MEDIA MATTERS
Local takes in Kashmir
SEVANTI NINAN
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The local TV channels, in spite of restrictions imposed by the administration, are invaluable to the residents in the districts…
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Photo: PTI
In the public eye: Omar Abdullah.
There is television about Kashmir, and television in Kashmir. The first consists of images which flood news channels when something dramatic happens, as was the case last week. The latter is something those living in Kashmir experience, not even thos
e residing in Jammu.
TV makes the different levels of government in Kashmir and Delhi insecure. So J&K is one of the few States in the country which has a flourishing media scene but no regional satellite channel of its own. One of the more powerful men in the State, Devinder Rana, who is variously described these days as Omar Abdullah’s advisor and as his secretary, announced back in 2004 that the State would be getting a satellite TV channel in a few months, it never came. Local journalists say businessmen in Srinagar have tried to start a satellite channel for the State, but never got permission for it from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Everybody you ask in the valley mumbles something about national security. That however, is not an issue on other sensitive borders. The North-eastern States are covered by three Guwahati-based satellite TV channels.
Mr. Rana is a local media baron in an unusual position in Kashmir. His family owns a local cable TV channel called Take1 which operates in both Jammu and Kashmir. He is also the Chief Minister’s right hand man. When there is trouble on the media front, he represents the State. Last week was a rare occasion when he surfaced on national television to announce that the CM had indeed resigned, otherwise he is a power behind the scenes.
In the absence of any satellite TV specific to J&K, there is a Kashmir-centric half hour news bulletin on ETV Urdu which fills the gap. Mr. Ramoji Rao is a benefactor for those who want to know what is happening in their State. And there are several local cable TV channels with news and current affairs bulletins. All of them surfaced around 2003-04 and energetically fill the gap, when allowed to.
Threat of legal action
When there is trouble in Kashmir, threats of the Public Safety Act also surface. This empowers the State to lock away someone in the interest of public security. Last month a local NDTV correspondent and the owner of a local news agency CNS, had FIRs prepared against them because the State did not like their reporting. Both say papers implicating them under PSA were also kept ready. Ultimately nothing happened to them.
Production is not the high point of news TV in Jammu and Kashmir. All the local channels showcase their sponsors so prominently that the latter would be the envy of TV sponsors in the rest of the country. And ETV falls back on stock images for the studio backdrop. Flowing streams, houseboats, chinar leaves, tulips. There is only so much time you can give to looping footage of Mehbooba Mufti uprooting a mike, or Omar Abdullah surrounded by his agitated party men. So in between, swaying tulips appear.
Whenever there is trouble in Kashmir as there is at present, ETV remains immune, and is avidly watched. But the axe falls on local cable. This bunch are an interesting community with diverse ownership which affects their behaviour. The news they put out would not win any prizes for quality, but they are the information lifeline of people in the districts of Kashmir. Much that does not surface on national news surfaces here. It took days for the recent rape and murder incident in Shopian to surface in the national press but the day the women’s bodies were discovered there was extensive coverage on local cable. Mouj Kashir or Mother Kashmir, showed the bloodied face of one of the victims and people carrying their bodies and spilling out on the street in large numbers, it interviewed the husband of Neelofer, and also gave considerable airtime to the police chief of the area. Local cable is careful to balance, in the interest of its own survival.
But it does not always help. The Cable TV Act of 1995 does not permit unlicensed news on local cable. Kashmir’s government does, but keeps a tight leash on the operators. When Amarnath blew up last year, there were written orders stopping cable news. As they point out in Srinagar, it affected the Jammu operators for 12 hours, and those in Kashmir for 12 days. This year, when Shopian blew up in the Chief Minister’s face, Kashmir cable was affected, Jammu was not.
Unofficial advisory
A week after the bodies surfaced at Shopian, Mr. Rana called a meeting of cable operators in his capacity as advisor to the CM. His father attended, representing the cable company Mr. Rana owns! The operators got no written instructions, only an advisory to restrict all news and current affairs programming to 15 minutes a day. That unwritten order is still in force. There is also a charming daily ritual to ensure that nobody steps out of line. At Vaadi TV (Valley TV) they said that every morning between 9.30 and 10.30 a person from the State CID comes by to collect a tape of the previous day’s 15-minute telecast.
Omar Abdullah isn’t exactly Mr. Popular in Kashmir at this point. But he gets lots of positive mileage on local cable. Take 1 in particular runs long films prepared by the Department of Information every night, on the CM interacting with people for development programmes in the State. That helps fill the time previously allotted to current affairs discussions. A local monthly, Honour, calls the local channels “Doordarshans in the making”, in its latest issue.
It is local cable, not Delhi-based satellite news channels, that have dwelt at length on the stone pelting that Kashmiris have begun to indulge in since the Amarnath trouble last year. So why permit local cable news in a truncated fashion, why not ban it?
Odd logic
Mehraj Ahmad Kakroo, the deputy commissioner of Srinagar, has an interesting formulation: he calls it a “friendly concession”, adding “We don’t want to create a situation where the government is stalling the news…As DC I am committed to a free press. But the press should go for introspection.” How long will the 15-minute restriction last? “Till they discover their proper professional role. You stick to the programme code... They should not show activities of Hurriyat aimed at secession.”
Ask the channels why they are not asking for the 15-minute restriction to be lifted and they say, “We have no legal ground to challenge the ban.” And then offer some off-the-record wisdom on why there will be no solidarity on this issue. Take 1 and the Jammu-based JK Channel will not join a protest, others will not because their owners include former militants who are vulnerable because the government can open up cases against them. They mention the ever present threat of the Public Safety Act.
Kashmiri media, like everything else here, has its own logic.
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