MEDIA MATTERS
Expression of protests
SEVANTI NINAN
THE Indian Express campaign on an IIT-educated engineer who wrote to the Prime Minister to complain of corruption on the Golden Quadrilateral highway project and was murdered roughly a year later, has been a masterly piece of media engineering. It judiciously combined tabloid techniques with online petitioning, marrying an outpouring of public sentiment online with generous media space in print. It tapped the growing middle class anger with corruption, and civil society's urge to tackle the warts that blot India's emergence as a progressive, modern nation. It used the IIT angle to the hilt, interviewing the stars in the alumni community, it also drew out and played upon a range of other angles which lent poignancy to the story, notably the poor-village-boy-from-Bihar angle and the pending whistleblower legislation. It hammered away till public pressure built up and the system felt compelled to respond, bit by bit.
When the spread of computer culture combines with the growth of online activism to broad-base both altruism and protest, what you get is the mainstreaming of activism, making it something no longer confined to a radial fringe. The gizmo, which may have been bought primarily as an educational tool and to e-mail non-resident relatives, including children studying abroad, also allows the educated, impatient Indian to find an outlet for his frustration at the inadequacies of the system. It is becoming a personal medium, which creates its own media. Conversely, it allows the non-resident Indian, who never quite sheds his homesickness, to have a sense of political participation back in his home country. The Satyendra Dubey petition on petitiononline.com was started by an Indian in Tokyo.
This mainstreaming of activism has a parallel in the gathering of anti-war sentiment before the invasion of Iraq. The scale of anti-war protest across nations, put by some at 10 million, and mobilised to a great extent over the Internet, showed that the peace movement was no longer confined to those who used to be derisively called peaceniks. Protesters are no longer just the proverbial long-haired. Nor were protests only localised. This one became an international peace movement, and a co-ordinated one at that.
More than one commentary on the Net at that time noted that the peace movement had become mainstream, middle-class and middle-of-the-road. Keith Suter wrote on onlineopinion.com.au, "It is now respectable and its values permeate all sections of society. There has been a quiet social transformation." Among the reasons he lists for why this has happened is combat fatigue in the U.S., the knowledge that previous wars against Iraq and in Afghanistan have solved nothing. There is also an increased interest in the roots of war and more imaginative ways of settling disputes.
In much the same way, the civil society mobilisation that is today abundantly in evidence in India has grown out of the realisation that people need to take problem-solving in governance into their own hands, mobilising the courts if necessary, as well as the Internet as a medium. A Hyderabad-based organisation Loksatta, which is trying to catalyse electoral reform, is able to mobilise support from all over the country through the Net. A keen bunch of Right to Information activists based in Pune has created the Mahadhikar mailing list, which keeps the movement active and inclusive. The Right to Food activism of Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and others uses the Internet to nurture a support group drawn from a large catchment area. There are many more examples.
The Net also provides an outlet at a time when financial self-sufficiency is allowing the middle classes to look outward and consider altruism. The consuming Indian would also like to be a caring Indian. The Internet caters to that, it helps to complete the feel-good sentiment that we've been hearing so much of these days. The corollary to that is that the buying Indian is increasingly becoming an angry Indian, more demanding in his quality of civic life, less tolerant of corruption and shoddy government services. Page Three's party-going Nafisa Ali is also an activist. The constituencies of the Indian Express and the Times of India are converging.
Apart from the Internet the other fillip to the expression of civil society mobilisation and protest comes from certain kinds of television talk shows. NDTV is becoming the TV twin of the Indian Express; they increasingly complement each other. Satyendra's brother Dhananjay is presented on "We the People", being asked what he thinks would be the best tribute to his brother. Just justice, he replies. Barkha Dutt's "will you make a commitment right now on this show" type haranguing of politicians and public servants is of a piece with the Express's approach: they are the gung-ho, accountability-demanding media brigade. They too help to catalyse the mainstreaming of activism.
The citizen sits in that studio, gets to express herself, gets applauded, and goes home feeling chuffed. Ditto same, as they would say, for the instant messagers whose anguish filled page-fulls over a fortnight of the Express's Satyendra Dubey campaign. Given how much newspaper readers always complain that their letters never get published, the Express's current editorial policy of making over a page or half page for reader's views on emotive issues must go down well with its constituency. Thus the new answer to the question, who is the media, is that increasingly it is the public, the readers and viewers and online petitioners themselves. They are getting increasing media space, and the opportunity to queer the pitch in a public debate. You have a gradual broad basing of the media itself.
This kind of activism is a marketable proposition. The Indian Express and NDTV certainly realise that, as does Petitions Online, which hosted the petition for justice for Satyendra Dubey. It is a sponsored site. You have to admire their selling line: "We give you the ancient methods of grassroots democracy, combined with the latest digital networked communications, running live and free 24 hours a day." Internet-enabled populism then is forging a new public-created media, which is distinct from private media and public service broadcasting.
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