Free media, labour and citizenship rights in a democracy

 

Padmaja Shaw *

*English & Foreign Languages University, India

 

Abstract

India is the most populous democracy in the world. In the early years after attaining independence, as a new democracy, Indian development strategy was driven by what Francine Frankel (2005) calls the “the Gandhian-socialist consensus” that was predominantly value oriented. Frankel enumerates the areas of consensus - first, there was the general agreement that economic policy should aim for the progressive removal of inequalities in Indian society, and ultimately result in the complete disappearance of class distinctions. Second, the Gandhians and the socialists concurred on the need to limit sharply the existing scope of the acquisitive instinct in Indian economic life, and to create a new set of cooperative motives.

The Nehruvian socialist state envisioned a strong industrial base under state ownership (Frankel, 2005) and wage labour was seen within the ethical context of productive employment and as a defining frame for good citizenship. This and the Constitutional guarantee of Fundamental Rights helped to give legitimacy to wage labour’s expectation of citizenship rights through provision of jobs, better working conditions, better social services and healthcare.

By the 1990s, after economic liberalization, the basic premises of this vision were discarded even in populist political rhetoric, while the state embraced neo-liberal ideology and economic policies. The changed economic agenda impacted severely on the working classes. Primarily because of the nature of growth and specifically because of the pressure from the Indian industrial houses, the policies encouraged relaxation of the already weakly implemented labour laws.

This paper will examine the role media played in debating these issues. As media are event oriented and not process oriented in their coverage, coverage of labour issues is unlikely on an ordinary news day. This paper, therefore, will examine the news and opinion pieces that have appeared in mainstream media when the CEO of a multinational auto component manufacturer, Graziano Transmissioni, located in Noida, India, died following an altercation with the dismissed workers of the factory.

The paper will begin by giving a background to the industrial dispute that provoked the event, followed by the perspectives on the role of media in a democracy. Prof Noam Chomsky and Prof Amartya Sen are two of the great contemporary philosophers who have written extensively on media’s role in society, though from different analytical perspectives. The coverage of the event itself in the media will be presented and the paper will discuss the coverage from the two theoretical perspectives on media expounded by professors Sen and Chomsky.

Keywords: Media studies; Labour; Democracy; Citizenship

 

Full text only available in PDF format.

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