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The Changing Face of Indian Media

As India concluded its celebration of 50 years of independence this year, having initiated a process of economic reform in the early part of the decade, the forces of privatisation and globalisation have unleashed dramatic changes in the country's media. Amidst a deluge of film-based entertainment, news and current affairs provided by private channels, All India Radio and Doordarshan, once the country's officially anointed public service broadcasters, have become undecided incarnations of their former selves.

This time in the history of Indian media is critical: it's overwhelming in the quick and dramatic changes over the last few years, and frustrating in the current impasse thanks to the imbroglio over the newly instituted Broadcasting Authority of India (for key features and landmarks in Indian media history refer Box 1)

For those in the business of renting eyeballs, the delinking of radio and television from direct state control has given endless joy. But media analysts and NGOs have varied responses. Some see the deregulation of broadcast media as potentially aiding the emergence of community radio and other forms of more democratic, participatory communication. Others despair that Indian audiences have been, to borrow a phrase, amused to death. They observe that market imperatives have already forced the once state-owned AIR and Doordarshan to abdicate their responsibilities, ringing the death knell on the state's role in public service broadcasting.

That role has been one of mixed successes. Over the last four decades, the state's forays into development communication, the ruling communication paradigm at that time, have been significant. But then the successes of SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) or the Kheda Communications Project are offset by the phenomenal failures of other projects such as PREAL, and in the long run, undermined by the vacillating fortunes and commitments of rapidly-changing governments.

Today's vastly changed media scenario calls for a recasting of the role of media in promoting prosocial change. This paper discusses the prevailing media trends in India in a historical context, highlights the issues being debated and describes the responses of NGOs and development agencies to the changes and the new opportunities they present. An underlying premise is the need for some of the key stakeholders for social change communication – donor agencies and NGOs -- to strengthen the linkages between the discourse on media trends and their own investments in communication, whether to promote child rights, HIV/AIDS education, women's empowerment or the environment.

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