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Beaming from the skies

Satellites Over South Asia

Broadcasting Culture and the Public Interest

By David Paige and William Crawley

*Publsihers: Sage, New Delhi

WPrice: Not mentioned.

IN David Paige and William Crawley, the authors of this book, we have a rare combination. Being media professionals with over two decades of experience at the BBC on the one hand and being specialists in South Asian Studies with significant publications to their credit on the history, politics and broadcasting of the region on the other, they have produced a well-balanced and sustained perception in their book which takes every side into consideration and above all does so from the perspective of an eag er learner and fellow traveller rather than that of the snobbish and superior outsider who knows better.

This crucial book, on the satellite revolution which has drastically transformed the face of the subcontinent over the last decade by putting the era of state monopoly behind it, is a major contribution of the Media South Asia Project, based at the Insti tute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, U.K. and co-directed by David Paige and William Crawley.

Primarily, it is the first extensive mapping of the complex terrain of satellite television in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the five main regions of South Asia and the varied responses that have been generated by its footprints in an d across these polities.

It is a detailed description of a volatile terrain over the skies, which renders even the rigid administrative boundaries of the nation state porous apparently causing great concern and anxiety to the powers-that-be giving rise to many an authorised or u nauthorised exercise of control but actually urging media producers to think beyond the confines of their own regions or the majority they serve, if what is at stake ultimately is the construction of a vigorous South Asian civil society.

That is, not just a vibrant India or Pakistan but an equally vibrant Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In this context, specifically the Indian satellite channels are taken to task for not reflecting the needs of its multiple audience both within and with out its boundaries as it plays the dominant role in the region.

Placing its principal object against the backdrop of the collapse of communism, the ever-increasing attempts to assimilate world markets into a singular homogeneous order, the accelerating advances and the convergence of the various technology of communi cation, and organised in eleven important chapters, this extensive study addresses a variety of themes from the colonial beginnings, the nationalist imperatives, globalisation of South Asia, the lure of the Indian Market, the agents of popular culture, t he South Asian Foot Print, the response of the Nation State, the differences between the Indian North and the South, to effectively linking broadcasting to the vital needs of community.

Substantially supporting its claims by drawing its sources from innumerable interviews, key focus group discussions, district wide surveys, a variety of reports, articles, documents and books it registers to the maximum extent possible multiple voices wh ich converge on the field indicating the enormous amount of work that has gone into its careful production. Going beyond the book, this project is also further supported by Nupur Basu's documentary film on the same subject.

If there is one central theme, which animates this entire volume then that is the issue of public interest. Right at the beginning of their book, David Paige and William Crawley displace the notion of public service with that of public interest.

Foregrounding their critical understanding of the colonial legacy of the region for which the public service of state administered media corporations always means nothing beyond the projection of the voice of the government they clearly indicate that the re are no British solutions to what are local problems.

It is owing to that they do not hold up BBC as the ideal model for the region as our middle class often does or hide the fact that the BBC itself is `vulnerable to political pressures' obviously well aware as they are of the critical debates which have h eld this `much admired' institution ethically responsible; in general for its various collusions with the state and in particular for buckling down to the conservative hegemony of the Thatcher regime. They bluntly assert, therefore, that the so-called au tonomous functioning of BBC is built more on conventions rather than on sufficient legal framework, which is a real necessity for any kind of substantial autonomy.

By conceptually unsettling the conventional binary that stereotypically juxtaposes public service media (for information and education) to commercial media (for entertainment) their notion of public interest simultaneously places the onus of public accou ntability on all the players involved.

It is because of such a refreshing approach to the problem at hand that the state sector is critiqued for equating its regulatory functions with its broadcasting functions, the commercial sector for its neo-liberal ideology that abandons everything to th e whims of the market and the print media for not reflecting critical public opinion or producing adequate media criticism. Nor is Doordharshan spared for not evolving adequate quality control criteria in the context of a highly competitive environment something, which it can afford to ignore only at its own peril.

Discussing the Prasar Bharati Bill and its current stalemate much as they accentuate the need for the creation of an independent body to regulate the state-broadcasting sector, not letting their grip on the immediate present go, they suggest a series of changes that could have decisive effects before this greatly desired objective is realised. `Why wait for autonomy?' they ask.

Provoking Doordharshan to put its own house in order by way of considerable decentralisation they also insist that the state devolve more power to the regions such that community radio and television becomes a reality pointing out that the interests of t he nation state would be better served and more successfully if and only if while endorsing the use of new technology it also encourages `greater freedom of expression and participation, greater affirmation of local and regional cultures, and greater pub lic accountability'.

Taking a leaf out of the public interest norms respected by TVi, of Business India in the range of programmes it made available and referring to the 'avowed' willingness of Zee and Sony to produce such programmes provided Doordharshan is bound by similar norms, they call for a well-framed media policy that would eventually establish the necessary legal framework to ensure that both the state and the commercial broadcasting sectors do not evade their democratic responsibility.

On the whole Satellites Over South Asia is as broad in its address as in its content making the reading of it necessary to everyone who has something to do with television be they media professionals or policy makers, fellow scholars or critics, media ed ucationists or students of media studies, the public at large or those who are better known as the audience; if all of them are to rethink the democratic responsibility entailed in their respective positions and the goals of public interest not sacrifice d on the altar of the illusory plenitude of the market, as the arbiter of all things.

Venkatesh Chakravarthy