The Reality of Media in India

In the by now tedious cliché, India, with a population of 1.22 billion (122 crores) and with an elected parliament, is supposed to be the largest democracy in the world. The relation between democracy and size is problematic. In small communities, voters can be presumed to have some personal knowledge of both candidates and issues arising from their life experience. But democracy in such communities in India is, to put it very mildly, slight. The various Panchayat systems set up to implement the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments are deprived of either significant jurisdiction or even minimal resources, and in most cases both. The sole exception is in West Bengal, where the Panchayat system was created fifteen years before the 73rd Amendment, and developed into real -- if flawed -- organs of local self-government. In consequence panchayat elections in West Bengal alone in all of India are truly serious matters and, as we are at the time of writing painfully aware, reflect a democracy increasingly overshadowed by gangsterism and force. But, for the rest, "democracy" amounts to periodical electoral exercises where the electors choose among candidates and programmes not on the basis of their personal knowledge or life experience but on information received from the media. If such democracy is to be meaningful, the first condition is that reasonably accurate information must be available.
But the ground realities show that the ingredients of meaningful democracy are in very poor shape. To be sure, official documents do not admit this. For example, in the case of literacy -- a relevant element if is to be assumed that electors are making informed choices based on print sources -- the Census figure for literacy is 65.4 per cent of the population aged seven and above. However, this figure merely reflects the replies given by