( Delhi metro and the Print Media / Part One

Politics of De-politicisation
Abhay Kumar Dubey Editor, Indian Languages Programme, CSDS

The structure of Indian print media has always been such that it has favoured middle classes and their shifting versions of democracy and modernisation. At times it has cudgelled on behalf of the struggling sections of people and has engaged positively with the idea of the political. Also, on some other occasion it has betrayed narrow class interests, and has tried to snap off linkages between the processes of modernisation and politicisation. In between, media has mostly liked to play the ball according to the rules fixed by the powers that be. It would be interesting to note that in several commentaries about its rise, a clear marker over medias class origin remains conspicuous by its absence.1 Another thing these commentaries never mention is the fact of the caste profile of media practitioners. Since the hitherto unspecified caste identities of the overwhelming majority of journalists have now been excavated by a pro-active group of socially concerned intellectual-activists2, one can make some sense of the structural overlap between their membership of the traditional elite and their claim of being the modernising instrument of society.

Irrespective of the theories about the development of democracy in India, as a middle class value, and modernisation as a process of politicisation,3 the existential considerations have dictated fluctuations in the life and times of media, trajectory of which have regularly been affecting various aspects of our public life. In colonial times,
For instance see, several issues of Seminar on the media related themes, such as issue no. 343, March 1983; issue no. 453, May 1997; and issue no. 458, October 1997. 2 The character of this survey was at best rudimentary, but it elicited huge response from editors and other journalists. The survey was done by a team of researchers and journalists under the leadership of Yogendra Yadav of CSDS in response to the blatantly partisan coverage of the current anti-reservation stir. It was broadcasted on IBN & AWAZ news channels.
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with its founding principal based on a high moral ground, the print media and its main protagonist the journalist fashioned an exciting career as a nationalistic pamphleteer. In post-independent era he became a conscience-keeper of the nation and made a wonderful use of the genre of investigative and development journalism. During the restless seventies and eighties, through this very genre print media showed a rebellious streak of politico-social activism. Stories constructed on the basis of governmental leaks, from the facts extracted out of ambivalent journalist-politician nexus, on the issues of environment, violation of gender and other human rights and massacres by landlord armies gave media the aura of an institution capable of transcending the grip of capital and other class interests. All this came as a whiff of fresh breeze as it introduced the occasional sparks of episodic radicalism in the otherwise mundane world of newsgathering and edition making. Its long affair with adversary journalism was proved most creative in terms of accelerating the ongoing process of politicisation.

But, with the advent of globalising nineties, and according to one media watcher, along with it came the demand for media product. This could only be supplied by the active and deliberate politics of de-politicisation. Other connotations apart, in the particular context of media the expression politics of de-politicisation simply means deployment of a professional mechanism by which centrality of the politicisation can be denied in the affairs of state, society and their development. In practice the politics of depoliticisation also meant planned discrediting of political class and a drive for the establishment of techno-economic state, where politics of the day gets reduced to only as an instrumentality.4

The face-off between the socially concerned media and the de-politicising media is still going on. The scale of editorial preference has already tipped towards the newfound category of human-interest stories rather than the humanistic stories with political content. It seems that the transformation in the offing is going to be stark. The watchdog
See, Rajni Kothari, The politics in India, Orient Longman, Delhi, 1969; and Rethinking Democracy, Orient Longman, Delhi, 2006 4 P. Sainath has done a thought provoking analysis of the impact of this process in one of his article. See, Amnesia, Seminar, issue no. 458, October 1997.
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of democracy already has become the keyboard-punching infotainment artist of the free market era, and the upper caste born middle class creature known as Indian journalist has gone from being an educated-patriot to a market-driven actor.5

Using the news-clippings, editorial pieces and other articles related to the mega project of Delhi metro as the base material, provided by the research team of Lokayan6, this twopart article intends to show how the changing face of journalism and resultant politics of de-politicisation has converted Delhi metro into a media product, and how a powerful nexus of media, politicians and parties of every variety along with the international profit seekers of capital play the game of image building and create a broad consensus around something as big as the metro project without any concern for social well being. Both parts of this article contain an exhaustive analysis of news-items published in the Hindi and English press. The first part gives an account of an urban rail project being depicted as the symbol of the non-political and technological times, the second examines the various other issues related to the Delhi metro, such as its cost effectiveness, concerns of security and environment, justification for the technology used, and above all, whether there were no other alternatives available for solving the problems of the daily commuter of National Capital city. A disclaimer may not be needed here, because it is nobodys argument that media should not have supported the metro project. This modest exercise of media analysis wants to focus on the newfound obsession for the de-politicisation of the social relationship of a development project by the most powerful opinion maker of the democratic state system.

. Sagarika Ghose, The Free Market Journalist, Seminar, Special issue on media trends, 458, October 1997 6 Five volumes of clippings of the period between 2002-2004 were prepared by the Transport and Print Media project under the leadership of LOKAYAN. It includes one separate volume of the English newspaper clippings, and one volume contained mixed items of Hindi and English both. The other three volumes contain only Hindi news items.

History as Present For newspapers the history of Delhi metro is rather well known in a particular way. It is a short and crisp history surfacing rarely in the columns of the papers7 and containing only one major fact of an urban rail project consigned to the dustbin of political rivalry and governmental inefficiency for several decades. One newspaper tells us that Delhi metro was conceived at least 42 years ago; the same newspaper on the same date in another item adventurously shortens this period to only 21 years; an English paper calls it a 50year-old dream. Apart from this typically careless research, newspapers also tell us again and again why this project couldnt fructify in earlier times, and why the commuters of Delhi were left at the mercy of the daily horrors of bus travel. This history does not hesitate to put leaders like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi in a dock because they had in their times failed to implement the project.
The dream realised today was in fact seen first in 1960. Forty-two year ago a plan was designed for the construction of the metro in Delhi and Calcutta simultaneously. For Calcutta the dream did come true many years ago, but unfortunately Delhi kept encountering roadblocks. For three decades the plan remained buried in files.8 The metro was conceived some 21 year ago on the initiative of Indira Gandhi squabbling began on the issue as to who would construct and who would run it then came Rajiv Gandhi but he did not want to 9 Fifty years on, a dream for the capital is realised 10

In fact the construction of this small piece of history firmly locates itself in the present by constantly referring to the ongoing glory of the metro project, and comes out as totally aloof of its real past. For instance, hardly any columnist or editorial writer, any reporter or news-analyst can be seen attempting to dig out the social reason as to why having a metro became increasingly necessary. They fail to recall the debates of late eighties and early nineties where a certain restraint policy about regulating the numbers of private vehicles was advocated by some ethically oriented social activists and intellectuals. Obviously, feebleness of those voices couldnt sustain against the powerful middle class
Details of the metro history hardly occur in news items under analysis. In the more than one thousand clippings only half a dozen items partially mentions this aspect of the metro project.
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Rashteeya Sahara, September 20, 2002 Alok tomar, Metro Rail ka Shuru Hua Khel, Rashteeya Sahara, September 20, 2002

proclivity of having the comforts of privatised vehicles and enjoyment of the social status derived from the ownership of cars.11 Delhis roads were, then, already choked. A situation had arrived when resolution of the commuting problem in non-road terms could be imposed as an easy option. It was an either-or situation, a choice between some kind of flying bus service and the metro rail service. Both options had to be technology intensive and resource guzzling. Soon they became the fashionable points of speculation by media.

The medias allegation that due to the political interference and haggling the metro project couldnt have launched earlier seems to have a certain design. The picture is completed when newspapers talk about the moment of decision and celebrate the event of shovel breaking the ground for the first time to start the long awaited project. It is interesting to note that none of the news items gives credit to politicians, as if implementation of the metro project was to be decided upon by some non-political entity. Only once a relic from the political past raises its head and we were informed in an apologetic tone that some Jagpravesh Chandra also dreamt about the future of Delhi as a city with an up-to-date metro service.12 Apart from this fleeting mention, politics get associated only with negative connotations in this very sketchy account of metros past.

Present as Non-political The purported non-political character of the metro project constitutes the huge overlap between selective media representation of its history and its current development. It provides for a smooth sailing opportunity for media to go overboard in condemning everything that is political in the affairs of the metro. Media had a field day when a tug of war broke between the BJP lead government at the centre and the Congress government

Hidustan Times, December 25, 2002 Restraint measures for the vehicles means something like erected gates to charge fees for entry in business centres and other busy parts of the city. In Indian context it also included the ethical appeals for pooling the car resources while going to offices. For middle class reaction to these policies, see Sanjay Mishra, Forestalling Transport Chaos in Delhi, Economic and Political Weekly, June 10, 2000. 12 Punjab Kesari, Sehra Baba Ke Sir, September 18, 2002
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of the Delhi state to take the credit for the successful commencement of first line.13 During the seventies and the eighties media defined the idea of development in the light of political preferences and raised the democratic issues of its impact on the poor sections of people. Obviously, the same print media couldnt have produced the editorial of this kind:

Today neither the central government nor the state government can dare create the bottlenecks in the Delhi Rail Project. They will be afraid to do so mainly because masses have nurtured the deep affinity with this project and would not hesitate to inflict a heavy political damage on those who want to obstruct the progress of the metro. In fact, the masses should hear the call of hour and come forward to force the government for the completion of other belated development projects. Public must make governments answerable on the issue of development14

Interestingly, while happily berating the government media does not produce even a shred of evidence to justify this sort of clarion call. Even a cursory glance over the metro related new items can tell us that although central and state governments did fought for the credit, they did not leave any stone unturned to remove possible hiccups in the construction of the metro. The managing Director of DMRC, E. Sreedharan concedes it in an undersigned article that the two governments who jointly own the project made sure that these constraints were not posed before the project. Sreedharan has gone to the extent of praising the governments efforts in advancing their equity contributions by almost a year and efficiently looking after the problems in land acquisitions.15 Given the years of maturity that media has enjoyed after independence, it could easily have taken a more realistic view of this politics of credit. Twenty five year ago the same media would have explained away this episode of party-politics in terms of centre-state relationship and would have used this opportunity to pontificate both the parties on the issue of federalism.

Media used the expression politicisation or rajnitikaran liberally in the headings, in the text of the news items and even in the editorials without making the necessary distinction in the narrow and broader meanings of the word. 14 Rashtreey Sahara, Ek sapane ka sakar hona, Editorial, Delhi, December 26, 2002 15 E. Sreedharan, The Metros Many Battles, Hindustan Times, Delhi, September 2002

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The content of the editorial pieces also got affected due to the de-politicised attitude of editors and assistant editors. By comparing the editorials16 published on the credit politics in four different dailies, a homogeneous picture emerges in terms of ideas, arguments and the polemics deployed. For any discerning reader it can only be called a strong command performance where even the difference of language used could not introduce any palpable variety. Every editorial without any exception used same parameters: showered the wholesome praise on the idea of the metro for its high technology content, hero worshipped the persona of Sreedharan, condemned without any exception the politics, leaders and parties, declared a direct relationship between the metro project and the people of Delhi, thereby ruling out the mediating role of democratic institutions.

The article written by Sreedharan referred above is a remarkable one from two more angles. Firstly, it gives us an idea about the importance of understanding the intricacy of the politics involved during construction work of the metro in its formative stages. Secondly, seen from the point of presentation in the Sunday magazine of the Hindustan Times it reflects on anti-political prejudices of the journalists involved. As evident from the above quotation the MD of DMRC have praised profusely the efforts of government, the transport minister, chief minister and LG of Delhi and rightly so because without the willing hand of the system, he couldnt have earned the kudos for the timely completion of first the metro line. Then came the following comment:
As Delhi is directly under the scrutiny of VVIPs, DMRC had to be careful in each step that we took DMRC had to navigate carefully between the central and state governments run by different political parties. The high standard of professionalism helped us to sail through without annoying any particular political party 17

Only once, while talking about the process of appointing the consultants, Sreedharan complained about political interference, but he never used this particular expression. It must be some member of the editorial staff who would have written the intro in an
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In fact, newspapers have written very few editorials on the issues related to the metro. Most of them appeared when credit politics was at its peak. Hindi newspapers found it more fit to comment in their leaders.

aggressive tone and put these words in Sreedharans mouth, we did the job despite political interference.18 As usual the intro of the article was presented in bold letters just beneath the thumb-size photo of the famous technocrat and it must have created the lasting impression on the minds of a-political readers. The journalists did not take any cue from Sreedharans comment and never came up with any credible story about the relationship between the day-to-day politics and a four hundred strong team of technocrats. Under the influence of their anti-political fetish they entirely missed an outstanding creative opportunity by subsuming it under the broad rubric of political interference.

Medias campaign to de-politicise the metro project got a boost when the BJP leader and Union home minister, L.K. Adwani and the Vice-President, Bhairon Singh Shekhavat separately gave statements in favour of keeping development and politics detached. Adwani, while inaugurating the trial run, repeated his favourite position that political competition is desirable only up to an extent, and focus should be on synergy in developmental matters.19 Shekhavat went one step further and suggested that politics of Delhi must learn to cleanse itself on the pattern of metros cleanliness.20 Most newspapers tried to use these statements for double effect. Both statements were given wide publicity on the one hand, and on the other hand, behind the scene political competition was described in a colourful language.21 Again a message was conveyed to the reader about the vile and double speaks of politicians.

Human-interest Stories: a Device for De-politicisation It was not possible to anticipate the repercussions of the changes introduced in the subject matter of newspaper reports in early nineties. Against the backdrop of the volatile episodes of the Mandir-Mandal politics, most editors belonging to the national press
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E. Sreedharan, Op.cit., Hindustan Times, Delhi, September 2002 See, especially the intro of Sreedharans article. 19 Adwanis comments were published in every newspaper. His speech was in English, but when translated by the Hindi reporter it became a blatant appeal for the de-politicisation. For a Hindi flavour of his speech, see Jansatta, Delhi, September 18, 2002. 20 Dainik Jagaran, January 10, 2003. 21 Rashtreey Sahara, Delhi, September 18, 2002

began to assign the human interest beats to their reporters, as if the earlier work done by these reporters were devoid of human interest. Accordingly the recruitment pattern of reporters also changed.22 Non-financial dailies started covering the specialised aspects of business. Besides removing the political correspondent as the central figure of a newspaper, this development saw the demise of the full time education and the specialised labour correspondents. The prevalence of rural poverty became a non-issue for editors.

Since questioning the editor by any staff member is not practically possible under the roof of a newspaper office, soon this new practice was able to take roots and without any contest.23 The expression human interest became an euphuism for pro-establishment journalism. The proponents of the nation building as a non-political concept found it much to their liking. Since newspapers were willing to take an overtly favourable position towards the metro project, with very few dissenting opinions being publicised, the related news items began to look like handouts given by the DMRC authorities. It was like a joint activity of reporters and DMRCs media cell. Reporters were granted extensive access to metro officials and fed steadily what one calls human interest materiel. Hundreds of news headlines, if analysed in the context of medias social responsibility, fail to provide the evidence of the professional detachment necessary to write an objective story. To prove the point a few of them are given below:
English Headings: Visit the metro for the taste of politeness; thefts down: metro does what cops cant; driving past a male bastion; dont think twice metro is alright; slum children taken for ride in metro; metro stall is trade fares Indian attraction; metro mantra: shop while you travel; metro offered spotless festive joy. Hindi Headings: Metro builds a beautiful school for the corporation; who will purchase the first metro ticket for Prime Minister?; Metro stations are decorated like brides; metro train more beautiful than plane;

Since late eighties, the tribe that we all know as activists cum journalists or social scientist turned journalists became persona non-grata in newspaper office. It sounded the death knell of the Jholawala journalist. 23 As far as the internal democracy is concerned, the case of the newspaper office is a bizarre one. The editor was and still remains the exalted autocrat, supposedly fighting the battle for the freedom of expression outside the office, but at the same time not allowing any kind of freedom

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metro was more talked about than Santa Claus on Christmas; metro used as picnic train; 100 poor and orphan kids enjoy metro ride; far from habitation, connected to nature; an outstanding architecture: the Kashmiri Gate metro station; one metro train would be more useful than 500 buses.

These are the kind of headlines that must have made an incredibly complicated selling job very easy for the metros media cell. One scholar working on Delhi metro project has estimated that due to the friendly attitude of media DMRC did not have to spend much on building a society-friendly image of the project. Today the promotional effort launched by DMRC can claim an astonishing success in a very limited budget. Media did not report the components of this campaign, which included programmes like street theatre, infomercials, volunteer education projects and exhibitions.24 These events were getting reported with the charged comments of onlookers and superimposed with the positive impressions of the reporter also.25

In Lieu of a Conclusion Incidentally, in another analysis of the news coverage of the metro, it was concluded that:
The opportunistic rush for political ownership over the metro created an environment where there was little direct political criticism of the logic underpinning the project. The metro was projected in media as being universally endorsed by all of the key politicians, which reinforced an image of the metro as the pride of Delhi. Furthermore, even amidst the political wrangling for credit, the fact that cooperation had been achieved between the rival political parties was a symbol to the public that the metro was an important effort to address one of the most pressing societal issues.26

There are points with which the present analysis can concur with the above conclusion, but not with the issue related to the political angle. Our analysis clearly shows that even if
to his fellow journalists. In office he is like the chief of a force and treats other journalists as his foot-soldiers. 24 For a critical appreciation of the publicity campaign launched by the media cell of the metro, see Matti Siemiatycki, Message in a Metro: Building Urban Rail Infrastructure and Image in Delhi, India, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 3.2, June 2006, Blackwell, UK, 25 The Times of India, April 3, 2002. 26 Siemiatycki, op. cit., International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 3.2, June 2006, Blackwell, UK,

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there was some political consensus on the construction of the metro, media did not give credit to the political class. Barring items few and far between, the reading of entire news-clippings and a few available editorial pieces published between 2002 and 2004, hardly do we have any information about possible or really existing contradictions, paradoxes, tensions and other problems in the team lead by Sreedharan. It is difficult to find any account of the inside working of the construction process from the news reports. It seems that a clear-cut distinction has already been made between the political class and the technocratic class. All kinds of criticism, vitriol and epitaphs were used against politics and its practitioners. It would be an over-statement to say that media gave technocrats a clean chit, because newspapers hardly ever found their attitude, thinking pattern and reactions even worthy of critical gaze. Probably for the first time in India, politics and politicians were relegated to the permanent back seat on such an important issue like Delhi metro, and the likes of Sreedharan and other technocrats replaced them in front. Thanks to media, at least one technology driven and de-politicise structure of development is finally constructed. (To be concluded)

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