Are Indian media’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ really dirty enough?

[fawwaxs]

We could be witnessing a rare and overdue shift in the Indian media’s approach to issues that were hitherto seen as taboo. It is not common in this era of easy jingoism to find journalists, with their own notions of patriotism and nationalism, questioning axioms of state policy towards, say, its intelligence outfits. This ice has now been broken. A tentative though absorbing discussion was held and it signalled a new beginning, which probably needs to be emulated in other regions of South Asia, more so in ISI-dominated Pakistan. Hopefully the Indian initiative will be followed with relentless persistence for it to bear fruit. It should not be abandoned like a tricky news report that got spiked because it would be inconvenient for powerful interests.

It is not often that a former head of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) is seduced by the media into revealing his worldview at a public forum where he ends up saying something both revealing and potentially embarrassing to the system he served. Take the revelation the other day that of the IB’s many tasks its foremost duty was to protect the state at any cost, even if it required taking thousands of Indian lives. The blunt message had a blood-curdling ring to it even if it did seem to match with the state’s current ruinous path of bludgeoning the weak into submission to serve the powerful. It is not often that a group of Indian journalists come together to bell the proverbial cat and ask the question whether it was not time that the secretive foreign spy agency RAW and the domestic IB were made accountable to the public, to the parliament. Who are the people who made the rare discussion possible?

In April 2008 a dozen energetic men and women, veteran journalists all, created a group in Delhi they called Foundation of Media Professionals (FMP). They contributed a hundred thousand rupees each to get the project off the ground. If it works out, and there is no known reason why it shouldn’t, after an impressive array of public debates on a clutch of forbidden subjects the group has managed to organise, it could be pioneering a renaissance of sorts the media need to boost their credibility, not just in India, but across South Asia.

Since the old breed of Indian journalists that mesmerised and spurred many of us into becoming members of the profession were largely led by those who had a bad “social reputation” so to speak, it would be useful to know how the founder members of Delhi-based FMP measure up to their peers in this vital acid test. Those were men and women who would not easily find a landlord to rent them a house because they were perceived as wayward, men who would be shunned by a girl’s family if they asked for her hand because they had a reputation for erratic nights at the press club and therefore with not enough stable income to “settle down” in life responsibly.

These were accusations of course with a tiny, almost negligible, grain of truth about men and women who were thus tarred mainly because they were not willing to be co-opted by a system they had sworn to stalk and expose. Their “shadowy” reputation hinged of course on their ability to irreverently quiz the system’s political and bureaucratic representatives. This attribute probably became a hindrance in their marketability in the middle class marriage market (if they were in it in the first place) or in finding a roof over their heads. That the Feroze Gandhi effect on national politics had not completely waned in the seventies helped the cause of journalists, who saw Nehru’s son-in-law as an icon for probity and scrutiny in politics. It is tempting to call the founding members of the FMP Indian Media’s Dirty Dozen.

That the Nehruvian state has given way to what may be called a Narendra Modi-friendly state – not only because of a huge rightwing slide but because of the enormous corporate backing and brazen collusion with big business it now commands – has added to the responsibilities of the FMP in shepherding the discourse and the struggle for a truly free and independent media. It may begin by asking the IB chief which state was he serving – Nehru’s or Modi’s? The group’s intentions seem transparent enough. However, given the ease with which so many media NGOs have sprouted on both sides of the Murdochian intervention, domestically and in a cross-border sense – some with clearly dubious agenda of shoring up the system instead of questioning it – the FMP will be watched closely before a fair assessment can be arrived at.

In its own words the FMP’s philosophy is transparent. It says: “Though we are traditionally referred to as journalists, we have decided to call ourselves differently to emphasise the importance we place on professionalism, so that we can be true to our vocation as watchdogs of society. This is not a forum for the media executive who might be into marketing, management or space selling. Nor is membership open to amateurs, for whom journalism is a hobby and not the main source of income.”

FMP believes journalist cannot be politically neutral. “Ours is not a sterile craft that seeks merely to entertain or inform. We confess to just one prejudice: liberty.” To pursue this single-minded agenda the foundation promises to be non-partisan, while welcoming members of all political persuasions.“Our intention is to strive towards the nobility of our calling and its high-minded purpose. We will try to inculcate and amplify best practices. We will debate issues impinging on our profession.” The group – which so far has a poorly designed website FMP Home – says it would recognise and reward excellence but I think that should be its least important pursuit.

Last week it invited India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and a former diplomat known to be a hawk on Pakistan to explain why the country needs to filter foreign delegates who are invited here to participate in public seminars and academic discussions. What was the need for a regime that smacked of thought police? It was comforting to thus learn from the interaction that there was no real or credible reason for India to stop people from coming to the country to exchange ideas on politics, science or any subject under the sun. The fact that the same people could get a visitors visa with far less harassment belied the security ruse that was being lamely given.

At a time when the Indian media seems to have lost the plot it once flaunted as a major asset (Feroze Gandhi, remember?) and as its credibility gets rapidly eroded and when it is beginning to be seen as an adjunct of the state and its many corporate collusions, a group of a dozen journalists who question the drift is reason to rejoice. But are the Dirty Dozen dirty enough to take on the challenges that a power-drunk and increasingly wayward state poses?

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