[Reader-list] convergence, civic style

[ravikant]

The columnist's tone is curious, but somebody in the mainstream media finally 
takes note of the complex mesh of mass media and mass politics in our times.
Enjoy!

Ravikant/Jeebesh

From: http://www.hindu.com/mag/2003/12/21/stories/2003122100020300.htm

The Hindu/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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