Indian media have proliferated in numbers and kinds over the past four decades in very divergent ways. These divergent ways have their economic, social, cultural and political dimensions. The numbers and categories/kinds associated with the kind of growth that is anchored by the word, “proliferation”, have their own hidden dimensions. These are dimensions of the markets, ownership patterns, circulation and distribution platforms and consumption modes.
Prof.Pradosh Nath, who was part of the team at CCMG that worked on the media pluralism research project and is presently at the Centre for Knowledge Ideas and Development (www.knids.org) at New Delhi and Kolkata, lamented that there is no disciplinary focus on media economics in the Depts. of Journalism and Communication. He said that media economics should be approached as a research and teaching programme in Universities. He also dealt with the challenges in gathering data about media organisations in India. His summation pointed in the direction of sameness of content and orientation in the Hindi news channels selected for his research.
His talk reminded me of my early field work in Coimbatore and Chennai during 1980s for my MA and MPhil dissertations which focussed on the economics of city and district newspapers. I could not enter the newspapers to gather information about their economic aspects and many a time I subsisted on conversations with workers and watchmen to gather information about the number of newsprint rolls that entered the godown and the number that were used. There was an enormous interest those days to focus on newsprint than the newspaper because of the scarce nature of the material and the controls which made it scarcer and precious. These topics were not of my choice. These were suggested by Prof.D Sadasivan who wanted me to study the newspapers in Coimbatore district, particularly the local newspapers such as Nava Shakti.
When he offered me the opportunity to join the PhD programme, I told him before hand that I would rather prefer to work in the area of public opinion studies and chose a topic related to Press Opinion and Polled Opinion on issues of the 1980s.
In recent times, I am back to where I was as a field worker and young researcher during my masters days. As I am engaging myself with the relevance of critical political economy (CPE), particularly the co-location of critical theories and CPE, the importance of studying the economic dimensions of Indian media is being deeply felt, despite the old challenges I experience and Dr Prathosh Nath pointed out.
Vibodh Parthasarathy, Associate Professor at CCMG, Jamia Milia Islamia, has been breaking new ground in what remains as an understudied and unexplored territory in journalism and communication studies, media economics. Biswajit Das and Vibodh Parthasarathy’s recent project unravelled interesting pointers on pluralism and diversities. It was a unique initiative which requires emulation by the Depts. of Journalism and Communication in India.
In this context, the two volume OUP work on “The Indian Media Economy” by Athique, Parthasarathy and Srinivas, is a welcome addition to the very limited collection of works on the economic aspects of Indian media. The book was relaunched at the “National Consultation on Creative Industry and Economy in India” at Jamia Milia Islamia on 17th April 2018. Prof.D.P Singh, Chairperson, UGC, Prof.Talat Ahamed, VC, Jamia Milia Islamia and Ms Joanna Kempkers, High Commissioner of New Zealand High Commission released the book.
The book is yet to be made available on Amazon and Vibodh is confident that it will be available soon online and in stores.
The two volumes succeed in bringing together a rich and unconventional canvas. In particular, I am fascinated by the sections on media labour titled “Labour Conditionalities” edited by Vibodh Parthasarathy and “Spaces of Communication” by Adrian Athique. The former has interesting chapters by Scott Fitzgerald, Babu Ramesh and Sunitha Chitrapu and deal with industrial relations in Indian journalism, unpaid workers and inequalities in the film and television sectors. The later has chapters on the peculiar contexts of media consumption.
GR 