Article Global Media Journal Indian Edition/ Summer Issue / June 2011

THE IMPACT OF THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA ON THE MODERN INDIAN VOTER: A STUDY OF THE POST LIBERALIZATION ERA Sayantani Satpathi PhD Scholar Department of Political Science The University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA Website: http://www.ou.edu/web.html & Oindrila Roy PhD Scholar Department of Political Science Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Website: http://www.kent.edu
Abstract : The increasing influence of electronic media in India was stimulated by economic liberalization in early 1990s. It gave citizens access to numerous news sources as opposed to the sole government regulated news channel of the preliberalization era. In the 21st century the electronic media was reenergized by the internet revolution. As citizens started looking at the internet as an additional source of information, they began voicing their opinion through blogs; opinion polls and social networking websites. This paper uses qualitative analysis for studying the impact of the electronic media on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular. The data for this study is obtained from the Election Commission of India, media coverage, opinion polls, blogs and social networking websites.

Introduction Media has been the source of shared images and messages relating to political and social context. In the United States political communication literature has been dominated by voting preference and agendasetting studies for the last four decades (Cohen, 1963; McCombs, 2004; McCombs & Shaw, 1972; McLeod et. al., 2002, p. 229, 234; Strate et. 1

al., 1989; Wolfinger & Rosenstone, 1980). In the Indian context, research on the cognitive and behavioral effects of media on political participation has been largely neglected. In this paper we focus on the postliberalization era in India and study the impact of the electronic media on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular. India is a multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious country with a plethora of factors shaping the contours of political behavior. After receiving her independence from Britain in 1947, India continues to remain a Parliamentary democracy. However, it also has close similarities with the American model of federalism. In 2009, the size of the Indian electorate was 714 million, making it the worlds largest democracy (more than that of European Union and the United States combined) (Times of India, 2009). But like the United States India has also witnessed declining levels of political participation and voter turnout. In the American case, the declining levels of political participation can be attributed to Robert Putnams thesis (1993, 2000) in Bowling Alone. Putnam (2000) argues that the declining levels of civic and political participation can be directly linked to the role played by television. As citizens start spending more time watching television, they tend to alienate themselves from civic engagement. This in turn contributes to a decline in social capital (Putnam, 2000, p.283284). As social capital declines, political disengagement starts to increase and this is something that can explain the growing political apathy among young people, between the age group of 18 and 29 (Putnam, 2000). A closer examination of the Indian voting behavior indicates an overall decline, but not by a substantial margin. During first general election held in 1952, 61.16 percent of the voting population cast their ballots. In the 2009 general elections, voter turnout had dropped to 59.07 percent. The 2009 voter turnout figures were slightly more than that of the 2004 figure of 58.07 percent (Election Commission of India; Institute for Democratic Election Assistance, 2010). In the Indian context, making an argument along the lines of Putnams thesis (Putnam, 1965, p.283284) is difficult due to the lack of verifiable data. However, it would be interesting to study the effect of media on political participation and voting behavior in the postliberalization period. In India, internet and cable television have brought about meaningful changes to public and private spheres of life more quickly than education, industrialization or any other socio 2

economic factor.

Electronic

media

had

no

role

to

play

for

decade

after

independence. Print media and radio (circa 1936) served as the primary means of political information and mobilization. Mass media received a boost in September 1959 as a result of the introduction of television to urban India. The emergence of television in postcolonial India was characterized b y co mp e t in g v is io ns . Its deeply segmented political sphere witnessed several rounds of intense debating between politicians and bureaucrats who were concerned with the efficacy of investing in television considering only a few could manage access to the medium (Sinha, n.d.). The government controlled national television network began as a modest enterprise since viewers had access to one channel, while the bigger cities/metropolis had access to two channels. In terms of influencing civic and political engagement, its influence was minimal since the goals of the state regulated electronic media were restricted to educational and entertainment based programs (Sinha, n.d.). In 1991 the Indian television network was deregulated and cablesatellite network emerged for the first time. From its modest beginning with two channels in 1990, the Indian audience got access to five hundred and fifteen cablesatellite channels by June 2010. Moreover, there were thirty three twenty four hour news channels that would constantly engage in political and economic debates and conduct opinion/exit polls in election years (Press Trust of India, 2010a). The number of satelliteradio stations grew from six during the 1990s to three hundred and twelve by the middle of the last decade (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting). These would include the community radio systems that became very successful in three states including Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttaranchal, serving as the key medium for engaging in grassroots activism, but operating independent of state and commercial control. The service providers for these stations were nongovernmental organizations using radio for generating development and community education. More specifically community radio served as a tool for empowerment that allowed local citizens the opportunity to seek accountability for state action (Shaw, 2005). But the success of community radio was limited to few states, due to barriers for entry created by the commerce radio lobbies and state agencies resisting citizens accountability through enforcement of strict guidelines and high licensing fees (Shaw, 2005). The deregulation of the television network in the 1990s was accompanied by the internet revolution. From 1992 to 2010, the number of internet users grew from none to 3

81,000,000 (International Telecommunication Union, 2008). Today internet has emerged as a new medium for information delivery. The internet holds the promise of enhancing democracy and changing traditional oneway process of political communications (Grossman, 1995, 149; Oblak and Zeljan, 2007, p.60). The role of the internet in providing for political information becomes relevant since majority of the Indian population is relatively young. According to a recent estimate, by 2020 the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, in comparison to 37 for China and 48 for Japan (Basu 2007). Literature Review The influence of media on political participation has been studied extensively in the United States (Chaffe & Kanihan, 1997; Golan & Wanta, 2001; McComb & Shaw, 1972; Tedesco, 2001; Tolbert & McNeal, 2003; Weaver, 1996). The role of the media in determining political participation has been studied from three main perspectives the role of the media as a source of political knowledge (Berkowitz & Pritchard, 1989; Chaffee & Frank, 1996; Chaffe & Kanihan, 1997; Culbertson & Stempel III, 1986; Weaver, 1996); the role of the media as an agenda setter (Golan & Wanta, 2001; McComb & Shaw, 1972; Tedesco, 2001); and the role of the media as a platform for political participation (Hook, 2011; krueger, 2002,2005). The literature on political knowledge focuses on a wide variety of issues like the correlation between reliance on different forms of communication resources and the corresponding level of political knowledge (Berkowitz & Pritchard, 1989), the relative importance of print and broadcast media in the context of political knowledge (Chaffe & Frank, 1996; Chaffe & Kanihan, 1997), media exposure and its impact on candidate evaluation (Weaver, 1996) etc. In this literature the main thrust has been to analyze if media exposure has a positive impact on the political knowledge of the masses. In studying this issue scholars have disagreed on the relative strengths of the different forms of media. While Berkowitz and Prichard (1989) found the print media to be a very strong indicator of political knowledge enhancement, Chaffe and Kahnihan (1996) concluded that the television can be a more informative source than the print m e d i a under certain circumstances. However, in another study Chaffe and Frank (1996) presented a more nuanced explanation of the roles played by newspaper and television with regards to 4

political learning. They found that while newspapers constitute the primary information source for those actively seeking information, television is a stronger instrument of political learning for those who lack political information. The agendasetting literature on the other hand studies how the media influences the publics perception regarding the salience of a particular issue. Mc Comb and Shaw (1972) in their seminal study on the agendasetting role of the media found that the political world is reproduced imperfectly by individual news media. Yet the evidence in this study that voters tend to share the media's composite definition of what is important strongly suggests an agendasetting function of the mass media. More recent studies on the agenda setting role of the media may be found in the works of Golan and Wanta (2001) and Tedesco (2001). Golan and Wanta (2001) focused on the concept of second level agendasetting. The main difference between McComb and Shaws (1972) idea of agenda setting and Golan and Wantas (2001) concept of second level agenda setting is that while the former focuses on how the media influences the amount of importance that the public attaches to a particular political issue the latter studies if the attributes attached to a particular political leader by the media is transferred to the public. Golan and Wanta (2001) in their study of the primary in New Hampshire for the year 2000 found that second level agenda setting was particularly potent in the initial stages of the campaign when the mass public was beginning to learn about the candidates. Tedesco (2001) in his study on the 2000 primaries focused on the relationship between the candidate and the media in the context of agenda setting. In this study Tedesco (2001) found a positive relation between the issue agendas set by the media and the candidate with particularly strong correlations for Republican candidates. With the onset of the internet revolution, more and more scholars have studied the media as a platform for voicing public opinion (Hook, 2011, Krueger, 2002, 2005). Lijphart (1997) had identified low and unequal voter turnout to be a major problem of the American democracy in his article Unequal Participation and Democracys Unresolved Dilemma. Similar concerns have been raised by scholars like Norris and Solop (as cited in Krueger, 2002) as far as political participation on the internet is concerned. According to these scholars the internet revolution has failed to expand online political participation because the internet is only accessible to the advantaged sections of the society. However, Krueger (2002) argues that if nearequal access to the internet is established in the 5

future then it will have a strong potential for expanding online political participation. In India, there have been several studies on the nature and functions of the media (Fernandez, 2000; Johnson, 2001; Kluver et al., 2007; Prasad, 2006; Sonawalkar, 2001). In fact much of these studies have focused on the role of the Indian media in the post liberalization period (Fernandez, 2000; Johnson, 2001; and Sonawalkar, 2001). However, these studies mainly focus on the cultural impact of the media. For instance Fernandez (2000) in her article Nationalizing the Global: Media Images, Cultural Politics and the Middle Class in India argues that the social as well as the cultural images emanating from the process of economic liberalization in India is a result of the interaction between the global and the national. Johnson (2001), on the other hand, focuses on the influence of television on rural India. Sonawalkar (2001) looks at the imperialistic tendencies of Indian television channels on South Asia from a cultural context. An overview of the Indian media literature suggests that there has been very little research on the impact of the media on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular. Therefore in this article we try to study the impact of the media on political participation in India with a special emphasis on electoral behavior in the post liberalization era. Television as a Political Tool: Great expectation High Penetration In India and other postcolonial countries television often becomes the compelling medium for influencing a normative national consciousness of language, image and sound, television (re)produces a vision of the world for its audiences. These productions link television with the political economy of nation building. The medium can work to socialize people, foment material desires, and normalize consumer relations (Ives, 2007, p. 154). If we look at the argument in the context of Indian television, we observe that the broadcast media under state monopoly helped to tentatively bridge the gap between a literate elite and the mass audience, to which print media, had formerly catered. Access to literacy in precolonial India was restricted as the colonial state sought to train select group of middle class television helped to narrow the gap between literate elite and others, even further as for it administrative purposes (Rajagopal, 2004, p.7). The emergence of the cable satellite brought market forces and the power of television together by 1992 (Rajagopal,2004, 6

p.7) Hindu Tele- epics Political Participation If there were a truly Indian genre, it would be based on the Hindu mythological tele epics starting in 1987 (Kumar, 2005). This becomes evident when we look at the success of mythological soap operas such as the million Ramayana television (19871988) and Mahabharat we are (1988 1990) that drew over 500 viewers. But here

interested in exploring whether or not the narrativediscursive framework of the teleepics provoked newer challenges for the Indian society in the form of an assertive Hindu supremacy manifest in the Ram Janmabhumi Movement of the 1990s. Rajagopal what did emerge as a (2004) argues that the inclusion of religious programming onto statecontrolled television, created distinctive programming genre, namely, mythological soap operas, the successor to the governments failed experiment in developmental soap operas.1 The serialized epics in Indian television would allow, the collective sharing of an idealized Hindu past that would essentially provide the opportunity of religious nationalist mobilization. As battle scenes witnessed in the epic, Ramayana became the model for Hindu militancy while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began to mobilize the political religious, Ram temple movement, along the lines of the epicserial(Rajagopal, 2004, p.25, 31, 72). The serial being broadcast to nationwide audience orchestrated different forms of political mobilization, including rioting or joining community services like mobilization, the Hindu nationalist is little continued to rely that the on the late karseva (altruistic service), alongside changes in voting behavior. In terms of the narrative of political to constructing the memories of otherness in a community, as means of resistance oppression. (Rajagopal, 2004, p.70). There disagreement started in commodification of Hindutva (the dominant religious ideology)

1980s, three decades after India received independence. The government under the Congress Party decided to take a landmark decision, allowing broadcasting of Hindu epics on state controlled television. The politically charged decision sought to revive the flagging fortune of the party by targeting the Hindu votes and risking alienation of both the Muslim voters and secular credentials. However due to organizational deficiency the Congress failed to capitalize on the teleepics popularity and revive its fortune. It was the BJPs 7

open advocacy of the Hindutva (the movement for Hindu selfassertion and nationhood) that helped them to capitalize on the televised narrative of an emergent collective Hindu identity. By the time of the general elections of 1991 they became a national party and made significant electoral gains (Chatterjee, 1994, p.14) (see table 1). Table I: Summary of General Elections 1991 Source: The Election Commission of India Political Group Congress (I) Bharatiya Janata Party Janata Dal (JD) Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI (M)) Telegu Desam (TD) Communist Party of India (CPI) AllIndia Anna Dravida Monnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Others Seat Distribution 226 119 55 35 14 13 11 33

In the post 1991 period following deregulation of the television networks, and a growing nexus between market reforms and technological advancement, interaction between media effect on political behavior underwent some changes. As market reforms and liberalization started influencing society, the topdown approach to economic development got replaced. Rajagopal (2004) thought that the change in the discursive narrative of state economy grew out of the complex politicoeconomic reality as civil society started contesting the claims of benign (or notsobenign) authoritarianism through which economic policy was legislated, and which had survived more than four decades of democratic elections (Rajagopal ,2004, p.2). The 1990s witnessed for the first time an emerging alliance between two contradictory forces, Hindutva and neoliberalism. Gopalakrishnan (2008) compared this alliance to living political projects, shaped in a 8

dialectical relationship with their social foundations and common goals offering a space that could be exploited (Gopalakrishnan, 2008, p. 11) in terms of the tactics used for operating the alliance. At the national level, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), headed by the BJP made discursive adjustments that allowed them to develop a political praxis built on the neoliberal privatization of education, intensified repression of social movements and the opening of the Indian economy to Non Resident Indian driven foreign investment. The two projects also promoted antiterrorism as the single most important agenda of the Indian state, while attempting to dissolve its commitment to any forms of social justice"(Gopalakrishnan, 2008, p.10). Riding high on the success of what emerged as successful alliance between neoliberalism and Hindutva, in 2003 the BJP led NDA coalition launched a nationwide television campaign with the slogan India Shining. The NDA government spent an estimated twenty million dollars of the taxpayers money were used to air the campaign in print and electronic media, in all languages (Zora & Woreck, 2004). The campaign was aired 9,472 times making it the second most viewed advertisement between December 2003January 2004 (Chandran, 2004, February 24). In the print media similar success were achieved in terms of its popularity, as it became the fourth most advertised insertion in the 450 national and regional newspapers (AdEx India Ananlysis, 2003; Bidwai, 2004). The New York based advertisement agency, Grey Worldwide were the brainpower behind the sixty second media blitz, focusing on a feelgood propaganda that were accompanied by the economic liberalization mantra along with images of Indias industrial and agricultural development, the emergent middleclass and the idea of India as an emergent super power. The NDA alliance emphasized that the India Shining was a government campaign that showcased Indias economic progress rather than political campaign for the upcoming General Election 2004 (The Hindu, 2004). The campaign plank was set up against the backdrop of the existing Indian economic development. According to Kohli (2006) the success of Indian economy under the NDA regime was reflection of the neoliberal intervention of favoring probusiness industrial policy and deregulation of the license raj. This would also allow for greater freedom for private investors in different sectors of the economy (Kohli, 2006). The figures listed in table II are often cited as indicators of economic progress in India, through the India Shining campaign. 9

Table II: PostReform Economic Indicators Source: Economic Survey of India

Wyatt (2005) argues that the India Shining campaign reflects Indias transition from modernist to the postmodernist vision of economic development (Wyatt, 2005, 466). Prior to economic liberalization of 1991, the literal and metaphorical interpretation of Nehruvian modern India was constructed through stateled planned development. The assumption here was that state as representation of modernity would overcome the barriers to progress created by myth and superstition2. The modernist view of stateled development was being undermined, following the colossal failure of the planned modernist project (Wyatt, 2005, p.466). Wyatt (2005) would sketch the postmodernist narrative through the logic of economic development characterized by production and consumption: Consumption is coming to be understood in new ways. Consumers are much more susceptible to the a ll ur e o f intangibl e a nd e p h e me r a l g o o d s . Advertising and branded goods are increasingly important aspects of economic life in India. India is itself being treated as a brand (Wyatt 2005, 466). The India Shining Campaign requires to be viewed as basis for Indias new economic imagery (Wyatt 2005, p.472). As the Indian nation starts becoming more secure with its postcolonial identity based on nascent Hindu nationalism, the political parties, started to champion the neoliberal agenda of economic nationalism. The India Shining Campaign, under the existing 10

BJP regime planned to extend its political base to the resurgent, educated urban electorate, who were benefactors of Indias rising status as software superpower and knowledge based economy (Wyatt 2005, p.470). The India Shining Campaign articulated the globalist discourse of the benefits of economic development, based on the logic of economic liberalization.3 It also reflected the BJP and its affiliated attempt of portraying mediafriendly image and claims that (p)roactive media management of Indias The two primary templates used to accomplish favorable

global image is key.4

voting outcomes in favor of the BJP and its affiliated, were making India a superpower and a developed country by 2020.5 The electoral campaign received further boost after the BJP, decided to use the traditional campaign strategy of road rallies along with the India Shining campaign, launched in print and electronic media. Bharat Uday Yatra (the India Shining Tour) was launched as a crosswide rally in March 10, 2004. The campaign led by Deputy Prime Minister, L K Advani, focused on the burgeoning economic growth and good governance, without any reference to the Hindutva ideology. The tour attempted to appeal to the rural audience without access to print and electronic media. Further, it tried to counter the allegations of largescale poverty and widening inequality disjuncture between the narrative of a dynamic Indian economy and popular perceptions of that economy, as projected by the opposition parties, international and national print and electronic media, along with scholars (Wyatt, 2005, p. 477). The appeals of emergent Hindu nationalism helped to secure political participation through voter mobilization for the BJP and its allies, during the 1991 general election. Moreover with the strong nationalist discipline, probusiness government stance, BJP brought b a c k t h e noncommitted v o t e r s , to vote for them. This form of political mobilization from previously noncommitted voters were significant since the 1991 election percent in 1989 witnessed below average voter turnout of 57.23 percent, from 61.24 consensus on the Indian National Congress was waning.

(IDEA, 2010). It was becoming clearly evident that the four decade long national This was direct outcome of the growing contradictions within the secularism project, manifest in the legacy of antiSikh and antiMuslim riots. The Nehruvian consensus also suffered a collapse of economic 11

modernity lead by stateled development that characterized wasteful and inefficient system nurturing stagnation and corruption rather than productivity (Rajagopal, 2004, p.33). In contrast, the failure of the 2004 India Shining Campaign and Bharat Uday Yatra needs to be attributed to several contradictions within the emergent political narratives of Brand India. By the early 2000, the postmodernist ambitions had lead citizens to emerge as consumers who would become susceptible to the allure of advertising and branded goods (Wyatt, 2005, p.466). These shifts in how the economic imaginary operates become critical for constructing Indias new national identity and understand the linkages between political mobilization and exposure to media. Failure of this political advertisement on the other hand indicates that the effects of media in influencing favorable voting outcomes (favor of BJP and its allies) can become counterproductive. Mr L.K. Advani (2004) would concede to this argument when he says that the 2004 electoral defeat for the NDA needs to be attributed to overconfidence and wrong slogans like India Shining... (Press Trust of India, 2009). Table III: Summary of General Elections 2004 Source: The Election Commission of India Political Group Congress (I) Bharatiya Janata Party Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI (M)) Socialist Party (SP) Other Parties Majority Society Party (BSP) Communist Party of India (CPI) National Congress Party Independents Seats Distribution 146 137 43 37 23 18 10 9 5

12

Figure I: Summary of Exit Polls: General Elections 2004 Source: http://www.hinduonnet.com/elections2004/index.htm

Chaffe and Kahnihans (1996) augmented that television could be a more informative source than the print media under certain circumstances seems to have some relevance for India. The proliferations of cablesatellite and radio in India over the last twenty years are an indication of the emergence of television as a useful alternative of information delivery. This growing popularity of television as a primary communication medium could also be attributed to the inaccessibility of print media to certain sections of population due to the problems of illiteracy, poverty and linguistic heterogeneity. We would further argue that Indian print media over the years have come to represent an elitistsubculture as they were set up by industrial corporations and business houses (since prior to 1990 television was regulated by the state) and serve as their mouthpiece for small group of educated middle class elites. The popularity of the cablesatellite television indicates that India has now entered the era of electronic capitalism. The print media uses the trajectory of information delivery that oscillates between catering to the regional or national level. The mode of information delivery for the electronic media is more nuanced, since it starts out by claiming its niche at the national level, 13

before reinforcing itself into the local and regional venues.6 We would argue that the role played by television in constructing the postmodernist Indian identity, had influenced political parties to succumb to the temptation of using the televised space for communicating political agenda and achieving electoral success. The India Shining is a great example of how the BJP and its ffiliates attempted to capture the neoliberal imagery of progress through political advertisement. What would probably explain its failure are the inherent contradictions between the neoliberal agenda of selfsustaining growth and freemarket operations and the paternalistic stateled bourgeoisie narratives that were constantly being circulated through other media outlets including the print and electronic media (also the Internet). The validity of our claims are once more established when we look at the fate of the recent political advertisement, JaiHo (Hail India) under existing Congress party. In March 2009 the Congress Party led government acquired the copyrights of JaiHo (Hail India) for $200,000, to use the song as part of its political campaign for the upcoming general elections (BBC, 2009). Unlike the India Shining campaign, Jai Ho (Hail India) had established its credibility as an award winning song showcasing the plight of real India, the common man and how he willingly marches forward despite the growing adversaries. The imagery of the common man has always been an intrinsic part of the Congress campaign for the last several decades. As Indias premier national party and primary one for the last fifty years, the party found itself at the crossroads of harboring an elitist subculture based on party membership that were dominated by foreignschooled, educate, upper and middle class intelligentsia. This was in contrast to the electoral base that would represent people from different sections of society including the social and economically marginalized sections of population. The overall thematic narrative of the Jai Ho campaign focused on the common man and his path to success that would be shaped by the neoliberal logic of market driven economic development. However, what was critical to the JaiHo campaign was the contrasting imagery of the neoliberal ideology, from the India Shining campaign. The India Shining campaign focused on growth rates, surging stock markets, booming service sector and sound financial reserves. The broad indicators of neoliberal development paradigm although significant, would overlook the shortcomings of neoliberal development in post colonial setting such as India, characterized by uneven development and inequality in the distribution of wealth. The 14

JaiHo campaign had already been part of the Indian psyche; following the success of the award winning song that established its credibility by celebrating the common man and their resilience to overcome adversaries. Reflecting on the campaign that ran for sixty seconds (in three different formats), three broad themes emerged the Congress leadership over the years; the success of the Indian farming community with implicit reference to the Congress initiated Green Revolution of 1965; and the Gandhian vision of selfsustaining Indian economy based on agricultural progress and small cottage industries. In addition to this they also focused on the current leadership and showcasing, among other things, Indias Moon mission, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the IndiaU.S. Nuclear deal and Bharat Nirman(Hindu, 2009). When NDA launched the India Shining campaign, it intended to capture the economic imagination of the nation spurred by successes of neoliberal development agenda. The BJP insisted that the campaign was not meant to be a political campaign for the upcoming elections. On the contrary, it was a government advertisement meant to promote Brand India by referencing Indias sociopolitical and economic accomplishments. But the timing, price tag and the problematic trajectory of Indias politicaleconomic development lead to rejection of the BJP mandates. The Public Interest Litigations (PIL) seeking ban on the campaign and challenging full disclosure of the funds used for the campaign indicated one more instance of growing interaction between media and political participation. It is to be noted, that the narrative of political participation in a democracy manifests itself in a number of ways including voting, attendance to town hall meeting, opinion polls or seeking accountability for governmental action through the act of lodging a civil case.In 2009 when brandCongress launched the JaiHo campaign, as compared to the India Shining campaign (2004) and the Bhai Ho (a satirical rendition of the Jai Ho campaign that translated to Be Afraid) (2009), the differences in the discursive narrative was discernibly evident. Santosh Desai, CEO of Future Brand argues that The smartest thing of the Congress campaign was not to give BJP ammunitions to shoot back at the incumbent. The entire communication strategy didnt gloat over achievements; it made the right soothing noises and didnt push the envelope too much. (Banerjee, 2009). Moreover studies conducted by BrandScience@IMRB International revealed that Congress campaign proved to be successful in all the cities with the exception of Bangalore. The 15

Congress campaign scored high on entertainment and enjoyment parameters with 72 percent (compared to 51 percent for the BJP). Similarly 55 percent felt optimistic watching Congress campaign versus 40 percent for BJP commercials (2004, 2009). Finally, the language of the campaign was simple, positive and appealed to women voters (The Economic Times, 2009) In the postcolonial context fashioning of the political identities and co existence of collective identity based on caste, class, religion and nationalism have been rooted in traditional forms of participation and mobilization techniques (Kidambi, 2007, p. 241). What is perhaps more distinctive is the role of media plays in the formation of political opinion. This study affirms the proposition that the relationship between media and political behavior is more nuanced, as it is nested in the ideological contradiction between neo liberal agenda and the culture of paternalism. It is also a product of the complex socio cultural reality fostering heterogeneity and possibility of violent fracture (Kidambi. 2007, p. 240). Table IV: Exit Surveys 2009 Source: Douglas, S. (2009) Agency CNNIBN Dates 05/13/2009 Predictions UPA 185205, NDA 165185, Front 110130, Fourth Front 2535 Third

StarNielsen India TV Times Now Headlines Today India TV UTVi

05/13/2009 05/13/2009 05/13/2009 05/13/2009 05/13/2009 05/13/2009

UPA 199, NDA 196, Third Front 100, Fourth Front 36 UPA 189201, Front 105121 NDA 183195, Third

UPA 198, NDA 183, Third Front 0, Other & Independent 162 UPA 191, NDA 180, Third Front 38, Other& Independent 134 UPA 195, NDA 194, Third Front 108, Other& Independent 46 UPA 195, NDA 189, Third Front 0, Other & Independent 14 16

Congress (own survey) BJP (own survey)

05/13/2009 05/13/2009

UPA 205, NDA 168, Third Front 0, Other & Independent 153 UPA 170, NDA 220, Third Front 0, Other & Independent 164

Table V: Summary of General Elections 2009 Source: The Election Commission of India Political Group Congress (I) Bharatiya Janata Party Samajwadi Party Bahujan Samaj Party Janata DalUnited Trinamool Congress DMK Seats Distribution 205 116 22 21 20 19 18

Communist Party of India Marxist 16 (CPI (M)) Biju Janata Dal (BJD) 14 Shiv Sena Nationalist Congress Party Communist Party of India (CPI) AIADMK Telegu Desam Party (TDP) Rashtriya Lok Dal RJD Akali Dal 17 11 9 9 9 6 5 4 4

CPI Independents Others

4 9 29

T he I nte r net a nd P olitical Pa r ticipation in I n dia American scholars like Krueger (2002, 2005), Norris and Solop (as cited in Krueger, 2002) have studied the impact of the internet revolution on political participation. These scholars have tried to find out if the internet has opened up opportunities for greater political participation in the United States. However, it is difficult to find a similar body of literature regarding the impact of the internet on political participation in India. Therefore, in paper we try to analyze if the internet revolution has influenced this political

participation in India in any significant way. For exploring this issue we focus on two major aspects of the internet that involve mass participation social networking and blogging. For studying the role played by social networking with regards to political participation in India we focus exclusively on Orkut communities dealing with Indian politics. On the other hand, in order to examine the impact of blogging on political participation we study the major blogging websites of India. In the first part of this section we focus on the analysis of the Orkut communities on Indian politics. Orkut is a social networking website run by the Google Inc. (Dmonte 2010). It was launched in the year 2004 (Dmonte, 2010). After Brazil, India is the second largest market for Orkut (Dmonte, 2010). In India, Orkut was the single largest social networking website till July 2010 (Press Trust of India, 2010). It was only in July 2010, that Orkut with 19.9 million visitors lost its top position to Facebook with 20.9 million visitors (Press Trust of India, 2010b). Other significant social networking websites in India include BharatStudent (4.4 million visitors), Twitter (3.3 million visitors), Yahoo Pulse (3.5 million visitors) and Yahoo Buzz (1.8 million visitors) (Press Trust of India, 2010b). In this study we focus exclusively on Orkut because it has been the most popular social networking website in India till July 2010. We begin our analysis by running a search on Orkut for communities with the key words 18

Indian politics. The search results produce a list of communities on Indian politics created in India and other countries. From the search results we select a sample of thirty two communities that were created in India. We pick out these thirty two communities on the basis of active participation. All the communities selected for this study were created between 2004 and 2010. The number of members for the communities range between 25 and 13,343 (as of February 2011). We study these communities with the specific purpose of answering three key questions Is the creation of communities systematically related to national parliamentary elections? Is the membership of the communities systematically related to national parliamentary elections? What is the general approach of these communities towards Indian politics and whether the approach taken in the communities is related to any tangible form of political participation? In the first question, we inquire if there is a relationship between national elections and the creation of communities related to Indian politics on Orkut. Our argument in case of this particular question is that if creating communities has an influence on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular then more and more communities are likely to be created in the years when India had a national parliamentary election. Considering Orkut was launched in the year 2004, our study is restricted to the 14th Lok Sabha election of 2004 and the 15th Lok Sabha elections of 2009. However, on looking at figure II, we fail to find evidence in support of a systematic relationship between the year of community creation and the national elections. While 2004 and 2005 had only one community created per year, figure II shows that the maximum number of communities were created in the years 2006 and 2007. Out of the thirty two communities analyzed in this study as many as nine communities were created in 2006 and the same number of communities was created in 2007. Seven communities were created in 2008. Four communities were created in 2009 and only one community was created in the year 2010. This implies that the maximum number of communities was created in years when Indian did not have a national election. The years in which India did have a national election i.e. 2004 and 2009 witnessed the creation of only one and four communities respectively. This trend is indicative of the fact that the creation of online social networking communities with a political intent is not directly related to political participation in general and voting behavior in particular. In the second question we focus on studying the relationship between community membership 19 and national

parliamentary elections in India. Our expectation from this question is that if joining communities did have a direct influence on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular then a community created in a year when India had a national election is likely to have high membership. Figure III shows the membership in different communities by the year of their creation. This graph shows that the one community created in 2004 and the one in 2005 had very high membership numbers. In fact the community created in 2004 had as many as 13,074 members whereas the community created in 2005 a membership of about 13,343. However, the membership for communities created in 2006 low with remained relatively only one out of nine communities witnessing a membership higher than 3000.

Most of the communities created in 2007 had membership figures lower than 3000. Only one of the nine communities created in 2007 had more than 6000 members. Memberships for the communities created in 2008 and 2009 remained very low in the sense that they had less than 1000 members. However, the one community created in the year 2010 witnessed a massive membership of more than 9000. This graph fails to portray a systematic relationship between community membership a n d n a t i o n a l e l e c t i o n s . While t h e y e a r o f t h e 1 4 t h Lok

Sabha election witnessed a community with membership as high as 13,074, the communities created in 2009 failed to have more than 1000 members. On the other hand, the community created in the year 2005, which was not a national election year, had the maximum membership of 13,343 people. Moreover, 2010 in spite of not being an election year witnessed a dramatic increase in membership as compared to 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Considering the graph depicts a highly unsystematic pattern in the relationship between national elections and membership in different communities by the year of their creation, it is difficult to argue that joining communities has any direct impact on political participation. In the final part of our analysis of the Orkut communities on Indian politics we look into the general approach taken by the communities on Indian politics as such. In order to answer this question we classify all the communities studied for this paper into two broad categories communities not seeking a change of the current state of Indian politics and communities aiming at bringing about a change in Indian politics. These communities are coded as zero and one respectively. The classification is based on the words used in the community titles and the description of the communities. We treat the use of words and sentences like change, clear up this devouring threat of corrupt and unjust political society, need 20

a revolution here in the title and description as indicative of communities belonging to the second category. Figure IV shows the number of communities falling under each of the two aforementioned categories. This graph indicates that there are as many as 20 communities that aspire to bring about change in the current state of Indian politics whereas only 12 demonstrate no explicit desire for change in the status quo. The question that immediately follows is that are the members of those 20 communities using the community platform for organizing concrete efforts like demonstrations, marches, online protests, campaigns etc. for bringing about a change? However, a study of the various comments posted on the communities suggest that the members are using the community platform for general discussion as opposed to organizing tangible programs for bringing about a change in Indian politics. Thus all the three aspects of Orkut communities on Indian politics suggest that social networking communities have failed to directly influence political participation in general and voting behavior in particular in India. In the following section on the role of the internet revolution in the context of political participation, we focus on the major political blogs of India. The data that we use in this paper for studying the blogs is obtained from the website of BlogRank. BlogRank uses a wide range of factors to rank the major Indian blogging websites. According to Khalid (2009, June 2) the key factors used by BlogRank for ranking the blogging websites are RSS membership, Yahoo incoming links, Yahoo indexed pages, Google indexed pages, Google page rank, monthly visitors, pages per visit, link page ratio, complete Alexa and Technocrati ratings, and social cites popularity. In our paper we use the rankings published by BlogRank to focus on two major issues first to study the rank of the political blogging websites among the major blogging websites of India and then to analyze if the political blogging websites involve any form of tangible political participation. We specifically focus on the top seventy five blogs of India. We consider a blog to be political only when political issues are specifically mentioned in the title of the blog. Out of the top 75 blogging websites we only found one with an explicit content. This blog titled Indian Political Blog ranks 72nd of governance, in BlogRanks list of the top 75 blogs. The India

Political Blog has been created as a platform for voicing public opinion in the three key areas consumer rights and politics. The major difference between the Orkut 21 communities discussed earlier in the paper and this blog is that posts on The India Political

Blog seem to be more detailed and more informed that the casual comments on the Orkut communities. Moreover, this blog also seems to be very active in the sense that it has been maintain an archive of all the posts since June 2007. The archive lists the comments posted to the community on a monthly basis. Although the description of this blog does not mention that the blog intends to promote any form of direct political participation the blog does provide for a platform for exchanging opinion on political issues. However, the low rank of this blogging website in the list of the major blogs in India indicates that political blogging is not yet popular among the internet savvy masses. This again shows that the internet revolution has not succeeded at influencing the political behavior of the masses in a substantial way. Conclusion In this paper we have tried to study the impact of the electronic media on political participation in general and voting behavior in particular in India during the post liberalization era. In order to study the role of the electronic media we have focused on the television and the internet. As far as the role played by television is considered we have mainly concentrated on the teleepics, the cable network channels, and the use of television for airing campaigns like India Shining by BJP and JaiHo by the Indian National Congress. In case of the internet we have looked into online social networking communities dealing with Indian politics on Orkut as well as blogging website on the same issue. Our findings suggest that television has exercised a meaningful influence on political participation in India during the last 20 years. However, the extent to which campaigns on television have led to successful mobilization has varied depending on the crafting of the contents of the campaign. The internet, on the other hand, has not yet emerged as a potent factor for determining political participation. Future research can be directed towards survey oriented field work that can be used for conducting quantitative studies on the relationship between the electronic media and political participation in India. B ib liograph y
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Note
1 See Chapter 4: A split public in the making and unmaking of the Ram Janmabhumi movement in A.

Rajagopal (2004) Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p.21. 2 James C. Scott (1998) Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have

Failed. Yale: Yale University Press, 9093 in Wyatt, A. (2005). Building the temples of postmodern India: economic constructions of national identity. Contemporary South Asia, 14(4), 465480. 3 Jalal Alamgir (2003) Managing openness in India: the social construction of a globalist narrative, in

Linda Weiss (ed), States in the Global Economy: Bringing Domestic Institutions Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p 226. Ibid. 471 4 India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) (2003), op cit, Ref 13, p 3. Ibid. 473. 5 Make India a superpower: Advani, The Hindu, 11 March 2004,

http://www.hindu.com/2004/03/11/stories/2004031107510100.htm (accesssed 20 June 2005) Ibid. 471 6 Richard Dienst (1994) utilizes an important distinction, one between the time of the image and the time of

viewing, in Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television. Durham: Duke University Press: 5859; Mary Ann Doane has written that televisions greatest ability is to be there both on the scene and in your living room. Mary Ann Doane, (1990) Information, Crisis and Catastrophe, in Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism, ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press and British Film Institute. P.238 According to traditional notions of time and space, as Samuel Weber points out, television can be neither fully here nor fully there; it is rather a split or a separation that camouages itself by taking the form of a visible image. That is the veritable signicance of the term television coverage: it covers an

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invisible separation by giving it shape, contour and gure. See Samuel Weber, (1996)Television: Set and Screen, in Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media, ed. Alan Cholodenko (Stanford: Stanford University Press, p.120 in Rajagopal 2004, 289.

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