India is one of the largest, if not the largest growing economy in the world. Recently there has been a steady rise in the growth of businesses. This doesn’t only apply to small businesses but major corporations as well.
India is the biggest democracy in the world. There are 4 pillars that help sustain this democratic state of affairs. Legislature, Executive, Judiciary and the Media. Yes! You read it right. Media is one of these democratic pillars. I know that is hard to believe if you’ve been living in this country lately.
Diversity is a key factor when it comes to Indian media, as there are thousands of media outlets functioning in multiple languages. Majority of these media outlets are run by for-profit corporations. These corporations enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the government which encourages a lot of political influence hence the content run by the media outlets tends to depict some sort of media bias. This brings into light McChesney’s thoughts on how the media system has become increasingly concentrated and conglomerated into a relative handful of corporate hands. This tendency of media bias damages the country’s democracy. Since media has the ability to shape the viewers attitude, propagated news causes a fair amount of dysfunctionality among the citizens.
This goes hand in hand with McChesney’s claims of “Political Crisis” thus proving that there is no scrutiny of media ownership in India. While at the same time you may wonder that in a country of 1.3 billion people, how is it possible for the people, who understand the unrighteousness of the situation not to question this government? Many attempts have been made to tackle this issue, not only by ordinary citizens but prominent journalists as well. But when you reach a stage where the government has everyone under their fingertips, any argument made is labelled as anti-national. We can here see McChesney’s statement, “Markets don’t deliver democracy” come to life.
To give you all an example, which I would say was one of the smartest moves ever made by a regime, the ruling party somehow convinced the most popular journalists/news anchor of the country to leave his post at “Times Now” and start his own news channel “Republic TV”. Which at the time people thought was a great move. Little did they know the events that would unfold. Since the inception of that channel the government has been using him as his pawn, to stand for all of their ill motives and vices.
You may ponder over the fact that how can I make such bold claims? It’s no rocket science to be honest. I have seen his narrative change first hand. From questioning the government to backing all of their wicked behaviour and immoral policies.
But the ship has not sunk yet. There’s still hope. There’s always hope left. There isn’t a particular major media organisation but there are a few journalists such as Rana Ayyub and Faye D’Souza who are trying their best to help the democratisation of India. These are journalists who once worked for the mainstream media companies but couldn’t stand the new direction which was heavily influenced by corruption. So they decided to change things themselves. Rana Ayyub who is writer for Washington Post critiques and writes scathing pieces on the government in her column. Faye D’Souza on the other hand has chosen the path of an independent journalist. She tries to expand the media platter and bring news that the mainstream right wing propagated media won’t. She includes both smaller local and diverse media as well as newsroom entertainment. Hence presenting the consumers news in a way that is appropriate for the largest “democracy” in the world.