Dumb dumb dumbing down

With millions of illiterate young desperately wanting to read and write, the small, elitist commercial media won’t be able to dominate the diverse and plural environment in India

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Delhi

We in India would not be able to describe ourselves as belonging to the world’s largest democracy were it not for the existence of an independent media. Although large sections of the corporate media in the country have become crassly commercial, focussing almost entirely on enhancing advertising revenues and catering to small, wealthy and influential elites, the big picture of the media landscape is not uniformly bleak. Even as much of the mainstream media in India dumbs down its readers, listeners and viewers, a narrow segment still believes that although journalism may no longer be a mission (but a location like any other), it is still possible for newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, documentary and feature films to not just entertain and inform but also educate and empower.

The media in India is unique in more ways than one. The approach paper to the Eleventh Five Year Plan, that starts on April 1, 2007, points out that “one of the sectors which has consistently outperformed” the rate of growth of gross domestic product in India is the “entertainment and media services sector”. This sector is expected to grow at a compound average annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19 per cent till the year 2010 and beyond, or twice as fast as the rest of the economy. The approach paper has put out estimates of the growth rates of different media. The fastest yearly growth would be recorded by television (42 per cent), followed by print (31 per cent), films (19 per cent), advertising (3 per cent), music and live entertainment (2 per cent) and radio (1 per cent).

The Planning Commission document has not provided the basis for making these estimates. Many could argue that some of these projections are rather conservative — particularly the one relating to radio listening. Still, the approach paper points out, media is one sector where “demand grows faster than income”. It adds that not only can the high growth rate be expected to continue but also that “the ‘convergence’ of all forms of media to a common digital form, along with technological breakthroughs, provides scope for even higher growth”.

Over the past decade and a half, the print medium in most developed countries has been facing tough competition from TV and, more recently, from the internet. A number of surveys have indicated that the paid circulation of newspapers has been declining by a proportion varying between two per cent and four per cent, virtually each year over the last five years, in countries located in North America and Europe. In quite a few developed countries, the number of people who listen to the radio on any given day has reached a plateau or even come down. However, in these countries, the number of users of the internet has gone up quite dramatically and is continuing to rise. Even faster than the rate of growth of the internet has been the sale of video games in many economically advanced countries.

In India, the media environment has been — and is certainly going to remain — quite different. All media — print, radio, TV, cinema and the internet — have been growing and are expected to grow each year, although some would obviously grow faster than the others. Other developing countries too are witnessing similar trends.