in six languages, and six radio stations in five languages. Seven of them are professors/teachers and are involving their students in the monitoring. In addition, students in 19 colleges scattered across the country (many outside the large metropolises) are participating in the monitoring.
Click here for more details on the GMMP: http://www.whomakes thenews. org/gmmp%202009_ 2010%20eng. pdf
For more information as well as updates on the monitoring process in various countries, visit the GMMP website, Who Makes the News (http://www.whomakes thenews. org/).
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Rajasthan Patrika’s initiative: Media Action Lab
Shipra Mathur has sent in the following, which deserves attention from journalists and media educators:
I am aware that being a part of media education fraternity it is a concern that media initiates active engagement into society affairs using its positive powers to influence and mobilize people and representatives for right action.
I am pleased to convey that Rajasthan Patrika has set up a Media Action Lab for promoting socio editorial campaigns with research and action intent. Presently the projects underway are NREGA, MLA performance and several are in the planning stage. We have also launched a Rural Citizen Journalist concept in all the constituencies of Rajasthan, the process of selection and delegation of tasks is also in the conduit. Hope with your active support we are able to contribute to the society with visible impact.
If any one of you wishes to have a glimpse of the campaign or willing to know the concept and our intent we are open to sharing.
If your students, with research and development interests, wishes to be a part of the learning group, you can recommend appropriate names.
Thanks
Shipra Mathur
Division Head
Media Action Lab
Rajasthan Patrika
JLN Marg, Kesargarh, Jaipur, Rajasthan
09928015504
0141-39404142 ( rp office) extn 5653
0141- 3005653 ( direct)
official e mail:
kshipra.mathur@epatrika.com
I am aware that being a part of media education fraternity it is a concern that media initiates active engagement into society affairs using its positive powers to influence and mobilize people and representatives for right action.
I am pleased to convey that Rajasthan Patrika has set up a Media Action Lab for promoting socio editorial campaigns with research and action intent. Presently the projects underway are NREGA, MLA performance and several are in the planning stage. We have also launched a Rural Citizen Journalist concept in all the constituencies of Rajasthan, the process of selection and delegation of tasks is also in the conduit. Hope with your active support we are able to contribute to the society with visible impact.
If any one of you wishes to have a glimpse of the campaign or willing to know the concept and our intent we are open to sharing.
If your students, with research and development interests, wishes to be a part of the learning group, you can recommend appropriate names.
Thanks
Shipra Mathur
Division Head
Media Action Lab
Rajasthan Patrika
JLN Marg, Kesargarh, Jaipur, Rajasthan
09928015504
0141-39404142 ( rp office) extn 5653
0141- 3005653 ( direct)
official e mail:
kshipra.mathur@epatrika.com
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Selling coverage and getting away with it
Now that the elections in Maharashtra are over will the Election Commission consider being more proactive than it was after the Lok Sabha elections in the matter of paid news? A HOOT editorial with inputs from MAHESH VIJAPURKAR. Pix: the ball is in the CEC?s court.
Now that the elections in Maharashtra are over will the Election Commission consider being more proactive than it was after the general elections in the matter of paid news? We are referring to a practice that has now become chronic at election time, of newspapers charging for election coverage. Plenty of evidence is available if the Commission is sufficiently motivated, and this might be a test case for seeing whether its statutory powers extend to asking for an audit of media houses accounts.
Even before the results were announced in Maharashtra on the 22nd October the Hoot was approached by a candidate from Satara with her experience. Of the three Marathi newspapers and one English newspaper in her area she said, that they are differing rates. One rate for writing positively about a candidate, and a lower rate for suppressing coverage of rival candidates. If a candidate was willing to buy a package some newspapers were offering, “they will give a photographer and someone with it to write.”
What we are talking about is the concept of ‘paid news' where cash payments are made for space, location of that space, and the drift of the news stories. An enquiry is unlikely to find evidence easily, since there will be quite a bit of subterfuge to conceal payments for these slots, making it hard to spot. But there are enough aggrieved politicians who did not benefit because they were not willing to pay, who will come forward to give evidence.
It is a time-honoured practice to separate the two: news to be presented as news and advertisements as distinctly as paid space as possible. The norm has been to print at either the top or the bottom corner, in tiny fonts, that they were ‘Advt.', ‘Advertisement feature', ‘Advertorial', or ‘Response feature' but such labelling has begun to disappear. Clever spinmeisters from PR firms even prepare the pages using the newspapers' specific fonts and send it across, ready to print. The gullible reader is thus lulled into believing that an advertorial or a sponsored feature is news.
In his article in the Hindu on October 26 P Sainath describes “the financial orgy that marked the Maharashtra elections. . In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all. Issues didn't come into it. No money, no news. This effectively shut out smaller parties and independent voices with low assets and resources. It also misled viewers and readers by denying them any mention of the real issues some of these smaller forces raised. "
As Sainath puts it, the fact of paid news at election time is not new, only the scale is. Back in 2005 politicians in Bhopal were telling researcher about the practice of election packages, if you did not buy one you risked not getting any coverage at all.
Apart from what Sainath describes without naming names, the following instances were also observed in Maharashtra.
IBN-Lokmat had half hour interviews of candidates with a small tag on left top corner saying 'Sponsored feature' and one wonders how many viewers made out they were advertisements. Why not straightaway say "advertisement'? ( Nikhil Wagale, Editor-in-Chief of IBN-Lokmat when contacted clarified that 'such programming was limited to a couple of slots and was assigned to the marketing department and had the tag of sponsored feature.' Nowhere did we compromise on news presentation in normal news programming. We declined several offers of payment for news coverage as a policy.') We did not see other channels but the word is that TV channels too were on the take.
Hindustan Times, Mumbai had pieces with "Election Promotion Initiative' as a small tag in place of the normal 'Advt.', which would have been a more honest way of saying it was paid for news. The type was bolder, the lines not justified and the language was truly promotional.
Mid-day too had devoted two pages for gushing pieces which no self-respecting journalist would ever write. Headlines matched that tone and tenor.
Maharashtra Times and Navbharat Times had four-page pull outs on Ashok Chavan with the caption "Ashokniti' without a mention of whether, in TOI linguistics, a "Response Feature'. Likewise, two pages on Kripashankar Singh, a former Congress MoS and now Mumbai Regional Congress Chief, contesting from Santa Cruz. The caption for that pull out was 'Kripa parv'. It is estimated the costing for a four page pull out, sans advertising, for Maharashtra Times is close to Rs 1.5 crore per day. Who paid?
None of these insertions had what newspaper and advertising jargon use - key number indicating the advertising agencies, the client's name etc.
These strengthen the fear that this time too, there was lot of effort to pass off advertising as news. That is one reason why ad agencies ask for editorial space because the latter is more credible from the readers' point of view. This is belief in the printed word of a journalist, even if misplaced these days, because he can be trusted.
On October 29th, at a discussion on the issue held by the Foundation for Media Professionals in Delhi, Prabhash Joshi, an elder statesman of the community of scribes, repeated evidence that he has cited in print before, about the practice of paid news in the Lok Sabha elections. He gave specific instances of politicians who became its victims. The Hoot had also recorded at that time evidence proffered in Hyderabad on malpractices of this kind by the media in the state. What seems missing is the will in the EC to be seriously seized of the matter.
The other bodies that needs to demonstrate a commitment to basic media ethics are the Editors' Guild, and the Indian Newspapers Society (INS). The next time there a state or Lok Sabha poll will they resolve that their members ensure that poll-related news and advertisements are not mixed up, and that the latter is not camouflaged as the former? Or will look the other way, as they have done so far?
It is quite extraordinary that the free press India boasts of is so willing to sell itself, and there is no institutional response.
(Source: http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4178&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=5&valid=true)
Now that the elections in Maharashtra are over will the Election Commission consider being more proactive than it was after the general elections in the matter of paid news? We are referring to a practice that has now become chronic at election time, of newspapers charging for election coverage. Plenty of evidence is available if the Commission is sufficiently motivated, and this might be a test case for seeing whether its statutory powers extend to asking for an audit of media houses accounts.
Even before the results were announced in Maharashtra on the 22nd October the Hoot was approached by a candidate from Satara with her experience. Of the three Marathi newspapers and one English newspaper in her area she said, that they are differing rates. One rate for writing positively about a candidate, and a lower rate for suppressing coverage of rival candidates. If a candidate was willing to buy a package some newspapers were offering, “they will give a photographer and someone with it to write.”
What we are talking about is the concept of ‘paid news' where cash payments are made for space, location of that space, and the drift of the news stories. An enquiry is unlikely to find evidence easily, since there will be quite a bit of subterfuge to conceal payments for these slots, making it hard to spot. But there are enough aggrieved politicians who did not benefit because they were not willing to pay, who will come forward to give evidence.
It is a time-honoured practice to separate the two: news to be presented as news and advertisements as distinctly as paid space as possible. The norm has been to print at either the top or the bottom corner, in tiny fonts, that they were ‘Advt.', ‘Advertisement feature', ‘Advertorial', or ‘Response feature' but such labelling has begun to disappear. Clever spinmeisters from PR firms even prepare the pages using the newspapers' specific fonts and send it across, ready to print. The gullible reader is thus lulled into believing that an advertorial or a sponsored feature is news.
In his article in the Hindu on October 26 P Sainath describes “the financial orgy that marked the Maharashtra elections. . In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all. Issues didn't come into it. No money, no news. This effectively shut out smaller parties and independent voices with low assets and resources. It also misled viewers and readers by denying them any mention of the real issues some of these smaller forces raised. "
As Sainath puts it, the fact of paid news at election time is not new, only the scale is. Back in 2005 politicians in Bhopal were telling researcher about the practice of election packages, if you did not buy one you risked not getting any coverage at all.
Apart from what Sainath describes without naming names, the following instances were also observed in Maharashtra.
IBN-Lokmat had half hour interviews of candidates with a small tag on left top corner saying 'Sponsored feature' and one wonders how many viewers made out they were advertisements. Why not straightaway say "advertisement'? ( Nikhil Wagale, Editor-in-Chief of IBN-Lokmat when contacted clarified that 'such programming was limited to a couple of slots and was assigned to the marketing department and had the tag of sponsored feature.' Nowhere did we compromise on news presentation in normal news programming. We declined several offers of payment for news coverage as a policy.') We did not see other channels but the word is that TV channels too were on the take.
Hindustan Times, Mumbai had pieces with "Election Promotion Initiative' as a small tag in place of the normal 'Advt.', which would have been a more honest way of saying it was paid for news. The type was bolder, the lines not justified and the language was truly promotional.
Mid-day too had devoted two pages for gushing pieces which no self-respecting journalist would ever write. Headlines matched that tone and tenor.
Maharashtra Times and Navbharat Times had four-page pull outs on Ashok Chavan with the caption "Ashokniti' without a mention of whether, in TOI linguistics, a "Response Feature'. Likewise, two pages on Kripashankar Singh, a former Congress MoS and now Mumbai Regional Congress Chief, contesting from Santa Cruz. The caption for that pull out was 'Kripa parv'. It is estimated the costing for a four page pull out, sans advertising, for Maharashtra Times is close to Rs 1.5 crore per day. Who paid?
None of these insertions had what newspaper and advertising jargon use - key number indicating the advertising agencies, the client's name etc.
These strengthen the fear that this time too, there was lot of effort to pass off advertising as news. That is one reason why ad agencies ask for editorial space because the latter is more credible from the readers' point of view. This is belief in the printed word of a journalist, even if misplaced these days, because he can be trusted.
On October 29th, at a discussion on the issue held by the Foundation for Media Professionals in Delhi, Prabhash Joshi, an elder statesman of the community of scribes, repeated evidence that he has cited in print before, about the practice of paid news in the Lok Sabha elections. He gave specific instances of politicians who became its victims. The Hoot had also recorded at that time evidence proffered in Hyderabad on malpractices of this kind by the media in the state. What seems missing is the will in the EC to be seriously seized of the matter.
The other bodies that needs to demonstrate a commitment to basic media ethics are the Editors' Guild, and the Indian Newspapers Society (INS). The next time there a state or Lok Sabha poll will they resolve that their members ensure that poll-related news and advertisements are not mixed up, and that the latter is not camouflaged as the former? Or will look the other way, as they have done so far?
It is quite extraordinary that the free press India boasts of is so willing to sell itself, and there is no institutional response.
(Source: http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4178&mod=1&pg=1§ionId=5&valid=true)
Monday, 26 October 2009
Paid News
Reproducing P. Sainath's piece in The Hindu
The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all.
C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself sidelined. An editor at the paper apologised to him saying: “Panditji, your columns will resume after October 13. Till then, every page in this paper is sold.” The editor, himself an honest man, was simply speaking the truth.
In the financial orgy that marked the Maharashtra elections, the media were never far behind the moneybags. Not all sections of the media were in this mode, but quite a few. Not just small local outlets, but powerful newspapers and television channels, too. Many candidates complained of “extortion” but were not willing to make an issue of it for fear of drawing media fire. Some senior journalists and editors found themselves profoundly embarrassed by their managements. “The media have been the biggest winners in these polls,” says one ruefully. “In this period alone,” says another, “they’ve more than bounced back from the blows of the ‘slowdown’ and done so in style.” Their poll-period take is estimated to be in hundreds of millions of rupees. Quite a bit of this did not come as direct advertising but in packaging a candidate’s propaganda as “news.”
The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across the State. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all. Issues didn’t come into it. No money, no news. This effectively shut out smaller parties and independent voices with low assets and resources. It also misled viewers and readers by denying them any mention of the real issues some of these smaller forces raised. The Hindu reported on this (April 7, 2009) during the Lok Sabha elections, where sections of the media were offering low-end “coverage packages" for Rs.15 lakh to Rs.20 lakh. “High-end” ones cost a lot more. The State polls saw this go much further.
None of this, as some editors point out, is new. However, the scale is new and stunning. The brazenness of it (both ways) quite alarming. And the game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a handful of journalists to the structured extraction of huge sums of money by media outfits. One rebel candidate in western Maharashtra calculates that an editor from that region spent Rs.1 crore “on just local media alone.” And, points out the editor, “he won, defeating the official candidate of his party.”
The deals were many and varied. A candidate had to pay different rates for ‘profiles,’ interviews, a list of ‘achievements,’ or even a trashing of his rival in some cases. (With the channels, it was “live” coverage, a ‘special focus,’ or even a team tracking you for hours in a day.) Let alone bad-mouthing your rival, this “pay-per” culture also ensures that the paper or channel will not tell its audiences that you have a criminal record. Over 50 per cent of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra have criminal charges pending against them. Some of them featured in adulatory “news items” which made no mention of this while tracing their track record.
At the top end of the spectrum, “special supplements” cost a bomb. One put out by one of the State’s most important politicians — celebrating his “era” — cost an estimated Rs.1.5 crore. That is, just this single media insertion cost 15 times what he is totally allowed to spend as a candidate. He has won more than the election, by the way.
One common low-end package: Your profile and “four news items of your choice” to be carried for between Rs.4 lakh or more depending on which page you seek. There is something chilling about those words “news items of your choice.” Here is news on order. Paid for. (Throw in a little extra and a writer from the paper will help you draft your material.) It also lent a curious appearance to some newspaper pages. For instance, you could find several “news items” of exactly the same size in the same newspaper on the same day, saying very different things. Because they were really paid-for propaganda or disguised advertisements. A typical size was four columns by ten centimetres. When a pro-saffron alliance paper carries “news items” of this size extolling the Congress-NCP, you know strange things are happening. (And, oh yes, if you bought “four news items of your choice” many times, a fifth one might be thrown in gratis.)
There were a few significant exceptions to the rule. A couple of editors tried hard to bring balance to their coverage and even ran a “news audit” to ensure that. And journalists who, as one of them put it, “simply stopped meeting top contacts in embarrassment.” Because, often, journalists with access to politicians were expected to make the approach. That information came from a reporter whose paper sent out an email detailing “targets” for each branch and edition during the elections. The bright exceptions were drowned in the flood of lucre. And the huge sums pulled in by that paper have not stopped it from sacking droves of staffers. Even from editions that met their ‘targets.’
There are the standard arguments in defence of the whole process. Advertising packages are the bread and butter of the industry. What’s wrong with that? “We have packages for the festive season. Diwali packages, or for the Ganesh puja days.” Only, the falsehoods often disguised as “news” affect an exercise central to India’s electoral democracy. And are outrageously unfair to candidates with less or no money. They also amount to exerting undue influence on the electorate.
There is another poorly assessed — media-related — dimension to this. Many celebrities may have come out in May to exhort people to vote. This time, several of them appear to have been hired by campaign managers to drum up crowds for their candidate. Rates unknown.
All of this goes hand in hand with the stunning rise of money power among candidates. More so among those who made it the last time and have amassed huge amounts of wealth since 2004. With the media and money power wrapped like two peas in a pod, this completely shuts out smaller, or less expensive, voices. It just prices the aam aadmi out of the polls. Never mind they are contested in his name.
Your chances of winning an election to the Maharashtra Assembly, if you are worth over Rs.100 million, are 48 times greater than if you were worth just Rs.1 million or less. Far greater still, if that other person is worth only half-a-million rupees or less. Just six out of 288 MLAs in Maharashtra who won their seats declared assets of less than half-a-million rupees. Nor should challenges from garden variety multi-millionaires (those worth between Rs.1 million-10 million) worry you much. Your chances of winning are six times greater than theirs, says the National Election Watch (NEW).
The number of ‘crorepati’ MLAs (those in the Rs.10 million-plus category) in the State Assembly has gone up by over 70 per cent in the just concluded elections. There were 108 elected in 2004. This time, there are 184. Nearly two-thirds of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra and close to three-fourths of those in Haryana, are crorepatis. These and other startling facts fill the reports put out by NEW, a coalition of over 1,200 civil society groups across the country that also brought out excellent reports on these issues during the Lok Sabha polls in April-May. Its effort to inform the voting public is spearheaded by the NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Each MLA in Maharashtra, on average, is worth over Rs.40 million. That is, if we treat their own poll affidavit declarations as genuine. That average is boosted by Congress and BJP MLAs who seem richer than the others, being well above that mark. The NCP and the Shiv Sena MLAs are not too far behind, though, the average worth of each of their legislators being in the Rs.30 million-plus bracket.
Each time a giant poll exercise is gone through in this most complex of electoral democracies, we congratulate the Election Commission on a fine job. Rightly so, in most cases. For, many times, its interventions and activism have curbed rigging, booth capturing and ballot stuffing. On the money power front, though — and the media’s packaging of big money interests as “news” — it is hard to find a single significant instance of rigorous or deterrent action. These too, after all, are serious threats. More structured, much more insidious than crude ballot stuffing. Far more threatening to the basics of not just elections, but democracy itself.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/26/stories/2009102651900800.htm
The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all.
C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself sidelined. An editor at the paper apologised to him saying: “Panditji, your columns will resume after October 13. Till then, every page in this paper is sold.” The editor, himself an honest man, was simply speaking the truth.
In the financial orgy that marked the Maharashtra elections, the media were never far behind the moneybags. Not all sections of the media were in this mode, but quite a few. Not just small local outlets, but powerful newspapers and television channels, too. Many candidates complained of “extortion” but were not willing to make an issue of it for fear of drawing media fire. Some senior journalists and editors found themselves profoundly embarrassed by their managements. “The media have been the biggest winners in these polls,” says one ruefully. “In this period alone,” says another, “they’ve more than bounced back from the blows of the ‘slowdown’ and done so in style.” Their poll-period take is estimated to be in hundreds of millions of rupees. Quite a bit of this did not come as direct advertising but in packaging a candidate’s propaganda as “news.”
The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across the State. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all. Issues didn’t come into it. No money, no news. This effectively shut out smaller parties and independent voices with low assets and resources. It also misled viewers and readers by denying them any mention of the real issues some of these smaller forces raised. The Hindu reported on this (April 7, 2009) during the Lok Sabha elections, where sections of the media were offering low-end “coverage packages" for Rs.15 lakh to Rs.20 lakh. “High-end” ones cost a lot more. The State polls saw this go much further.
None of this, as some editors point out, is new. However, the scale is new and stunning. The brazenness of it (both ways) quite alarming. And the game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a handful of journalists to the structured extraction of huge sums of money by media outfits. One rebel candidate in western Maharashtra calculates that an editor from that region spent Rs.1 crore “on just local media alone.” And, points out the editor, “he won, defeating the official candidate of his party.”
The deals were many and varied. A candidate had to pay different rates for ‘profiles,’ interviews, a list of ‘achievements,’ or even a trashing of his rival in some cases. (With the channels, it was “live” coverage, a ‘special focus,’ or even a team tracking you for hours in a day.) Let alone bad-mouthing your rival, this “pay-per” culture also ensures that the paper or channel will not tell its audiences that you have a criminal record. Over 50 per cent of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra have criminal charges pending against them. Some of them featured in adulatory “news items” which made no mention of this while tracing their track record.
At the top end of the spectrum, “special supplements” cost a bomb. One put out by one of the State’s most important politicians — celebrating his “era” — cost an estimated Rs.1.5 crore. That is, just this single media insertion cost 15 times what he is totally allowed to spend as a candidate. He has won more than the election, by the way.
One common low-end package: Your profile and “four news items of your choice” to be carried for between Rs.4 lakh or more depending on which page you seek. There is something chilling about those words “news items of your choice.” Here is news on order. Paid for. (Throw in a little extra and a writer from the paper will help you draft your material.) It also lent a curious appearance to some newspaper pages. For instance, you could find several “news items” of exactly the same size in the same newspaper on the same day, saying very different things. Because they were really paid-for propaganda or disguised advertisements. A typical size was four columns by ten centimetres. When a pro-saffron alliance paper carries “news items” of this size extolling the Congress-NCP, you know strange things are happening. (And, oh yes, if you bought “four news items of your choice” many times, a fifth one might be thrown in gratis.)
There were a few significant exceptions to the rule. A couple of editors tried hard to bring balance to their coverage and even ran a “news audit” to ensure that. And journalists who, as one of them put it, “simply stopped meeting top contacts in embarrassment.” Because, often, journalists with access to politicians were expected to make the approach. That information came from a reporter whose paper sent out an email detailing “targets” for each branch and edition during the elections. The bright exceptions were drowned in the flood of lucre. And the huge sums pulled in by that paper have not stopped it from sacking droves of staffers. Even from editions that met their ‘targets.’
There are the standard arguments in defence of the whole process. Advertising packages are the bread and butter of the industry. What’s wrong with that? “We have packages for the festive season. Diwali packages, or for the Ganesh puja days.” Only, the falsehoods often disguised as “news” affect an exercise central to India’s electoral democracy. And are outrageously unfair to candidates with less or no money. They also amount to exerting undue influence on the electorate.
There is another poorly assessed — media-related — dimension to this. Many celebrities may have come out in May to exhort people to vote. This time, several of them appear to have been hired by campaign managers to drum up crowds for their candidate. Rates unknown.
All of this goes hand in hand with the stunning rise of money power among candidates. More so among those who made it the last time and have amassed huge amounts of wealth since 2004. With the media and money power wrapped like two peas in a pod, this completely shuts out smaller, or less expensive, voices. It just prices the aam aadmi out of the polls. Never mind they are contested in his name.
Your chances of winning an election to the Maharashtra Assembly, if you are worth over Rs.100 million, are 48 times greater than if you were worth just Rs.1 million or less. Far greater still, if that other person is worth only half-a-million rupees or less. Just six out of 288 MLAs in Maharashtra who won their seats declared assets of less than half-a-million rupees. Nor should challenges from garden variety multi-millionaires (those worth between Rs.1 million-10 million) worry you much. Your chances of winning are six times greater than theirs, says the National Election Watch (NEW).
The number of ‘crorepati’ MLAs (those in the Rs.10 million-plus category) in the State Assembly has gone up by over 70 per cent in the just concluded elections. There were 108 elected in 2004. This time, there are 184. Nearly two-thirds of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra and close to three-fourths of those in Haryana, are crorepatis. These and other startling facts fill the reports put out by NEW, a coalition of over 1,200 civil society groups across the country that also brought out excellent reports on these issues during the Lok Sabha polls in April-May. Its effort to inform the voting public is spearheaded by the NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Each MLA in Maharashtra, on average, is worth over Rs.40 million. That is, if we treat their own poll affidavit declarations as genuine. That average is boosted by Congress and BJP MLAs who seem richer than the others, being well above that mark. The NCP and the Shiv Sena MLAs are not too far behind, though, the average worth of each of their legislators being in the Rs.30 million-plus bracket.
Each time a giant poll exercise is gone through in this most complex of electoral democracies, we congratulate the Election Commission on a fine job. Rightly so, in most cases. For, many times, its interventions and activism have curbed rigging, booth capturing and ballot stuffing. On the money power front, though — and the media’s packaging of big money interests as “news” — it is hard to find a single significant instance of rigorous or deterrent action. These too, after all, are serious threats. More structured, much more insidious than crude ballot stuffing. Far more threatening to the basics of not just elections, but democracy itself.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/26/stories/2009102651900800.htm
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Collusion between the Kerala police and Shiv Sena: Indifferent media
B R P Bhaskar is a senior journalist writing for English and Malayalam publications on political, social and media-related issues. His blogs have been raising issues uncomfortable to the establishment and the media. His latest blog talks about the collusion between the police and Kerala's Shiv Sena in a case of murder of a senior citizen in Varkala.
I reproduce the post http://keralaletter.blogspot.com/2009/10/varkala-month-later-political-links-are.html presuming that readers in Maharashtra may not be aware of the developments, as indeed I wasn't.
Varkala: A month later political links are coming in the open
Responding to a YouTube video on the atrocities committed against Dalits in Varkala in the wake of a murder, a young Facebook friend asked, “but, why did they kill him?”
Sivaprasad, a senior citizen with no known political affiliation, was killed while on a stroll on the morning of September 23, 2009. The local police quickly pinned the crime on Dalit Human Rights Movement, an organization which was working among Dalits in the state for a few years but had attracted little public attention. It said DHRM had committed the murder to proclaim its strength.
The Facebook friend’s question did not surprise me. It is a question decent human beings have been asking one another since the media reported the police theory and embellished it with insinuations of Dalit extremism. After I visited Varkala as a member of a fact-finding team and wrote in my Malayalam blog about facts suppressed by the police and the media, a veteran journalist and good friend asked me the same question, “but, why did they kill him?”
Another senior journalist and friend, commenting on the collusion between the police and Shiv Sena, to which I had referred in the blog post, said it was difficult to believe that all media would knowingly spread the same lie. In response, I reminded him that all media had joined hands to spread the same lie in the ISRO espeionage case. The primary source for that lie, too, was the police, which was ably assisted by two Central intelligence agencies.
Another friend put his finger right on the middle class mind. “We may have differences about the perpetrators of the crime, the plotters, abettors, police, politicians and media. But what about the victim -- that middle class malayali, guilty of enjoying the leisure of a morning walk? All the inquiries should start from him --because he is you and me.”
The real question, indeed, is how safe are you and me amidst plotters, abettors, police, politicians and pliant media persons.
One FB friend found my reference to collusion between police and Shiv Sena not very convincing. He asked, “Do you mean there was not one single cop available to reveal the foul-play or the nexus? Do you mean all the cops in this state are hopeless? I am sorry sir, … I have seen enough number of cops with strong spine, regardless of innumerable punishment transfers.”
I presume this good friend believes Varghese was not killed in the Wayanad forest, Rajan was not tortured to death in the Kakkayam camp and Udayakumar did not die in the Fort police station, because no cop with strong spine revealed the foul play.
I am not overlooking Ramachandran Nair, the cop who spilled the beans about the fake encounter in Wayanad. He did confess to having pulled the trigger on Varghese. That was years after the event. He is no more. A case registered on the basis of his confession is still pending, with the prosecutors apparently waiting for the surviving accused also to die so that they can close the case and live happily ever after.
This FB friend voiced two other criticisms about the video, which was taken by a member of the fact-finding team. One is that there are no men in sight. The other is that the women refer to RSS, not Shiv Sena. The answer is simple. No men are in the video because they are all in police custody or hiding to avoid arrest and torture. The women mention RSS because they lack the sophistication needed to distinguish between different elements of Hindutva.
One month after the murder, political interests which were not visible until now have started surfacing. What has prompted them to come out is the intervention of the State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, a body which has a mandate to look into the problems of Dalits and Adivasis.
On Wednesday, October 21, the Commission’s Chairman, Dr. P. K. Sivanandan, went to Varkala with some other members to study the situation in the Dalit colonies. They visited the Thoduve colony and the Ambedkar colony at Vadasserikonam and took evidence from a number of Dalits.
The next day, the Chairman of the Varkala Municipality, K. R. Biju, in a statement, accused Dr. Sivanandan of adopting a stance helpful to murderers. He said Dr. Sivanandan had visited the house of the accused and taken evidence in a partisan manner which was not consistent with the Chairman’s status. The other members of the Commission did not act in the same manner, he added.
Biju, who is an advocate, has either a poor understanding of the law and the mandate of the SC/ST Commission or his partisanship overruns his legal knowledge. The Commission is charged with the task of bettering the lot of Dalits and Adivasis. It visited Varkala not to investigate the murder but to look into complaints of atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis. Registration of a murder case against Dalits does not cut out the Commission’s jurisdiction over Dalit affairs.
Biju’s attempt to put the Chairman and members of the Commission on different planes is significant. The Chairman is a former IAS officer. The members' posts are political sinecures.
The State Committee of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Aikyavedi (united front), in a statement issued in Thiruvananthapuram, demanded the Dr. Sivanandan's removal from the chairmanship of the Commission. It alleged that he had visited the houses of murder case accused. It further accused him of scolding police officers in the presence of criminals.
The major media institutions did not cover the Commission’s visit to Varkala, although they had prior knowledge about it. That, however, did not inhibit them from playing up the statements critical of the Commission’s visit. There was nothing to indicate that they had sought the Commission’s response to the allegations.
Incidentally, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi which have consistently ignored the police’s month-long Dalit hunt, found time to pursue the appearance of mysterious white drawings at the site of Sivaprasad’s cremation. The latest police theory is that it is the work of a person of unsound mind.
The statements against the Commission’s visit and the personal attack on the Chairman reveal the convergence of various vested interests in Varkala. The Municipal Chairman belongs to the CPI-M. The SC ST Aikyavedi is an outfit of the Hindutva camp. Their statements bear out their common interest in protecting the police which has let loose a reign of terror in the Dalit colonies.
Dr. P. K.Sivanandan, who is a trained engineer, holds a Master’s degree from the University of Sussex, M. Phil from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Political riff-raff may be forgiven for not being able to appreciate his credentials.
I reproduce the post http://keralaletter.blogspot.com/2009/10/varkala-month-later-political-links-are.html presuming that readers in Maharashtra may not be aware of the developments, as indeed I wasn't.
Varkala: A month later political links are coming in the open
Responding to a YouTube video on the atrocities committed against Dalits in Varkala in the wake of a murder, a young Facebook friend asked, “but, why did they kill him?”
Sivaprasad, a senior citizen with no known political affiliation, was killed while on a stroll on the morning of September 23, 2009. The local police quickly pinned the crime on Dalit Human Rights Movement, an organization which was working among Dalits in the state for a few years but had attracted little public attention. It said DHRM had committed the murder to proclaim its strength.
The Facebook friend’s question did not surprise me. It is a question decent human beings have been asking one another since the media reported the police theory and embellished it with insinuations of Dalit extremism. After I visited Varkala as a member of a fact-finding team and wrote in my Malayalam blog about facts suppressed by the police and the media, a veteran journalist and good friend asked me the same question, “but, why did they kill him?”
Another senior journalist and friend, commenting on the collusion between the police and Shiv Sena, to which I had referred in the blog post, said it was difficult to believe that all media would knowingly spread the same lie. In response, I reminded him that all media had joined hands to spread the same lie in the ISRO espeionage case. The primary source for that lie, too, was the police, which was ably assisted by two Central intelligence agencies.
Another friend put his finger right on the middle class mind. “We may have differences about the perpetrators of the crime, the plotters, abettors, police, politicians and media. But what about the victim -- that middle class malayali, guilty of enjoying the leisure of a morning walk? All the inquiries should start from him --because he is you and me.”
The real question, indeed, is how safe are you and me amidst plotters, abettors, police, politicians and pliant media persons.
One FB friend found my reference to collusion between police and Shiv Sena not very convincing. He asked, “Do you mean there was not one single cop available to reveal the foul-play or the nexus? Do you mean all the cops in this state are hopeless? I am sorry sir, … I have seen enough number of cops with strong spine, regardless of innumerable punishment transfers.”
I presume this good friend believes Varghese was not killed in the Wayanad forest, Rajan was not tortured to death in the Kakkayam camp and Udayakumar did not die in the Fort police station, because no cop with strong spine revealed the foul play.
I am not overlooking Ramachandran Nair, the cop who spilled the beans about the fake encounter in Wayanad. He did confess to having pulled the trigger on Varghese. That was years after the event. He is no more. A case registered on the basis of his confession is still pending, with the prosecutors apparently waiting for the surviving accused also to die so that they can close the case and live happily ever after.
This FB friend voiced two other criticisms about the video, which was taken by a member of the fact-finding team. One is that there are no men in sight. The other is that the women refer to RSS, not Shiv Sena. The answer is simple. No men are in the video because they are all in police custody or hiding to avoid arrest and torture. The women mention RSS because they lack the sophistication needed to distinguish between different elements of Hindutva.
One month after the murder, political interests which were not visible until now have started surfacing. What has prompted them to come out is the intervention of the State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, a body which has a mandate to look into the problems of Dalits and Adivasis.
On Wednesday, October 21, the Commission’s Chairman, Dr. P. K. Sivanandan, went to Varkala with some other members to study the situation in the Dalit colonies. They visited the Thoduve colony and the Ambedkar colony at Vadasserikonam and took evidence from a number of Dalits.
The next day, the Chairman of the Varkala Municipality, K. R. Biju, in a statement, accused Dr. Sivanandan of adopting a stance helpful to murderers. He said Dr. Sivanandan had visited the house of the accused and taken evidence in a partisan manner which was not consistent with the Chairman’s status. The other members of the Commission did not act in the same manner, he added.
Biju, who is an advocate, has either a poor understanding of the law and the mandate of the SC/ST Commission or his partisanship overruns his legal knowledge. The Commission is charged with the task of bettering the lot of Dalits and Adivasis. It visited Varkala not to investigate the murder but to look into complaints of atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis. Registration of a murder case against Dalits does not cut out the Commission’s jurisdiction over Dalit affairs.
Biju’s attempt to put the Chairman and members of the Commission on different planes is significant. The Chairman is a former IAS officer. The members' posts are political sinecures.
The State Committee of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Aikyavedi (united front), in a statement issued in Thiruvananthapuram, demanded the Dr. Sivanandan's removal from the chairmanship of the Commission. It alleged that he had visited the houses of murder case accused. It further accused him of scolding police officers in the presence of criminals.
The major media institutions did not cover the Commission’s visit to Varkala, although they had prior knowledge about it. That, however, did not inhibit them from playing up the statements critical of the Commission’s visit. There was nothing to indicate that they had sought the Commission’s response to the allegations.
Incidentally, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi which have consistently ignored the police’s month-long Dalit hunt, found time to pursue the appearance of mysterious white drawings at the site of Sivaprasad’s cremation. The latest police theory is that it is the work of a person of unsound mind.
The statements against the Commission’s visit and the personal attack on the Chairman reveal the convergence of various vested interests in Varkala. The Municipal Chairman belongs to the CPI-M. The SC ST Aikyavedi is an outfit of the Hindutva camp. Their statements bear out their common interest in protecting the police which has let loose a reign of terror in the Dalit colonies.
Dr. P. K.Sivanandan, who is a trained engineer, holds a Master’s degree from the University of Sussex, M. Phil from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Political riff-raff may be forgiven for not being able to appreciate his credentials.
Monday, 5 October 2009
The Costs of Becoming a Journalist
Colleague Rahul Gadekar forwarded this report to me. Shouldn’t it trigger similar studies in India and other countries? Do please read the comments to the original post, http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-costs-of-becoming-a-journalist/#comments
A report by the British Cabinet Office released this summer offers stark evidence of the disappearance of the working class from the journalism profession, and the study offers some relevant observations for American media as well.
The report, Unleashing Aspirations, notes, among other things, that journalists born since 1970 predominantly come from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds. And Journalism ranks third in the list of the most socially exclusive professions, just behind doctors and lawyers.
The study finds that:
Between the 1958 and the 1970 birth cohorts, the biggest decline in social mobility occurred in the professions of journalism and accountancy. For example, journalists and broadcasters born in 1958 typically grew up in families with an income of around 5.5% above that of the average family; but this rose to 42.4% for the generation of journalists and broadcasters born in 1970.
The National Union of Journalists told the panel compiling the report that a 2002 Journalism Training Forum poll showed that fewer than 10 per cent of new journalists came from a working-class background and only three per cent came from homes headed by semi-skilled or unskilled workers.
One of the many troubling findings of the report, and the one most readily applicable to the profession here in the US, is that a prerequisite for entrance into a career in journalism is at least one internship experience, and that many, if not most, are unpaid. A cursory glance at available internships here in the US reveals that of 50 intern opportunities listed on journalismjobs.com, only 15 offer pay. Of the 50 internships posted, another 15 offer no pay but college credit, which at many universities, ours included, means that doing an internship actually costs a student tuition money. Here at YSU, students can earn six hours maximum for internships, but at many universities, 12 to 16 are allowed, paving the way for students to spend several thousand dollars (at least) to get an entire academic semester of work experience.
If the student can afford this luxury and the cost of living in the city in which he or she interns, s/he in theory gains the passkey to an entry-level position somewhere upon graduation. Of course, many of the most prestigious internships are located in the media hubs of New York and Washington D.C. where the costs of living are beyond the reach of a student from an average, let alone below average wage earning household.
Of the 15 internships listed that offer pay, the average salary is just under $250 per week for an average of 35 hours, before taxes. If a student is working to pay his or her tuition and rent and also, in many cases, supporting a family while going to school, even the paid internship is an impossibility.
This means, of course, that only students who can afford to work for free for several months are gaining the credentials to access their chosen profession.
The broader implications of this exclusion from the journalism profession are obvious and have been documented by ourselves and others—fewer opportunities for working- class students to enter the profession equals fewer journalists attuned to the complex issues facing the working class and fewer stories about the issues facing working-class people.
Of course, the best-case scenario to remedy this inequity would be if news organizations paid living wages to interns, but in the current media market, one in which many outlets are struggling to survive, this seems unlikely.
And, if the current enrollment trends in journalism programs continue, there will be ample supply of candidates ready to pay to work or work for no pay. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite the dismal outlook for jobs upon graduation, more and more students are choosing journalism majors, increasing the competition for scarce jobs and furthering the entrenchment of unpaid internships as a means to gain a leg up on the competition.
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson even suggests that while the current practice is clearly exclusionary, “It’s not the responsibility or the interest of the businesses like magazines and non-profits who operate on slim budgets and narrow margins to design an internship that can accommodate even the least fortunate.” Rather Thompson argues that colleges should instead expand their acceptance of accredited internships or provide financing.
Some schools, like Dartmouth College, have done just that by providing financing for students to complete internships. The college has grants available for students to take on unpaid internships, and offers additional funds for financial aid recipients based on need.
But for working-class students at colleges and universities that lack the deep pockets of Dartmouth the choice still most often comes down to an unpaid internship that will drive them deeper into debt or a job that allows them to pay another year’s expenses– not much of a choice.
The consequences of this increasing social exclusivity of the profession are dire, and more complex than a matter of equal class representation within the ranks of professional journalists for the sake of equality or diversity.
If journalists increasingly come from a more privileged social class or segment of society, even the best of them will likely not question the master narratives that have victimized the working class for decades: maximum profit takes precedence over fair and equitable treatment, what’s good for business is always good for America, and so on.
The end result will be more stories that fail to question these fundamental assumptions, stories that inevitably reduce the worker to a trite anecdotal device, a narrative stepping stone to “really important” people and issues.
A report by the British Cabinet Office released this summer offers stark evidence of the disappearance of the working class from the journalism profession, and the study offers some relevant observations for American media as well.
The report, Unleashing Aspirations, notes, among other things, that journalists born since 1970 predominantly come from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds. And Journalism ranks third in the list of the most socially exclusive professions, just behind doctors and lawyers.
The study finds that:
Between the 1958 and the 1970 birth cohorts, the biggest decline in social mobility occurred in the professions of journalism and accountancy. For example, journalists and broadcasters born in 1958 typically grew up in families with an income of around 5.5% above that of the average family; but this rose to 42.4% for the generation of journalists and broadcasters born in 1970.
The National Union of Journalists told the panel compiling the report that a 2002 Journalism Training Forum poll showed that fewer than 10 per cent of new journalists came from a working-class background and only three per cent came from homes headed by semi-skilled or unskilled workers.
One of the many troubling findings of the report, and the one most readily applicable to the profession here in the US, is that a prerequisite for entrance into a career in journalism is at least one internship experience, and that many, if not most, are unpaid. A cursory glance at available internships here in the US reveals that of 50 intern opportunities listed on journalismjobs.com, only 15 offer pay. Of the 50 internships posted, another 15 offer no pay but college credit, which at many universities, ours included, means that doing an internship actually costs a student tuition money. Here at YSU, students can earn six hours maximum for internships, but at many universities, 12 to 16 are allowed, paving the way for students to spend several thousand dollars (at least) to get an entire academic semester of work experience.
If the student can afford this luxury and the cost of living in the city in which he or she interns, s/he in theory gains the passkey to an entry-level position somewhere upon graduation. Of course, many of the most prestigious internships are located in the media hubs of New York and Washington D.C. where the costs of living are beyond the reach of a student from an average, let alone below average wage earning household.
Of the 15 internships listed that offer pay, the average salary is just under $250 per week for an average of 35 hours, before taxes. If a student is working to pay his or her tuition and rent and also, in many cases, supporting a family while going to school, even the paid internship is an impossibility.
This means, of course, that only students who can afford to work for free for several months are gaining the credentials to access their chosen profession.
The broader implications of this exclusion from the journalism profession are obvious and have been documented by ourselves and others—fewer opportunities for working- class students to enter the profession equals fewer journalists attuned to the complex issues facing the working class and fewer stories about the issues facing working-class people.
Of course, the best-case scenario to remedy this inequity would be if news organizations paid living wages to interns, but in the current media market, one in which many outlets are struggling to survive, this seems unlikely.
And, if the current enrollment trends in journalism programs continue, there will be ample supply of candidates ready to pay to work or work for no pay. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite the dismal outlook for jobs upon graduation, more and more students are choosing journalism majors, increasing the competition for scarce jobs and furthering the entrenchment of unpaid internships as a means to gain a leg up on the competition.
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson even suggests that while the current practice is clearly exclusionary, “It’s not the responsibility or the interest of the businesses like magazines and non-profits who operate on slim budgets and narrow margins to design an internship that can accommodate even the least fortunate.” Rather Thompson argues that colleges should instead expand their acceptance of accredited internships or provide financing.
Some schools, like Dartmouth College, have done just that by providing financing for students to complete internships. The college has grants available for students to take on unpaid internships, and offers additional funds for financial aid recipients based on need.
But for working-class students at colleges and universities that lack the deep pockets of Dartmouth the choice still most often comes down to an unpaid internship that will drive them deeper into debt or a job that allows them to pay another year’s expenses– not much of a choice.
The consequences of this increasing social exclusivity of the profession are dire, and more complex than a matter of equal class representation within the ranks of professional journalists for the sake of equality or diversity.
If journalists increasingly come from a more privileged social class or segment of society, even the best of them will likely not question the master narratives that have victimized the working class for decades: maximum profit takes precedence over fair and equitable treatment, what’s good for business is always good for America, and so on.
The end result will be more stories that fail to question these fundamental assumptions, stories that inevitably reduce the worker to a trite anecdotal device, a narrative stepping stone to “really important” people and issues.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
New Media for Development in India
Paper on New Media for Development in India
presented at the national conference on Media and Development
Organised by Kushabhau Thakare Patrakarita avam JansancharVishwavidyalaya
On May15-16, 2008 at Raipur,Madhya Pradesh, India
Introduction:
Indian newspapers played a very important role in the freedom struggle. Newspapers in English and non-English languages published from cities and rural areas took on the might of the British rulers. They effectively countered the anti-freedom struggle campaigns undertaken by the British-owned newspapers of the day. The newspapers largely devoted their space to politics. Non-English publications debated social issues also. Coverage of issues of development was rare.
After the Independence, these newspapers were initially not sure about their role in the democracy because now the governments at the Centre and at the states were run by the natives. They could not thus continue the anti-establishment stance. Like the common people and the government servants, journalists were overawed by the charismatic personality of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who remained at the helm until his death in 1964. Owners, editors, and journalists gradually woke up to write about the social and economic issues although politics remained top priority for some decades later.
Politics of Mrs Indira Gandhi and her opponents dominated newspapers in the turbulent seventies. Yet newspapers had provided space to issues of the common people as special features on droughts, scarcity of food, and problems of deprived sections such as women, children, tribals, and slum-dwellers. Newspapers had space earmarked for debates and question-and-answers in Parliament and state assemblies. Government-run Akashvani and Doordashan broadcast programmes that discussed such problems and experts were on their panels to offer advice and solutions to the listeners.
The scenario gradually changed when colour television made its appearance for the Asiad Games in 1982. Although the electronic media was still state-controlled, newspapers felt that there was now stiff competition from television, which could provide live coverage of major events. The policies for globalisation, liberalisation, and privatisation were introduced in 1991 that brought in the subsequent years, among other things, private television channels, private telephone operators and Internet. The users had more options to get news and entertainment. Daily newspapers and other print publications changed their strategies and tried to offer what the 24-hour channels telecast.
The electronic media did not provide any threat in terms of circulation and advertisement revenue to the newspapers, like the US traditional media experienced during the last two decades. Yet, the India print media became more aggressive as the publishers added pages, brought out more supplements, editions from other centres, and even publications in other languages, with colour printing on glossy art papers. Some leading publishers have begun exploiting convergence of media technology, as they now own television and private FM radio stations. Some newspapers have Internet portals offering a variety of contents including latest news, jokes and counselling.
The globalisation and open economy have brought in India multi-nationals and new players in engineering and service industry. This has offered substantial ad support and sponsorships to at least leading media in English and non-English languages.
In this flurry of activity in media of India, casualty seems to be serious coverage of pressing development issues. Newspapers ape the formats of news and entertainment channels that have no space or inclination to cover such issues. Parliament coverage is available on state-run Loksabha and Rajyasabha channels, but newspapers do not any more carry columns such as 'Today in Parliament' wherein they used to publish important government decisions announced in both the Houses. The popular media cover political issues that include intra-party or inter-party feuds presuming that this is newsy and that the audiences are eager to watch or read only these. No serious nation-wide surveys have been carried out to find out if this presumption is correct. Television channels are happy with the TRPs (Television Rating Points) collected from few viewers in metros.
Against this background, Internet has become a very important and useful tool to fill in the vacuum created by the traditional print and electronic media who ignore development issues. This paper attempts to highlight the role of Internet and other new technologies play to do what the traditional media have chosen to ignore.
It will be too presumptuous to argue that Internet has been very effective in reporting, discussing, and motivating the target audiences to act for development. There are limitations to the use of Internet in a vast sub-continent of India, but it is worthwhile documenting how the Net is trying to play a role in its nascent stage. After all, the web emerged as recently as in 1995 when it was available only in the metros. The real thrust to introduction of Internet was received in the initial years of the new millennium when broadband and mobile telephony were made available to the people.
Internet in India
Internet was born in USA in 1960s to aid defence and scientific project. In India also, Internet was introduced by research institutes. India had 42,000,000 Internet users (not subscribers) in July 2007 compared to 5,000,000 at the turn of the last century. This showed an impressive 740 per cent usage growth. Yet for a population of 1,129,667,528, the penetration was just 3.7 per cent. When contrasted with tiny Japan, India’s progress in this area would seem unimpressive: Japan (population: 128,646,345) had 86,300,000 Internet users, which meant that the penetration was 67.1 per cent. The usage growth during the seven years ending 2007 was 83.3 per cent.
It would have to be acknowledged, however, that India made rapid progress in Information and Communication Technology within a very short span. This had to be viewed against the backdrop that Internet for private use was first available only in 1995. Within the first three years, there were 1,400,000 users while the number went up to 5,500,000 at the turn of the century though it meant a penetration of only half a percent for a population of 1,094,870,677. Thanks to a series of initiatives taken by the Union Government, the dial-up connectivity was available to government and local-self government offices, commercial establishments, educational institutions, domestic users and cyber café owners taking the number of Net users to 42,000,000 for a population that had gone up to 1,129,667,528 in year 2007. The penetration was only 3.7 per cent. Broadband connectivity was available in major cities in 2003. From a mere 19,000 broadband connections in 2004, the country had 1.82 million connections in September 2006 by which time dial-up connections had gone up to 8.8 millions.
Year Ending Internet Subscribers Broadband Subscribers
2005 6 million 3 million
2007 18 million 9 million
2010 40 million 20 million
(Data source: http://www.dotindia.com/ntp/broadbandpolicy2004.htm, accessed in August 2007)
Education and Research Network (ERNET)
The Department of Electronics initiated, under financial assistance from UNDP in 1986, the Education and Research Network (ERNET) which became the first major step in ushering in Internet era in the country. It practically brought Internet in India. It succeeded in building a large network for scientists and academics. The government adopted ERNET as the platform for launching a science and technology network in the country. The founding fathers were National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, five Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Chennai, and the Department of Electronics, New Delhi.
ERNET eventually became the largest nationwide terrestrial and satellite network of premiere educational and research institutions in major cities of India. Focus of ERNET is not limited to just providing connectivity, but to meet the entire needs of the educational and research institutions by hosting and providing relevant information to their users.
National Informatics Centre (NIC)
An important decision of the government in seventies was to set up National Informatics Centre (NIC) as the initiative of the Department of Information Technology. If ERNET’s mission was to network the science and academic community, NIC was created to provide network backbone and e-Governance support to government administration. Its mandate was to provide Information and Communication Technology services to Central Government, State Governments, Union Territory Administrations, Districts, and other Government bodies in India.
The NIC offers a wide range of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services including Nationwide Communication Network for decentralised planning, improvement in Government services and wider transparency of national and local Governments. NIC assists in implementing Information Technology Projects, in close collaboration with Central and State Governments, in the areas of (a) Centrally sponsored schemes and Central sector schemes, (b) State sector and State sponsored projects, and (c) District Administration sponsored projects. NIC endeavours to ensure that the latest technology in all areas of IT is available to its users. (http://nic.gov.in/)
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, then a state-owned monopoly corporation, launched commercial Internet service in 1995 for industry, trade, home-users, and so on. In February 2002, the Government of India, as per its disinvestments plan, released 25% of VSNL's equity to TATAs. The TATA Indicom and other private service providers have since been offering connectivity to the net users in all parts of the country. Along with these developments, private telephone operators have been spreading their markets with handsets that have camera, audio-visual add-ons and even a communicator incorporating MS Office which can send and receive e-mails. These developments have given a major push to ICT, mostly in major cities but also in smaller places in the countryside. Government and non-government agencies, enterprising institutions, and innovative individuals have been trying to effectively use the new generation tools not only for entertainment but also for development of the society.
Public Broadcasters and government web sites
The Public Broadcasters, Doordarshan and All India Radio have continued to cover, besides spot news, Science and Technology, Agriculture and Rural Development, Women and Children, Arts/Culture/Entertainment, Education and Social sector and so on. Those interested in the proceedings of both houses of Parliament can watch exclusive live coverage from channels dedicated for the purpose.
The Union government harnessed Internet technology to post these proceedings also at the web sites http://rajyasabha.gov.in/ and http://loksabha.gov.in/. Similarly, state governments have set up their own web sites to project the plans and achievement of the respective government. There are web site that provide some static details of respective state assemblies, but most do not have question-and-answers, government's announcement, and reports of various committees as are posted at the web sites of Loksabha and Rajyasabha. Besides these, there are websites of Press Information Bureau (http://pib.nic.in/) that offers press notes and photographs about announcements of central government, Doordarshan (http://www.ddinews.gov.in/) and, All India Radio (www.newsonair.com). The NIC has designed and hosted websites for ministries and departments providing details about the policies and schemes.
Thus, enough resources are available on the websites hosted by the government which has made commitment to people about e-governance, transparency and the Right To Information Act. Administrations in the states, including local civic bodies, have transferred essential information on the net enabling people to get their work within minutes, and not days together as used to happen only in the recent past. An extract of the land record (or 7/12 as it is popularly known) is one of these transactions that were time-consuming and sources of rampant corruption.
This is not to say that these efforts of the government are adequate for the development of society. It is only submitted that these resources were not available earlier with the popular media, and whatever the newspapers in the past did for development is also not being offered to the people through their columns. The new technology has made it possible to provide essential contents in real time and also with very little cost.
Private Initiatives
These features of the new media have been harnessed by non-government organisations, academic institutes, cooperative ventures, and public-spirited individuals. They have set up web sites to provide details of the projects and policies or to offer advice on important issues. These web sites provide space for debates and discussions in a manner the government-hosted web sites cannot venture to do. Many of these web sites have been providing great service to the people interested in issues affecting them.
The following discussion centres around some such web sites that shows how the new media and their tools can play important role in the development of the society:
Centre for Agricultural Media (www.farmedia.org)
Centre for Agricultural Media (CAM) came into existence in Dharwad, Karnataka, on December 3, 2000. It has been expanding its activities successfully to accomplish its objective of strengthening the farmer friendly communication system. It is now registered as a trust under the India Trust Act.
CAM supports any pro-farmer issue in all possible ways. This is the first venture of its kind in India. This forum has initiated several activities, with the support from likeminded experts in farm and rural development journalism. It has been effectively using new media tools:
Web activities: CAM maintains this website (www.farmedia.org) which acts complementary to CAM’s activities. Two important issues of water and organic farming have been addressed extensively in this website. Two separate sections have been created for the purpose.
Media for sustainable development: CAM introduced a programme called, ‘Media for Sustainable Development’ to facilitate media to focus on the positive efforts carried out in the rural areas.
As an extension of CAM’s efforts, the Centre ventured into book publication in 2005 and has published two books and is in the process of publishing the third one.
Issue based networking: CAM has indicated a promising future in creating issue-based awareness through Internet. The centre has played an active role in drawing the public attention on the issue of endosulfan tragedy in certain districts of Kerala. Through its bulletins, CAM has disseminated related information to concerned people, which helped the people’s movement considerably.
CAM-Net: CAM has released 50 e-bulletins through CAM-Net until it became defunct due to lack of technical support. The bulletins reached over 10 thousand people across the world.
Reuters Market Light: A service to farmers
A novel initiative to harness mobile telephone technology has been undertaken by Reuters and Maharashtra government since October 2007. Under the service called Reuters Market Light (RML) introduced first time in the world, farmers receive through their mobile telephones local and customised prices of agro-products, news and weather updates in Marathi.
The idea is to help farmers take informed and quick decisions to dispatch their produce to a market place where the price is more attractive. Weather updates and advice about farm practices are intended to help the farmers take precautionary measures when sudden changes in the climate occur. This service is, thus, intended to aid farmers to develop their financial status using the modern communication technology and credibility of the Reuters.
For a monthly fee of Rs. 60, the scheme was a big draw within few days after Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar formally launched it. Over 7,500 farmers subscribed in October and two months later the subscriptions rose to 10,500.
On December 20, 2007, the Reuters announced that the RML would be available in local post offices across the state. It entered into a partnership with Maharashtra’s Postal Circle, to distribute, sell and support the RML.
RML promises help to farmers to enhance their crop yields and improve their productivity over a very wide range of produce including onions, cotton, soybean, pulses, pomegranates, and oranges.
The initiative thus acknowledges the need to combine modern technology, with the tried and tasted traditional postal service that reaches the remotest villages.
NGOsIndia.com
NGOsIndia.com is an online web directory and resource centre of Indian NGOs. The portal contains information about grass root level Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), government agencies, funding Agencies, social activists and concerned stakeholders, Funding Agencies, issues, projects, job opportunities in social sector, success stories of individuals as well as organizations, and other relevant links.
This web site has been set up by Delhi-based Srishti Sansthan. It has, among other things, alphabetically organised database of non-governmental organisations located in the states of the country. According to its vision and mission, it is committed to
· social justice, sustainable development and human rights. The right to communicate freely is a basic human right and a necessity for sustainable development. Access to information is essential to informed decision-making at all levels.
· dissemination of information and promotion of sustainable development initiatives, in response to the needs of under represented and marginalized sectors of society.
· develop and establish an ideal medium for the participation and exchange of a trusted and accurate source of quality information.
This NGO, through its web site, has made its objective very clear and specific to use new media:
· To promote Information collaborations and Constructive communication between NGOs, to develop effective partnership with each other.
· To network for the access, sharing and dissemination of information,
Collaboration and Partnerships between NGOs themselves and with other organisations.
· Electronic Networking to strengthen community organisations by boosting its knowledge base and its ability to share information and experiences with strategic allies and other partners in relevant field.
· Capacity building of grass root level NGOs, social workers through free online resources and information on a single platform.
· To serve non-profit organisations, charities, grassroots and community groups, educational and research institutions.
· Sharing of ideas among NGOs and development agents.
ITC's e-choupals (e-choupal.com)
ITC Ltd is one of India's foremost private sector companies with a market capitalisation of nearly US $ 18 billion and a turnover of over US $ 4.75 billion. Its e-choupal initiative, started in year 2000, is claimed to be the world’s largest rural digital infrastructure empowering over four million farmers.
Around 80,000 hectares of plantations by marginal farmers have been supported by ITC’s R & D based propagation programme. More than 35,000 hectares have been brought under ITC’s watershed development projects. Integrated animal husbandry programmes have been extended to 1,75,000 milch animals. Its women empowerment programmes have created over 11,000 rural women entrepreneurs and its supplementary education support has touched the lives of 100,000 children in rural India.
Choupal in Hindi means a meeting place in a village. The e-choupal concept has been borrowed from the age-old tradition of an earmarked place for such meeting. In the e-concept, an Internet kiosk is set up with the support of the ITC that also has a constantly updated database. Farmers assemble and use the new technology for the better their lot and to bring about rural development.
The ITC, as part of its corporate social responsibility, funded the initiative and provided expertise to run the project successfully. Farmers now log on to the site through these Internet kiosks in their villages to order high quality agri-inputs, get information on best farming practices, prevailing market prices for their crops at home and abroad and the weather forecast – all in the local language.
In the very first full season of e-Choupal operations in Madhya Pradesh, soya farmers sold nearly 50,000 tons of their produce through the e-Choupal Internet platform, which has more than doubled since then. The result marked the beginning of a transparent and cost-effective marketing channel.
Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (http://agmarknet.nic.in/)
This initiative undertaken in the tenth plan period is another example, this one by the government and its agencies, to use new communication technology to help the farmers in improving their earnings and make farming remunerative. The website explains its purpose as follows:
Almost all the States and Union Territories are providing market information in one form or the other for the benefits of market users like producers, traders, and consumers. However, the information is collected and disseminated by use of conventional methods, which cause inordinate delay in communicating the information to different target groups, and thus adversely affects their economic interest.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to bring improvement in the present market information system by linking (i) all Agricultural Produce Wholesale markets in the States and Union Territories, and (ii) the State Agricultural Marketing Boards and State Directorates of Agricultural Marketing, with the Directorate of Marketing & Inspection of the Union Ministry of Agriculture, for effective and efficient information exchange. Investment in networking of about 7000 Wholesale Agricultural Produce Markets in the Country will facilitate globalisation of Indian Agriculture (and also globalisation of Indian Markets) in addition to strategically establish Supply-Chain Model (SCM).
The Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, in the Union Ministry of Agriculture sanctioned a Central Sector Scheme 'NICNET Based Agricultural Marketing Information Network (AGMARK-NET)', with a Project Cost estimate of about Rs. ten crore. Under the project, it was envisaged to link 810 nodes (735 agricultural markets and 75 State Marketing Boards/DMI offices) to begin with, through its attached office, Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI), during the year 2000-02. During the tenth five year plan, further expansion to 2000 additional markets, Regional Portals and GIS based National atlas of Markets has also been approved. As part of the expansion programme, about 1400 more markets are being networked.
The website now has a rich database updated continuously to help producers take quick decision about marketing their produce.
--
Limitations of this presentation
The use of new media tools has just begun in India during the last decade. Those who are harnessing the technology have been making sincere experiments to participate in the development processes. The examples discussed here are picked up from scores of websites and cannot be termed as representative. Intention to site them in this paper was to document such initiatives and not to carry out a critical analysis.
It must be acknowledged here that these initiatives suffer from several factors that hamper the efforts for the all round development of the deprived sections. Some of these factors are:
· Paucity of funds to provide computer and Internet connectivity at every place
· Non-availability of uninterrupted electricity to use the new technology
· Non-availability of technical support to run the centres at village level
· Non-availability of trainers to train farmers to use the technology
· Computer and Internet illiteracy. Computers in most places do not have regional language fonts that can be used to read contents in the web sites.
· Limitations to use regional languages to enable farmers to use contents of the web-linked databases
Yet, these initiatives deserve to be chronicled as the first steps in the digital era in India, particularly in the process of development. It will be useful to study these and other initiatives to find out how the farmers have actually benefited. Such studies will be useful also to the owners of the web sites.
-
Presented in absentia by:
Dr Kiran Thakur
Retired Professor and Head
Department of Communication and Journalism
University of Pune
--
Address: 03, Indrayani, Patrakarnagar, Pune 411016
Phone 020 25650225 Mobile 9373331733
e-mail drkiranthakur@gmail.com
--
presented at the national conference on Media and Development
Organised by Kushabhau Thakare Patrakarita avam JansancharVishwavidyalaya
On May15-16, 2008 at Raipur,Madhya Pradesh, India
Introduction:
Indian newspapers played a very important role in the freedom struggle. Newspapers in English and non-English languages published from cities and rural areas took on the might of the British rulers. They effectively countered the anti-freedom struggle campaigns undertaken by the British-owned newspapers of the day. The newspapers largely devoted their space to politics. Non-English publications debated social issues also. Coverage of issues of development was rare.
After the Independence, these newspapers were initially not sure about their role in the democracy because now the governments at the Centre and at the states were run by the natives. They could not thus continue the anti-establishment stance. Like the common people and the government servants, journalists were overawed by the charismatic personality of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who remained at the helm until his death in 1964. Owners, editors, and journalists gradually woke up to write about the social and economic issues although politics remained top priority for some decades later.
Politics of Mrs Indira Gandhi and her opponents dominated newspapers in the turbulent seventies. Yet newspapers had provided space to issues of the common people as special features on droughts, scarcity of food, and problems of deprived sections such as women, children, tribals, and slum-dwellers. Newspapers had space earmarked for debates and question-and-answers in Parliament and state assemblies. Government-run Akashvani and Doordashan broadcast programmes that discussed such problems and experts were on their panels to offer advice and solutions to the listeners.
The scenario gradually changed when colour television made its appearance for the Asiad Games in 1982. Although the electronic media was still state-controlled, newspapers felt that there was now stiff competition from television, which could provide live coverage of major events. The policies for globalisation, liberalisation, and privatisation were introduced in 1991 that brought in the subsequent years, among other things, private television channels, private telephone operators and Internet. The users had more options to get news and entertainment. Daily newspapers and other print publications changed their strategies and tried to offer what the 24-hour channels telecast.
The electronic media did not provide any threat in terms of circulation and advertisement revenue to the newspapers, like the US traditional media experienced during the last two decades. Yet, the India print media became more aggressive as the publishers added pages, brought out more supplements, editions from other centres, and even publications in other languages, with colour printing on glossy art papers. Some leading publishers have begun exploiting convergence of media technology, as they now own television and private FM radio stations. Some newspapers have Internet portals offering a variety of contents including latest news, jokes and counselling.
The globalisation and open economy have brought in India multi-nationals and new players in engineering and service industry. This has offered substantial ad support and sponsorships to at least leading media in English and non-English languages.
In this flurry of activity in media of India, casualty seems to be serious coverage of pressing development issues. Newspapers ape the formats of news and entertainment channels that have no space or inclination to cover such issues. Parliament coverage is available on state-run Loksabha and Rajyasabha channels, but newspapers do not any more carry columns such as 'Today in Parliament' wherein they used to publish important government decisions announced in both the Houses. The popular media cover political issues that include intra-party or inter-party feuds presuming that this is newsy and that the audiences are eager to watch or read only these. No serious nation-wide surveys have been carried out to find out if this presumption is correct. Television channels are happy with the TRPs (Television Rating Points) collected from few viewers in metros.
Against this background, Internet has become a very important and useful tool to fill in the vacuum created by the traditional print and electronic media who ignore development issues. This paper attempts to highlight the role of Internet and other new technologies play to do what the traditional media have chosen to ignore.
It will be too presumptuous to argue that Internet has been very effective in reporting, discussing, and motivating the target audiences to act for development. There are limitations to the use of Internet in a vast sub-continent of India, but it is worthwhile documenting how the Net is trying to play a role in its nascent stage. After all, the web emerged as recently as in 1995 when it was available only in the metros. The real thrust to introduction of Internet was received in the initial years of the new millennium when broadband and mobile telephony were made available to the people.
Internet in India
Internet was born in USA in 1960s to aid defence and scientific project. In India also, Internet was introduced by research institutes. India had 42,000,000 Internet users (not subscribers) in July 2007 compared to 5,000,000 at the turn of the last century. This showed an impressive 740 per cent usage growth. Yet for a population of 1,129,667,528, the penetration was just 3.7 per cent. When contrasted with tiny Japan, India’s progress in this area would seem unimpressive: Japan (population: 128,646,345) had 86,300,000 Internet users, which meant that the penetration was 67.1 per cent. The usage growth during the seven years ending 2007 was 83.3 per cent.
It would have to be acknowledged, however, that India made rapid progress in Information and Communication Technology within a very short span. This had to be viewed against the backdrop that Internet for private use was first available only in 1995. Within the first three years, there were 1,400,000 users while the number went up to 5,500,000 at the turn of the century though it meant a penetration of only half a percent for a population of 1,094,870,677. Thanks to a series of initiatives taken by the Union Government, the dial-up connectivity was available to government and local-self government offices, commercial establishments, educational institutions, domestic users and cyber café owners taking the number of Net users to 42,000,000 for a population that had gone up to 1,129,667,528 in year 2007. The penetration was only 3.7 per cent. Broadband connectivity was available in major cities in 2003. From a mere 19,000 broadband connections in 2004, the country had 1.82 million connections in September 2006 by which time dial-up connections had gone up to 8.8 millions.
Year Ending Internet Subscribers Broadband Subscribers
2005 6 million 3 million
2007 18 million 9 million
2010 40 million 20 million
(Data source: http://www.dotindia.com/ntp/broadbandpolicy2004.htm, accessed in August 2007)
Education and Research Network (ERNET)
The Department of Electronics initiated, under financial assistance from UNDP in 1986, the Education and Research Network (ERNET) which became the first major step in ushering in Internet era in the country. It practically brought Internet in India. It succeeded in building a large network for scientists and academics. The government adopted ERNET as the platform for launching a science and technology network in the country. The founding fathers were National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, five Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Chennai, and the Department of Electronics, New Delhi.
ERNET eventually became the largest nationwide terrestrial and satellite network of premiere educational and research institutions in major cities of India. Focus of ERNET is not limited to just providing connectivity, but to meet the entire needs of the educational and research institutions by hosting and providing relevant information to their users.
National Informatics Centre (NIC)
An important decision of the government in seventies was to set up National Informatics Centre (NIC) as the initiative of the Department of Information Technology. If ERNET’s mission was to network the science and academic community, NIC was created to provide network backbone and e-Governance support to government administration. Its mandate was to provide Information and Communication Technology services to Central Government, State Governments, Union Territory Administrations, Districts, and other Government bodies in India.
The NIC offers a wide range of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services including Nationwide Communication Network for decentralised planning, improvement in Government services and wider transparency of national and local Governments. NIC assists in implementing Information Technology Projects, in close collaboration with Central and State Governments, in the areas of (a) Centrally sponsored schemes and Central sector schemes, (b) State sector and State sponsored projects, and (c) District Administration sponsored projects. NIC endeavours to ensure that the latest technology in all areas of IT is available to its users. (http://nic.gov.in/)
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, then a state-owned monopoly corporation, launched commercial Internet service in 1995 for industry, trade, home-users, and so on. In February 2002, the Government of India, as per its disinvestments plan, released 25% of VSNL's equity to TATAs. The TATA Indicom and other private service providers have since been offering connectivity to the net users in all parts of the country. Along with these developments, private telephone operators have been spreading their markets with handsets that have camera, audio-visual add-ons and even a communicator incorporating MS Office which can send and receive e-mails. These developments have given a major push to ICT, mostly in major cities but also in smaller places in the countryside. Government and non-government agencies, enterprising institutions, and innovative individuals have been trying to effectively use the new generation tools not only for entertainment but also for development of the society.
Public Broadcasters and government web sites
The Public Broadcasters, Doordarshan and All India Radio have continued to cover, besides spot news, Science and Technology, Agriculture and Rural Development, Women and Children, Arts/Culture/Entertainment, Education and Social sector and so on. Those interested in the proceedings of both houses of Parliament can watch exclusive live coverage from channels dedicated for the purpose.
The Union government harnessed Internet technology to post these proceedings also at the web sites http://rajyasabha.gov.in/ and http://loksabha.gov.in/. Similarly, state governments have set up their own web sites to project the plans and achievement of the respective government. There are web site that provide some static details of respective state assemblies, but most do not have question-and-answers, government's announcement, and reports of various committees as are posted at the web sites of Loksabha and Rajyasabha. Besides these, there are websites of Press Information Bureau (http://pib.nic.in/) that offers press notes and photographs about announcements of central government, Doordarshan (http://www.ddinews.gov.in/) and, All India Radio (www.newsonair.com). The NIC has designed and hosted websites for ministries and departments providing details about the policies and schemes.
Thus, enough resources are available on the websites hosted by the government which has made commitment to people about e-governance, transparency and the Right To Information Act. Administrations in the states, including local civic bodies, have transferred essential information on the net enabling people to get their work within minutes, and not days together as used to happen only in the recent past. An extract of the land record (or 7/12 as it is popularly known) is one of these transactions that were time-consuming and sources of rampant corruption.
This is not to say that these efforts of the government are adequate for the development of society. It is only submitted that these resources were not available earlier with the popular media, and whatever the newspapers in the past did for development is also not being offered to the people through their columns. The new technology has made it possible to provide essential contents in real time and also with very little cost.
Private Initiatives
These features of the new media have been harnessed by non-government organisations, academic institutes, cooperative ventures, and public-spirited individuals. They have set up web sites to provide details of the projects and policies or to offer advice on important issues. These web sites provide space for debates and discussions in a manner the government-hosted web sites cannot venture to do. Many of these web sites have been providing great service to the people interested in issues affecting them.
The following discussion centres around some such web sites that shows how the new media and their tools can play important role in the development of the society:
Centre for Agricultural Media (www.farmedia.org)
Centre for Agricultural Media (CAM) came into existence in Dharwad, Karnataka, on December 3, 2000. It has been expanding its activities successfully to accomplish its objective of strengthening the farmer friendly communication system. It is now registered as a trust under the India Trust Act.
CAM supports any pro-farmer issue in all possible ways. This is the first venture of its kind in India. This forum has initiated several activities, with the support from likeminded experts in farm and rural development journalism. It has been effectively using new media tools:
Web activities: CAM maintains this website (www.farmedia.org) which acts complementary to CAM’s activities. Two important issues of water and organic farming have been addressed extensively in this website. Two separate sections have been created for the purpose.
Media for sustainable development: CAM introduced a programme called, ‘Media for Sustainable Development’ to facilitate media to focus on the positive efforts carried out in the rural areas.
As an extension of CAM’s efforts, the Centre ventured into book publication in 2005 and has published two books and is in the process of publishing the third one.
Issue based networking: CAM has indicated a promising future in creating issue-based awareness through Internet. The centre has played an active role in drawing the public attention on the issue of endosulfan tragedy in certain districts of Kerala. Through its bulletins, CAM has disseminated related information to concerned people, which helped the people’s movement considerably.
CAM-Net: CAM has released 50 e-bulletins through CAM-Net until it became defunct due to lack of technical support. The bulletins reached over 10 thousand people across the world.
Reuters Market Light: A service to farmers
A novel initiative to harness mobile telephone technology has been undertaken by Reuters and Maharashtra government since October 2007. Under the service called Reuters Market Light (RML) introduced first time in the world, farmers receive through their mobile telephones local and customised prices of agro-products, news and weather updates in Marathi.
The idea is to help farmers take informed and quick decisions to dispatch their produce to a market place where the price is more attractive. Weather updates and advice about farm practices are intended to help the farmers take precautionary measures when sudden changes in the climate occur. This service is, thus, intended to aid farmers to develop their financial status using the modern communication technology and credibility of the Reuters.
For a monthly fee of Rs. 60, the scheme was a big draw within few days after Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar formally launched it. Over 7,500 farmers subscribed in October and two months later the subscriptions rose to 10,500.
On December 20, 2007, the Reuters announced that the RML would be available in local post offices across the state. It entered into a partnership with Maharashtra’s Postal Circle, to distribute, sell and support the RML.
RML promises help to farmers to enhance their crop yields and improve their productivity over a very wide range of produce including onions, cotton, soybean, pulses, pomegranates, and oranges.
The initiative thus acknowledges the need to combine modern technology, with the tried and tasted traditional postal service that reaches the remotest villages.
NGOsIndia.com
NGOsIndia.com is an online web directory and resource centre of Indian NGOs. The portal contains information about grass root level Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), government agencies, funding Agencies, social activists and concerned stakeholders, Funding Agencies, issues, projects, job opportunities in social sector, success stories of individuals as well as organizations, and other relevant links.
This web site has been set up by Delhi-based Srishti Sansthan. It has, among other things, alphabetically organised database of non-governmental organisations located in the states of the country. According to its vision and mission, it is committed to
· social justice, sustainable development and human rights. The right to communicate freely is a basic human right and a necessity for sustainable development. Access to information is essential to informed decision-making at all levels.
· dissemination of information and promotion of sustainable development initiatives, in response to the needs of under represented and marginalized sectors of society.
· develop and establish an ideal medium for the participation and exchange of a trusted and accurate source of quality information.
This NGO, through its web site, has made its objective very clear and specific to use new media:
· To promote Information collaborations and Constructive communication between NGOs, to develop effective partnership with each other.
· To network for the access, sharing and dissemination of information,
Collaboration and Partnerships between NGOs themselves and with other organisations.
· Electronic Networking to strengthen community organisations by boosting its knowledge base and its ability to share information and experiences with strategic allies and other partners in relevant field.
· Capacity building of grass root level NGOs, social workers through free online resources and information on a single platform.
· To serve non-profit organisations, charities, grassroots and community groups, educational and research institutions.
· Sharing of ideas among NGOs and development agents.
ITC's e-choupals (e-choupal.com)
ITC Ltd is one of India's foremost private sector companies with a market capitalisation of nearly US $ 18 billion and a turnover of over US $ 4.75 billion. Its e-choupal initiative, started in year 2000, is claimed to be the world’s largest rural digital infrastructure empowering over four million farmers.
Around 80,000 hectares of plantations by marginal farmers have been supported by ITC’s R & D based propagation programme. More than 35,000 hectares have been brought under ITC’s watershed development projects. Integrated animal husbandry programmes have been extended to 1,75,000 milch animals. Its women empowerment programmes have created over 11,000 rural women entrepreneurs and its supplementary education support has touched the lives of 100,000 children in rural India.
Choupal in Hindi means a meeting place in a village. The e-choupal concept has been borrowed from the age-old tradition of an earmarked place for such meeting. In the e-concept, an Internet kiosk is set up with the support of the ITC that also has a constantly updated database. Farmers assemble and use the new technology for the better their lot and to bring about rural development.
The ITC, as part of its corporate social responsibility, funded the initiative and provided expertise to run the project successfully. Farmers now log on to the site through these Internet kiosks in their villages to order high quality agri-inputs, get information on best farming practices, prevailing market prices for their crops at home and abroad and the weather forecast – all in the local language.
In the very first full season of e-Choupal operations in Madhya Pradesh, soya farmers sold nearly 50,000 tons of their produce through the e-Choupal Internet platform, which has more than doubled since then. The result marked the beginning of a transparent and cost-effective marketing channel.
Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (http://agmarknet.nic.in/)
This initiative undertaken in the tenth plan period is another example, this one by the government and its agencies, to use new communication technology to help the farmers in improving their earnings and make farming remunerative. The website explains its purpose as follows:
Almost all the States and Union Territories are providing market information in one form or the other for the benefits of market users like producers, traders, and consumers. However, the information is collected and disseminated by use of conventional methods, which cause inordinate delay in communicating the information to different target groups, and thus adversely affects their economic interest.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to bring improvement in the present market information system by linking (i) all Agricultural Produce Wholesale markets in the States and Union Territories, and (ii) the State Agricultural Marketing Boards and State Directorates of Agricultural Marketing, with the Directorate of Marketing & Inspection of the Union Ministry of Agriculture, for effective and efficient information exchange. Investment in networking of about 7000 Wholesale Agricultural Produce Markets in the Country will facilitate globalisation of Indian Agriculture (and also globalisation of Indian Markets) in addition to strategically establish Supply-Chain Model (SCM).
The Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, in the Union Ministry of Agriculture sanctioned a Central Sector Scheme 'NICNET Based Agricultural Marketing Information Network (AGMARK-NET)', with a Project Cost estimate of about Rs. ten crore. Under the project, it was envisaged to link 810 nodes (735 agricultural markets and 75 State Marketing Boards/DMI offices) to begin with, through its attached office, Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI), during the year 2000-02. During the tenth five year plan, further expansion to 2000 additional markets, Regional Portals and GIS based National atlas of Markets has also been approved. As part of the expansion programme, about 1400 more markets are being networked.
The website now has a rich database updated continuously to help producers take quick decision about marketing their produce.
--
Limitations of this presentation
The use of new media tools has just begun in India during the last decade. Those who are harnessing the technology have been making sincere experiments to participate in the development processes. The examples discussed here are picked up from scores of websites and cannot be termed as representative. Intention to site them in this paper was to document such initiatives and not to carry out a critical analysis.
It must be acknowledged here that these initiatives suffer from several factors that hamper the efforts for the all round development of the deprived sections. Some of these factors are:
· Paucity of funds to provide computer and Internet connectivity at every place
· Non-availability of uninterrupted electricity to use the new technology
· Non-availability of technical support to run the centres at village level
· Non-availability of trainers to train farmers to use the technology
· Computer and Internet illiteracy. Computers in most places do not have regional language fonts that can be used to read contents in the web sites.
· Limitations to use regional languages to enable farmers to use contents of the web-linked databases
Yet, these initiatives deserve to be chronicled as the first steps in the digital era in India, particularly in the process of development. It will be useful to study these and other initiatives to find out how the farmers have actually benefited. Such studies will be useful also to the owners of the web sites.
-
Presented in absentia by:
Dr Kiran Thakur
Retired Professor and Head
Department of Communication and Journalism
University of Pune
--
Address: 03, Indrayani, Patrakarnagar, Pune 411016
Phone 020 25650225 Mobile 9373331733
e-mail drkiranthakur@gmail.com
--
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