Print media, women and the state
The first half of the book dwells upon the importance of modernity, politics and literacy upon women in India, the second half is a collection of essays mapping the history of the newspaper industry in India.
JAYA BHATTACHARJI ROSE reviews Robin Jeffrey’s Media and Modernity Communications, Women and the State in India
Media andModernity: Communications, Women and the State in India
Robin Jeffrey
Pages 322 (Hardback)
Year of Publication 2010
Permanent Black, New Delhi
Rs. 695
Robin Jeffrey’s Media and Modernity gives a broad overview of more than 200 years of media history in India. At present he is Visiting Research Professor, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore. He identifies three periods in information transmission in India: (i) the hand-to-hand and face-to-face of pre-industrial times; (ii) the era of genteel print from the 1870s to the 1980s; and (iii) mass print and television from the 1980s.
The first half of the book dwells upon the importance of modernity, politics and literacy upon women in India. He argues that the literacy of women has an immediate impact upon development, as is evident with Kerala. He says, “The role of women was the crucial ingredient, not just because literate mothers were more likely than fathers to ensure literate offspring. It was a combination of the influential Hindu groups (which made it acceptable for girls to go out in public and to school) and the educational zeal of Protestant missionaries that propelled Kerala’s female literacy.”
The book speaks of how an English missionary, in the 1940s, was surprised to see ‘working class folk’ on a ferry ‘studying the Communist Manifesto’ and ‘other books by Marx and Engels.’” According to Jeffrey this phenomenon was easily explained in Kerala by the history of presses and printing. These blossomed due to the high growth of literacy when there was a demand for textbook publishing and this inevitably led to the growth of newspapers.
The second half of the book is a collection of essays mapping the history of the newspaper industry in India, especially Kerala, and the relationship between advertising and the media houses. These articles were published during 1994-2006 — a period that coincided with a huge spurt in satellite television, FM radio channels and the Internet. The author notes, “84 per cent of the population is estimated to speak one of the India’s 18 ‘official’ languages. The Anthropological Survey of India estimates that India has 325 different languages. Newspapers and periodicals were published in 95 languages in 1991.” In 1920, the Indian National Congress, under Gandhi’s leadership, reorganized itself into provinces based on languages, even though these did not correspond to the administrative divisions of British India. This innovation recognized the power of local languages to touch the minds and hearts of far larger numbers of people than English or Hindi, ever could.
Such developments greatly stimulated the growth of a nationalist press in regional languages. Of the 20 largest newspapers published in India in 1994, seven originated in this (1920-32) period of intense nationalist idealism. These papers, measured on the basis of daily circulations, are Hindustan Times (English and Hindi), Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali and English), Aj (Hindi), Gujarat Samachar (Gujarati), Sandesh (Gujarati), Mathrubhumi (Malayalam) and Sakal (Marathi).
Jeffrey also focuses on institutions that were established to monitor the growth of newspapers like the British-created Department of Information and Broadcasting (which became a ministry after Independence) which included an advertising section. Within this was established a Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) in the 1950s, and state governments devised or expanded their own equivalents; Audit Bureau of Circulation, Registrar of Newspapers for India, and the National Readership Surveys. It was also a way of gathering data for the newspapers to solicit advertising.
Max Weber told a conference in 1910: ``The role the advertiser plays in the press budget [is] much more important than that of the subscriber.” For Jeffrey, this has proved to be so in India, in spite of the efforts of the state to control advertising and its effects. He says that in India, World War Two and Independence led major newspaper proprietors, a number of advertising agencies, and a handful of big companies to form an Audit Bureau of Circulation in Bombay in 1948. The requirements of advertising prompted the formation of the ABC but newspapers more than advertisers or advertising agencies were the main proponents and beneficiaries. Owners of established newspapers, mostly English-language, recognized that to ensure a steady flow of advertising revenue a mechanism was needed to reassure advertisers that their money was being effectively spent. Otherwise, how were they to be sure that the circulations newspapers claimed were genuine? The formation of ABC in 1949 represented a landmark in the history of Indian capitalism and consumerism. ABC membership as well as the total circulation of member publications grew from 2.7 million in 1950 to 7.1 million in 1960, and from 12.6 million in 1970 to 28.5 million in 1990.
The Registrar of Newspapers for India was established based upon the recommendations of a Press Commission set up in 1952. The registrar’s position was intended in part to remedy ‘the chaotic condition of the statistics’ relating to newspapers. It was implemented by amending the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, a British legislation devised ten years after the great revolt that required publications to register with local magistrates. Its main aim is to verify the circulation of 28,000 identified publications through the head office in New Delhi. Later the National Readership Surveys were also established.
The author’s research shows that by 1900, though literacy was only 5 per cent of the population, newspapers like the Hindu and Amrit Bazar Patrika, published in English, were a generation old. This underlined the elite nature of the ‘print mode’. He also has a fascinating chapter on the absence of Dalit journalists from newsrooms. An oft cited reason for their absence was their ‘lack of qualifications’. According to him, ``the position of Dalits in Indian newsrooms is at least two generations removed from that of Blacks (and perhaps Hispanics) on United States newspapers. Indian newspapers had not yet found it necessary to do what many United States newspapers did from the 1920s: cover Afro-American stories in a specially named section of the newspaper.” In 2001, when this essay was first published, Jeffrey felt that Dalits were too vulnerable either to proclaim their ‘Dalitness’ to their newspapers, when they do have jobs, or to start newspapers of their own.” In 2003, a few students of JNU, led by Anoop Kumar, began a small Dalit magazine called Insight. In 2010, it developed into a portal with staff, regularly uploading news about Dalits. The Insight Foundation also uses social media tools like Facebook to disseminate information about Dalits — much of which remains invisible from the mainstream media.
The book gives a good overview of the newspaper industry in India and promotes positive attitudes towards women and Dalits. With a background in media and gender, it is of no surprise that Jeffrey is now working on the cell phone revolution in India — another book to look forward to.
(The writer is a consultant editor.)