April 21, 2008	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1429

Archives Write to Mr. Jawed Naqvi

On Saturday I was in Bombay, known also by its older Marathi name Mumbai, or Bambai, as the unceasing throng of immigrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have adoringly called it for decades. The news in Bombay is different from news in Delhi for news as we all know is usually a local affair. For examples, Americans may think the Superbowl World Series has global appeal but this is really not the case. In a similar vein, most of their school kids (and some presidents) would not be able to spot Iraq on the map where their troops have messed up everyone’s life but the tiny island of Grenada in the neighbourhood would always be easier to locate. Similarly, Delhi is transforming itself for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, a major event for the local government, but the event doesn’t seem to have interested newspapers in Chennai that much. Beijing is bracing for the Olympics in August but the global media conglomerates think Tibet is the real issue. And Kashmiris and Palestinians may be wondering why the cheerful approval for self-determination for Tibet is seen as a subversive idea when it comes to their plight.

Sri Lanka is fighting a separatist bloodbath, which no serious newspaper beyond Tamil Nadu follows regularly. Pakistan is locked in a war that the world’s most powerful countries believe will decide if global terrorism could be defeated. But Israel thinks Iran is the main culprit and its newspapers are full of that story rather than Waziristan. For Israelis, Hasan Nasrallah is a more urgent story than the hunt for Osama in fading light. These biases or priorities get reflected in the media locally. That’s perhaps why global broadcasters like BBC have had to devise segments such as news from Asia, Africa and so on to beam stories they consider of interest directly to the concerned regions.

But of course even that may not be enough. When it comes to vernacular TV newscasts, for instance, Tamil, Malayam, Telugu, Kannada channels in southern India mostly carry entirely diverse lead stories unrelated to New Delhi or Mumbai. In Kolkata, the Friendship Express train linking the city with Dhaka was the major story last week. In Delhi , Priyanka Gandhi’s meeting with her father’s killer got more prominence while in Mumbai stories related with the trauma of its train blasts continue to find more space. More than the Indus water dispute, newspapers in Karnataka are likely to be riveted to the Cauvery water dispute the state has with Tamil Nadu. With such a range of diversity of “local” interests and concomitantly limited attention span for news about neighbours even within the political confines of India, what are the chances that a South Asian cultural and current affairs channel is feasible?

Former bureaucrat Rathikant Basu, who pioneered India’s drive for private TV channels as alternative to the official Doordarshan that he ran for years, believes such an enterprise is feasible. So he got a clutch of television barons from South Asian countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka to come together to share their plurality of views and experiences on a host of issues that could range from the Kashmir dispute to female foeticide, from forms of theatre and music to globalisation and the South Asian farmer’s unrelenting hardships.

Simply called Southasian, the project stepped into its second year on the 2nd of April this year. On Saturday, Mr Basu launched a joint platform that has begun to be beamed in all South Asian countries as a free-to-air channel. So why should Southasian, as the channel is called, work successfully when similar ventures, including the one patronised officially by Saarc heads of states had failed. Mr Basu had supervised the formation of SAVE, the Saarc audio visual exchange programme more than two decades ago. The scheme did not take off because “programmes under SAVE were irregular, erratic and failed to make much of an impression on viewers.”

The new initiative involving private broadcasters would be “very different”, says Mr Basu. Of course, it will be little more than a tall claim till we see the programmes flowing smoothly, uninterrupted by the ardent bureaucrats who call the shots in South Asian states. The duration of the programme, anchored by Rubana Huq from Bangladesh, would be increased from the current half hour and Mr Basu believes broadcasters from other countries will participate in the initiative. Given the extreme vulnerability of the member states to what we can safely call religious and cultural atavism, the new channel does promise a measure of reprieve, if not instant succour from closed minds. Its programmes would promote “liberalism, a scientific temperament, education, sports, health, heritage and cultural diversity, it would oppose divisive forces, superstition, fundamentalism, discrimination and violence especially against women and children, environmental pollution, cruelty to animal, cultural hegemony and communalism’’. It makes for an ambitious array of ticklish subjects to grapple with. But there are already other problems that lie ahead.

How would Southasian go about discussing Kashmir, Balochistan, M.F. Hussain, Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, for example, if they evoke such extreme and disproportionate emotions as to force people out on the streets? Rubana Huq insists her programmes would “take special care whenever dealing with matters of controversy to assure that a plurality of viewpoints are acknowledged and are fairly and adequately represented’’. In addition, there would be “full disclosure of the interests of all stakeholders’’.

Of the seven television channels, three are based in India while one each is from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. In addition to these five countries, Saarc includes Bhutan, the Maldives and new entrant Afghanistan, providing a potential viewership of 1.5 billion people. “While in a few of these eight countries, the media is relatively underdeveloped and controlled by those in positions of power and authority, in most Saarc nations, the media is vibrant, fiercely independent and free of government influence.” Or so it was claimed at Saturday’s soft launch in Mumbai. If Southasian does believe it could inspire outspoken journalists and intellectuals from the region on a single platform it would be a dream come true for many. But some pointers already exist to counsel caution. A country like India has successfully kept Al Jazeera from freely beaming its newscasts on some flimsy technical grounds, or so we hear. You can watch the channel in the foyer of a five star hotel but it has faced problems being delivered to home sets. Strange but true.

There is thus a genuine fear of intrusive state policies coming in the way of a serious and bold channel, which I believe Southasian has the potential to be. Other than that there is the ever-present question of cultures and people being often erroneously defined by political boundaries. Where does South Asia begin and where does it end? Afghanistan’s inclusion as a Saarc member has not produced a valid answer. On the contrary, most of us in South Asia cannot tell a Tajik from an Uzbek though both belong to the region by virtue of their current political sway over Kabul. Shouldn’t Saarc then extend its scope to include Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and not stop at a contrived boundary from some colonial era? After all most north Indians can’t tell the difference between the citizens of Tamil Nadu from that of Andhra Pradesh. And even more Indians would not be able to tell an ethnic Naga from a Manipuri or a Mizo or even a Han Chinese if they were not dressed in their tribal attire.

Southasian has the possibility of filling this void in our bonding with each other. But the Manipuri may not be happy that we left out Burma from the scope of this South Asian identity we are eager to celebrate. Is Saarc a creation of new technology that connects us, hence so much focus on connectivity at last year’s summit? It seems to be the case. Faiyyaz Khan sang the seductive lines in Raag Tilak Kamod — Morey jobana pe aayi bahaar, balam pardesa na jahiyo – which describes a woman in the prime of youth as she pleads with her lover not to go away to a foreign land. But pardesa, literally meaning abroad, could be the neighbouring village and not some foreign shores. People, even lovers, were not technologically equipped to travel long distances unless they were willing to desert their home and hearth for good.

Southasian — being beamed through THAICOM 5 satellite on a downlink frequency of 3199 MHz, symbol rate 13.30 Ms/sec, FEC ¾, polarisation vertical – looks primed by sheer technological force to transport us to some of the foreign lands, even if those distant lands, to use a maudlin idiom of Saarc, are often really right next door.

—jawednaqvi@gmail.com