Daily Times

The Union government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had exhorted hundreds of millions of citizens of the Indian union to open bank accounts. This was after his pre-poll promise of putting 15 lakh rupees in every citizen’s account by his capturing of black money. Many small deposit accounts were thus opened with bank officials, especially government bank officials being continuously pressured to boost the outputs of what was essentially a political gimmick couched in language of economic empowerment. Nowadays you can buy peddlers of such lingo on streets of Delhi where their supply is especially high. Not one of those small deposit accounts from millions of people grew to have a balance of 15 lakhs. Because such exponential and sudden growth in account balance can only be promised by a demagogue and can only happen in the bank account of a crook.

If someone’s account balance increases by a factor of 16000 ever since Narendra Modi came to power, there is reason for hope. Let’s say that person put in 100 Rupees. A 16000 fold increase means that 100 Rupees would become 16 lakhs. That would be then a case where Narendra Modi’s promise would have come somewhat true. In a comic way, the alleged case involving Jay Shah, son on BJP President Amit Shah, seems to be the most prominent person in the alleged 16000 fold account value increase club. Narendra Modi’s Hindi slogan of ‘Aacche Din’ or ‘good days’ seems to have worked at least in the case of Jay Shah.

The vibrancy of the media and freedom of expression hugely varies across the political landscape of the Indian Union. This means that the Indian Union does not have a uniform media terrain. Various non-Hindi linguistic nationalities of the Indian Union dominate their own homelands

This is a story whose original reporting is now banned by a court case launched by the powers-that-be against the press. However, much of the English language press (with very few notable exceptions) and the major Hindi language press almost across the board has completely avoided much mention of this crucial case of alleged corruption and nepotism. This is due to the fact that the ruling BJP is primarily based out of Hindi states and Delhi and hence it wields greatest powers of threat and coercion as well as exacting servility from English and Hindi media. However, the power of the BJP drastically wanes when one ventures into a majority media space in the Indian Union that is controlled by non-Hindi, non-English media. Thus, if one looks at the Bangla media space or the Tamil media space or the Kannada media space, a very different reality emerges.

Thus, the vibrancy of the media space and freedom of expression hugely varies across the political landscape of the Indian Union. This means that the Indian Union does not have a uniform media terrain. Various non-Hindi linguistic nationalities of the Indian Union dominate their own national homeland areas (Bengalis in West Bengal, Tamils in Tamil Nadu, Malayalis in Kerala, Punjabis in Punjab, Marathis in Maharashtra and so on) and hence their domestic media culture varies greatly from the media space of the Hindi linguistic-national homeland, often called the cow-belt. What are the implications of this heterogeneity?

If in a polity where Hindi states disproportionately dominate in shaping policies of the present BJP-led Union government, the reality of the realm ruled from Delhi is refracted in various languages, reflecting their own standards of journalism and more importantly, the extent of reach of BJP aligned big money. So when Hindi media doesn’t report on the Jay Shah case but others so as all should, one ends up with a scenario where Hindi states and non-Hindi states are waking up everyday and going through media world with very different versions of reality. If that reality was one that was due to the very different realities of Hindi states and non-Hindi states, that would have made sense. But it is dangerous when that difference simply reflects the primary political base of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan forces and the relative weakness of these forces in most non-Hindi states. This would not have mattered if the state governments were mostly in charge of affairs of the State. But in the super-centralised framework of the Indian Union, the Union government has captured almost all important powers.

Thus, a skewed version of reality and sometimes even an alter-reality is being created by Hindi media space that principally serves BJP’s interests. That does ensure that party of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan ideology dominates the Hindi states. But when that enables the BJP to capture power the Union government, it ceases to be a matter of Hindi states alone. Buoyed by Hindi state media propaganda, the public opinion of non Hindi states in rendered irrelevant and thus a government that draws its support from this sort of propaganda ends up affecting the daily lives of the citizens of non-Hindi states.

The only solution to such a state of affair is decentralisation, such that most of the union and concurrent list subjects are moved to the state list. The corporate-political nexus is a truth for all media industries but the depth of that nexus matters. The Hindi and English media is doing a disservice to its audience by doing what it is not supposed to do and not doing what it is supposed to do. The non-Hindi media audience and citizens are the collateral damage in spite of having a higher and better informed level of public discourse.

The writer is a brain scientist and commentator based in Bengal

Published in Daily Times, November 14^th 2017.