If medium is message, what is the message?

Orissa. Sikkim. Andhra Pradesh. Manipur. Natural disasters struck the first two states. Floods in Odisha impacted 2.2 million Indian citizens. People lost lives.

Property was destroyed. Development washed away. Sikkim suffered an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale. At least 100 people died. The loss in monetary terms is still being calculated, and expected to be in the range of tens of thousands of crores. You would think that there would be media outrage — why is it that after 60 years and crores of rupees we can’t build houses that aren’t washed away? That can’t withstand an earthquake. But, there was silence. In Andhra Pradesh and Manipur, citizens, political movements, and civil society have blockaded the lives and liberty of other citizens. Inhabitants of Manipur have been blockaded for two months.

Essential goods cost a bomb. An LPG cylinder costs Rs2,000, and vegetables like the humble potato cost Rs45 a kilo. In Andhra Pradesh a ‘strike’ by a few people agitating for Telangana has left the majority in darkness. Electricity cuts are to the tune of 16 to 22 hours. Crores of Indian citizens are in deep distress. Yet, there seems to be a relative silence in the ‘national’ broadcast news media about these events. Imagine if events similar to these, even a fraction in impact and magnitude, had occurred in Mumbai or Delhi and ask yourselves — how would the media have covered it?

In India, it is very clear that there is a news media centre — cities, citizens, causes & civil societies that get noticed, and a media periphery — issues, areas, people and events that are ignored. The national media tends to do very well when issues are based in its playing fields — Mumbai and Delhi. Regional media do well covering their individual areas or states. The issues arise when it comes to the coverage of India. India is more than just Mumbai or Delhi. It is greater than individual regions or states. It is a diverse, plural, complex, thriving, vibrant nation that deserves better than to be ignored like a beggar at the feast.

The view in the Northeast is that while there was always a perception that the rest of India never cared, the arrival of 24-hour news has confirmed it. Channels that devoted over 85% of their total air time to Anna Hazare’s fast in the Ramlila grounds could not even muster a tenth of that for other issues that impact other Indians. It is almost as if the ‘rest of India’ has dropped off the map for news channels. The very same news channels that get into a tizzy when the Indian map is represented wrongly by a foreign publication, lop off the bulk of the population through non-coverage. 

Over 50 years ago, media theorist Marshal McLuhan postulated that the medium is the message. What he meant was that every so often a technology so powerful comes into our lives that it alters the way the society behaves, works and think — and changes our very perception of the world around us. Satellite TV technology is one such medium.

Unlike the more sedate terrestrial television, it allows hundreds of channels to be beamed directly to your home and has changed the society. The world has become a smaller place. Global has become local, and local, global. So, we feel for nations and citizens whom our news channels look up to, Cannes becomes an extension of Bollywood, New York a suburb of Gurgaon and London an extension of Chandigarh. But, China that is right next to us is not in our media’s scheme of things. Neither are Burma and ASEAN nations. Pakistan figures, but more in terms of our ‘common shared history’ forgetting that only one Indian state, Punjab, shared history with Pakistan. The same is the case within India. Three days of water logging in Delhi or Mumbai will garner more headlines than 2.2 million citizens marooned in Orissa.

Given that technology profoundly impacts the world in which we live and our perception of events, how would a generation brought up in the ‘media centres’ or the ‘media peripheries’, with 24-hour news channels as their  primary news source view the idea of India? How do you cope with the idea that you as Indians do not matter, nor do the calamities impacting you? Can the ‘idea of India’ survive national news channels that ignore most of her people?

Harini Calamur is a media entrepreneur, writer, blogger, teacher, & the main slave to an imperious hound. She blogs at calamur.org/gargi and @calamur on Twitter