Incredible India [Elections]: Jay Ho!
By Partha Banerjee
27 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Over the past few weeks, I've been watching the Indian parliamentary election coverage on big media, both here in the U.S. and back home. Of course, being in New York, my source of Indian papers and television is primarily through online search, and secondarily through email and phone conversations with family and friends in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. I presume though, in this day and age, that’s more than sufficient: you don’t have to be physically there.
I must say I'm frustrated to see the rampant bias in favor of the ruling party. It's more frustrating that over the years – since my own political days in India – it hasn't changed at all. Back then, in the 70’s and 80’s, it was a Putin-like favoritism for Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv, both of whom were made “peoples’ leaders” practically overnight by upper-class establishments. In the 90’s and now in the first decade of 2000, it’s been for Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, and following traditions, Rahul Gandhi. The media-supported rise of Rahul Gandhi as the next potential prime minister of India is eerily similar to the rise of Rajiv and his brother Sanjay, particularly for those who remember the tumultuous days.
Government-owned Doordarshan TV and All India Radio – both of which fell from grace in this privatized, U.S.-modeled era – have always shown bias for the party in power; in fact, Congress Party, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had helped create the pro-government spin the Ronald Reagan way. At least in the Nehru regime, it was rather by default than by engineering. During the post-1947 days, especially after the Gandhi assassination, Nehru became larger than life; just like Congress with its pair of bullocks became a household symbol. Nehru’s out-of-touch, elitist rule complete with toppling democratically elected governments in various parts of India never got rightful media exposure. To Indian media, he was Bharat Ratna.
If Nehru did it by default, Indira Gandhi did it by her violent exercise of power never to be questioned by media. When her Garibi Hatao (kick the poverty) slogan miserably failed in the first half of 1970’s and people on the street began mocking it as Garib Hatao (kick the poor), and when even sane Congressis started revolting against Indira’s extreme nepotism to bring her younger, wayward boy Sanjay to national limelight, and especially when the poor started organizing against the out-of-control poverty, inflation and state repression, a royal lifestyle and cult worshipping (the most famous was then Congress president Devkant Barua’s “Indira is India” catchphrase), the first and only woman prime minister exercised illegal power, clamped down on the opposition with a 1975 emergency rule to void the Allahabad High Court rule against her election victory, amended the constitution, imprisoned thousands of opposition party activists including most of the leaders, and put a blanket censorship on the press.
Even for someone like me who was deeply involved with political activism, it came as a shock that Indira put Jay Prakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, Raj Narayan (Indira’s personal nemesis in Rai Bereilly), George Fernandes and the top brass of Indian politics in jail, indefinitely, on charges of “anti-India activities.” She passed emergency legislations in an opposition-free parliament – laws that we can easily compare with today’s TADA or POTA of India or the PATRIOT Act of Bush government – the “father” of all repressive laws.
Notable was that Indian big media never really opposed such autocratic measures. A handful of journalists such as Barun Sengupta, Gaur Kishore Ghosh and Jyotirmoy Datta of Kolkata protested; they were promptly arrested and put behind bars. Patna’s daily Searchlight was torched.
It is important to remember the stained history of India’s ruling class, particularly the Congress Party, because the younger generation does not know it, again, thanks to the exclusive coverage and distortions of history. A quick history lesson puts the developments today in perspective. It helps us to understand and analyze.
Today, India has witnessed an explosive growth of privatized media corporations: their national and local channels as well as print and online publications mushroomed across the country. Globalization has helped create alliances between Indian, European and American media giants; just like the recent marriages of soft drinks, energy or insurance companies between India and U.S., hyphenated media organizations, more powerful than ever before, have now pervaded India’s upper- and middle-class drawing rooms. Globalized and Americanized private media have wielded an unprecedented influence on Indian people and electorate, especially the younger generation. Just like in the U.S., media have taken advantage of the age-old perception: “if it’s in the news, it must be true!”
In this backdrop, the role of government as well as private media such as ZeeTV, NDTV, Star-Anand, CNN-IBN, Times of India, etc., along with their many local and regional offshoots, to show extreme bias for parties and candidates of their choice is gravely ominous for democracy. Contrary to the much-touted American media doctrine of a fair and objective reporting – doctrine they always preach but seldom practice – the new Indian media have resorted to an unrestricted, one-sided coverage of the Congress Party and its leaders. Any half-hour news segment, interspersed between relentless cricket matches or Bollywood stars’ imbecile dances, would find headlines and wrap-ups featuring a feeble and visibly energy-less Manmohan Singh, a typical pin-striped, unemotional Hindi speech of Sonia Gandhi, or meaningless, elitist rhetoric of Rahul or Priyanka (again, eerily reminding us about their father), and that too, about the so-called rise of India as the “next superpower” in the world stage.
Sadly, even now during the election times, voters can find nearly no reporting of the fact that a vast majority of Indians still have no access to health care, education, drinking water or electricity. One wouldn’t know that in India, a world-record number of farmers committed suicide because of economic desperation and multinational companies’ forced seed-bank replacements. By reading or listening to media’s interpretations, one would think India is now equally and equitably prosperous like Japan, Korea or China. After all, Nano has rolled out!
We don’t hear about the destruction of Indian environment and massive pollution and energy crisis. We don’t hear about the extreme lack of women’s rights (sure, we now have more fashion shows and jewelry models on the catwalk!). We don’t hear that India is now the fastest-growing AIDS country (and contrary to Thailand or USA, talking AIDS is still very much a taboo). We don’t know that police brutality and abuses on social and religious minorities are abysmal. We’re never told that international organizations have called India as one of the worst countries to protect human rights and promote equality. We’re not reminded that India has seen a massive number of communal riots, big and small, in recent years: not just in Gujarat, Ayodhya or Mumbai. And that our governments have failed miserably to protect us from terrorism.
Problem is, as “Guru” Goebbels said long time ago, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Goebbels also said, “It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
It’s not that Indian opposition parties are telling the truth about the state of affairs either; if anything, the big opposition parties’ hands are badly dirty. But then, in a much-glorified Western democracy India has followed so keenly, what’s the layperson’s alternative? They must know the truth, and media is perhaps the only place where an average, apolitical voter can get it.
That is, outside of their day-to-day, working-class experience; the only ray of hope is that poor Indians, if they decide to vote, will vote based on their real-life experience, and not so much because of the incessant pressures from the media, political mafia, village panchyats, town strongmen or family bosses.
But that’s only a hope indeed – a utopian dream. In reality, it doesn’t much happen. And that is why Indian media’s suppression of truth and generous donation to ruling class’s rampant lies are even more worrisome. In their election coverage today, opposition parties find minimal amount of time and importance. Third parties and especially those who have mass support to boycott elections are not given any time at all.
Big media have belittled opposition alliances, and brought them to ridicule. Let me cite a rather “civilized” example. On April 16, Times of India reported:
Not ruling out taking its support again to form the government at the Centre after the Lok Sabha elections, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the 'Fourth Front' comprising SP, LJP and RJD would split secular votes.
"They will clearly waste votes. That is their main objective," the Congress leader said in an interview.
When asked to comment on reports that in the post-poll situation, the Congress might take their support, he said, "I do not know. It will depend on numbers. After all democracy is a game of numbers. What I can say is, we will get adequate number of seats. I can't predict. We are fighting to win the elections."
So, according to mighty Mukherjee-saab, democracy is only "a game of numbers"; it’s not about real people and their real lives or real problems. It’s not about the future of India and her children. Shouldn’t the all-important Times of India have challenged it? Also, wasn’t it time to find the reasons why there’s a fourth front mostly of disillusioned ex-Congressis? Why is that pre-poll surveys suggest that neither the Congress nor BJP is going to get more than a third of the total number of parliamentary seats, in spite of their big money and muscle power?
I want to cite a different example.
Recently, I had the opportunity to watch an NDTV "Town Hall" where well-known journalist Barkha Dutt brought in personalities from various parties to talk about terrorism, economics, etc. – things that matter to the electorate. Even though she did a commendable job to put on her show a diverse array of politicians, in reality, it was a skewed coverage in favor of the so-called secular state the Congress way where religion and spirituality does not seem to count, and also in favor of the “modern India way” where Pakistan in particular is the accepted enemy, where no questions can be asked about the politics India governments have always played around Pakistan (and which power kept supporting Pakistan’s military governments with money and arms). The TV Town Hall of invited guests also heavily favored the now-doomed market-driven U.S. capitalist system where the reasons for the doom were never explained, as if there was no need to question the corrupt, inefficient and poverty-causing system, a system that now made the U.S. one of the most broken economies.
The biggest irony to me is that a pro-Hindu, upper class, feudal, oppressive system is vindicated in India, and that too, in the name of a Western, liberal democracy. With this, who needs the BJP? Worse, what’s the real difference between them?
India is a country where status quo is the name of the game. Nothing really changes. Elections only validate the status quo. We do the democracy exercise every five years spending stupendous amount of money we can’t even afford. Then we go to sleep; rather, we’re put to sleep. The rich and the powerful live happily ever after.
Incredible India, Indeed. Jay Ho!
[ Partha Banerjee is a New York City-based human rights and media activist. He teaches at Empire State College. Banerjee’s book In the Belly of the Beast: Hindu Supremacist RSS and BJP of India is a chronicle of his many years of political activism. To know more, visit his homepage at http://www.geocities.com/chokmoki .]
