Market logic erodes genuine connect

IN Opinion | 02/03/2013

THE HINDI PRISM

Anand  Vardhan

Does language media instinctively  ‘connect’ with the region  it is supposedly rooted in and catering to? Before exploring this question with reference to the Hindi media space, it’s important to remember that even the idea of ‘connect’ can lend itself to different connotations.

Radio Mirchi-type Gen Next Hinglish is getting echoed regularly in Hindi dailies and news channels. In fact, the Hindi media has been resetting its dialogue with its readers and viewers (read consumers) with altered lingual contours, which cannot be  a coincidence. It could be as prosaic as identifying the changing social profile, conversational and consumption patterns, aspirational terrain and demands of its readers. Marketing managers (sometimes doubling up as editors) of a sizeable section of Hindi media seem to have figured out that they have to cater to a section of consumers who want everyday lingo with liberal doses of Bollywood imagery and are allergic to Sanskritised lexicon (much to the dismay of purists). So market fundamentalists eyeing youth readership (as if it were a monolith) would be nodding when, for instance, inext (the Dainik Jagran group’s bilingual daily tabloid published from 13 centres across Hindi-speaking states) has a headline in its Varanasi edition (February 26) saying Facility ka naamonishan nahi (No sign of facility, with ‘Facility’ in Roman script) and its Patna edition same day having a local sports headline saying Raj Milk ne Khidipur ko dho dala (Raj Milk washes out Khidipur, with ‘Raj Milk’ in Roman).

For those watching the Hindi media space, it is not a sudden development. Navbharat Times has even accommodated its upwardly mobile young Hindi reader on its masthead, where half its name is carried in English. And many Hindi supplements and of course, news channels’ photo sections and shows are just as clear about the section they are targeting as Delhi/ Bombay Times or the assembly line of ‘night-out’ shows on English news channels. Within the market scheme of things, a manager would call that ‘the strategic consumer connect’. But, there is a danger lurking somewhere beneath such connect – the danger of insidiously eroding the legitimacy of a Hindi journalist’s patent lament – they have ‘greater connect’ with ground realities, but are not recognised in the English-led media hierarchy. The feeling of being ‘left out’ seem to be guiding such lament. Ironically, the ‘connect’ is often no longer there. 

From school to workplace, wannabes have different shades, and aspirations have different camouflages. Victimhood is one. A failure to gatecrash if not gain entry into the ‘people like us’ club causes heartburn. Those excluded feel compelled to explain why they are left out. How do they do that? Apartheid theories are born and the defining colour is language. If one revelation was never a revelation, it is this: The discriminated ones are upwardly mobile and ambitious (nothing wrong with that). As are journalists working in the Hindi national media space.

The irony is that upwardly mobile and ambitious journalists they are as disconnected to ground realities of the Hindi belt as their counterparts in cocooned English media. Merely speaking and writing in the language of the soil is not reason enough for the current crop of Hindi journalists to claim bigger ears to the ground. Being at home in the language is a great asset, but not an instrument for negotiating and monopolising reality. The rootlessness in news rooms of Hindi channels and newspapers is getting increasingly exposed.

There has been a conspiracy of silence in contemporary Hindi intelligentsia in general and the Hindi media space in particular. It is the elephant in the room. The fact has no lingual biases – Hindi media space is devoid of any substantive engagement with the social, political, economic and cultural life of the Hindi belt, and particularly the Hindi hinterland. The missing rigour in subtle understanding of is evident.

Any claim to reality-connected superiority of Hindi media vis-à-vis English media has to be based on content and general orientation. Hindi journalism is banking on English ‘sophistication’ and English intelligentsia to fill its glamour quotient and intellectual space. How?

Hindi Media – Identity crisis and consumerist symphony

As a consumer of Hindi news, chances are you watch Aaj Tak, Zee News, NDTV India, ABP news, IBN 7, India TV, DD News, etc., and read Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Hindustan, Amar Ujala, Navbharat Times, Prabhat Khabar, Jansatta etc., and Hindi editions of India Today and Outlook (the umbilical cord a statement in itself). The growth in Hindi news media has been the stuff of some scholarly dissection and been well documented in two remarkable studies on Indian media in recent years – Robin Jeffrey’s India’s Newspaper Revolution (2000) and Sevanti Ninan’s Headlines From the Heartland (2007). The expansion of Hindi news media is generally seen as being propelled by a whole new generation of literates who consume news in their mother tongue first. However, such churning has not led to better reporting and commentary.  The reverse has been true. Sensing the killing to be made in a vast Hindi news market, media houses have stuffed Hindi news space with ingredients that can cater to a basic common denominator of entertainment as news or news as entertainment. Any hope of a renewed connect with the socio-cultural milieu and political realities of the Hindi belt was shortlived.

Even the language has witnessed a market makeover, and the tone of most shows on Hindi news channels is Bollywoodesque metro hybrid. Hindi media czars have carved a Hindi universe for market sensibilities and not for its lingual culture. Just have a look at Navbharat Times on any day, chances are you will find headlines and even articles written in the language of Hinglish jingles.

Is Hindi media contributing to a nuanced understanding of news and issues in the region?  It has failed to produce original narratives and perspectives in coverage of electoral processes in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, or even issues of development, disparity and cycle of Naxal violence in states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and parts of Bihar. If you could recall coverage of last Assembly elections in UP early last year, Hindi TV news might have left you with a sense of spectacle. The election shows beamed from studios were caught in the trap of turning elections into TRP-chasing carnivals with programmes packaged as Kaun Banega Mukhyamantri and its replicas.

An equally disturbing aspect is how the space for intellectual engagement in Hindi media space has been outsourced to English intelligentsia. Too many articles and columns in Hindi newspapers are translated versions of pieces originally written in English. So you have articles by C Uday Bhaskar, Kuldeep Nayar, C Raja Mohan, C P Chandrashekhar, Harsh Mander, Pushpesh Pant, Tavleen Singh, Chetan Bhagat, Madhu Kishwar, Khushwant Singh, etc. on pages of the Hindi press.

Even talking heads in many shows on Hindi channels are from the English-speaking intelligentsia (a few are of a rare bilingual breed too). There is nothing wrong in having views and perspectives from the English space, but it is disturbing that Hindi media is failing to nurture in-house expertise or even tap Hindi intelligentsia in the mainstream of intellectual discourse. In stark contrast, Hindi intelligentsia is not present in English media space in any noticeable way.

Hindi journalism had once illuminated the intellectual and cultural discourse of the country with iconic publications and legendary names like Dharmvir Bharti, Prabhash Joshi, Mrinal Pande, to name a few. Have we anyone of that stature now? The only contribution that the new breed of Hindi journalists can claim to have made is in reinforcing stereotypes about the Hindi belt (with market logic being the governing principle) saanp, bhoot,  raashi-bhavisya vani, tantra etc.

So where do Hindi media wannabes expect to gain their sympathy from? Who will stand by them in their fight against news apartheid? If they remain as disconnected as they are, language cannot be their saviour. They must realise that the Lohiate anti-English ground is shifting beneath their feet. Why?

Churning in the Heartland

The cultural hegemony of English is an unfortunate given of our times.  From colonial cultural engineering to the concept of social distance, there can be a number of explanations for the lingual hierarchy and cultural capital in the Hindi heartland I have briefly addressed the issue in my previous piece on this site.

However, there is a subtle churning. Rural spaces are filled with St. Thomas, St. Xavier and Mother Mary schools running from dilapidated two room buildings – all private initiatives to cater to demand of parents. Learning English has emerged as the universal mantra for socio-economic salvation in the hinterland. Any solidarity on basis of anti- English rhetoric has only few takers in the Hindi belt now. Even the political class has read the writing on the wall and post-liberalization anxiety for English education has been taken note of. Samajwadi Party had to shed its historical anti-English baggage within a span of few months.

This is not a new development. A case in point is how intellectuals of the marginalized Dalit community have viewed English in recent years. An interesting aspect of Dalit intellectual discourse has been how it has cherished Macaulay and resultant English education as a liberating force. Dalit ideologue Chandra Bhan Prasad has gone to the extent of deifying English as devi and celebrates Macaulay utsav.

The feet of clay of the Hindi media get exposed when it follows the script of the same corporate potboiler that feeds English media, which is as fallacious as Bollywood’s portrayal of the Hindi belt. The Hindi media must rediscover its rooted engagement with the socio-cultural and politico-economic narrative of the space it claims to represent and cater to.