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Brave New Media

Three years back, when Vijay Mukhi, Kanakasabapathy Pandyan and I set up India's first cybercafe at The Leela Kempinski, everyone thought we were off the wall. Most people said the Internet was never going to grow at the pace we prophesied. With a base of barely 20,000 subscribers in those days, paying the extortionist fees that VSNL was asking for, no one was quite convinced that one day all of India would clamour for Internet access and the prime minister, amidst his hectic political schedule, will take the initiative to hire a task force to see how quickly the entire nation can be wired.

Vijay was the most bullish. He knew the Internet better than all of us. As a programmer, he understood its technology, its potential, its amazing reach. So he created more and more user groups, led by celebrity evangelists, and at the same time kept the pressure on VSNL to be more reasonable, more realistic about the rates. There was enough money to be made in the future, he assured them. Why not open the flood gates first? Once the subscriber base achieves critical mass, the opportunities for commerce will swiftly multiply: that was his argument. Pandyan played Simon to him. The rock on which Vijay built his church.

My vision was different. For me, the Internet was the first real opportunity that had presented itself for an alternative media in India. A free, unfettered media. Low on delivery cost. Where content, not money or distribution muscle, will determine success. Where every independent journalist will have the right to his or her say, without being cut down to size by editors, owners, politicians, censors, courts.

Print, in this country, has been traditionally controlled by a clutch of powerful press barons with their own personal agenda. To break into this power elite is tough and requires huge resources that are usually beyond the capacity of journalists. To perpetuate the exclusivity of this power elite, which enjoys a cosy relationship with the political mafia, our laws specifically forbid foreigners from investing in the print media. The arguments for this are many and specious. But the government's objective is clear. It wants to protect the turf for our own press barons and stop others from coming in.

This maintains the status quo. The current control mechanism between the State and the media.

Both love the idea of control. In fact, so obsessed were the press barons with the idea of control -- both market and editorial control -- that, by the early nineties, most of them were signing off their mastheads as editor. Yes, they prefixed it once in a while with words like 'managing' or 'executive' or 'controlling' but what they clearly wanted to flaunt was the fact that they were in complete charge of content. Like Murdoch, who was their role model. Except that Murdoch never had the audacity to put out his name in the signature line of any of his newspapers. He may not have liked journalists overmuch but he knew exactly where to draw the line.

As result, independent editors have become an endangered species in India. The few that remain are either old or retired or have resurrected themselves as columnists, living dangerously in an era of swiftly changing market forces. A few like me have sought sanctuary in the Rajya Sabha. But we all risk extinction because no one is interested in independent news any more.

But why blame print? Terrestrial television, the most single powerful news medium in India, was never free. It began as a slave of government and remains so. Prasar Bharati is only a semantic exercise. Doordarshan remains what it always was: A shameful example of a badly managed government monopoly.

It is not just the news on Doordarshan that is controlled. The men in charge of news are also controlled. One wrong step and they can be harassed. By the CBI or any other enforcement agency on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing. By the ministry of information and broadcasting, an anachronism in any democracy. That is why what you get on terrestrial television is dreary, insufferable rubbish being passed off as news. That is why satellite television has made such a spectacular impact on urban India. The reach of Zee or Sony or Star may be small -- very small compared to Doordarshan --but the very fact that they are capable of offering unfettered information and entertainment has driven urban India into their arms.

But, here again, the reality is different from the opportunity. Most satellite channels are reluctant to offer news. When they do so, they are extremely cautious and circumspect, avoiding an independent line that may get them into any kind of direct conflict with the government in power. Because our broadcasters also want to stay on the right side of an oversensitive, interventionist State that can be extremely mean and vicious at will. That is why Star News hired the guys who were earlier putting together the news for Doordarshan, not because they were particularly good on their job but because they were entirely malleable and known to be so. Plus, they have several CBI cases against them. Which makes them doubly easy to manipulate and ensure that they never step out of line.

To enforce entry barriers for television news, the State has in fact set up many road blocks. Absurdly high duties on hardware. No uplinking. No DTH. No foreign equity beyond a point. The objective is the same as in print. To limit the number of media owners to a manageable and manipulatable cabal. The reason? Simple.Banias, be they Indians or foreigners, are easier to handle than independent-minded editors and journalists.

The strategy has paid off brilliantly. For the State, that is. Editorial coverage in Indian newspapers, magazines and television channels has become softer and softer over the years. Entertainment has stepped in to fill the hiatus and, to further emasculate the power of news and current affairs, the thin dividing line between information and entertainment being deliberately blurred by a series of mindless shows perversely pursuing the chimera of infotainment. Infotainment is a sick, perverse, bastard idea created precisely with the objective of blunting the cutting edge of hard, hurting news -- be it in print or television -- and lulls people into reading and watching more and more brainless junk.

It is an opiate for those who cannot face the truth. Chewing gum for the senile mind.

You can camouflage it. Call it attitude or newgen stuff. But even the stupidest among us knows that much of what we read in the colour sections of newspapers, in the magazines, what we watch on television today is pure trash. Bright, colourful, smart-arsed trash. But trash all the same. The fact that it is put together by brash, clever people with slick, savvy technology makes them no more accomplished than a David Dhawan film.

This is where the Internet can play a crucial role. As a brave, new, alternative media combining the strengths of both print and television. By being informed, intelligent, affordable. By changing faster than newspapers and television channels ever can. By offering an amazing range of options to choose from. By making choice itself an article of faith.

You do not need fancy printing presses. You do not need huge inventories of newsprint. You do not need large production staff. Nor exorbitant production budgets to make shows that have to recover their costs from advertisers who tell you what to make. You can afford to be yourself. Small, clever, committed to what you believe in. If your story is big enough, if your site grabs the imagination, no one can stop you from getting the hits you want. And, once the hits come in, you can get all the sponsorships you need. For this is the fastest growing delivery system in the world. What print achieved in one century and television in two decades, the Internet has surpassed in less than three years.

That is why we need to grow it quickly. It is the only way we can reform the quality of our public life. Through swift, effective, direct communication between the journalist and his audience. Without fear or censorship. At a cost anyone can afford.

If this means wiring India and building a communications infrastructure that will power us into the next millenium, so be it. It is better than making nuclear weapons and subsidising sick PSUs. In fact, in the long run it will transform us from a nation of job seekers into a nation of self starters. Each ready to challenge the system on his or her own terms.

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Pritish Nandy