Books
SATELLITES OVER SOUTH ASIA by David Page and William Crawley. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
CAN we look at broadcasting in South Asia under the umbrella cover of one book? In the answer to that query lies the relevance and importance of Satellites Over South Asia. The Kashmir dispute, the Sri Lankan-LTTE conflict, the hijacking of the Indian Airlines aircraft and the Hritik Roshan controversy in Nepal, the April killing of BSF men in Bangladesh, continue to emphasise the differences between India and her neighbours. However, we know there exist inescapable bonds which link India to them.
For the purposes of this review it is sufficient to point towards the historical legacy of British rule, the religious, linguistic, social and cultural ties India shares with each country. Also, though democracy has a somewhat chequered history in South Asia, when research for satellites was conducted, there were democratically elected governments in each of the South Asian countries written about: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Last and more recently, is a common technological experience: signals from broadcast satellites over South Asia are available in all five nations. Thus, the people of the region can receive the same TV channels, watch the same programmes. To this extent, there is a homogeneity that provides a justification for Page and Crawley’s book.
Satellites Over South Asia is divided into 11 chapters (389 pages) with a detailed source material section and an index at the end. This represents the most comprehensive survey of South Asian broadcasting so far attempted. The organisation of the chapters is historical, tracing broadcasting from its origins in the British period, through the 30-odd years of terrestrial television (1960-1992), the positioning of satellites over Asia during the next decade – and the impact the latter exerted in each country. It combines historical and audience research, political and cultural analysis with an easy, readable writing style which makes the dense book highly accessible.
As the title states, the focus is on the spread of satellite TV in the region, its absorption into the fabric of society, and the influence both have exercised on public broadcasters in each nation. It grapples with the issue of ‘foreign’ satellite television (western, plus private Indian TV channels which are alien to our neighbours) and its ambivalent relationship with the public interest. How can the public interest be defined and then best served in an era of intense commercial competitiveness between 75-odd satellite and terrestrial TV channels across five nations? Chapters 10 and 11 are specifically devoted to these issues, an indication of how the public interest in all its multifaceted manifestations has been ignored, overwhelmed and perhaps rendered irrelevant as the marketplace imperatives of the broadcast industry occupy centre stage.
Page and Crawley take you through the labyrinth of the last decade in a linear country by country progression: quantitatively, in terms of developments, policies etc., and qualitatively in terms of public reactions to the phenomena. What do they come away with? Two rather obvious conclusions: first, Indian popular culture and news broadcasts dominate the region which, as a whole, resents India’s hegemony as it has in the past. Moreover, India’s neighbours have been unable to shield themselves from the pervasiveness of a channel like Zee or the undue influence of a serial such as Shanti, because developing their own television services demands the kind of finances they feel reluctant to spend on what seems to be a luxury.
Second, the government-funded public broadcaster in each case, has failed to stand firm against commercial television and in the process the public interest has been enslaved to market forces – an enslavement the public broadcasters have lent an arm and shoulder to by going commercial themselves. In between these two conclusions and suggestions on what can be done to restore a sense of balance between the public interest and commercial imperative, lies a tome of matter about everything on broadcasting in South Asia. This is said not dismissively but in admiration. Page and Crawley have unearthed a wealth of details relating to the subject in each instance. And they have understood the implications of what they have discovered. The criticism, then, is that there is an embarrassment of riches.
Satellites Over South Asia, is above all, the handiest handbook of broadcasting in the region. A kind of ready-reckoner, a digest and guide. That is its strength but also its weakness. Strength, because you can immediately obtain a brief history of broadcasting in the region. From an Indian standpoint, perhaps the book’s greatest asset is the reactions of the neighbours to the satellite invasion – whether in terms of public response or policy formulation; you appreciate what is happening in Pakistan or Sri Lanka and relate it to developments in India or the other countries. We learn that the other countries see us the same way as we see the West: as cultural imperialists eroding local arts and values.
For that reason alone, those interested in popular culture and how cultural codes operate across national borders should read the book. However, the devil of the book lies in the details. There are just too many details. You simply cannot absorb all the book offers. You see the trees and miss the woods, or vice-versa. You find yourself skipping large portions and reading only those sections which interest you. And you end up thinking: Why, I know India is the neighbourhood’s Big Brother, I know Bollywood is Hero No.1 in all these countries. So what’s new in the books conclusions?
We are, also, well-acquainted with the failures of Doordarshan and the Indian government. The latter’s to grant functional autonomy to the electronic media in the true sense of the word, the former’s to cherish and uphold its public service broadcasting mandate in the face of commercial pressures. Again, Page and Crawley offer no new insights which would enhance our understanding of either the political or economic compulsions faced by public interest (as they prefer to call it) broadcasting. Thus, if you were to judge Satellites from a national perspective, you would conclude that the book is useful to readers wanting an overview of broadcasting in the region, but not particularly useful if they want a deeper analysis of broadcasting in each society.
This is equally true of the prescriptions Page and Crawley recommend for the maladies of the media. These are well-meaning and blameless – autonomy, decentralisation, community radio/broadcasting, and so on – but once again, these cures are common knowledge. We also know why they’re not being offered or effected. An unregulated broadcast industry suits the government and the industry. The government can hold onto DD and AIR and hang the Damocles sword of regulation tantalisingly over private broadcasters to keep them in line; the broadcast industry can continue to flourish and grow the way it has in the last decade without bothering with the public interest beyond the television viewership rating points.
As Page and Crawley know only too well, there are enough recommendations made by far too many committees and experts, not only gathering but disintegrating into dust because no government has implemented them. From the Chanda Committee report of the mid-sixties to the Shunu Sen Committee report in 2000, the corridors of Shastri Bhavan, headquarters to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, are strewn with pages of unused, unwanted reports. There is no dearth of ideas regarding broadcasting in the country, or how Doordarshan and AIR may be restored and the public interest better served. It’s the spirit which is missing – and unwilling.
Everyone knows that. This is the trouble with Satellites Over Asia: it covers well-known territory. Admittedly with a legerdemain but it tends to be so comprehensive, it skirts the issues without ever dwelling long enough to offer potentially original analysis or solutions. A decade after satellite TV we do not need to be told that one of its impacts has been to change fashion styles. Or how women-oriented serials dominate the box. We’ve been there.
Writing about broadcasting in the region, India in particular, must go beyond the cause and effect of political (in)action and tele-imagery. We have reached the stage where we have to question the ideal of public service/interest broadcasting. Was it ever anything more than sometimes a good notion (to steal the title of a Joseph Heller novel)? A notion imposed by governments and idealistic people on a very expensive technology (because television is foremost technology-driven). Can it ever be anything more without very strong commercial underpinnings? Is not the content of television, generically, a fast-moving consumer good which changes when tastes change?
On the issue of the influence of television content: increasingly, TV appears to reflect the dialectic between tradition and modernity, the real and the aspirational. To what extent is television a reflection of reality? Of popular belief and the changing face of South Asia? Or is it, as is so often the case, the repository and upholder of middle class values, irrespective of nationality?
Lastly, is the question of the future of television in the age of convergence. The entire spectrum of broadcasting could be revolutionised as broadcasting, telephony and the internet merge and share the same distribution systems and technologies. Already cable operators in India offer internet services. But this is just the first, not last frontier. We’re on the threshold of a second media revolution within a decade. We need to know its implications. With the potential of big industrial houses such as Reliance Industries dominating the distribution business, we could see a whole new kind of Big Brother syndrome emerge – one in which he’s not only watching you but controlling the access to what you watch. What, then, happens to the public interest. Page and Crawley do address some of these issues, but fleetingly. We can only hope future books will devote more space to them.
Shailaja Bajpai
PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE POVERTY OF REFORMS: The South Asian Predicament edited by Imrana Qadeer, Kasturi Sen and K.R. Nayar. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
DO the poor have a right to medical care irrespective of their ability to pay for it? Should the state withdraw from its responsibility to provide accessible and affordable health care services to the poor? Should the public health system be dismissed primafacie without an analysis of the reasons for the state it is in? Shouldn’t reform remove inequities and facilitate the creation of a more just society? These are but some of the questions that Public Health and the Poverty of Reforms: The South Asian Predicament seeks to address.
Over six sections, and drawing from experiences from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Finland, the book seeks to: ‘(i) Draw attention to the challenges of health planning in South Asia, (ii) explore the depth and spread of influence of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) on the health sector and the people, and (iii) to highlight the need to grasp differences within the region and to avoid simplistic solutions.’
India, by the admission of the editors, occupies considerable place by virtue of its size and internal variations. Yet, the contributions specific to other countries in the region do not detract from the central themes and only reaffirm the similar challenges that these countries face. The descriptions of the hospitals and the health care systems, encouragement by the state of private practice, the gradual withdrawal of the state from the domain of public health provision for all and the emphasis on family planning are uncannily familiar.
The contributors to the book trace the development of the health care systems in the countries of the region and map the evolution, spread and impact of the SAP using a historical perspective. Except for a few chapters in the book that are likely to be of specific interest only to individuals involved in health care, for the most part the book locates health problems in the context of development in the region given its varied political, economic and social ramifications. The location of problems related to health in a wider context makes the book accessible and easy to read.
Unless the current state of the public health system is analysed in the light of what it has been systematically subjected to, dissatisfaction is likely to lead to a simplistic demand for any alternative – even private services. The excessive emphasis of governments in the region on family planning as the panacea to the problem of poverty and the role of international agencies – multilateral as well other international organisations – are systematically explored. Vertical programmes such as those for family planning, tuberculosis and malaria did not just lead to a diversion of resources, human and financial, away from the public health system but in fact made it inefficient. The impact of donor agencies on health policies of governments in the region and developing countries in general comes in for scathing criticism through the book. Imrana Qadeer aptly points out that ‘long term policies cannot be pursued on short term loans.’
The book does not seek to suggest that reforms as part of the SAP alone have been responsible for the state of public health services. It does, however, categorically seek to establish that reforms alone may not solve the public health problems encountered, particularly by the poor who are reeling under the cumulative impact of cutbacks in investment in the social sector.
The basis for privatization of services is questioned. Rama Baru is of the opinion that there is inadequate empirical evidence regarding the quality and efficiency of medical care provided by the private and public sectors. Anant Phadke on the other hand, based on studies conducted in Satara district, demolishes the notion of efficiency of private practitioners on grounds of their irrational drug therapy and monetary wastage. Based on the experience from Finland, Meri Koivusalo states that in terms of equity, market mechanisms and privatization in health care provision are likely to be problematic. The clincher does come in the form of Kasturi Sen pointing out that ‘while major changes based on market formulae are proposed for the developing world, few such changes are contemplated in the developed world.’
This book touches upon many a raw spot and pet peeve of mine. For many years, the timings of the local PHC were such that when the buses from villages in the block arrived, there would be just an hour left before it shut for the morning. It would open in the evening around the time the buses were to depart. The villagers would have no choice but to visit the government doctors at home. Private practice flourished as Kasturi Sen aptly describes; an example of the ‘public sector subsidising private activity’ existed. The death of a youth unable to afford private treatment sparked off a campaign to alter the timings to suit those travelling to the block headquarters for treatment. What incentive would doctors have for reporting a high incidence of malaria if it could lead to an epidemic being declared? After all, if the state declares an epidemic, government doctors must desist from their private practice.
Over a period of time the mystification of technology and modern medical treatment has also led to satisfaction becoming directly proportional to the cost of treatment. Private doctors and private practice flourish in this milieu. When an injectible can bring down the fever quickly, why rely on oral pills that are practically free. The experience of the Shahid hospital attempts to address this reality. Quite clearly today, the rich urban middle class and its counterparts in rural areas want quality treatment for a price, if it can be quick then all the better. Out goes rationality since technology seemingly comes only at a price. The price is not important, the service is. The poor who have no money want treatment of any kind, irrespective of the quality, even if debts must be incurred to ensure survival.
The tragedy is that the health services in the South Asian region are geared to address the need only of a particular section that wishes to exercise its choice and can afford to do so. The authors are therefore justified in their rejection of a decreased role for the state. If the needs of the poor are to be addressed then the regulatory functions of the state are essential.
For the proponents of structural adjustment and privatization, this book could pose several uncomfortable and provocative questions and would therefore make for an interesting read. For those convinced about the differential impact of structural adjustment policies this book could provide a reaffirmation. Nevertheless, the book is important inasmuch as it hopes to provoke thought on how the negative aspects of reforms can be arrested and contained?
The book makes it apparent that unless a critical mass of people commence questioning the path that the nations of South Asia have embarked upon, we will have wrought upon the poor of this region a grave injustice by our silence.
V.K. Madhavan
GLOBALIZATION AND NATIONALISM: The Changing Balance in India’s Economic Policy 1950-2000 by Baldev Raj Nayar. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
MOST studies of Indian ‘globalization’ experiences tend to operate on the extremes. While the critics, and they are increasingly a minority, paint the turn-around in economic policy as disastrous, a pandering to the current neoliberal orthodoxy, ostensibly at the behest of the Bank-Fund regime, the proponents portray the early years as an autarkik failure. Balanced accounts, and these are rare, analyse the shifts in the relative emphasis given to the market and the state, both internal and external, as a slow evolution – a response of our policy-makers to the changing environment.
While 1991 or 1985, depending upon which date you favour, did mark a rupture in thought, the undeniable fact is that the Indian economy since Independence can best be described as a shifting compromise between market and state, or as Baldev Nayar prefers, globalization and nationalism. At its core, ‘economic globalization presumes the existence of a supra-national, borderless economy with its own laws of motion, encompassing the various local economies into a single worldwide division of labour, rendering national governments into municipalities.’
A softer version treats globalization as a process in which the international economy becomes more closely integrated with domestic economic agents increasingly oriented to global rather than particular national markets, even as the state continues to remain central to national economic management. Economic nationalism, on the other hand, is constituted by the paramountcy of national economic interest against the claims of other nations.
Nayar’s broad sweep study seeks to analyse the impact of these two opposing forces, or more correctly their interdependance, on national security and autonomy, changing role of state (planning) and markets, the distortions caused by the changing balance, and the shifting set of losers and gainers. Overall he remains convinced that while the role of the state has shrunk in the last two decades, it is hardly irrelevant. Equally, if India has not swung to extremes, it is as a result of its size, diversity and a democratic structure which necessitates seeking validation from the people before introducing ruptures.
What is surprising is that Nayar, like many other scholars, believes that substantive economic reforms, not just short term stabilization or even structural adjustment but throughgoing changes, requires a degree of coercion. Of course, he sweetens this by arguing that democracies may need to work with lower expectations of growth since they cannot afford to be negligent to issues of distribution. Alternatively, handling the pangs of economic reform may lead to a transformation of the political system.
Within this broad framework, the story as outlined by Nayar is competent, though without any surprises. The policy choices exercised by different regimes – Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi – are seen as pragmatic, ideological preferences tempered by the needs of the time. True, the weightages given to the nature of industry to be developed, the orientation of these industries to the world economy and the economic agents chosen for development did change with the pendulam swinging from state-run heavy industry to market-based consumer goods. But Nayar’s narrative does not paint any regime as sacrificing national interests. Like many others, he too feels that we probably relied too much on the home market and were probably too sceptical of private capital, both national and foreign, but at no time did we foreclose any options.
More useful is the chapter ‘Changing the Balance 1991-96’, which outlines the pressure on the Rao-Singh regime and the choices made. Nayar, while recognising the external factors, argues that the choices were nationally determined and that any other regime would have acted similarly. Clearly by the early ’90s, the potential of the earlier path had more or less been exhausted. Nevertheless, since the crisis caused by fiscal profligacy disappeared rapidly, the impetus to carry the reform process forward too dissipated.
The rest of the book, including the analysis of economic policy and performance under the UF and NDA regimes, focuses on the limits to reform set by the balance of class forces within and the need to ‘sell’ shifts in strategy and emphasis to different constituencies. Interestingly, while the BJP led NDA harps on swadeshi, its actual choices have been a continuation of the past. It is thus not surprising that its greatest opposition has come not from the left but the RSS, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and the BJP trade unions.
As a book of political economy rather than only economics, the relative absence of politics in the overall analysis is disappointing. More than formal policy announcements and ideological rhetoric, what has consistently been neglected in India are the details of rules and procedures which govern how wealth is created. So if the state run public sector is inefficient, it is because it is made so, with bureaucrats and politicians seeking to extract rent from it. Similarly, the private sector, big or small, has to work through a plethora of regulations.
There is, of course, little recognition of the needs and urges of the marginal players – informal sector labour, self-employed artisans, petty trade and landless/unskilled labour. In Nayar’s world, the terms caste, tribe and ethnicity do not appear. So for instance, the whittling away of the Vth Schedule which governs tribal areas to facilitate entry of industrial capital does not even find mention in the book. If one is serious about creating a larger constituency for economic reform, than our elites need to move beyond the world of the corporates. In the end, while Nayar is undoubtedly more balanced and comprehensive than many of the other analysts, his framework remains much too limited to give us a fuller idea of either globalization or nationalism.
Harsh Sethi
