By Ranjona Banerji
The middle class media bias against both class struggles and the demands for democratic rights has shown itself full scale during the last six years. And it is in full prejudiced display during the ongoing farmers’ protests.
This makes it easier for the government of the day to manipulate the media’s coverage of difficult and contentious events. The anti-citizenship law protests last December and early this year were presented in terms of inconvenience (supposed traffic restrictions and disruptions) and dangerous activity bordering on treason (OMG! Muslims are asking for democracy to work for them!).
An easy comparison is with the Mandal Commission protests, where upper castes were filled with anger that their inalienable right to discriminate would be affected by Central government job quotas for the historically ignored and/or discriminated against. The media in those days was sympathetic to the protestors because they could personally empathise.
Another comparison is a few years ago when upper caste students of IIT Mumbai were angered by Dalit demands that they not be discriminated against in terms of food, accommodation and teaching systems. Here again, the middle class media found itself on the side of the oppressor.
Since then, especially since the Modi government came to power, we have seen over and again how the media fights for the rights of buses and not beleaguered people, how it concentrates on inconvenience to others rather than the essence of the demands made and in such insidious and obvious ways kowtow to the dictates of the State.
That the State exists to serve the rights of all citizens takes a long while to ever percolate into the media’s collective consciousness. This middle class it represents however is largely selfish, greedy and happy to be apathetic. It is in a broad sense a stark contrast to the middle classes that began a fight for freedom from imperial rule over a 100 years ago.
The ongoing farmers’ protests at the Delhi border and across parts of India has however put the establishment media in a quandary. Having gone from calling all protestors terrorists, whether Khalistani, Maoist or Naxal, to concentrating on the inconvenience of protestors blocking the roads into Delhi to being enraged that Sikhs and Muslims are standing together to being enraged that the farmers were not poor enough to semaphoring scabs and infiltrators in order to further the Modi government’s cause to falling back to the government line of farmers being “misled”, this vast swathe of the media has tried whatever tricks it was instructed to.
But this time the media has been caught out badly by the protesters themselves. These farmers are articulate and well aware of what they’re fighting for and against. At no point have they claimed that they did not have resources and education. They have eaten the biryani and pizzas and enjoyed foot massages donated to them. It is another matter than when farmers came from Tamil Nadu to Delhi and had to eat rats to survive, neither the media nor the Modi government was bothered. Damned if you’re poor, damned if you’re not.
And these protesting farmers have been vocal in their anger about the TV channels and TV anchors who vilify them. They know what is being said about them and they are not scared to counter the allegations. This is the first time in a while perhaps that a dominant group has been so vociferous and fluent. The violence that they have faced has not made them back down or retaliate. Lives have been lost. They have been joined by sympathetic groups. Regardless of media coverage.
Let’s take the most cynical media attitude here, where you have no stake in any outcome. As far as coverage goes, this is a spectacle, which is what the media needs to build up figures. It has the classic elements of a Small versus Mighty drama. There is anger and camaraderie. Heroes and heroines. But this current media in India cannot see it this way just has it cannot see that its first duty is to speak “truth to power”, to hold the government to account for its shortcomings. It has got so entangled in the “how do we support Modi to survive” game that is unable to differentiate between its gluteus maximus and its cubitus.
The farmers see this. The people of India see this.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal