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Wanted: CEOs from India

JV Vilanilam: be a minor force. And English exerts its influence over administrators and decision makers including powerful politicians. The author stresses repeatedly that satellite and cable TV has risen as the number one influence on the Indian polity.

The formats of programming on the satellite channels in India and their influence: on the upper and middle classes, the advantages of the talk show format; political satires; reality shows; the ascent of TV politicians; citizen journalism; the argumentative quality of the Indian psyche; the increasing role of SMS; digitisation and all the major technical sophistication of TV and the manipulation of the medium by astute politicians such as Narendra Modi are brought out clearly. How TV became a lightning conductor for existing social conditions in Gujarat and influenced the results of the Gujarat elections despite the shameful communal riots of the 2002 riots is also discussed.

In 308 pages, the book has highlighted the important role of satellite TV news with striking examples from historical and contemporary, national and international, events. The book does not ignore the reality that nearly 50% of Indian media users do not yet have access to satellite and cable, and more importantly, half of the Indian population does not have a TV set. These naked truths are brought to the readers’ attention in an eight-page long Epilogue. The role of advertising in TV expansion is discussed, but the author could have dealt with the types of products advertised more often and how they are influencing the TV viewers, particularly women and children’s habits of consumption.

The author is to be congratulated for discussing his ideas on the basis of authentic history and verifiable contemporary documentation. I wish more such books on the media are published, giving details of certain oft-repeated sociological events of overall importance — the Khairlanji and Haryana dalit-bashing and the tragic sari distribution melas organised by self-promoting politicians such as the ones in Lucknow or Chennai a few years ago. Events similar to these are too frequent to be treated as isolated incidents and they are picked up more by the print media than the electronic ones. They should not escape 24x7 media and scholarly attention. However, the author deserves approbation for the much needed contemporary account of the Great Indian TV Circus that has exceeded all expectations in a decade’s time.