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Who's afraid of the foreign print media?

On January 23 this year, a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government stood up at a seminar in Calcutta on 'Media Policy in the New Millennium' and said the entry of foreign print media into India would not threaten its sovereignty. "Our sovereignty is not so weak as to be threatened by it. We have to counter it by strengthening our own communication system," he said. The 1955 Cabinet decision, which bars foreign print organisations from setting up base here, had no relevance now that foreign television channels were already "downloading information", the honourable minister was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

On February 1, a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government said in Dubai that India had no plans to allow foreign media into the country.

"There has been no talk on giving entry to the foreign media. This cannot take place," he told reporters on the sidelines of a reception by the Indian Association. "We have quite an independent and free media which is doing its job well. So is Doordarshan, the national television channel," the honourable minister was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

This is no literary device, but the hon'ble minister in both instances was one and the same, Sarva Shri Arunji Jaitely. In the space of less than10 days, the hon'ble minister of state for information and broadcasting (independent charge) -- and a Supreme Court lawyer who should know a thing or two about the "relevance of the 1955 Cabinet resolution"-- had swung from one end of the spectrum to another. Why? Why do the lions of the saffron brotherhood who so bravely demonstrate their manhood to flop film-makers from Canada, piddle in their pantaloons when it comes to taking on the 'paper tigers' of India?

If foreigners can sell us books, CDs and cassettes (which can very well alter our views and change our way of living forever), if foreigners can dump on us advertisements, movies and television serials (which could very well poison our minds and our culture and lifestyle), if foreigners can sell us a million web sites, CD-ROMs and games (which could very well corrupt our thinking), if foreigners can show a hundred channels, news and current affairs programmes and cartoon shows (which could very well distort our sense of perspective and those of our children), if foreigners .... dammit, if foreigners sell us a thousand others things more crucial to our wellbeing -- food, soft drinks, drugs, medicines, cars, computers, power -- in the name of globalisation, why the hell can't they sell us newspapers and magazines?

In short, what is it that the foreign print media will do to us which the government is so sure has not been done to us already and is not being done to us now at this very moment as you read this? Why, as India Today proprietor and editor-in-chief Aroon Purie says, this "double standard" on foreign equity in the electronic medium and not in print?

Why, if you will pardon the French, is the government so shit scared?

Mr Jaitely's flip-flop is amazing because, for the first time in a decade, the National Democratic Alliance government seemed to have made up its mind on the issue which usually sends those outstanding votaries of liberalisation -- proprietors, publishers and editors of newspapers and magazines, and their guilds and associations -- into paroxysms of paranoia. Finally it seemed, a government had summoned up the courage to demolish the last bastion of monopoly in post-liberalised India: print media.

The first, clear indication that the BJP-led government was thinking of jolting India's press barons out of the comfortable status quo of "45 years of Congress rule", came on December 7 last year.

I&B secretary Y N Chaturvedi stood up at an interactive session on 'Entertainment and Media' at the India Economic Summit in New Delhi and said the government was expected to consider afresh in the "next few weeks" whether or not to allow foreign direct investment in the print media. And which, he added, could lead to a loosening of controls on the entry of foreign media. (The Hindu, December 8, 1999)

The I&B babu revealed that the proposal had come up for consideration several times over the past decade, but had been "opposed by domestic newspapers owners rather than politicians."

But now, Mr Chaturvedi added, "a consensus had been reached among policy-makers" on the need to relax restrictions on the entry of FDI. And, on the 1955 Cabinet decision, he said: "It was taken at a time when the local print media was in its infancy. There were only a few large newspapers then and it was felt that their interests needed to be protected. The situation had now changed as Indian companies were much stronger."

In itself, the I&B secretary's position was surprising because barely nine months earlier, in the BJP's second stint in government, the signals were that it, too, did not want to disturb the status quo of "45 years of Congress rule".

At a question-answer session at the golden jubilee seminar of the Press Trust of India in Delhi on March 13, 1999, the then I&B minister Pramod Mahajan, ruled out the entry of foreign media.

"At present, we are bound by the 1955 Cabinet resolution," he said, in response to a question whether the government was planning to review the Cabinet decision in the light of his remark that "India did not fear any cultural invasion from the global media." (The Economic Times, March 14, 1999).

So, Mr Chaturvedi's interjection at first and Mr Jaitely's assertion immediately thereafter were as strong a signal as one could receive that a rethink was on. What then caused Mr Jaitely's sudden turn-around?

To understand the kind of pressures that are brought on the government by the media barons on the issue of foreign print media, one only needs to follow the sequence of reportage in the two citadels of the "jute press" -- The Times of India and The Hindustan Times.

A day after I&B secretary Chaturvedi's bolt from the blue, he was quoting unnamed "highly-placed government sources" as saying that the "Vajpayee government may restrict FDI in the print medium only in the case of technical, medical and science journals", and that "no proposal was under consideration to allow FDI in print media dealing with news as such."

Alluding to a similar debate in the early '90s when it was argued that allowing entry to foreign print media was a logical consequence of liberalisation, it said, "not only do most developing countries restrict entry into the media but even such avowedly liberal, capitalist countries such as the UK and USA have a degree of official regulation in this area." (The Hindustan Times, December 10, 1999).

But the clincher came in the concluding paragraph: "Newspapers are not a capital-intensive business like, say, power generation where we need billions of dollars of foreign investment. There is no technology that the Indian press is not already using, or can't easily buy, that only foreigners can bring in. There exist no legal barriers to prevent Indians from accessing foreign newspapers and magazines, which are already being freely imported, and are available on the Internet. As for the free flow of ideas, nearly every significant Western newspaper or news agency has an arrangement with an Indian publication to reproduce its stories. So why then do we need foreign ownership of the media?

"The weakness of the foreign media case became clear to the P V Narasimha Rao government after a group of ministers was constituted to decide whether this move formed part of the economic reform process. Mr Rao's government came to the correct conclusion. The demand for foreign ownership of Indian media was not about liberalisation or about a free flow of information. It was about control. The key question was this: why should foreigners want to buy into an industry that is not, even in global terms, particularly profitable? The only answer that made sense was: they desire a situation where they, not Indians, control the dissemination of information. Sensibly, Mr Rao rejected the proposal. Mr Vajpayee should do the same." (ibid).

The Times of India, on the other hand, did not editorialise on its edit page, but did so on its news pages: "Arguments that technology has overtaken the media and that satellite television and the Internet have made borders irrelevant dodge the question of whether these media belong to the fourth estate. The fourth estate is the print media. This is acknowledged by mechanisms such as the wage board which do not extend to television and the Internet, and cannot be made applicable to the foreign print media.

"Secondly, the mistakes made by television such as showing an erroneous map of India do not attract the same reaction and action that follows when the print media goofs up.

"This underscores the absence of a level playing field for the Indian print media within the country. The entry of foreign equity in the print media will impose another dimension to this imbalance. Should foreigners want to buy space in the Indian fourth estate, then the same principles of globalisation demand that Indians be able to invest and own newspapers in foreign countries. At present, many western countries have severe restrictions against foreign ownership of the print media. Unless there is a worldwide level playing field, foreign equity will introduce another inequity in an already unequal world.

"If the fourth estate can be opened for foreign investment then by what logic can foreign participation be kept out of the other three estates: namely the executive, judiciary and the legislature?

"The constitutional scheme envisages a unity of purpose for all four estates. Ideally, freedom of expression and freedom of movement have universal application. But since citizens of this country, for instance, cannot freely exercise what should be their freedom as defined by residing and working in foreign countries, how can foreigners expect such hospitality here? Even assuming that other advanced countries ease restrictions on print media ownership for foreigners, the benefits of this will largely be confined to the big Indian newspapers. But it is not the investment interests of the big papers that is at issue.

"What is at issue is that many small voices which together give articulation to this great republic should not be silenced under the crushing weight of foreign-owned monolithic monopolies." (ibid).

Mercifully but quite tellingly, both newspapers do not make any mention of the threat to our culture or our sovereignty, which Arun Jaitely alludes to. Neither is there any mention of journalists' wages, quality of journalism, or the freedom of choice that obtains when more media companies enter the picture. On the contrary, the line of argument of The Times of India and The Hindustan Times is essentially an articulation of the presumed threat to their business. That in a sense is a dead giveaway.

Admittedly, a foreign major with deeper pockets (in dollar terms) is infinitely better placed to woo readers and advertisers. But is that reason alone enough to protect the fatted calves of the Indian English language print media from foreign competition?

Since the "biggies" have themselves pushed "culture and sovereignty" out of the way (they haven't come to territorial integrity yet), a few questions are crying for answers from the arguments they themselves have advanced:

a. What is the one defining journalistic characteristic in our post-90s English language newspapers that even barely suggests that they are "not just another business" that should be subject to the same rules as the rest?

b. If the preconditions for FDI in print had also been applied in other sectors, just how many sectors of the Indian economy would have been opened up and what would have been India's position in the global village?

c. If ready availability of capital and technology are reasons why print should be protected, what was the great dearth of capital and technology in, say, the salt industry for foreign majors to be allowed entry?

d. In a country where computer penetration is under one-fifth the global average and Internet penetration is 0.1 per cent, is it reasonable to expect the average Indian to scan foreign publications on the Net?

e. In an economy where the most basic necessities of life -- food, water, electricity, health, security -- have become luxuries, can news and information too be allowed to become the privilege of the rich at the behest of a cartel?

f. Since the Murdochisation of the Indian print media -- through trivialisation and price cuts -- is a fait accompli, what is it that the entry of foreign players will do that hasn't already been done?

Of course, it is all about "control", stupid. But how is it again different from, say, Coke taking over Thums Up to take "control" of the soft drink market? K E Eapen, a journalism professor, writes in The Hindu that during a ten-year period between October 1947 to February 1957, of the 60 editorials in The New York Times on Kashmir, not one single editorial was found to be favourable to India, 10 were mildly favourable, 13 were neutral, 21 mildly unfavourable and 16 unfavourable.

"Let not India be tempted by the foreign print media merchants," he says. "With all its faults, the vibrant Indian press is a on a pedestal of national interest which need not be upset under the garb of globalisation an vested interests."

So, it's national interest finally. But, like with "culture and sovereignty" it all boils down to one simple fact for the Indian print media: if you are so strong, if your fundamentals are so strong, what are you so afraid of?

Krishna Prasad