> Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express
>
> Aditya Nigam
>
> kafila.org, 3rd September
>
> [Note: Television was often referred to as the the
> idiot-box. For very
> sound reasons. It produced idiocy on a regular basis. It
> still does.
> But in these days, this is no longer the monopoly of the
> televisual
> media. Newspapers too are doing pretty much the same. Let
> us call this
> specific form of media-generated idiocy, rampant among
> media persons,
> mediocy and the phenomenon, mediotics. Those affected by it
> will then
> be mediots.]
>
> I know that someone will immediately step in to correct me
> to say that
> Indian Express is not an NGO. But if one looks at the
> completely
> illiterate use of the term made by the Indian media, then
> anything
> that is not 'governmental' is
> 'non-governmental' and can, hence, be
> called an NGO. Except that for the large mass of
> ignoramuses peopling
> the media i.e. mediots, this is a safe term to describe an
> animal that
> you cannot identify.
>
> A political party or a corporation is identifiable – and
> let us keep
> these two animals in mind for these will be continuous
> reference
> points in our attempt to understand the mind of the mediot.
> A civil
> liberties organization like the People's Union for
> Civil Liberties
> (PUCL), or a People's Union for Democratic Rights
> (PUDR), or the
> specific outfit mentioned in today's Express report,
> the Association
> for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), is as
> unfathomable to
> these corporatized, unthinking minds, as is for example the
> NAPM (the
> National Alliance of People's Movements) which has
> among its key
> constituents the Narmada Bachao Andolan and its leader,
> Medha Patkar.
> They are all NGOs.
>
> Today's Indian Express runs a report on Singur,
> following up from
> yesterday's. The reporters go and meet 'all'
> participant groups of the
> struggle – and I shall return to the struggle later –
> and ask them one
> single and simple question: who funds you? Where do you get
> your money
> from? As if, once it were 'proved' that a foreign
> donor (the report
> mentions Ford Foundation) funds or at some previous time
> funded, any
> of these outfits, it would be 'proved' that they
> are working for some
> outside agency, are not genuine etc. The burden of the
> Express song is
> that "Mamata Banerjee's" agitation (since
> when it became Mamata's is
> of course, another question) has been taken over by a
> ragtag
> combination of Naxals, ex-Naxals, NGOs (presumably funded
> by Ford),
> disgruntled ex-CPI-M elements and such others. We shall
> presently
> indicate how many lies lie concealed in this short story.
> But before
> that, one word of appreciation is called for.
>
> One thing that these mediots do understand – correctly,
> for once – is
> that the key difference between an NGO and a non-NGO is
> that the
> former is funded by some funding agency. After all, a
> corporation does
> not require funding. It is supposed to be the source of all
> funding.
> Nor do political parties. For they get their funds, as we
> know only
> too well, from corporations. But they form governments and
> are
> therefore in a position to repay the corporations, by other
> means.
> This much the mediot knows. Thereafter, s/he faces a real
> knowledge
> barrier. Corporatized mediotics produces one Truth
> relentlessly,
> daily, by the hour: Corporations and capital are the only
> saviours of
> humanity that has lost its way, enticed into eating the
> fruit of the
> 'tree of knowledge' by these Satanic forces of the
> Left/NGO variety.
> Mediots thus shun knowledge that Capital, their God, has
> forbidden;
> they are duty-bound to do so.
>
> However, for those who might want to know, let us state it
> clearly.
> All NGOs have to be registered under the Societies
> Registration Act
> and have an FCRA (Foreign Contributions Regulation Act)
> clearance from
> the Government of India, before they can get any funding.
> The most
> important condition for getting such clearance is that the
> organization concerned must not engage in political
> activities
> (political activities being defined here as holding
> demonstrations and
> dharnas, picketing, publishing newspapers and such other
> activity). If
> they do something like jamming a highway, or picketing the
> Nano
> factory gates that all these so-called 'NGOs' were
> clearly doing,
> their FCRA can be cancelled without further ado. Mediots
> wouldn't be
> mediots if they knew that there are simpler ways of getting
> your FCRA
> cancelled!
>
> As it happens, the Paschim Banga Khet Majur Samity (PBKMS),
> one of the
> prime targets of that story, is registered under the Trade
> Unions Act,
> is affiliated to the IUF (International Union of Food and
> Farm
> Workers' Associations) and to the best of our
> knowledge, does not get
> any institutional funding.
>
> Now let us turn to the story, its text and sub-text. First
> the
> headline (in the print version, Delhi edition):
>
> "Upstaging Mamata's Drama: Tata institute
> graduate, Ford Foundation &
> JP, The Socialist."
>
> Question 1: When did Singur become Mamata's drama? It
> is as though she
> has authored it. Suits everybody. Life was going on well.
> There was a
> Communist government that had vowed to serve Capital, their
> God, at
> all costs. Then suddenly something happened. This motley
> crowd came
> along and spoiled the party. What fun we all were having!
> And look at
> these jholawals (Express's preferred term for such
> people), they just
> come and destroy everything. NOw once again their knowledge
> block hits
> them. Who are these people, who have no presence anywhere
> in the state
> but have the power to spoil the party? It must be Mamata
> Banerjee.
> Else, their fantasy-world just cannot hold. Suits the CPM -
> it can now
> say, it is all orchestrated by the opposition. Suits the
> mediotic
> ideologues of capital who can now claim that this whole
> thing is
> driven by plain electoral-political interests who are
> 'against the
> interests' of the 'people of West Bengal'.
>
> Q2: What relevance does it have for anything or anybody
> that Anuradha
> Talwar of PBKMS is a TISS graduate? Is it being suggested
> that the
> Tatas should screen all possible futures of all the
> graduates they
> produce or will produce and inoculate them against
> anti-Tata activism?
> Or, is this a crude carry-over of a CPM-style canard about
> her being
> 'elite' – educated at LSR and TISS and having
> once set up an NGO
> called Gana Samhati Kendra in 1984, that was funded by
> Ford? Whatever
> it be, it is interesting, to say the least. It is for Ford
> to clarify
> their role in propping up the Singur struggle, of course
> but most
> readers would be left spellbound at such digging out of
> personal
> histories.
>
> Q3: Where does JP, The Socialist figure? Poor fellow, we
> knew died
> decades – if not centuries ago! Is there some despicable
> attempt to
> establish patriliny of the participants going on here? As
> if that
> would establish that they belong to some bad breed? And
> what does it
> mean to say 'JP' where you mean an organization
> that merely claims his
> inspiration? May we then merely say 'Goenka' when
> we want to say
> 'Indian Express'? Or 'Karl Marx' when we
> want to say 'CPI-M'? As it
> happens this attempt at establishing genealogies is
> directed at trying
> to 'prove' two things. First, this is a
> 'ragtag' combination of
> diverse elements with no common ideological basis. Second,
> that
> virtually all components of this combination have
> 'virtually no
> presence in the state' but are basically backed by
> 'other'
> considerations – funding, settling scores with the CPI-M,
> being
> anti-industry, or being socialist and so on. Many of them
> do not even
> have offices, the report tells us, gleefully, as if the
> mediots have
> made some new discovery. We might enlighten them that many
> movement
> groups or political citizens groups across the country have
> deliberately not built up 'offices' and real
> estate, because they
> function on an altogether different logic and do not want
> to either
> get NGO-type funding or corporate backing. But according
> the report,
> they are NGOs and have no office – and both statements
> are supposed to
> be true at the same time and both equally damning
> indictments.
>
> Now let us take a closer look at the sub-text of the
> report. Once you
> remove these layers of strange accusations, allegations and
> insinuations, what is revealed is the blank surface of the
> mediot
> mind. A mind that can gasp and unbelievingly ask the
> tribals of
> Kalinganagar (after a dozen people were killed in police
> firing), 'are
> you against industrialization?' must be a truly
> innocent and blank
> one. It has still not registered to these people that the
> CPI-M was
> defeated in the Singur and Nandigram panchayat elections
> and that its
> effect reverberated in other areas as well. It has also not
> registered
> that the municipal elections that followed saw an even more
> serious
> setback for the CPM. Presumably there is actually no reason
> for what
> has been happening in Singur except that some trouble
> makers are
> creating trouble. Malcontents who neither have any presence
> in the
> state, not even an office, have simply taken over
> "Mamata's drama."
>
> Are we missing something here? Now, there is no doubt that,
> electorally, it was Mamata's Trinamool Congress that
> trounced the
> CPI-M. And all these other fellows do not really have any
> presence
> anywhere, no mass support. Yet they 'took over'
> "Mamata's drama"! And
> Mamata, the real power player who split the Congress, has
> given the
> Left Front headaches for years, simply concedes ground to
> these
> characters? Why are they so important to Mamata? They
> can't mobilize
> votes and they have no money, but they have hijacked the
> agitation. A
> question to ponder over. A Times of India report a few days
> ago
> displayed a somewhat better sense of the situation.
> According to this
> report, the TMC has had no relationship with rural West
> Bengal for a
> long time and they therefore do not understand it. This gap
> is being
> filled up, says the report, by Naxals and the Party for
> Democratic
> Socialism (the Saifuddin Chowdhury-Samir Putatunda
> breakaway from the
> CPI-M). This is indeed important. But there is something
> else as well
> that is of critical importance. One of the key social
> groups moving
> away from the Left Front today is the Muslims, especially
> the Muslim
> peasantry. And there are radical Islamist elements waiting
> to
> capitalize on this situation. Mamata, if she seeks to
> present a real
> political alternative, has to actually live down her NDA
> past.
>
> But that is only part of the story. What is completely
> beyond the
> comprehension of the mediots is the logic of the thing
> called
> politics. Politics to these people is a game of
> manipulation by crafty
> people who want power. Everything is read through this
> lens. However,
> somebody who has done even an elementary study of politics
> will tell
> you that when a spontaneous mass movement occurs, it
> compels all
> political forces present in the field to take a position.
> Inevitably,
> it means that all kinds of forces will make common cause:
> Look at the
> JP movement that the report invokes. From the Naxals,
> CPI-M, Gandhians
> and Socialists to the RSS, all hues were part of the
> movement – some
> fully, some hesitatingly. Take any movement – say the
> October
> revolution in Russia – and the same pattern can be seen
> to be
> repeated. The fact that any movement displays the presence
> of a motley
> crowd among its supporters is a sure sign of its
> 'mass' nature. But
> the mediot mind is screened against any kind of depth. It
> can only see
> the surface (which does not of course make an imbecile a
> postmodernist!)
>
> But talking of funding, before we sign off, one point
> remains.
> We know one thing about both corporations and political
> parties: they
> are not disinterested players. They have a mission and a
> goal – in one
> case profit and in another, power. Most other things that
> they do are
> secondary to achieving this fundamental goal.
>
> But what about newspapers and television channels run by
> corporations
> or industrial houses, supposedly wedded to 'uncovering
> the truth'?
> Epitomes of a 'journalism of courage' (the slogan
> of course, comes
> from the Emergency days, no doubt, but is mired in the
> dirty history
> of corporate wars of those days between an upcoming
> Reliance and a
> Bombay Dyeing)? These media institutions claim to provide
> 'objective'
> and disinterested information so that citizens may make
> informed
> choices. They are the makers of public opinion. Nobody
> however, asks
> journalists to declare where there 'funds' come
> from? And here we are
> not talking simply of their salaries, which at the editors
> levels can
> run into a crore or more? We are talking of the money they
> earn on the
> side – a bungalow here or a car there or shares in some
> company or the
> other?
>
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