Hyderabad has become a peculiar practitioner of religion. It all begins with the rains. First the Mahankali jaatra. Followed by Ganesh puja, followed by Durga puja.
When we were growing up in the 50s and 60s in Hyderabad, only Mahankali jaatra used to be held, the most famous one being the Ujjaini Mahankali of Secunderabad.
I do not recall loud drum beats and prolonged processions. People used to take offerings to the temples and yes, used to sacrifice animals and chickens in public. One day evening the Potharaju procession would be on, which was fun to follow around, culminating with the oracle event.
But the modern day avatars of the festivals interfere with the existence of others who may not want to participate. Take the Ganesh festival. It was a delightful family celebration, most fun for children. It was fun to pick the cutest figure and bring him home for worship. The lesson in botany would follow, as we actually used to hunt and find the leaves and flowers for the puja. Fun to hear the story of over-eating till one's tummy went bust. We would religiously get our books marked with kumkum for better grades!
Now it has taken on a monstrously polluting street avatar. It is polluting lakes; the sound pollution during the ten days of celebrations is unbearable. No one is worried about blocking traffic which may well include an ambulance or two. No one is worried about disturbing the old and the sick. They seem to be making some of the loudest drums these days. And they beat unconcerned late into the night disturbing school children, office goers, the elderly. And all this is done with money collected from you, me and the neighbourhood shopkeepers. Everyone, including the administration wait with bated breath for those days to pass. From social insesitivity, pollution of lakes, sound pollution, we also have thought pollution - leading to religious muscle flexing. One wonders whom the drums really mean to keep awake?
Now Durga puja, the latest entrant into the game of going public with what was private worship, is on in Hyderabad. It is past midnight and I can hear frenzied drumming outside. I hope Durgaji is pleased with all the energy being expended to show how much we love and revere her. Each of the processions would have several dozens of able-bodied young men, who are telling us that if society doesn't show them a better way of channelling their energies, this is what society will get from them. Sleepless nights from July to October.
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Monday, 4 October 2010
Live TV and dubious judicial logic
Whether a self-proclaimed custodian of God can go to court claiming land in His name and whether Indian courts can endorse such ownership of land was not explored by any channel. But it is heartening to see self-restrained broadcast media and vibrant English newspapers doing a fair job of one of the most difficult news events of recent times.
Posted Monday, Oct 04 14:37:07, 2010
I have been following the relentless media coverage on the Ayodhya issue over the past few days. I must confess, mostly NDTV, CNN-IBN and occasionally, Times Now.
It was interesting to see the anchors of all the three channels earnestly assuring the viewer that this time around they are going to play it by the book and not fall for unverified information and its spin by interested parties. That was an admission of guilt in itself, and a conscious effort to ‘behave’. One caught the anchor on IBN-7 repeatedly exhorting restraint and removal of the live visuals of the chaos outside the court.
When the lawyers emerged from the court, things appeared to be thrown out of gear. The post-judgement coverage on these channels initially was completely high-jacked by the Hindutva brigade of lawyers who emerged out of the court waving victory signs. The media brethren swarmed them and transmitted live whatever they had to say without any filter. The drama of the court prohibiting people from entering the premises, putting the judgement on the website, etc., proved unnecessary in the end as the events unfolded. Restraint flew out of the window. Studio experts were compelled to give unexamined opinion before they had the time to think or read the judgement, based on the lawyers’ statements amidst jostling media persons.
The large number of politicians, academicians and more importantly, legal experts who were on various channels were perhaps as surprised by the verdict as were the anchors. But none of them, neither the experts nor the anchors, raised the two issues that are problematic in the judgement. The judgement under Issue No. 12. of its brief summary states that the ‘idols were installed in the building in the intervening night of 22/23rd December, 1949’. Every Hindutva lawyer triumphantly declared that the court accepted the thesis of the deities ‘appearing’ there. This happens to be the oldest trick in the book for religious goons of all hues. It is surprising that the High Court takes something like this to be a claim to legitimate enjoyment of a property if enough people devoutly believe it or can be mobilised to use the place for religious purposes. Does the High Court judgement set a precedent for legitimising the innumerable attempts at land-grab by planting deities in the middle of the night and claiming that they have ‘appeared’ there (virajmaan huye)?
It is also fascinating that the Indian courts actually admit cases filed on behalf of someone called ‘Ram Lala’. There are precedents to this cited in the judgement. The court, in all its seriousness, in its judgement summary on page number 18 says, ‘The instant suit was filed on behalf of the deities and Sri Ram Janm Bhumi through the next friend, praying that the defendants be restrained not to interfere in the construction of the temple of plaintiff nos. 1 and 2 on the ground that the deities are perpetual minors and against them Limitation Laws do not run.’ The case is on behalf of God himself, he has the advantage of perpetual infancy and some laws of the land do not apply (No laws should apply, if you ask me). Ordinary petitioners must be identifiable entities.
CNN-IBN anchor, Rajdeep Sardesai, repeatedly attempted to raise some questions through the reporter on location, Bhupendra Choubey, but either the audio failed or the reporter could not hear what the anchor was asking. One could not get any substantive response from the lawyers, other than the triumphalism of the victors, once again rendering the coverage more sensational than measured. The question whether a self-proclaimed custodian of God can go to court claiming some land in His name and whether the Indian courts can endorse ownership of land based on this principle was not explored by any channel.
The judgement by Justice Sharma further says, ‘This court is of the view that place of birth that is Ram Janm Bhumi is a juristic person. The deity also attained the divinity like Agni, Vayu, Kedarnath. Asthan is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as the birth place of Ram Lala or Lord Ram as a child. Spirit of divine ever remains present everywhere at all times for any one to invoke at any shape or form in accordance with his own aspirations and it can be shapeless and formless also’. While the other justices did not go quite so far, this is an amazing judgement under a secular Constitution. One always believed that the courts arrived at judgements based on hard scientific/historic/forensic evidence. Now we have courts telling us that gods can go to court through ‘next friends’, and ‘holy’ places are juristic persons. Indirectly, the judgement is also endorsing the beliefs in Agni, Vayu and Kedarnath, in addition to Ram Lala, in the process effectively giving more power to the self-proclaimed representatives of the gods!
Media as neutral observers of events are expected to raise the questions that are central to any debate. But live television has its own dilemmas to face. More so, when covering incendiary issues like Ayodhya judgement. The commercial news channels have made a conscious decision to provide sober coverage and therefore seem to have treaded lightly.
When one contrasts the coverage in the next day’s newspapers, The Times of India, The Hindu and Deccan Chronicle, have all given more well-rounded coverage. The Times of India’s headline, “2 Parts to Hindus, 1 Part to Muslims” has already invited some criticism, enough for the paper to give a rejoinder asserting the accuracy of its headline. But the ToI coverage had several features, both pro and con, and opinion pieces. Notable is the piece by Dileep Padgaonkar, “The Muddle Path”, taking a critical look at the judgement and incisively addressing both the issues raised above. The Hindu also carried an accurate banner headline, much like the ToI and carried a well-argued piece, “Force of faith trumps law and reason in Ayodhya case” by Siddharth Varadarajan. The Deccan Chronicle, while putting a positive spin on the judgement with its banner headline, “Judges divide land to unite India”, had the unique item that gave brief profiles of the three judges on page 2, “Men who delivered the ruling”. The profile of Justice Sharma helpfully tells us that, “The judge, who can always be spotted in a white dhoti-kurta or white shirt and trousers, is a vegetarian who cooks for himself – and occasionally for colleagues and friends. He stays with his elder sister.” All three papers carried security stories from all over the country. All the papers also carried chronology of the issue in different ways in addition to curtain-raisers all the papers ran in the run up to the judgement. The print media had the advantage of time lag to do more varied coverage. The question is, whether the coverage was fair.
And should fairness mean that the media be neutral in every news report, or should they reflect the broad spectrum of opinion in the country? If the later is true, then the print media have successfully reflected the various shades of opinion. The news reports largely gave news and the opinion pieces reflected opinion on Ayodhya judgement.
In the case of broadcast journalists, the distinction between news and opinion is constantly blurred. Broadcast newspersons are too eager to take a position, infuse emotion, express their personal opinions and worse, to exhort the viewers on how to or how not to respond to the events.
The viewers of English news channels also see other channels like the BBC and CNN and find the exhortations on Indian news channels condescending. It is an insult to the intelligence of the viewer to assume that s/he needs guidance from the anchors on issues of the day. The experts on the panels ought to be the vehicles for this. However, an impression of neutrality deficit comes from two strategies of the anchors. One is the long-winded, opinion-laden questions that are shot at the experts; the second is the cosiness of the relationship between the regulars on news channels and the anchors. These two lead the viewer to believe that the debates are an elaborate web to frame issues in a certain way. The regulars like Ravi Shankar Prasad and Swapan Dasgupta have a mind set and world view which gets a free hand on the channels. There is also a temptation among channels to bring in people of polarised opinion to create an environment of inevitability to certain arguments and ideologies. After the Ayodhya judgement, one had the renewed good fortune of seeing Uma Bharati, Shahabuddin, Sheshadri Chary and to be enlightened by their opinion on the judgement. How many Hindus and Muslims accept these figures as representatives of their community’s aspirations?
In a 21st century emerging India, the completely unscientific/theocratic framework of this case was debated by the media, the politicians and the legal community. The English print media were able to raise these issues first this time because of the admirable restraint shown by the live broadcasters. Irrespective of what else the court has used as the basis for its judgements in this case, the question of whether a court defending a secular Constitution can invoke Agni, Vayu, and Ram Lala also needed public scrutiny.
It seems somehow more incendiary for the broadcast media to debate the issues of whether the mobs who demolished the Mosque should be punished, whether it is desirable for a secular democracy if the higher courts endorse the dubious logic of faith and belief being superior to legalities. It is the nature of the beast – it has this problem of immediacy, and impulsiveness. It comes in too soon after an event. It sometimes needs to stand back and let reason take precedence over emotion.
It is heartening to see self-restrained broadcast media and vibrant English newspapers doing a fair job of one of the most difficult news events of recent times.
Posted Monday, Oct 04 14:37:07, 2010
I have been following the relentless media coverage on the Ayodhya issue over the past few days. I must confess, mostly NDTV, CNN-IBN and occasionally, Times Now.
It was interesting to see the anchors of all the three channels earnestly assuring the viewer that this time around they are going to play it by the book and not fall for unverified information and its spin by interested parties. That was an admission of guilt in itself, and a conscious effort to ‘behave’. One caught the anchor on IBN-7 repeatedly exhorting restraint and removal of the live visuals of the chaos outside the court.
When the lawyers emerged from the court, things appeared to be thrown out of gear. The post-judgement coverage on these channels initially was completely high-jacked by the Hindutva brigade of lawyers who emerged out of the court waving victory signs. The media brethren swarmed them and transmitted live whatever they had to say without any filter. The drama of the court prohibiting people from entering the premises, putting the judgement on the website, etc., proved unnecessary in the end as the events unfolded. Restraint flew out of the window. Studio experts were compelled to give unexamined opinion before they had the time to think or read the judgement, based on the lawyers’ statements amidst jostling media persons.
The large number of politicians, academicians and more importantly, legal experts who were on various channels were perhaps as surprised by the verdict as were the anchors. But none of them, neither the experts nor the anchors, raised the two issues that are problematic in the judgement. The judgement under Issue No. 12. of its brief summary states that the ‘idols were installed in the building in the intervening night of 22/23rd December, 1949’. Every Hindutva lawyer triumphantly declared that the court accepted the thesis of the deities ‘appearing’ there. This happens to be the oldest trick in the book for religious goons of all hues. It is surprising that the High Court takes something like this to be a claim to legitimate enjoyment of a property if enough people devoutly believe it or can be mobilised to use the place for religious purposes. Does the High Court judgement set a precedent for legitimising the innumerable attempts at land-grab by planting deities in the middle of the night and claiming that they have ‘appeared’ there (virajmaan huye)?
It is also fascinating that the Indian courts actually admit cases filed on behalf of someone called ‘Ram Lala’. There are precedents to this cited in the judgement. The court, in all its seriousness, in its judgement summary on page number 18 says, ‘The instant suit was filed on behalf of the deities and Sri Ram Janm Bhumi through the next friend, praying that the defendants be restrained not to interfere in the construction of the temple of plaintiff nos. 1 and 2 on the ground that the deities are perpetual minors and against them Limitation Laws do not run.’ The case is on behalf of God himself, he has the advantage of perpetual infancy and some laws of the land do not apply (No laws should apply, if you ask me). Ordinary petitioners must be identifiable entities.
CNN-IBN anchor, Rajdeep Sardesai, repeatedly attempted to raise some questions through the reporter on location, Bhupendra Choubey, but either the audio failed or the reporter could not hear what the anchor was asking. One could not get any substantive response from the lawyers, other than the triumphalism of the victors, once again rendering the coverage more sensational than measured. The question whether a self-proclaimed custodian of God can go to court claiming some land in His name and whether the Indian courts can endorse ownership of land based on this principle was not explored by any channel.
The judgement by Justice Sharma further says, ‘This court is of the view that place of birth that is Ram Janm Bhumi is a juristic person. The deity also attained the divinity like Agni, Vayu, Kedarnath. Asthan is personified as the spirit of divine worshipped as the birth place of Ram Lala or Lord Ram as a child. Spirit of divine ever remains present everywhere at all times for any one to invoke at any shape or form in accordance with his own aspirations and it can be shapeless and formless also’. While the other justices did not go quite so far, this is an amazing judgement under a secular Constitution. One always believed that the courts arrived at judgements based on hard scientific/historic/forensic evidence. Now we have courts telling us that gods can go to court through ‘next friends’, and ‘holy’ places are juristic persons. Indirectly, the judgement is also endorsing the beliefs in Agni, Vayu and Kedarnath, in addition to Ram Lala, in the process effectively giving more power to the self-proclaimed representatives of the gods!
Media as neutral observers of events are expected to raise the questions that are central to any debate. But live television has its own dilemmas to face. More so, when covering incendiary issues like Ayodhya judgement. The commercial news channels have made a conscious decision to provide sober coverage and therefore seem to have treaded lightly.
When one contrasts the coverage in the next day’s newspapers, The Times of India, The Hindu and Deccan Chronicle, have all given more well-rounded coverage. The Times of India’s headline, “2 Parts to Hindus, 1 Part to Muslims” has already invited some criticism, enough for the paper to give a rejoinder asserting the accuracy of its headline. But the ToI coverage had several features, both pro and con, and opinion pieces. Notable is the piece by Dileep Padgaonkar, “The Muddle Path”, taking a critical look at the judgement and incisively addressing both the issues raised above. The Hindu also carried an accurate banner headline, much like the ToI and carried a well-argued piece, “Force of faith trumps law and reason in Ayodhya case” by Siddharth Varadarajan. The Deccan Chronicle, while putting a positive spin on the judgement with its banner headline, “Judges divide land to unite India”, had the unique item that gave brief profiles of the three judges on page 2, “Men who delivered the ruling”. The profile of Justice Sharma helpfully tells us that, “The judge, who can always be spotted in a white dhoti-kurta or white shirt and trousers, is a vegetarian who cooks for himself – and occasionally for colleagues and friends. He stays with his elder sister.” All three papers carried security stories from all over the country. All the papers also carried chronology of the issue in different ways in addition to curtain-raisers all the papers ran in the run up to the judgement. The print media had the advantage of time lag to do more varied coverage. The question is, whether the coverage was fair.
And should fairness mean that the media be neutral in every news report, or should they reflect the broad spectrum of opinion in the country? If the later is true, then the print media have successfully reflected the various shades of opinion. The news reports largely gave news and the opinion pieces reflected opinion on Ayodhya judgement.
In the case of broadcast journalists, the distinction between news and opinion is constantly blurred. Broadcast newspersons are too eager to take a position, infuse emotion, express their personal opinions and worse, to exhort the viewers on how to or how not to respond to the events.
The viewers of English news channels also see other channels like the BBC and CNN and find the exhortations on Indian news channels condescending. It is an insult to the intelligence of the viewer to assume that s/he needs guidance from the anchors on issues of the day. The experts on the panels ought to be the vehicles for this. However, an impression of neutrality deficit comes from two strategies of the anchors. One is the long-winded, opinion-laden questions that are shot at the experts; the second is the cosiness of the relationship between the regulars on news channels and the anchors. These two lead the viewer to believe that the debates are an elaborate web to frame issues in a certain way. The regulars like Ravi Shankar Prasad and Swapan Dasgupta have a mind set and world view which gets a free hand on the channels. There is also a temptation among channels to bring in people of polarised opinion to create an environment of inevitability to certain arguments and ideologies. After the Ayodhya judgement, one had the renewed good fortune of seeing Uma Bharati, Shahabuddin, Sheshadri Chary and to be enlightened by their opinion on the judgement. How many Hindus and Muslims accept these figures as representatives of their community’s aspirations?
In a 21st century emerging India, the completely unscientific/theocratic framework of this case was debated by the media, the politicians and the legal community. The English print media were able to raise these issues first this time because of the admirable restraint shown by the live broadcasters. Irrespective of what else the court has used as the basis for its judgements in this case, the question of whether a court defending a secular Constitution can invoke Agni, Vayu, and Ram Lala also needed public scrutiny.
It seems somehow more incendiary for the broadcast media to debate the issues of whether the mobs who demolished the Mosque should be punished, whether it is desirable for a secular democracy if the higher courts endorse the dubious logic of faith and belief being superior to legalities. It is the nature of the beast – it has this problem of immediacy, and impulsiveness. It comes in too soon after an event. It sometimes needs to stand back and let reason take precedence over emotion.
It is heartening to see self-restrained broadcast media and vibrant English newspapers doing a fair job of one of the most difficult news events of recent times.
Response to the Shoma Munshi extract
Response to the Shoma Munshi extract
I have several bones to pick with the author of the book about the Jensen and Oster study which she seems to quote with enthusiasm in this extract. PADMAJA SHAW has trouble accepting the links put forth here between soaps and development.
Posted Sunday, May 23 16:17:27, 2010
Read the excerpt from Shoma Munshi's ‘Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television' that's posted on The Hoot.
It is interesting to see that the much-maligned positivist tradition of research pioneered by Wilbur Schramm, Daniel Lerner, Everett Rogers and others is back with a bang (or did it ever go away?).
I have several bones to pick with the author of the book about the Jensen and Oster study (which she seems to quote with enthusiasm in this extract. I have not read the rest of the book):
Ø How is the causation established in the Jensen study? Since it is an empirical survey, was there pre-soap and post-soap exposure data on ‘women's empowerment' that was compared?
Ø Since it was between 2001 and 2003, what were the sizes of the families where men were helping women? What was the geographic location of the respondents? Close to major cities like Delhi and Chandigarh? Were women in this sample wage earners in the outside world?
Ø Was there already a declining trend in fertility (as is the case in a large number of Indian states since the 1990s), specially in states like Tamil Nadu?
Ø Also, since these are cable households, the sample has to be from the rural upper and middle classes with disposable incomes and with already established interactions with the outside world ' in 2001, certainly innovators and early adopters as the diffusion model would tell us. Women from such households are more likely to be educated and therefore more autonomous in some respects?
Ø Social researchers have established the link between women's education and decline in fertility rates ' also women with better SES (socio economic status) profile will do better. Women can be better educated where there are schools accessible. Where a conducive social environment exists for women's education. Of the states chosen for the Jensen study, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Haryana also happen to be three of the top five Education Development Index states in India, the other two being Kerala and Gujarat, according to the data provided by National University for Educational Planning and Development. Several states in India have failed to provide for basic educational infrastructure. Then, how much of female education and empowerment can be credited to the soaps? Or are we happy with the innovators and early adopters among the audiences?
Ø There may be intervening variables like expanding urbanization, migration of men, changes in social and economic equations within the family structure that could well have given the findings, even without the intervention of the soaps. Were these considered in the study as a significant factor?
Ø How can the analysis glibly imply introduction of cable TV has resulted in decreases in fertility and increases in the enrolment of girls into schools? Taking both Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as an example, both AP and TN are high on cable density and fertility is declining in both but AP has performed the worst as far as education is concerned. It stands 28 among the states in literacy (with the BIMARU states). It is also performing quite poorly in other indices of women's empowerment. Education infrastructure like schools in the neighbourhood for girl children is obviously a prerequisite for literacy than introduction of cable television.
Ø “Smriti Irani [Tulsi] and Sakshi Tanwar [Paravti] as drivers of long term economic growth. Now, that's a thought!”, says a channel boss. One would like to thank one's luck that soaps seem to have a natural ‘novelty life cycle' and disappear from screens as soon as the audience figure out the game plan at work. Even within their ‘life', for a year or so the soaps are dragged on while the producers try to keep the audience interest up.
Ø One of the most insidious things about the passages is the assertion that only satellite television is capable of delivering transformation, (while citing Hum Log as a success!). There is no need for public service advertising, no need for state television. They cannot match the pull of a bedecked Smriti Irani. We have forgotten ‘Udaan' and several other shows on Doordarshan that were avidly watched and provided role models for women to get educated and live a life of dignity.
Ø The advent of satellite television has taught some Indian women to lose sensitivity to what's fashion and what's trashy dressing; taught some to think that doing well is to be ostentatious; taught some that to be traditional is to be clannish; taught some others to navel gaze and become body-centric when what's needed is a humane understanding of society and the happenings in our surroundings. In a three year soap, there may be an ‘empowering' dialogue or two that we can all quote with conviction. But exceptions don't prove the rule. It's the garish sets, jewellery, inherent lack of social goodwill and intrigue that are ever present in a subliminal way.
Ø It is unfortunate that AK Ramanujan is invoked to support something that has very little to do with what he was talking about ' he was talking about women's stories in folk tales, we are talking about synthetic media kitsch that is concocted week after week, not always based on lived and inclusive experience of a society.
Ø Back in mid 20th century, the mainstream media messiahs came up with the media formula for development: 10 newspapers, 5 radio receivers, 2 television receivers, 2 cinema seats for 100 population. UNESCO, which was greatly influenced by the scholars, also promoted the formula. Of course, now per capita telephones and ICTs are added to the list of ‘media minima' recommended by UNESCO since 1960.
Ø This ‘input orientation' carried over by the structural-functionalist school into media theory without acknowledging the social/economic structural issues in development has been much debated and discredited over the years. The scholars asserted that the media through ‘modernising' content form everywhere would be the trigger for development. The assumption being that it's the lack of imagination that keeps a population poor, not the systemic constraints.
Ø The media market in India has seen an extraordinary expansion, with foreign players thrown in for spice. But the last two decades have seen an extraordinary growth also in poverty, crime, religious fundamentalism, and corruption. Can media research afford to gloss over the existential reality and ask only questions about media's role in some nebulously defined social ‘transformation'?
Ø What really amazes one is, when it comes to impact of violent programmes on impressionable young minds, the scholars from the positivist tradition would dismiss the link citing the impossibility of establishing a causal relationship between violent behaviour and viewership with the existing tools of research, and invoking genetic propensity, impact of family and environment (anything but media!) as the possible reasons. But for ‘women's empowerment' here, a giant leap of faith is being attempted to sell soaps shown exclusively on satellite/cable television (and not on state TV) as the panacea for the emancipation of women in the backwaters of India.
Ø In Telugu, we have a saying ' trying to tie the bald head and the knee cap together …. Not going to work!
I have several bones to pick with the author of the book about the Jensen and Oster study which she seems to quote with enthusiasm in this extract. PADMAJA SHAW has trouble accepting the links put forth here between soaps and development.
Posted Sunday, May 23 16:17:27, 2010
Read the excerpt from Shoma Munshi's ‘Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television' that's posted on The Hoot.
It is interesting to see that the much-maligned positivist tradition of research pioneered by Wilbur Schramm, Daniel Lerner, Everett Rogers and others is back with a bang (or did it ever go away?).
I have several bones to pick with the author of the book about the Jensen and Oster study (which she seems to quote with enthusiasm in this extract. I have not read the rest of the book):
Ø How is the causation established in the Jensen study? Since it is an empirical survey, was there pre-soap and post-soap exposure data on ‘women's empowerment' that was compared?
Ø Since it was between 2001 and 2003, what were the sizes of the families where men were helping women? What was the geographic location of the respondents? Close to major cities like Delhi and Chandigarh? Were women in this sample wage earners in the outside world?
Ø Was there already a declining trend in fertility (as is the case in a large number of Indian states since the 1990s), specially in states like Tamil Nadu?
Ø Also, since these are cable households, the sample has to be from the rural upper and middle classes with disposable incomes and with already established interactions with the outside world ' in 2001, certainly innovators and early adopters as the diffusion model would tell us. Women from such households are more likely to be educated and therefore more autonomous in some respects?
Ø Social researchers have established the link between women's education and decline in fertility rates ' also women with better SES (socio economic status) profile will do better. Women can be better educated where there are schools accessible. Where a conducive social environment exists for women's education. Of the states chosen for the Jensen study, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Haryana also happen to be three of the top five Education Development Index states in India, the other two being Kerala and Gujarat, according to the data provided by National University for Educational Planning and Development. Several states in India have failed to provide for basic educational infrastructure. Then, how much of female education and empowerment can be credited to the soaps? Or are we happy with the innovators and early adopters among the audiences?
Ø There may be intervening variables like expanding urbanization, migration of men, changes in social and economic equations within the family structure that could well have given the findings, even without the intervention of the soaps. Were these considered in the study as a significant factor?
Ø How can the analysis glibly imply introduction of cable TV has resulted in decreases in fertility and increases in the enrolment of girls into schools? Taking both Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as an example, both AP and TN are high on cable density and fertility is declining in both but AP has performed the worst as far as education is concerned. It stands 28 among the states in literacy (with the BIMARU states). It is also performing quite poorly in other indices of women's empowerment. Education infrastructure like schools in the neighbourhood for girl children is obviously a prerequisite for literacy than introduction of cable television.
Ø “Smriti Irani [Tulsi] and Sakshi Tanwar [Paravti] as drivers of long term economic growth. Now, that's a thought!”, says a channel boss. One would like to thank one's luck that soaps seem to have a natural ‘novelty life cycle' and disappear from screens as soon as the audience figure out the game plan at work. Even within their ‘life', for a year or so the soaps are dragged on while the producers try to keep the audience interest up.
Ø One of the most insidious things about the passages is the assertion that only satellite television is capable of delivering transformation, (while citing Hum Log as a success!). There is no need for public service advertising, no need for state television. They cannot match the pull of a bedecked Smriti Irani. We have forgotten ‘Udaan' and several other shows on Doordarshan that were avidly watched and provided role models for women to get educated and live a life of dignity.
Ø The advent of satellite television has taught some Indian women to lose sensitivity to what's fashion and what's trashy dressing; taught some to think that doing well is to be ostentatious; taught some that to be traditional is to be clannish; taught some others to navel gaze and become body-centric when what's needed is a humane understanding of society and the happenings in our surroundings. In a three year soap, there may be an ‘empowering' dialogue or two that we can all quote with conviction. But exceptions don't prove the rule. It's the garish sets, jewellery, inherent lack of social goodwill and intrigue that are ever present in a subliminal way.
Ø It is unfortunate that AK Ramanujan is invoked to support something that has very little to do with what he was talking about ' he was talking about women's stories in folk tales, we are talking about synthetic media kitsch that is concocted week after week, not always based on lived and inclusive experience of a society.
Ø Back in mid 20th century, the mainstream media messiahs came up with the media formula for development: 10 newspapers, 5 radio receivers, 2 television receivers, 2 cinema seats for 100 population. UNESCO, which was greatly influenced by the scholars, also promoted the formula. Of course, now per capita telephones and ICTs are added to the list of ‘media minima' recommended by UNESCO since 1960.
Ø This ‘input orientation' carried over by the structural-functionalist school into media theory without acknowledging the social/economic structural issues in development has been much debated and discredited over the years. The scholars asserted that the media through ‘modernising' content form everywhere would be the trigger for development. The assumption being that it's the lack of imagination that keeps a population poor, not the systemic constraints.
Ø The media market in India has seen an extraordinary expansion, with foreign players thrown in for spice. But the last two decades have seen an extraordinary growth also in poverty, crime, religious fundamentalism, and corruption. Can media research afford to gloss over the existential reality and ask only questions about media's role in some nebulously defined social ‘transformation'?
Ø What really amazes one is, when it comes to impact of violent programmes on impressionable young minds, the scholars from the positivist tradition would dismiss the link citing the impossibility of establishing a causal relationship between violent behaviour and viewership with the existing tools of research, and invoking genetic propensity, impact of family and environment (anything but media!) as the possible reasons. But for ‘women's empowerment' here, a giant leap of faith is being attempted to sell soaps shown exclusively on satellite/cable television (and not on state TV) as the panacea for the emancipation of women in the backwaters of India.
Ø In Telugu, we have a saying ' trying to tie the bald head and the knee cap together …. Not going to work!
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