This is the Part-V of the series on political communication By S.Narendra Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officerto Government, and Spokesperson.
The five-year plans right from the first one
gave flesh and blood to the political promises of the Indian National Congress.
Gandhiji had set up a community development
project known as the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa. However, after returning to
India, he had not done anything with it on homeland. Perhaps, the affairs of the
Indian National Congress kept him too preoccupied to experiment with anything
else! But after his death, a country-wide Community Development movement was
started with much fanfare in 1952. One does not know whether this was inspired
by Gandhiji’s Tolstoy farm or not. It
may come as a great surprise for the present generation to know that this CDP
or community development project was undertaken in partnership with USA. An
American trained Indian, S.K.Dey had sold this CD idea to Nehru. In the soaring
idealism that pervaded the air then, CD arrived as a pathway to Utopia, in some
ways a short cut to for solving the myriad problems faced by India’s villages
due to centuries of neglect. CD neatly fitted with the Left-of-centre politics of INC and its leaders who were
fascinated by Socialist thinking. CDP
was integrated into the first five year plan ‘for initiating the process of
transformation of the social and economic life of villages’.
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| S K Dey with Argentine Marxist revolutionary |
Politically it was marketed as the Gandhian
concept for developing villages in a participatory framework as self-sufficient
entities. To quote one of the thousand-odd scholars who flourished on the CD
concept, the initial programme aimed at the upliftment of the rural poor, covered
agriculture, animal husbandry, roads, health, education, housing, employment, social
and cultural activities’ ( Arent they the same subjects covered under the Rural
Development programmes and Panchayat Raj even now?) There was also the ultimate
Utopian idea of villagers pooling farm lands.
The first Plan allocated substantial sum for
community development, and a separate ministry under S.K.Dey was created. A
central institute was set up for training policy makers,
development administrators and communication officials and I had the privilege of getting trained in that
institute. Very symbolically, it was located at Karnal, near Kurukshetra, where
the Mahabharata war was supposed to have been fought. The officials trained in
the institute were supposed to be at the forefront of waging the much needed epic
battle against poverty, with farm development as a core activity.
The large number of officials trained at
Nilokhehri had become its most vocal advocates and communicators. The official
PR machinery PIB had a special cell for ‘publicising’ CD. The I & B
ministry started a specialised journal
titled ‘Kurukshetra’ for spreading awareness
about CD philosophy and activities.
In many ways than one, CD was an effective political mobilisation channel that
to a large extent helped the ruling party in electoral terms. Late prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi unsuccessfully attempted a similar political mobilisation
through Panchayat Raj reforms and push rural development as his party’s patent on
the eve of 1989 Parliament elections.
PRapport readers would recall that the five-year
plan created a vast and unique official media system and an information
bureaucracy. The Five-Year Plan publicity division (later renamed Field Publicity)
for undertaking direct communication overtures to the public, The official advertising wing DAVP spawned a vast network
of field exhibition units. There was the Song and Drama division for harnessing
folk media for development communication. Already, the central government had a
country-wide PR network-PIB- for liaisoning with the news media. A specialised
unit was already in existence for producing documentaries. Under an official
order, all cinema theatres were expected to screen the official documentaries
before showing the main feature film – something this generation of
communicators would not be aware of! All India Radio network got further
expanded. In the name of development communication, the Union Government, thus,
came to own and run a powerful communication system. The centralised planning
structure and planning processes, along with communication network soon came to
serve the political purposes of the Congress party that had a pan-India hold. This
vast network was deployed to publicise the five year plans, especially the
community development work.
Official Media for National Themes:
Right from the beginning, the leaders of the Republic were worried about
divisive forces raising their head. Such apprehension had a certain basis in
the initial years of Independence. The first Home minister Sardar Vallabhai
Patel had bulldozed the hundreds of princely states to integrate with the new
India. While the political map presented the picture of a united India, the
cultural and linguistic identities, along with regional identities were very
strong. These were seen as a serious threat to the unity of a nascent
democratic India. The INC presented itself as the only entity that could save
India from an imminent fragmentation. AIR, along with the large central
communication machinery, was entrusted with the task of spreading the message
of unity and national harmony.
The demand for the creation of states on
linguistic basis had gathered momentum and after some dithering by PM Nehru. But
this transformation took place only after Potti Sriramulu undertook fast for
the creation of Andhra Pradesh and became a martyr. This caused much violence
across Andhra region of then undivided Madras State. The violent communist
movement in Telangana area was perceived as endangering the national integrity.
The north east frontier (present north eastern states) was in turmoil. In Punjab,
there were agitations for creating the Punjabi suba, led by Master Tara Singh. Much
before such agitations came on the scene, the government of independent India had passed an infamous
law-Rajaji Act (known as such because the then Union home minister
Rajagopalachari had initiated this legislation for Prevention of Objectionable
Matters) for controlling the media that was likely to cause unrest among the
people and pose a threat to national
unity.
In retrospect, one could only say that the strong
regional affiliations and tensions were largely on account of absence of
communication infrastructure that had allowed people to lead their lives in culturally and physically bounded spaces.
In such a situation the centre took the role of a unifier and looked upon the
official media as a stop gap substitute for the
absence of travel facilities like roads, transport and communication
which could have enabled Indians to discover their commonness and a develop a common national identity.
The policy makers in Delhi tended to suspect
the political intentions of the States, particularly if they happened to be
ruled by non-Congress parties. The first ever Centre-State clash occurred in
1959, in which Indira Gandhi had led an agitation against the popularly elected
state government of Kerala and managed to topple it. The central government
media had been extensively used to paint the state government as a danger to
Indian democracy.
When I joined the central (it was not yet
Indian Information Service) Information Service, there were elaborate
guidelines on national integration communication. The policy makers in Delhi were
inclined to doubt the states’ ability to
think in broader national interest. The official media was therefore, enjoined upon
to constantly plug in ‘national themes’.
There has been a huge academic debate on
whether in a liberal democracy, the federal government should or should not
engage in such communication. Purists argued that the Federal Government that
uses public money should be neutral in its messaging. Both in Canada and in
Australia there are strict guidelines for conducting such official communication.
A national body oversees the expenditure incurred and the tone and tenor of
federal government messaging on issues which touch on regional autonomy and
identities and ‘national’ themes.
To return to India, this suspicion of the States
transformed itself into a communication policy that blocked all attempts by
states to create their own multi-media ‘publicity’ machinery. The Planning Commission
would not approve states’ proposals for setting up such state official media machinery,
especially broadcast facility and film production. They had to be contended
with only PR and advertising departments.
The Emergency of 1962: As a result of the
central monopoly over media, including the airwaves, it conferred an enormous
advantage to the ruling party at the centre. During election campaigns from
1957 onward, the ruling dispensation generously used the official media
machinery that had put the opposition and the states at a great disadvantage.
The national emergency promulgated in the wake of the Chinese aggression had
enabled the centre to tighten its grip over the media and also offered a sort
of convenient legitimacy for media control, their use and even abuse. The
external threat served another very useful purpose. Various parties and leaders
who were fancying independence for certain regions were put on notice that the security
of states that separate from India could be endangered by an external enemy.
Such concentration of media power also led to
protests and demands for breaking up the centre’s media monopoly, especially over
the broadcast media. The first but very tentative
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| The authorsunarendra@gmail.com |
look at the extent of central control over the broadcast
media and possible autonomy
for it was undertaken by the A.K.Chanda committee on Broadcasting set up
by Indira Gandhi in her capacity as the I &B minister in 1966.
Several aspects of government policy and
national life were shaken by the India-China war of 1962. Besides claiming the
political career of Defence Minister Krishna
the war claimed several casualties. Among them was the third five year plan. It
also heralded the twilight period of Nerhu era and decline of the Congress, And
the space for questioning many of the political, economic and foreign policy areas hitherto treated as sacrosanct
got enlarged.(To Continued with focus on Foreign Media Entry ban)
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