Corruption folklore and a hapless PM - Blast from Nehru's past

      

     

Political communication (PC) is the oxygen of an open democracy like India. In the first decade after independence, PC was mostly  one way from the government, that meant mostly from the first prime minister Nehru to the political system and to the people. It was almost direct communication, not mediated by media. The latter was prone to report Nehru and what the government said and did at length. Its reach was limited. While Nehru was keen to provide adequate space for the opposition, it was puny, in the face of the Congress juggernaut. However, there was a sudden political churn at fag-end of the decade. Robust signs of challenge to Nehru’s authority, government and  Congress party government and the policies appeared...Also, sings of emergence of dynastic politics. Read the fifth in a series by S Narendra, former adviser to PMs and Govt Spokesman.

While the Karnataka government raised a controversy in trying to mark  Tipu Sultan’s birthday on November 20^th, not many in India would remember or like to remember November 21st. On this day in 1962 China declared unilateral ceasefire after occupying territories in North East Frontier (in present North East states, especially Aurnachal Pradesh and Assam) and inflicting a humiliating military blow to India. The one month long Indo-China war ended on this day. In a broadcast to the nation, Prime Minister Nehru had said ‘my heart goes out to the people of Assam......’ as the ill-equipped and under-clothed army had limped away to  Tejpur, Guwahati was expected to be under threat. President Radhakrishnan in a radio broadcast had mildly upbraided the government for its lack of anticipation of Chinese threat and absence of preparation.

An Express report on Chinese aggression

The then Times of India editor N.J.Nanporia in a scoop of the century,  through series of articles written from about November 14^th onwards had predicted such a unilateral ceasefire by China.

K. Hanumanthiah, Congress MP and a former chief minister, in a quotable quote had said “We seem to be fascinated by the word ‘non’. It was non-violence to begin, later non-alignment’. It has come to mean that half the cabinet is aligned with Washington and the other half with USSR and a prime minister in between.

A rare picture of a pensive Nehru, with a heavily slumped shoulders, clasping  hands at his back, walking alone and away from the camera  (T.S.Satyan a great photographer from Karnataka, had taken one of them)  in Parliament corridor had appeared in newspapers. It pictured the state of the nation’s morale and the shattered ideals and optimism which had characterised the political communication until then. A new questioning phase in PC was palpable.

The political rumblings had arrived in 1959, when C.Rajagopalachari launched the Swatanatra party, as a counter to the Congress party’s  embrace of socialistic pattern of society. The Bharatiya Jan Sangh founded by Shyam Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 was also a critic of the government’s  tilt against the private sector. Thus, there was some convergence of views  and the two began to coordinate their attack on the government. In the meanwhile, the Communist party of India that had opposed the Congress party and Nehru in the initial years had softened its stance, as its external mentors in USSR had now become India’s economic partners and the prime minister’s close friends. This party also had allies like Krishna Menon in the Congress party.

The Communist party had newspapers in different languages including  its English magazine New Age and through the People’s Publishing House the Communists were able to penetrate the public opinion space. On the other side of the spectrum   was the Current weekly by D.F.Karaka (in early fifties Karaka had written a book- ‘The Lotus Eater from Kashmir- and presented it to Nehru).The latter had also exposed the in -flow of money from USSR to PPB house and foreign exchange remittance to some leaders of the Communist party.

In order to fill the big gap in India’s foreign reserves, the government had introduced a scheme under which Indians could receive foreign remittances without facing any questions. Russi Karanjia of the Blitz weekly was reportedly another beneficiary of Soviet generosity. While the Blitz was blazing away against critics of the Prime Minister, Karaka was soliciting one Rupee contribution from the readers of Current for fighting communism.

Corruption Folklore: PM Nehru, who had declared very early in his stint that he would hang from the nearest tree any one found to be corrupt, was facing serious corruption charges against his partymen in government. His son in law Firoze Gandhi had mounted the attack on corruption by exposing the LIC-Munhdra scandal in 1957. A judicial enquiry headed by Justice M.C.Chagla indicted the  finance minister T.T.Krishnamachari (TTK) and the finance secretary H.M.Patel ,forcing them to quit the government. The ‘folk-lore on corruption was spreading’ was the warning given by  A.D.Gorwala committee, set up ban  the government for suggesting anti-graft steps. It had found that ministers, legislators and bureaucrats were involved in corruption. While the prime minister’s integrity was not under question, he was seen as  somewhat ambivalent in dealing with the corrupt (there was a precedent before  Dr,Manmohan Singh).

For example, Krishna Menon came into the cabinet even though he was under the shadow of corruption during his tenure as the High  Commissioner in U.K.  TTK came back into the cabinet in 1963.The Punjab chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon was alleged to be corrupt  but was seen to  be in PM’s good books. There were several other names of ministers  in states and the centre who were considered to be of doubtful integrity.

Poor Image  of Private Sector: The highly government controlled and regulated private sector was not above board either. The political communication on behalf of PSUs had put the latter on a pedestal, extolling the fact that PSUs represented the best  in private and public ownership (It is now the turn of PSUs to face  this criticism  as inefficient and prone to political misuse and calls for their dismantling mounted in the wake of the economic reforms of 1991) .

Next:Part VI- Pre-Emergency Sledging Phase. Garibi Hatao, and 1971 elections,AIR misuse attacked by Opposition, Media represents 00.001 percent-Mrs Gandhi, Newsprint Crisis. Media Urges government to set up newsprint mills, Price-Page Schedule Struck Down by SC, BBC Thrown Out, Myth &Reality Campaign by Frank Moraes, B.G.Verghese Removed from HT for his campaign on Mrs.G, foundation Laying spree, STD arrival worries government, spying on foreign media, JP's Gujarat and Bihar agitations queer political pitch, Student Strikes and Media Strikes etc

This implied that the private sector not only did not serve the public purpose but was dominated by purely profit (greed?) motive. What was more damaging to the private sector image were  reports of mismanagement of firms, manipulations of their accounts and stock market rigging. This prompted the government to set up the  Vivian Bose Commission to enquire into more than a dozen companies including the Bonnet &  Coleman company publishing the Times of India and several other papers, controlled by Ramakrishna Dalmia-Jain family. This family owned airways and an Insuracne company as well. Ramakrishna Dalmia was jailed after a trial on charges of embezzlement of funds of companies under his management. Sriyans Prasad Jain  also faced similar charges. The government had moved for removal of the Board of Directors of TOI group of newspapers headed by S.P Jain on the ground that it was being mismanaged and company funds diverted.  Even the ownership of TOI was under question. TOI editor had appealed to the government to transfer the ownership to a cooperative.  (During the emergency full ownership was restored to Ashok Jain.). A commission of enquiry had established serious fraud charges against S.P.Jain but action was not taken against him reportedly because he enjoyed the protection of the home minister G.L.Nanda. Again Nanda’s reputation for probity was unquestioned.

The Vivian Bose Commission in a separate enquiry into the state of Audit in the private sector had  found that the institution of auditors had lost  credibility, as some famous auditing firms had conducted audits but had not cared to check the records for their veracity (in the  same way Arthur Anderson and other so-called Audit biggies had audited multi-national firms such as ENRON, WorldCom in 2000-02 and Meryl Lynch, AIG in 2007 ).

The Tatas and some others  had even quit FICCI, as S.P.Jain accused of misappropriation of funds of companies he was managing and facing legal proceedings had refused to quit as FICCI president (reminiscent of the case of the former BCCI boss K.Srinivasan controversy!)

C.Rajagopalachari, had coined his famous ‘Licence -Permit Raj’ as a short hand for denoting the prevailing corruption. The country had adopted the decimal system (1957) and Naya Paisa became the currency replacing the earlier Rupee, Ana, and Paisa (a Rupee had 16 anas further divided into 192 Paisa). For the first time, aluminium alloy coins came in circulation, replacing  genuine silver, copper and brass coins. Rajaji, commenting on this transformation of coins, had written that the rot in the government was so bad that even the coins minted by such a government had lost their weight and begun to float in water (the light weight 10 Naya Paisa coin actually floats in water for some time before sinking and that was a fun game kids of my generation played!).

PSU – PR: PSUs were duty bound to be more open and expected to engage in public communication about their activities. This burnished the government image as well. As a result they became the patrons of PR and pioneers by setting up well staffed PR units with good budgets. This was in contrast to the private firms. Excepting some big, far sighted  houses like the Tatas, very few private firms engaged in PR. Of Course, they had advertising wings. Even in the  field of advertising, corporate PR and advertising was not in much vogue. Most brands in the market were extension of international brands, as Indian FMCG and other products were a very small part of the market. This supplementary position of private sector continued for several years after independence.  

Overall, the (mis) behaviour tendency of the private sector and the  political communication that derided the profit motive of private enterprise  largely have gone to  condition the Indian  public perception of  the private firm. It has not come out of such a negative image even after role of the PSUs and the government in the economy have undergone a substantial change in the post-reform period.

Father-Daughter in Driving Seats: On the political front there were some unusual turns. The PM’s daughter Indira Gandhi had been made the Congress president in 1959. Although senior party leaders were very resentful of  Mrs Gandhi’s elevation, there was no open opposition because  Nehru was the tallest party leader and a vote catcher. For the first time in history in 1957 elections, a communist government (headed by E.M.S.Namboodaripad) had come in Kerala. With the active support of Mrs Gandhi as the Congress president, a massive agitation was mounted for toppling this duly elected state government. Religious sentiments were stoked for the move.  The president of India Dr.Rajendra Prasad (according to  the autobiography of  D.P.Misra, a Congress chief minister  of M.P and a staunch supporter of Nehru and Mrs Gandhi)  very reluctantly had approved Nehru cabinet decision for dismissing this elected government. This was the first instance of the central government misusing Article 356 of the Constitution that vests power in the Union government for removing a state government, if the latter was not in a position to be carried out in accordance with the constitution. The prime minister was roundly criticised for using his daughter for this political putsch.

There were sudden  developments  on the northern borders of India derailing the much hyped ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai,Bhai’ and Panch Sheela declarations. The Chinese army had occupied Aksai Chin (part of Pak occupied Kashmir) heights ceded to it by Pakistan. China had ended autonomy of Tibet  and the Dalai Lama had sought asylum in India. Around this time, there were unconfirmed reports (now confirmed in a biography of Gen,K.S.Thimmiah, though) that the army chief Gen. Thimmiah had offered to quit his post. The army chief had differed with the defence minister Krishna Menon over the defence forces preparedness to meet the Chinese threat. Reportedly, there was pressure to cut the defence spending that was just a little over Rs300 crore. The Indian Express had reported that factories meant for making guns and ammunition had made improved coffee filters under the orders of the minister. Also, Krishna Menon was alleged to have interfered with senior army appointments.

Nehru and Krishna Menon 

There was a blistering attack on Menon in Parliament by one of the opposition stalwarts- J.B.Kripalani, a freedom fighter and a Gandhian who was not afraid of  differing with Gandhi. Kripalani was now in the socialist party and a critic of Nehru. In a memorable speech in Parliament, Kripalani said; ‘under Menon’s watch we have lost 12,000 square miles of our territory without striking a single blow “ (reference to Chinese occupation of Aksai Chin). It seemed that the entire opposition ire against Nehru was being heaped on Menon, seen to be a favourite of the prime minister. There were media reports that some of the members of the cabinet were not even on talking terms with Menon.

The 1962 parliamentary elections were held against backdrop of  several challenges before the government. While the Congresss victory was a foregone conclusion  (even a lamp post would get elected under the Congress flag, to quote Frank Anthony M.P),  the entire nation’s focus on  North Bombay constituency where Menon was challenged by Kripalani. It was a high profile and a tough contest at that, in which Nehru staked his prestige. One campaign poster on behalf of Kripalani had this memorable ditty: ’Chini hamla hote hai/Menon saab sote hai’ (from the book on this contest by Dastur). The Congress party  saved Menon’s seat by investing enormous  resources. The poll campaign was remarkable for its high decibel level that inaugurated the confrontationist politics.

Rajaji had galvanised and united the splintered opposition. Nehru had carpingly described the Swatantra party as the party of tycoons, landlords and princes representing a bygone age. The Congress juggernaut, as expected, rolled on and won 361 seats out of 488 contested. But the opposition despite its disadvantages had scored. The Communist party was the biggest gainer with 29 seats. Swatantra party made its debut with 18 seats. Jan Sangh touched double digits (14). What the opposition lacked in numbers in parliament, it made it up in terms of the personalities.

Krishna Menon’s poll victory turned out to be a pyrrhic one. In October, the Chinese had moved their army into Indian territory and inflicted heavy defeats. This post has begun with the mention of  events leading up to November 21^st, 1962.

The politics and political communication then on moved into a new phase, replacing the single most  dominant voice of the first prime minister with many. The most significant outcome of India’ s debacle on its borders  was that for the first time the hitherto unthinkable question - Who After Nehru -  began making the rounds. A year later, an American writer By Welles Hengan published his bestselling book with the same title.

Freedom of the Press under Govt shelter

This is the Part-VI of the series on political communication By S.Narendra, Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer to Government, and Spokesperson.

Disclaimer: Some of the media friends may find part of the content shocking!

Political communication is the oxygen of an open democracy like India. During the first decade-and-a-half after independence, such political communication closely followed the economic development model and foreign policy stance adopted by the government. The ‘Cold War’ was at its height, along with massive propaganda battle for mind space. India was struggling to navigate through the complex international politics. One of the far sighted measures introduced during this time was to protectthe Indian media against global competition and propaganda war. This was aimed at allowing Indian media to develop and grow and evolve their own perspectives on internal developments and India’s engagement with the outside world. While the foreign media enjoyed as much freedom as the domestic one in reporting and commenting on Indian affairs, it could not exert a dominant influence on public opinion. Read on this Part-V in series of political communication.

           

Some samples of reporting by the international media would show that Indian policy of restricting foreign media entry in the formative years of Indian democracy was not totally misplaced.

During the Falkland conflict in 1982 between Great Britian and  Argentina, the All India Radio morning broadcast had this headline: British armed forces are poised to free Falklands (Islas Malvinas in Spanish). This story was sourced to Reuters, a British agency. Because AIR had used a British source, it reflected the British view point and ignored Argentina’s legitimate claim to these islands in Antartic ocean, closer to that country than Britain that had gained control over the islands in 1833.

In 1980s and 1990s, when there was separatist militancy in Punjab, most western agencies reporting this agitation used to  begin their stories thus: ‘Punjab,  homeland of Sikhs’. It was ignored that half of the Sikh population of India lived outside Punjab, and India has been their homeland.

Until mid-1990s, the western media showed a bias in reporting terrorism in J&K. Once the US government softened its stance on J&K dispute and began to view it as a bilateral issue between Paksitan and India, their media changed tack.  When Tony Blair government asserted in 1997 that it had a role in resolving this dispute, Reuters reports invariably toed the British government line on this subject. Once a new government came to power and changed this policy, the agency stories on the dispute too underwent a noticeable shift.

India has been a victim of terrorism exported from Pakistan for long. However, India’s complaints on this score went unheeded in the west. Their media largely reflected the western governments’ line and viewed the separatists as Kashmir freedom fighters. Post 9/11 terrorist attack, however, there was a 360-degree turn in the stand of those governments and media belonging to those countries in New York.

Looking at these instances of foreign media behaviour, one would begin to appreciate Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s move in 1956 to bar the entry of foreign media into India and thus facilitate the Indian media to develop. The Union Cabinet in May 1956 formally put restrictions on foreign news agencies from directly feeding Indian newspapers and other news outlets. To quote from the Cabinet decision: “Our policy should be in all such cases (of news dissemination) be that communication facilities can be granted only where the distribution of news (by such agencies) within  the country is to be effected through an Indian news agency, owned, managed by Indians... which would have full and final authority in the selection of foreign news...and would be in a position to supply Indian news in reasonable volume to the foreign news agencies with whom they have a working arrangement”.

This policy continued almost unchanged until 1991.

It is amply clear the discussions recorded in that cabinet meeting that the government was keen to project developments abroad in India but also project its own point of view on international matters. It did not want the foreign media to thrust its western bias on Indian public opinion. The international information order historically was dominated by the media from the West (please refer to MacBride report, UNESCO 1978).

The prime minister, who also shaped the foreign policy right from the interim government days, was wary of the ‘cold war’ between the west and the Soviet Union (as early as 1946, Winston Churchill had famously used the expression “Iron Curtain’ has fallen on Europe). The ‘cold war’ had impacted the global media and divided them into advocates of rival ideologies. The rival military alliances such as NATO,SEATO,CENTO had been forged by the West which faced the Warsaw Pact allies. It may be impolitic to call the media partisan but their reporting and commentaries were visibly coloured. Never before in history, in a peace time, countries competed  so  fiercely for  propagating  their ideologies through massive propaganda apparatus such as the Voice Of America, Radio Free Europe, US Information Agency, Radio Soviet Union, Soviet information Service, Radio China and Radio KMT. The academia in all the contending countries had received patronage from their respective governments  for undertaking research  on perceived ‘enemy countries’  and contributed to the raging propaganda war.

Media Freedom Upheld: In a way, by 1956, India had openly embraced ‘non-alignment’ foreign policy, as it did not want to be drawn into ‘cold war’. In some ways, the government was extending this policy to media, especially the Indian wire agencies. Full credit must be given to Nehru for upholding the freedom of the press.

In an often quoted speech at AINEC or editors body, he had said that he prefers a chaotic Press to a (officially) disciplined Press.

In a deliberate move, the government set up separate official agencies for media relations and government advertising. Detailed guidelines were prescribed for distributing advertising budget in order to ensure that it was not used as a tool for influencing  the Press.

Although the Indian news agencies received indirect financial and other support much as agencies  like AFP, Reuters and broadcasters like CNN had received official patronage from their home governments. Successive governments, of course until the infamous 1975 Emergency, did not try to arm twist them. As a result of the government maintaining an arm’s length, Indian agencies like PTI and UNI  gained professional credibility unlike the national news agencies set up in many  Afro-Asian countries.

The relative protection from competition enjoyed by the Indian media has enabled it to develop as a robust wing of Indian democracy as the 1956 Cabinet resolution prevailed right up to 1991. This policy was relaxed during 1998-2000 to allow FDI in Indian media. Further, as the Indian media was able to present an independent and Indian perspectives on  international issues, it was possible for Indian public opinion to gain access to international news and views  that was not influenced by cold war politics. However, it has to be acknowledged here that the coverage of foreign news in Indian media, especially AIR was not only limited  but such news and views largely  were sourced from foreign media. There was no restriction on the circulation of foreign newspapers or access to foreign broadcasts. But not many individuals could afford them. The Indian newspapers were permitted to  enter into arrangements with foreign newspapers for  reproducing articles and commentaries appearing in such partner foreign newspapers. Mostly English language newspapers had made use of such government rules. The language media by and large relied on Indian wire services for their foreign news as well as domestic coverage. The Indian wire agencies had agreements with most foreign wire agencies for exchange of news. Although they were expected to filter such news flow to their subscribers, rarely did they exercise this right. 

The freedom enjoyed by Indian media as well as the protection from global competition offered by 1956 government decision have contributed to the emergence of Indian media barons.

Numerous developments in the economic, political and international spheres set the course of political communication as sieved through the Indian media. After the non-aligned nations conference in Bandung in Indonesia held in 1955, India, Indonesia, Egypt and Yugoslavia and their leaders came to be viewed as the spokespersons of the third world. India and China moved into the Bhai-Bhai phase. The Soviet Union, that  had been  upset by India joining the Common Wealth, The Soviet media used to refer to India as the lackey of the West. But the Indo-Soviet relations suddenly changed after the Soviet leaders Bulganin and Nikita Krushchev visited India in 1955. The Soviet offer of technical and financial help to India in setting up government projects strebgthened the ties. Indian diplomacy had played a significant role in the peace process in the Korean Peninsula where  China and Soviet Union were confronting the US. India was also active in the peace process in Indo-China where the West was facing China. Pakistan had joined the western alliance and the US and Britain had sided with Pakistan in the UN Security Council. The political discourse was unfavourable to the west and correspondingly there was not so subtle a tilt in favour of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries.

As mentioned in an earlier post, The INC session at Avadi had adopted the resolution of setting up a socialistic pattern of society. This was soon followed by the  framing of the Second five-year plan that had borrowed the Soviet model of economic development with emphasis on heavy industry development. And the Soviets had come forward to offer technical and financial assistance to government in setting up big projects. Cumulatively, all such developments had increased the favourable news fall  related to the Soviet Union, China and third world countries such as Egypt. India’s staying out of western alliances, its economic preference for socialist model and moves to expand the Non-alignment movement  were openly disapproved  by the United States through its Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Indian envoy to the UN Krishna Menon, described by US President Eisenhower as ‘a menace’, was a widely reported figure in India. His anti-west and anti-imperial forces utterances used to hog the headlines.

Misgivings about  the government’s distinct tilt towards the ‘socialist bloc’, within the professed ‘non-alignment’ foreign policy were not heard until 1959, when  Dalai Lama came into exile in India. By then, China had moved troops to Aksai Chin, ceded to it by Pakistan. This was also the time when Gen. K.N. Thimmaiah had offered his resignation to the then defence minister Krishna Menon over differences regarding defence preparedness to meet the China threat. As recalled earlier, Rajaji’s Swatantra party had hoisted its flag of opposition to prime minister Nehru’s economic and foreign policy.

The author:sunarendra@gmail.com

PM writes to CMs: The political communication emanating from the ruling Congress and government communication at this stage of evolution had got mixed up. Most of the newspapers and media professionals were followers of the national and state leaders from the freedom struggle days. There was a sort of hero worship that reflected in the reporting of statements and activities of such leaders, many of whom had become government ministers or prominent party functionaries. Prime Minister Nehru was both a prolific speaker and an equally prolific letter writer to colleagues, state chief ministers and foreign leaders. In an unsual move, the prime minister thought it fit to write letters to CMs on national and international affairs and the engagement of the Union government with such issues. Some persons unfairly criticised Nehru on the ground that such letters did not deal with issues relevant to States. But the fact is it was a far sighted effort to keep the state leadership informed of global issues impacting India as the States are vital stake-holders in the Federation. Nehru’s statements and his correspondence with Indian and foreign leaders were closely tracked by media. The tradition of carrying lengthy reports on the speeches and statements of political leaders that was in vogue during the freedom movement continued even after independence.

This made the official PR work less difficult!

A mini Kurukshetra over Media Mahabharat

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’.

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

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)

Of poverty, Radio Rice, farm revolution, Mahalonabis Plan

• Political Communication-Part IV

By S.Narendra

Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer

to Government and Spokesperson

The socio-economic agenda of the political leadership from 1952, when the first five-year plan was launched, until the economic reforms of 1991 was articulated in the Plans. Planning and five-year plans were considered as something like a magic wand for delivering the dreams of millions of Indians. And, thus began the halcyon days for development communication, serving as the oxygen of political communication…….and official propaganda. Read on the 4th Installment.

Nehru - the brain behind Five-Year Pans
that shaped dearly days of Independent
India's economic development

It began as an era of unimaginable scarcity and deprivation. Rationing of food, fuel, firewood, cloth and other essential commodities continued for several years after independence. As an eight-year-old boy, I remember, I had to stand in a queue for collecting mere 6 to 8 pieces of firewood. That was the weekly quota! My four older siblings were detailed at other queues for basic items like rice, sugar, wheat (a rare commodity), and cloth. On many days, after waiting for hours in the line, we would return empty handed, as the ration shop was short of supplies. Poverty was something that was shared by the majority of people. The advent of freedom and the promise of INC during the freedom movement that it would address poverty issues on a priority had kindled a faint hope among the people.

Agriculture, though of subsistence kind, dominated the economy. Overcoming scarcities, especially of food (the foodgrain output was less than 50 million tonnes) was a political priority as well. Congress as a national movement had committed itself to abolish Zamindari and now time had come for redeeming that commitment. While public pronouncements on honouring this commitment were sweet music to the landless and the farm tenants, the party had to contend with behind-the-scene opposition from its leaders and legislators. According to studies, nearly 12% of them were landlords. The new Constitution had included private property ownership right as a Fundamental Right.

Bhakra-Nangal Dam

A British government report in the early part of 20^th century had famously said that India’s agriculture was a gamble in monsoons.  And, the new government’s focus was on making farming less dependent on rains by building big irrigation projects. The core economic content of political communication in the initial days of Independence was naturally was on growing more food. After the famine of 1940s, the predecessor British government had launched a low key  grow more food campaign and it ended up only as  posters exhorting farmers to grow more food.  The campaign got subsumed and imbued with new energy in the first five-year Plan the focus of which was on improving agriculture. A large share of the  first five-year Plan of over Rs 2000 crore went to fund the grow more food campaign and multi-purpose irrigation projects.

Radio Rice Revolution: The policy makers were greatly impressed by the American  Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that had harnessed the Colorado river for greening the arid western America. This model was adopted lock, stock and barrel by India. The political communication went lyrical while presenting this government initiative. Prime Minister Nehru, who opened the sluice gates of 700-feet tall Bhakra dam in Punjab in 1954 called it ‘the new temple (s) of India’. According to newspaper accounts of the time, people lined up for miles along the canals branching out of the dam to witness the Sutlej river water entering their area. Many more such projects such as the Tungabhandra, Nagarjuna Sagar, Damodar, Hirakud laid the foundation for the  in the ‘green revolution’, catapulting India on to the way to food self–sufficiency. But it took more than a decade for this ‘green revolution’ to come on stream.

The communication saga surrounding India’s farm revolution, especially the ‘green revolution ‘has spawned thousands of Ph.Ds in the US and India. The political leadership that spearheaded this movement showed an extraordinary vision that resonated among the farming community. A notable feature of this political communication was that it was sans party politics. This effort also created a massive country-wide machinery including innovative communication channels reaching out to the villages. One of the AIR initiatives in this field -RRF or Radio Rural Forum - has donned the folk-lore of development communication. The illiterate farmers who were taught by participatory radio programmes to grow a high yielding rice (IR-8) associated it so much with the radio, they termed it  ‘Radio Rice’. I was a very, very small part of this farm revolution machinery when I started my career. I had the privilege of writing a series of feature articles on the green revolution that was taking place in the Kosi river command area in Bihar. 

Planning as an instrument of national development was, however, embraced by the Indian national Congress in as early as 1938, and Jawaharlal Nehru had headed the party’s committee on Planning. And, the National Planning commission was set up very soon after India became a Republic in 1950 and the first five-year plan was rolled out in 1951. Its first chairman was PM Nehru himself, who was also its foremost spokesman. The 1952 general elections was the first poll campaign in which INC showcased many of the five-year plan programmes. The party manifesto declared: “it is Not possible to pursue a policy of laissez –faire in industry....it is incompatible with any planning. It has long been Congress policy that basic industries should be owned or controlled by the State...State trading should be undertaken...A large field is left for private enterprise... Thus, the economy will have public sector as well as a private sector’.

Tungabhadra Project

The concept of this mixed economy progressed further for addressing the prevailing wide  income  disparities. In 1955, the All India Congress Committee session held at Avadi decisively moved for controlling the commanding heights of the economy. Its resolution said: “In order to realise the object of the Congress,...to further the objective of the Preamble (of the Constitution of India), and Directive Principles of State Policy ...Planning should take place with a view to establishing a socialist pattern of society, where the principal means of production are under social ownership or control, production is progressively speeded up and there is equitable distribution of national wealth’.

The IDRA or Industrial Development and Regulation Act (1951) had already anticipated such a political stance.

On the political front, the party Resolution not only reflected  Prime Minister Nehru’s own economic thinking but it was also a response to the criticism by stalwarts like Acharya Kripalani, Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan that the Congress was not sufficiently socialistic. These persons had left the Congress and formed new political parties. In fact, there was some discussion within the party at this stage whether farm land should be owned by communities but it did not go further. The Avadi session was a watershed moment in India’s economic history and decisively influenced the later official industrial policy.

A year later, the II five year plan, known as the Mahalonabis Plan- was unveiled. (Per Wikipedia, The Feldman–Mahalanobis model is a Neo-Marxist model of economic development, created independently by Soviet economist G. A. Feldman in 1928, and Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1953. Mahalanobis became essentially the key economist of India's Second Five Year Plan, becoming subject to much of India's most dramatic economic debates.)

The Plan fully embraced the Avadi philosophy, with the government getting into running of big heavy industry enterprises such as steel. The political communication that emanated was somewhat jingoistic in the sense that India would build some of the world’s ‘biggest’, world’s ‘first’, ‘largest’ projects. While the policy of import substitution, self-sufficiency, had not yet appeared in political parlance, there was a definite  stress on ‘self-reliance’. This was also the period when Nehru had given his famous call for inculcating ‘a scientific temper’ among the people and had  laid the ground for setting up various institutions for scientific research and higher education like CSIR, Atomic research, IITs and others. But India had not closed its doors to foreign technology, expertise and enterprise. Media reports about projects were highly appreciative accounts of government policies. There was a spirit of ‘we can do it’ in the air and the impact of this spirit can be felt even to this day. 

Foreign Media watch on India: From the II Plan onwards, the Planning Commission became almost a supra-body that overshadowed the cabinet. The Plan document itself with its grandiose schemes was something like a post-dated cheque. It was an invaluable companion of government publicists. The newspapers gave prominent coverage to announcements of Plan schemes and the Plan document served as a great source for news stories spun out by economic journalists, especially on days when the news fall was thin.   

A largely illiterate population (85%) adopting the democracy based on universal franchise had excited the western developed countries and their media. No such example existed in political history. A poverty-ridden India’s experiment to push planned development in a federal democracy was another factor that came to be watched with keen interest. The compulsions of World War II had made the western capitalist countries also to accord a dominant role for the state in running the economy. Leading captains of Indian industry had come out with their own Plan document known as the Bombay Plan that had strongly argued for the state to take a lead in economic development, and had visualised a supplementary role for the private sector.  And, therefore, the Indian government declaring its intention through Planning to control and manage the economy for the greatest good of the greatest numbers was not contested either at home or abroad. The sheen of freedom movement had not left the Indian national Congress and the credibility of the prime minister was unquestioned. He spoke for the government and the nation on almost on all matters and dissenters were seen as an aberration.

One had to wait until 1959 for major political dissent on economic policy to surface in the form of the Swatantra party founded by C.Rajagopalachari, a close associate of Gandhi and Nehru. Minoo Masani had set up his Forum of Free Enterpise. The editor of Current weekly, D.F.Karaka was a trenchant critic of Nehru and had begun his free enterprise crusade. Around this time, there was also some disquiet on on Nehru’s foreign policy, especially with regard to China and its actions in Tibet. The first biggest scam of independent India -Mundhra Scandal- was coming to light. But let me not jump into another period.

The author
sunarendra@gmail.com

Returning to 1950s, a remarkable facet of political communication on economic development in the early years of independence was that the political leaders who had suffered incarceration at the hands of the colonial power, did not hark back to the economic havoc brought upon India by the colonial masters. This was in stark contrast to the content of political communication on the same theme that took   place in the recent past. Political parties at the centre and the states come to power by blaming the predecessor regime.

When several Afro-Asian countries gained independence from the colonial masters, very soon after India became free, the leadership of those countries kept blaming the predecessor regimes for their under-development and used this theme as an excuse for them not making economic progress. But Indian leadership, in contrast, was more far- sighted and kept focus on what it could do to remedy the aborted economic development of India under foreign rule. (To be continued)