Media, Civil Society, Elections
B.R.P.Bhaskar
When Edmund Burke, Henry Fielding, Thomas Carlyle and William Hazlitt used the
term ‘the Fourth Estate’ to denote the newspapers, they were acknowledging the
emergence of the media as a power centre outside the Establishment in 18th century
Britain. Since then newer media forms have come up and together they have emerged as
a powerful element -- for good or bad.
Civil Society is composed of myriad voluntary civic and social organizations which
remain outside the power structure but interact with all the four estates on a continuing
basis and often influence them, on the strength not of numbers but of the justness of the
causes they espouse.
What role do media and civil society play in our democratic process, especially in the
elections? When we seek an answer to this question in the context of the need for
electoral reform, it is necessary to take a close look at the way our democracy works.
Barring the Emergency period, when the life of the Lok Sabha was extended by a year,
parliamentary elections have been held regularly without fail. Elections to the Assembly
have been put off from time to time in several states using the expediency of President’s
rule. After the Supreme Court laid down parameters for use of this constitutional
provision, the Centre has been unable to invoke it recklessly as before. In the early
decades of Independence, many states habitually delayed local self-government elections
taking advantage of the absence of any compelling constitutional provision. After the
Constitution was amended to make local elections mandatory, they have been held at
stipulated intervals in most states. Thus elections are now a regular feature of Indian
democracy at all levels. However, the democratic process remains deficient inasmuch as
the citizen’s role in it does not extend beyond exercising the right to vote when called
upon to do so. In the long interval between one election and the next, he remains a
passive spectator at the mercy of the political system. To use a term familiar to us from
the working of the market economy, he is a mere ‘consumer’ of governance.
The law as it now stands provides for holding of meetings of the gram sabha (village
assembly), which all citizens residing in a specified area are entitled to attend, at regular
intervals. This is the only forum to which a citizen has free and direct access. To begin
with, people turned up at the gram sabha meetings enthusiastically, ready to use the
opportunity they provide to question those responsible for management of day-to-day
affairs. Soon they realized that the powerful elements, social or political, which dominate
life in the area are able to limit their role. Consequently they lost interest in the institution
of gram sabha. Today in many parts of the country, the gram sabha does not function in
the intended manner. Officials are compelled to hold its meetings with a captive audience
– in Kerala, women belonging to the Kudumbasree self-help network are the chosen
victims -- or to fabricate records to show that the sabha has met.
It is against this background that we must examine the performance of the media and the
civil society, two institutions which have the ability to augment the content of the
democratic process, at election time as well as during the interval between elections.
In the early years of Independence, the large metropolitan newspapers in English came
under the control of business houses. In the first General Election, the Congress helped
the owners and editors of some newspapers to enter Parliament and the State Assemblies.
There was only one metropolitan newspaper owner among them: Ramnath Goenka of the
Indian Express, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Madras state. Two decades later,
he re-entered the house, from Madhya Pradesh as a Jana Sangh candidate.
Even when the Indian newspapers, which had been following the British pattern, started
adopting the ways of the US press, they steered clear of the American practice of
endorsing a party or candidate at election time. However, when J. B. Kripalani took on
V.K. Krishna Menon in the North Bombay constituency in 1962, the big business press
did not hide the fact that its sympathies lay with the former. Frank Moraes, who was the
Editor of The Indian Express at the time, joined the “Defeat Krishna Menon Committee”
formed by right-wing elements.
As literacy spread and reading habit grew, provincial newspapers in English and several
Indian languages emerged as major players in their respective regions. The owners of
many of these newspapers cultivated political links. Some entered politics directly and
sought public offices, but most of them were content with the influence they wielded by
virtue of their proximity to the political establishment. Apart from owners, some editors
and working journalists also sought elective posts or other political favours. Thus a cosy
relationship developed between politicians and media persons. Rajiv Gandhi made M.J.
Akbar, a rising media star of the time, a member of the Lok Sabha but he did not remain
in the political arena for long. More recently the Shiv Sena sent Pritish Nandy to the
Rajya Sabha. What is common to them? It appears, by and large, the relationship between
the media and the political parties has been of the wheel-and-deal kind. Recent
revelations about “paid news” indicate that it has now metamorphosed into a commercial
one.
Apart from attempts to trade favours, there have also been attempts to browbeat each
other. There have been instances in which newspapers which invited the hostility of the
political establishment were penalized. Media offices and media persons have come
under attack from Kashmir to Kerala.
Several parties and politicians have their own media organizations. To begin with, the
party newspapers did not aspire to anything more than the status of a political organ.
Lately, however, there have been efforts to establish and sustain newspapers and
television channels on a commercial basis. Some politicians have acquired control of
long established newspapers or started new ones in recent years.
Do media organizations influence the voting pattern? This question needs to be looked at
carefully. The pronounced anti-communist bias of the Malayalam newspapers, which
hold sway in Kerala, did not prove an insurmountable obstacle to the Communist Party of
India in its successful bid for power in the state in 1957. While there has been no marked
change in the attitude of the large newspapers -- the state CPI-M alleges they are part of a
media syndicate which is conspiring to destroy it -- the Left Democratic Front which it
heads has been coming to power in alternate elections.
The experience of other states is no different. Both the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and
the All India Anna DMK rose to power without any support from the large newspapers of
Tamil Nadu. The BJP probably got some push from sections of the press in the north but
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati rose to the top in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Prasad
Yadav in Bihar overcoming the indifference or even scorn of the media.
Andhra Pradesh has a different story to tell. The Telugu newspaper Eenadu was primarily
responsible for N. T. Rama Rao’s sensational electoral triumph there within a year of the
formation of the Telugu Desam party. Its owner-editor, Ramoji Rao, with the help of his
correspondents in the state, had identified candidates with a winning chance for the
fledgling party. His tactics worked because circumstances were favourable. He could not
repeat the performance later.
Over the past two decades, television has emerged as a more powerful medium than the
press across the country but there is no evidence so far to conclude that it is able to
influence the outcome of elections.
Lately the major political parties have been enlisting the services of public relations and
advertising agencies at election time to mount media campaigns. The impact of these
campaigns remains questionable. The BJP sought a renewal of mandate in 2004 with a
pithy slogan “Shining India”, coined by an ad agency. In 2009, it tried an even bolder
slogan “Strong leader, decisive government”. Neither slogan worked.
James Mutti, a Fulbright scholar who was in India last year to study the media’s role in
the democratic process, observed that it was not playing a significant public service role.
He wrote, “The media may do a good job of providing news to the estimated 300 million
members of the Indian middle class – in fact, coverage of political issues tends to be quite
good – but as long as over 700 million Indians are sidelined from the media's gaze by
their inability to conspicuously consume, the media’s role as public service is severely
limited.”
Mutti said the country needed a new media model which balanced its profit motive with
coverage of issues relevant to the poorer, voting classes, and which could serve as a
model for the entire developing world.
Electoral reform has figured in the media sporadically and the major newspapers have
extended editorial support to the concept in general terms from time to time. The media
enthusiastically endorsed the Law Commission’s reform proposals of 1999. When
Tehelka exposed political corruption, the Times of India pointed out that “any solution
aimed at cleansing the system must address the issue of electoral reforms”. The media
also supported the limited efforts made by the Election Commission to improve the
working of the system.
However, no media institution has made serious and sustained efforts to mobilize public
opinion in favour of electoral reform. Civil society, which lacks the reach and resources
of the media, has been striving to fill the breach. Tarun Tejpal, Editor of Tehelka, draws
an interesting contrast between media and civil society. “The media,” he says, “has
become a purely commercial construct. Civil society, in contrast, is not. There is no
money to be made out of the activities that civil society is involved in. I think this has
become the fundamental difference between the media and civil society organizations.”
Several national and international civil society organizations have been campaigning for
or extending support to electoral reform. Notable among them are the Association for
Democratic Reforms (ADR), Lok Satta and People’s Union for Civil Liberties, whose
public interest litigation resulted in the Supreme Court order of 2003 requiring disclosure
of the criminal, financial and educational background of all contesting candidates. The
National Election Watch has been gathering information filed by candidates about their
assets and criminal antecedents and giving wide publicity to it. Such activity has not
inhibited the parties from offering tickets to criminals. Nor has it prevented criminals
from getting elected. Quite obviously the campaign needs to be continued with great
vigour. There is reason to suspect that some of the affidavits filed by the candidates are
not truthful. NGOs working at state and local levels must come forward to verify their
statement and initiate legal action against those who have made false declarations.
Transparency International, Amnesty International and the Asian Human Rights
Commission are among the international NGOs which have called for reform of the
Indian electoral system with a view to eliminating malpractices and cleansing the
democratic process.
At the root of the malaise is the emergence of money power and muscle power as major
elements in the electoral exercise. Various ideas to tackle the problem have been before
the country but the political establishment has been unwilling to initiate purposeful
measures to check the twin menace. The media is a beneficiary of democracy in more
than one sense. The democratic set-up allows it to function freely. It also helps them
commercially: newspaper circulations grow and channel ratings rise at election time. In
the circumstances it has a duty to play a pro-active role in the efforts to ensure the well-
being of the democratic system.
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Paper presented at the National Seminar on Electoral Reforms organized jointly by
C. Achutha Menon Study Centre and Library and Indira Gandhi National Open
University at Thiruvananthapuram on July 10, 2010
