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Weaned on a diet of democracy, the average Indian has grown to take a few rights for granted. These include the right to speak, to write, to listen, to read, and to share ideas. It is perhaps a function of this that India has done extraordinarily well in the business of ideas. And also that India has amongst the most thriving media and communication industries in Asia.

Numbers bear this out: with 70 million television households India boasts the third largest television market in the world; with a cumulative circulation exceeding 12 crore, its print industry ranks fifth globally; and while regulatory constraints have choked its telecommunications industry, consulting outfit Gartner expects the number of cellular phone subscribers in India to soar to 30.9 million in 2005.

The success of the media and communication business in India is built around what MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte calls ''the ability of the small man to be heard''. That's true of Italy, and while Negroponte's observation holds for both countries that it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to the dispersion of a particular medium becomes evident when one looks at China. The country everyone will have to compete with-the stake is the political and economic dominance of the world, a position the US enjoys today-boasts over 100 million cellular subscribers.

A far more convincing explanation for the success of the media and communications businesses in Italy and India could be the shared traits of their peoples: family-oriented, religious, indolent, and with a love of the spoken word (especially their own).

Circa 2002, Indian media has come a long way from beginnings associated with the Indian freedom movement. Post-independence, the government took upon itself the role of information disseminator. Radio and television weren't media in the contemporary sense; they were instruments to achieve social objectives. All too often that meant propaganda, and it was left to the print media to present an unbiased view.

If the government's efforts to adopt mass-media to its own ends failed, then its attempts to engender a telecom revolution fared no better. India has just 26 phones for 1,000 people.

Today, the private sector is present in both telecommunications and broadcasting. A bouquet of private satellite channels has segmented the market in terms of viewership and advertising. A rise in literacy levels has spurred a resurgence in the vernacular print media. India's two largest newspapers and the television channels with the largest following in the country are vernacular ones. Satellite television-there are 35 million C&S (cable and satellite) households in the country-reflects the aspirational changes in the Indian middle class, sometimes even influences them. And even as the debate to allow foreign investment in print media continues-it is, in every other medium-Indian media houses are discovering that there is a middle path: one that balances the profit-motive with the need for objectivity.

Subliminal Persuasiveness

The coverage of General Election 1998: Influencing minds?

There's something sinister, in an almost Goebbelsian sort of way, about media's much-touted role as a shaper and changer of opinions. Fact is, media has traditionally played little part in influencing decisions, especially when these relate to India's largest marketing event, the General Elections. 'Traditionally', because, its importance as an opinion-shaper is growing. Driving this growth is the shift from print to television-not in terms of a classic viewership vs readership debate, but in terms of the different ways in which people read and watch television.

Print is a cerebral medium. It is meant for the super-literate (the wholly Indian tactic of classifying people as literate if they can read and sign their own names prevents us from using the word without a qualification). Ergo, it impacts opinions, not ways of life. Television images, in contrast, completely bypass the cognitive process. They offer bit-sized packages that can be easily consumed. Politicians, more than media professionals, seem to realise this: the television-savvy among them, from Jayalalithaa to Laloo Yadav to Pervez Musharraf, take to the medium like a duck to water; the rest stumble on, their foibles visible for the world to see and dissect.

But it isn't in the political domain that television has its most significant impact: it is in the business domain. Images of consumerism, and consumerist lifestyles in feel-good soaps work better than references to Lux's salutary impact on skin types in the earliest American radio soaps (yes, the product was written into the script). When this happens, the medium truly becomes the message.

-Shailesh Dobhal

Programmes That Revolutionised Televison... ...well, almost. This subjective list was drawn up with the assistance of media planners. P.S.: Even they couldn't remember the years, a sign of the ephemeral nature of televison.
Chitrahaar, 1974, DD: song and dance time and the pioneer	Ramayan, 1987, DD: Religion and television make a potent combo	Cricket World Cup, 1996: the India Pak match attracts 10 crore viewers
Hum Log, 1984, DD: The soap (op)era begins	Chanakya, 1991, DD: perhaps the last of DD's superhits	Amanat, 1997, Zee: a serial that shaped Zee's fortunes
	Bold And The Beautiful, 1992, Star: a soap that started the cultural invasion	KBC, 2000, Star Plus: the programme that turned around a channel
Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, 1984, DD: viewers still remember its sponsor Vicco	Tara, 1993, Zee: India's first female-centric soap	Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, 2000, Star Plus: the return of family-oriented soap
Buniyad, 1986, DD: the first of the mega soaps	Shanti, 1994, DD: a big day-time	Chithi, 2001, Sun TV: a success that inspired translation