Media instinctively toes the ruling establishment

Anil Sinha
Only a fortnight ago, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen was in Delhi to attend a meeting on revival of Nalanda University, a dream project of Bihar government. The Human Resources Ministry had rightly organized a lecture on ‘Centrality of Literacy’. I think Sen himself had given the title of the topic. For the first time, I found the power of knowledge can not compete with the massive apparatus of the ruling regime. And, the truth loses its power to defeat establishment unless it is made a people’s instrument. The establishment is capable of stopping to spread at least for the time being.

That morning, information of the program appeared in most of the important newspapers. But very few of them were present to cover it. The newsworthiness of the program was more than evident by the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was chairing the program and Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal and Minister of State for Human Resources D Purandeshwari were other important participants. I wondered why no important media house was represented! It is common knowledge that Kapil Sibal alone can pull a media crowd. Here, Prime Minister too was there to help him in this endeavor. When I saw next morning newspapers, I found news was largely ignored by the media. It was a real surprise for me. I was not prepared to accept that Amartya Sen has no news value.

It really took sometime for me to gather some strength to analyze the absence of media in such an important program As the news industry is concerned it was an important program. All of us have been hearing debate on news value versus value based news for quite sometime now. Here there wa hardly any dichotomy. Amartya was really at his best in opening various doors of elementary education. Sen has never been a revolutionary thinker as far as the question of overthrowing of state power is concerned. I have never heard him suggesting against globalization either. But he never hesitates to suggest radical reforms within the system.

In his address on literacy, he did not hesitate to suggest the Prime Minister that the program to make elementary education universal should be completely state financed. He suggested that no school should be run on the basis of religion-Hindu school and Muslim school. He attacked single identity, private tuitions and overburdening of pupil. He emphasized how literacy and knowledge empower deprived sections including women. Al was spell bound. But like private media government websites also ignored the news. It had only flashed lecture of the prime minister. I do not believe that any of the Government Public Relation Officers might have advised media people to ignore the item. Then, what was it which prompted them to hear the inner voice of these officers?

Though it was late, I realized ultimately that media houses share the same model of elementary education as the government do. It is rooted in private schools and heavy curriculum. It includes school run on the basis of community and religion. It will be foolish on our part to think of an education system which is completely free from governmental interference and influence of money power. Similar is true for media.