Beyond Globalization: A Cultural Study

[A New CMIE Matrix]


By Abir Chattopadhyay
abmo2020@yahoo.co.in

Introduction:
The world is both spectacularly rich and distressingly impoverished. There is unprecedented opulence in contemporary living and the massive command over resources, knowledge and technology that we now take for granted would have been hard for our ancestors to imagine. But ours is also a world of dreadful poverty and appalling deprivation. An astounding number of children are ill-fed, ill-treated, and also illiterate and needlessly ill…Depending on where they born, children can have the means and facilities for great prosperity or face the likelihood of desperately deprived lives: Amartya Sen: Identity & Violence [Penguin Books]



In the contemporary transcorporate market and media literacy era, people, across national boundaries, are trying very hard to simulate the market-environment, grasping transnational mediation of newer cultural codes [parameters] to re-define…refresh…own individual cultural identity. With the massive growth of hyperreal [largely mediated] market determinants [advertising, sales formulae, newer marketing and managerial principles, retail outlets, other stimulant infrastructure etc.] in some specified centers of global neo-capitalist matrix, beyond national coasts, people gradually find themselves very close to the global market signification, get an impending touch of a band of newer structural codes amidst myriad of brands and commercial establishments. Such upswing substantially affects socio-cultural response of the audience of the developing world. What do people do with such a market uprising? This prime signifier needs to be appropriately understood in developing contexts beyond western capitalist signification. In the western hi-capitalist societies, the growth of industry and market was more or less an immediate post-war (World War II) phenomenon with newer symbolic alignments in the power structure toward formation of G-7 (nowadays G-8) groupings. The whole of western (especially European) societies had no other option but to be swayed away, to combat the devastation of Second World War, along with the development of its market orientation both in immediate and long-term dimensions. Besides that, a new alignment of power-nexus in the aegis of United States over most of the former imperialists and warmongers, like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy etc., overshadowed the [determinate] space of traditional western social culture that led common people gradually alienated from the society to an individualistic generalized pattern of marketed-livelihood. So from those days the growth of market wherever it came into force in the globe, had always been liable to such contextual changes [toward the signpost of culture industry] both in the developed and the developing world.
India in the last frigid 60 years had been contending with itself on whether to rally with the power blocs seeking their support en route to boosting up the internal economic growth and upgrade infrastructure to justify the developing nation reality. So it tried out keeping euphoric relations with the socialist bloc as well as with the capitalist power bloc and notably was least caring about the neighbours specially China and other states [in spite of being a leader of non-aligned platform]. So a relational crisis in the whole South-East Asia perturbed the total political and cultural scenario throughout the cold war period until the collapse of the socialist superpower bloc.
However India and the south-east Asian countries, from late eighties and 1990 onwards, extended massive internal market space along with some of the common low-level equilibratory features like, huge amount of under-prepared consumers, abundant source of raw materials, cheap labour force, unsaturated social formats in terms of consumption of mediated cultural elements, a hardcore value-based culture, territorial sensibilities, and individuality suffering from colonial hang-over. Our intelligentsia may seem to be unhappy with such a formulation but today’s corporate globalization agenda have found probably the safest place in these countries for their finance-capital to sit [on]. Noted corporate strategist and former senior partner, McKinsey & Co. Kenichi Ohmae made a useful comment, “…The western firms now moving, say, into the parts of China and India are there because that is where their future lies, not because the host government has suddenly dangled a carrot in front of their nose…” (1). But for noted analyst David C. Korten (1998) the terminal two three decades of the last century was driven by global dreams of vast corporate empires, compliant governments, a globalized consumer mono-culture and a universal ideological commitment to corporate libertarianism(2). However despite all round underdevelopment in socio-economic sector, these developing countries [excepting Communist China] did not even keep their fingers crossed to open themselves before the corporate conglomerates.
But could really this part of the world have been a corporate destination from the beginning? Plausibly ‘No’, despite having the above features and other modes of consumerist simulation quite accessible in such countries, western corporations and state powers never urged to transfer the finance-capital in any of the developing region. The early days of these countries immediate after the colonial jolt was over, were stuffed with severe food crisis, massive unemployment, unleashing poverty and a very old traditional [chiefly religious] cultural heritage. Developing countries, therefore, desperately needed an estimated balanced internal economic growth between agriculture and industry. So they started industrializing, sometimes collaborating with richer capitalist countries or otherwise the socialist bloc. Nevertheless the whole developmental paradigm remained quite ‘national’ in its outfit though international cooperation was often politically signified as the notion of ‘intervention’ [if sensitive readers intend to use it in symbolic power terms, because government of India in its third, fourth and fifth five-year plans abortively tried to produce alternative sustainable policy and eliminate external assistance in terms of foreign-aid]. Moreover since late fifties Asian and Latin American countries, especially, were time and again pitched by the US-led militarization, which culminated to the massive killing in Indonesia, Mexico, Venezuela and many other nations.

Toward a Global [corporate] Culture?

However there was always a clear-cut option, since late eighties, for the developing nations to transform itself in an open economic and cultural format. But they could not manipulate the situation, as usual, in favour to become a third [alternative] force compared to the power blocs. The whole South East Asia and Latin American nations were severely subjected to move independently by US militarization and rejuvenated supra-national organizations like GATT. India [the contemporary political and cultural opinion leaders] on the other hand, chose the cheapest option to open up economic and cultural borders inviting foreign corporations to takeover the whole charge of the country. Here a quote from Chitra Subramaniam, the noted Journalist, can make the scene more sensible, “…When you read you begin with A, B, C, when you GATT about India you begin with T, T, and A— Trips, Textiles and Almonds. Or H&N for Haldi (Turmeric) and Neem. Don’t let New Delhi fool you into believing that the haldi and neem patents granted to America have come as a surprise. The whistle was blown as early as 1989 but then there was no one to listen. In 1989 our politicians had elections to win and the last thing they had time for was a detail like GATT…”(3).
Thus from the initial phase of economic and cultural globalization an assurance toward commodification of socio-cultural elements was given to Indian habitation in contrast to the post-colonial nationalist principles of sustainable economic development. Kenichi Ohmae has stated quite convincingly, “as corporations move, of course, they bring with them working capital. Perhaps more important, they transfer technology and managerial know-how. These are not concessions to host governments; they are the essential raw materials these companies need to do their work…”(4). Naturally traditional social structures started facing a new challenge of ideational fragmentation of socio-cultural [institutional, technological, intellectual, managerial, territorial and of course mediational] factors of development.
Readers should convince themselves about the rush to such a deterministic outcome note of the contemporary de-structured praxis-codes, which transcends the traditional [nationalist] socio-cultural boundaries setting a newer commercial cultural trend with an empowered corporate backup. One may recall noted British Sociologist Raymond Williams once (1962) defined ‘culture’ as, “a particular way of life, shaped by values, traditions, beliefs, material objects and own territory. Culture is a complex and dynamic ecology of people, things, world views, activities, and settings that fundamentally endures but is also changed in routine communication and social interaction.”(5). Later on, many definitions of culture and global culture were made justifying the contemporary situational context. Another British Sociologist Anthony D. Smith came out with a new definition in the 1990s, “If by culture is meant a collective mode of life, or a repertoire of beliefs, styles, values, and symbols, then we can only speak of cultures, never just culture; for a collective mode of life or a repertoires of beliefs etc., presupposes different modes and repertoires in a universe of modes and repertoires. Hence the idea of a global culture is a practical impossibility…”(6).
But the corporate agenda of media conglomerates flow beyond the natural plurality of our lives and judged by the means of commoditization, where elements of every cultural format are being so empowered to knock-out the traditional boundaries of ‘modernity’, as west symbolizes them, to promote such ‘commercially globalist or homogenized’ cultural praxis. Noted Sociologist Arjun Appadurai in his ‘Scape’ [dimensions of culture](7) theories though has argued about various impossibilities of such generalization as ‘globalization’ of cultural forms, but the commercial homogenization lends outright a different outcome within the developing nation territories. They can’t dictate such a degree of corporate homogeneity that encroach their traditional social boundaries. However the corporate hegemony coupled with the US-led neo-imperialist terrorizing measures, especially in the post cold war period, had been enforced to industrialize the developing nations and also dominate them.

Manifold Crises: A cultural jolt?

The crisis before the third world post-colonial nations is double folded. The first one is a need for industrialization to achieve a balanced economic and social growth for which they strive after new industrial boom chiefly in manufacturing sector that can absorb both skilled and unskilled labour force primarily from surplus in the agricultural sector and to mitigate educated jobless problem by creating considerable employment opportunities. The second problem is to generate service-providing industrial opportunities for the urban educated youths. To resolve the first problem a country should commit a better industrial infrastructure to the investors [both internal and foreign] which most of the developing nations reach far short from the desired extent. So only option remains to commit the bare land and optimum possible facilities they can provide along with. On the other side of the globe large industrial corporations and the [host] mother nations [mostly members of G-7] in the last two-three decades have been facing another form of crisis of having huge amount of vulnerable excess and unutilized money in their money markets specially in pension funds and insurance programmes. One can here recall Marxian propositions about the terminal or culminating crisis of state capitalist structures. But the scape of such crisis was so perturbing that even when their internal economies and institutional structures steadily approaching close to bankruptcy there was huge money accumulated in insurance sectors [Kenichi Ohmae, 1996]. Naturally they had have come out with a sheer neo-imperialist [neo-liberal] notion to formulate harmonization of global economy and business anyway beyond national limit to ensure transnational investment. So both hunters and preys came forward to convince each other letting the question of domination quite obvious and a one-sided affair in favour of the dominant nations. The whole world is nowadays heading toward such an aberrant harmonization where the ‘need for development’ has to comply with the ‘bankruptcy’. And this harmonization often becomes so vulnerable that such capital, once realized in money market for further investment in various global regions, in anytime sweeps out of the stock market, as nowadays noted as global financial crisis [9/13 crisis], ‘and went into government-backed bank accounts where they remain, pooled up and inert. These bank accounts are the equivalent of hiding money in one’s mattress’(7A).

Transcorporatization & Emergence of Newer Cultural Establishments:

With the opening up of internal economies, a series of neo-liberal economic & cultural strategies were imposed on the developing countries, in the name of 1st and 2nd generation economic structural reforms, toward liberalizing the economy in terms of privatizing large public sector industries and disinvesting other public holdings. The long awaited notion of the growth of manufacturing sector was replaced, in the late eighties, by the huge quantum of emerging service-providing [chiefly insurance firms and retail companies] corporations set out for competing with the indigenous industries. Native corporations had no other option but either to close down or to go for a forceful collaboration with foreign companies to share room and achievement in the market. Moreover majority of the incumbent corporations were reported sick institutions of west, coming to refresh their future in India. The major flush was observed in insurance sector, retail consumer products sector; specially computer products, spare parts for industrial goods, outlets of foreign clothing brands, fast food sector, and of course in the entertainment & media sector above all. Especially foreign insurance and financial institutions are nowadays rushing in India to re-circulate the long-dumped pension funds. Kenichi continues arguing, “…capital markets in most developed countries are flush with excess cash for investment. Japan for example, has the equivalent of US$10 trillion stored away. Even where a country hovers close to bankruptcy, there is often a huge accumulation of money in pension funds and life insurance programmes. The problem is that suitable and suitably large — investment opportunities are not often available in the same geographies where this money sits. As a result the capital markets have developed a wide variety of mechanisms to transfer it across national borders. Today nearly 10 percent of US pension funds is invested in Asia. Ten years ago, that degree of participation in Asian markets would have been unthinkable.(8) So India also is experiencing a huge influx of foreign institutions setting up their establishments.
This influx has been causing some serious outcomes that can be theoretically categorized into three sectoral responses, i.e. ‘Institutional response’, ‘Individual response’ and ‘Social response’. Institutional response reflects the transformation of economic behaviour of the country toward so far absolute financial transcendency. Other two categories sternly represent changes in cultural signification of the demographic mappings & cognitive factors of earlier social peripheries. Traditional growth of market in the last three or four decades after world war II had always influenced the dynamics of nationalist sovereign culture and its structural factors, so an integrated cultural psyche of the third world nations. The culture of the developing nations is always found dynamic and naturally heterogeneous and above all quite tolerant to even absorb any newer format of the time. Therefore the crux of underdeveloped identity, which remained largely a creation of colonization and western dominance, has subsequently been merged into the cultural and political struggle of the common people in sixties and seventies. The basic note of ‘underdevelopment’ is therefore plausibly a well-defined nationalist code, largely related to the struggle for life. It would be wrong to conclude the issue in terms of any metanarrative, like ‘the underdeveloped nations need western assistance and industrial support to sustain’ as it pertains nothing other than the assertion of unhindered western structural domination and corporate hegemony over the sovereignty of such developing states. However the third world nations still desperately need a means sustainable balanced development.
Meanwhile struggling through a massive deadlock in investment in their own economic regions, western economists started indoctrinating [Re-Friedman-ianizing] transnational free trade liberalism [through some of the supra-national institutions, like, primarily through the GATT and then from mid nineties it was WTO formulations] that might be a way-out from the crisis. The primary steps premised were to let developing states deregulate all state enterprises; privatize them, curbing tariff barriers down to the minimum possible limit to zero, open internal trade structures, and above all, set an ideoscape to be more industry friendly, investment friendly and corporate friendly [until faced with a new crisis when their (advanced economies) governments lend them ‘new’ money and chief banks of developing nations release money into the internal markets creating more and more economic imbalance]. Within a few years in the late eighties and early nineties this conception incited transnational corporations to step into cross-border expansion [McChesney] toward so called globalization. In his words, one of the foremost free-trade formulators, Kenichi Ohmae asserted this neo-liberal proceedings as, ‘growth depends on inviting the global economy in, not keeping it out. It depends on creating and leveraging value-adding economic linkages that ignore political borders, not on ruthlessly stamping them out in the name of national interest as an insult to the prerogatives of sovereignty. A closed-country model makes cities and regions rivals to each other…the nation state solution assumes a zero-sum game for limited resources. The region state model, open to the global economy, is plus-sum as prosperity is brought in from without’ (9).
Thus a notional alternative was routed through to the developing nations at the cost of their own sovereignty, internationalism, political ideologies, often described by the corporate formulators as - the last refuge of the scoundrel – economically dispossessed – declining cottage industry etc. etc. Added more to this the installation of transnational corporate note in developing economies, since late eighties, became synchronized with that of nationalist bourgeoisie [as observed in India] to pursue the nationhood beyond the class struggle away from social configuration. They have been perpetrating it quite efficiently till date even up to the accomplishment of Indo-US Nuke Deal.
As the economic reforms gradually ascend in India civil society [[combined bourgeoisie, billboard[ed] both sides with traditional aristocrats and peti-bourgeois]] have soon emerged information elites acting as facilitators to social change, thus setting a newer form of hierarchy which appears in as alternative to the state governance. The notion of balanced development has been shifted from its ideological [political] base - in terms of public responsibility - to a transcorporate domination that, according to new individualists, might bring up the development. Small countries of South-East Asia and West Asia nowadays have almost lost their economic and political sovereignty within this newer CMIE [Corporate-Military-Information-Elitism] matrix. In India though the situation seems different having no such direct military oppression so far, but, with the signing of Indo-US nuke deal the economic and political sell-out process would definitely be accomplished.

Globalization - Americanization: TNC-ization and Media-ization

However from the last two decades down the line, global corporations have established adequate control over more than half of the world’s top economies. In almost every sector of our ‘life’ and ‘socialization’ TNCs have established their reach and control setting a new brand-control. Out of world’s most commercially valuable brands top ten are mostly from United States [Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, G.E., Nokia, Intel, Disney, Ford, AT&T, McDonald’s Source: Kavaljit Singh, PIRC]. Out of top 100 TNCs 37 come directly from US and 55 from its G-8 allies, only 3 come from China [PIRC] (10). Most Surprisingly out of world’s top 100 economies 54 are transnational corporations and 46 are nations. Out of total Fortune-500, nearing 200 are US corporations; more than 100 are Japanese corporations. 90% of patent covering latest technologies owned by TNCs [PIRC-2000]. Ten to thirteen media conglomerates own the total global media operation, technologies, and sky-space.
From the above statistical figuration one can realize the extent of contemporary globalization process but experience least about the aftermath. But we can nucleate the Indian experience graduated since last two decades into some distinctive [institutionalizing] features:
(i) weakening public sphere;
(ii) Advertisers’ signification rules the market;
(iii) Outright depoliticization: emerging new bourgeois-elitism : Outbreak of fundamentalist politics;
(iv) Unleashing mediation of violence, sexual obscenity; Children become sterile to violence and obscenity;
(v) Commerciality in education, social praxis etc: Total Commodification;
(vi) Paradigmatic shift in social responsibility: state governance to corporate governance;
(vii) Toward global monolithic corporate culture [!!]: beyond regional plurality;
(viii) Neo-capitalist industrial centres: beyond nationalist geography;
(ix) Social places transformed into commercial hyperreal places;
(x) Branded life: beyond social control;
(xi) Mediated consumerized hyperreal outlook;
(xii) Predigested commercial journalism to achieve early response from the audience and advertisers;
(xiii) News against advertisements, no longer socially responsible;
(xiv) Emergence of branded racism and anew ethnic concentration;

Proponents of globalization often denounce the popular saying ‘Americanization’ or American domination as they consider globalization is a transnational affair beyond any particular nationalist control. They even propose that America no longer invokes its control over the nations and transnational corporations. Prof. John B. Thompson, while taking on Herbert Schiller’s thesis on Cultural Imperialism, accounted that with the expanding reach of transnational corporations, United States, like other colonizing nations, also have become a recipient nation [like others] of the transnational corporate agenda. However surprisingly they still believe that critics of globalization can’t even recognize the transcorporate domination and the compliant US hegemony even after what Henry Paulson [US Treasury Secretary during his speech on need for an open economy and society, Shanghai Futures Exchange] said recently “An open, competitive, liberalized, financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than government intervention”. But probably even US do not know the nearest exit from the recent financial crisis. One may think about the future of India and its common, vastly impoverished people when such financial liberalization programme would be accomplished within a few years down the line. The crisis has however already affected Indian middle class severely and the near future of the economy causing inflation and all round volatility in every sector.
Whatsoever the question or uncertainty regarding the issue of transnationalization of economies still remains, has no match with what we have experienced in terms of ruthless militarization over nations in the last two decades during and after the fall of Soviet Union. Continual attack on Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba and the collapse of Soviet Union reached a new height when US-led allied force flapped over Iraq in the first Gulf War. CNN, the prime icon brand of Time Warner Company, the world’s largest ever media conglomerate, played a complete statist & propagandist role while they covered and forcefully broadcasted the war to the people of the world. All nations, specially the Asian governments were advised to transmit the war footage. According to McChesney and Herman, ‘…the commercial media were distressed by the fact that war scenes and reports were not providing a suitable advertising environment, and they tried to manufacture one with their enthusiasm and portrayal of the war as an exciting, aesthetically and technically attractive game’ (11). Cited from noted researcher Douglas Kellner, ‘‘‘…throughout American history, vengeance for rape – especially the rape of white women by people of colour – has been used to legitimate political and military action against coloured people. Captivity drama narratives of white women captured and raped by Native Americans were a standard genre of colonial literature’…‘Bush not only used rape as a justification for war against Iraq, but also…cited the sexual assault of an American Officer’s wife by a Panamanian soldier as a reason for invading that country, and…” (11A). The most chanting story behind the first gulf war routed through a satellite image that, according to Pentagon, indicated Iraqi amass of 100,000 soldiers on the Kuwait [Saudi] border, which was communicated by all large media houses. However finally it was disclosed that the satellite photos [taken on 8th August and 13th September] showed sand covers on the roads which was signified by the Bush administration a mass of Iraqi soldiers [Kellner, Media Culture, p205, Routledge]. US textile and media institutions globally vended ‘Anti Arab racism’ through Hollywood films, millions of T-Shirts picturing the ‘Gulf War’ and US as liberator. Some of these were: <“A disk jockey in Toledo, Ohio solicited funds from listeners to buy a ticket to Iraq for an Iraqi-American Professor who was critical to war”> etc. (12)
After 9/11, the attack on Afghanistan, and the second Gulf War [Liberation of Iraq] to dismantle Iraq again had shaken the Asian region. The telecast of Saddam Hussein’s death sentence and further planning to attack Iran, People’s Republic of Korea, Syria and sanction threat to India – of course nowadays subject to the accomplishment of Indo-US Nuke Deal continue to derange and terrorize the socio-cultural identity of this continent.
Prof. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, while connoting this category as ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ altogether, have analyzed it in three semantic categories from US extent: Constructive, Benign and Nefarious. According to them such ‘classification based strictly on the utility of the terrorism to US interests as perceived by the ruling political elite’ (13).

Cleansing Ethnicity: US route toward Globalization:

As Herman and Chomsky have argued that the terrorizing pursuit when is considered by the US officials and media, advantageous to US interests, has always been considered as positive development and ‘constructive’. This typification can be observed in Indonesia massacre in mid sixties. US force directly promoted imperialist President Suharto to wipe out the Communist base and to open up Indonesian [and far east countries along with] economic border for foreign direct investment by refreshing the foreign policy in favour of the western industrialized nations. ‘In this instance not only was there no moral indignation expressed at the murder of many hundreds, thousands of civilians it was treated as a dividend from the policy of military aid to the Indonesian Army [Robert McNamara] and a gleam of light in Asia’ (14).
The second category what US strategists do not consider as ‘positive development’ but cognize that might help its allies, is carried out by killing large number of civilians with no moral indignation, as the theorists duo accord, is ‘benign’. It was observed in Indonesian invasion to Timor where one-third of the East Timorese population was killed, which was protected, promoted and aided both diplomatically and financially by the US. This is similar to how the extremist movements in India are funded and promoted extensively by various institutions of west.
The third category of the cleansing terrorism perpetrated by any designated enemy [of US], what Pol Pot did in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq [killing Kurds], can be categorized ‘Nefarious’.
For the first two kinds of terror corporate media are reliably [H & C] silent but in nefarious cases media coverage is intense with having massive liberal pluralist vigour that includes many personal stories, sufferings, and elicits great indignation [H & C] (15).
Thus US terrorism and ethnic cleansing operations routed TNCs and finance capital through to the developing nations. In this ordained course deviant [and sovereign] nations were transformed into a place for global financial investment. Moreover compliant [bourgeois rightist] political forces of these nations propagate [mediate] a story of having huge foreign exchange within their peripheries to make its people feel ‘good’ about their future. As in India the NDA government announced before 2004 general election, ‘India is shining’, when fiscal deficit, as estimated, might have crossed the limit of a billion dollar mark. This kind of treachery and mistrust are always given primacy toward the corporate globalization effort. What Manmohan Singh started through liberalizing in 1991, has been culminated to the unprecedented vulnerability and volatility that reign Indian economy.
This is how the neo-liberal globalization strategies have been constituted and fed by both transcorporatization and incessant militarization cleansing ethnicity and socio-political identity of human being. The outcome of such globalization was and is the formulation of packaging of the produced and the creation of ‘consumer and only consumer’ to encompass socialization in terms of consumption.
For western nations this has emerged as a debacle of high capitalist [modernist] configuration, debauches all earlier theories of consumption formulae and demand for money, creating safe portfolios for future consumption (which has been stored in pension, insurance funds)] and above all strong public control etc. But for developing nations, where public control is still being assessed for the subsistence of huge distressed mass, neo-liberal approaches for them become really invasive and obtrusive to the development. As mentioned earlier that development specially industrial development has always been the need of the hour in these nations for many generative reasons: boosting up employment opportunities [both in production and service sectors], balanced economic growth to mitigate impoverishment and deprivation, to meet huge fiscal and monetary deficit, development of infrastructure etc. Such deprivation and distressed lives in these nations thus remain penalties of both neo-liberal globalization and failure of earlier structures [systems].

Political Economy of Media: Conglomeration and Decline of Democracy

Be it a natural outcome of emergence of media industries or to hegemonize proactive audience toward monolithic consumerist cultural content, trans-corporatization or conglomeration of media, as formulated in the west, transcended national limits to intercept ideological polarity or plurality at first, and to catch hold of internal [developing] economies further. This notion may resemble with Fukuyama’s no-historic statement after the collapse of Soviet Union that ‘we had reached the end of history…now that the bitter confrontation sparked by the century’s collision of ‘ism’s has ended’ (15A). For third world context it yet reveals a different connotation altogether. Here corporatization [privatization] of media, unlike other parts of the globe, initially necessitated development of media in terms of socializing more audience even in remote areas to get them aware of latest developments and programmes. As seen in India, along with Akash Bani & Doordarshan, private owned print media also played utmost a nationalist role upholding traditional culture and accumulating diverse regional sentiments triumphant to the social integration process. But at the same time both private and public media endeavoured a half-hearted effort putting participatory role of media in front. Naturally the question of state domination over media could not be obliterated in India in the initial [post independent] phases of media-modernity. However both private media owners and public media played statist role before ‘trans-nationalization of media’ phase came into the scene.
Nevertheless the transnationalization of media was nowhere consequential to the failure of ‘nationalist’ frame of corporatization of media in terms of only ‘development’ agenda. For the third world nations this phase, often termed globalization of media, came as prime commercial imperative as the industrially developed nations and large transnational corporations gave primacy to champion the media-market as chief promoter and solitary causal factor of globalization. Quoting Anthony Smith about globalization of media that reflects ‘concentration into large international companies of previously more locally owned information and entertainment businesses...a form of concentration has been under way, at national levels, for a century, the number of news agencies around the world began to shrink into a tiny group, dominated by French, German, British, and American firms that divided the world according to the spheres of influence of their respective governments...’ (15B). But India, despite having no such past imperialist record like the above imperialist ‘gang of four’, had to comply with every transnational progress right from giving ‘autonomy to public media houses’ to opening the sky to generate a global mediating space conforming neo-imperialist media-globalization agenda. In India, like global route toward media autonomy, commercialization of media contents also came into force to attract advertisers. It started with compilation of Hindi film songs, talk shows, soap operas until private media houses had shown the total sell-out of mediated space.
The immediate corollary of it was the huge influx of transnational media houses [chiefly News Corporation] and a cumulative growth of newer internal media industries through large-scale merger & acquisitions, joint ventures. An all-round consumerization of media resulted in a monolithic consumer culture with a diverse range of consumer products including mediated contents [media productions] soon became the solitary feature of these countries. Synchronistically, as Kenichi affirmed, other western packaged firms, including, insurance companies, financial institutions, large-scale retailers, real estate firms, etc. inundated Indian market. Korten here beautifully substantiates such paradigmatic shift of economies from ‘social economy of household and community to monetized economy’ in an account that, ‘…business became skilled in using colours, glass, and light to create exciting images of a this-world paradise conveyed by elegant models and fashion shows. Museums offered displays depicting the excitement of the new culture. Gradually the individual was surrounded by messages reinforcing the culture of desire. Advertisements, department stores, show windows, electric signs, fashion shows, the sumptuous environments of the leading hotels, and billboards all conveyed artfully crafted images of the good life. Credit programmes made it seem effortless to buy that life…’ (16).
The massive shift in economic structures attributed to the influx of chiefly financial institutions and retailing companies subsequently, determined primacy to the transformation of older nationalist economic structures to become more and more information and culturally dominated. Therefore a shift in traditional cultural and mediational structures also became imperative to capitalize the above changes that ought to supersede the nationalist economic or political sovereignty. This had a serious devouring impact on older or classical conceptualization of political-economy of media or the media-ownership structures. It resulted in two-fold manifestation. If the first one is the ideational transformation of mediational genres from nationalist formulation [to a geo-politically located mass] to global or transnational [beyond enmassification of any kind] imperative, the second manifestation is a massive transformation in media-ownership toward conglomeration and vertical integration [concentration] through chain ownership of media, cross ownership between media and acquisition of media by ordinary industrial concerns.
Consequent to such paradigmatic shift toward transcorporatization of so called nationalist institutions almost everything comes within the close vicinity of direct mediation and becomes itself a medium. Amusement parks, water resorts, ayurvedic resorts [vedic resorts, spa resorts], eco-friendly tourist places, ice-rinks, musical arena, shopping malls, video games, softwares, etc. have come vertically under media conglomeration. This denotes the neo-liberal definition of globalization of media, emasculating so called ‘nationalist media sovereignty’ that disseminates newer symbolic power and neo-hierarchy to the weaker regions.
Moreover as the transcorporatization of earlier nationalist economic affairs and globalization of mediation well appear as resultant to each other, a strangulation of dual agenda dominates individual audience up over any regional specificity. Thus industrial conglomeration and media conglomeration becomes synonymous and highly monolithic to the individual audience and has been manifested in terms of market before them. Nevertheless, for people of any western nation, this might come in as corporate concentration and convergence of media & communication technologies, but for people of third world nations it ended up as neo-liberal domination.
So whenever people of these nations still depend largely upon governments and nationalist initiatives toward settling itineraries of their lives, they largely extend an erring look at these developments in terms of ‘collateral expansion’ of the earlier set up that [specially media] would definitely correspond the same developmental role. Naturally globally mediated mono-commercial contents make them simulate another world of hyperreality alternative to shabby, hardcore truths of their lives. The most crucial outcome of such simulation, in our developing nations, is that people consider pro-nationalist institutions [including media], still as prime facilitator for life and globalization of mediation as unknown but essential and non-alternatively public institutions. They expect same degree of social-responsibility form media conglomerates. So the content codes, like soap operas, reality shows, lucky draws, musical competition and even advertisements easily become iconic codes to them which they strive to get entirely accustomed with. But unfortunately things are not going to happen in reality likewise. The transcorporatization of media comes about at the cost of all democratic initiatives. Commercial media houses also have readily come forward to produce such iconic representational codes for these audiences. For them media thus have become reality and reality is media. Noted analyst-duo Robert McChesney and Edward S. Herman have pointed out that, ‘…a crucial factor in the decline of democracy has been weakening of labour, invariably a cornerstone in political movements for social democracy. This, too, is a direct result of globalization. TNC-investment…can often be explained in terms competitive (anti competitive) strategies and by a desire for proximity to markets and resources, but labour costs have been a very large consideration – arguably the most important consideration – in cross-border investment, and clearly the most important in terms of social and economic impact…investment and operations can be gradually shifted from areas where wages, benefits and taxes are high, and regulations of working and environmental conditions are costly, to places where the climate of investment is more business-friendly’ (17).
Thus from the audience end, media conglomeration and transcorporatization of industrial bodies convey [gradually] the complete withdrawal of nationalist set-ups, nevertheless, giving a new responsibility to those governments to emerge only as investment-friendly, industry friendly, information-technology friendly, and finally individual consumers friendly. Of late in India, this four ‘I’-friendly political wings get majority of people’s support in elections. This preconceived outcome has already favoured a huge space, in most of the developing countries, for TNCs, media conglomerates and their finance capital to sit on.
Following this notion, developing countries, like India, since the gulf war ended and Soviet Union collapsed, started formulating new policies specially in industrial sector, infrastructure, social sector, media development etc. to transform [not reform] their internal economic adjustment mechanism. At the same time they all had been taught to appear before the prospective investors with loudest possible make-over to become more and more [Four ‘I’] attractive. With the time this imperative has been propagated to be the only solution to perennial underdevelopment. Nationalist or traditional media notionally were believed not at all competent to cover such cultural transformation. So transcorporatization of media became preemptive outcome to ensure globalization of media.
It would be too simplistic, if readers now think much that such above globalist formulation are quite independently sorted out by the developing nations. It has already been noted that the bi-polar [cold war] crisis resulting in ‘bankruptcy of internal economic sectors’ of industrially developed nations and ‘eternal underdevelopment’ of the third world nations have made the situation so compulsive that anyone may think about it as a global crisis. But the question of domination and neo-imperialism here has been considered by many critics as being most sorted way-out formulated by US-led group of countries and their TNCs.
However globalization of media has come into force through dominant concentration of media ownership and corporate convergence over media & communication technologies. Since early nineties of the last century it has reached its initial saturation point. Robert McChesney and Edward S. Herman have accomplished research on corporate convergence over media quite convincingly. In terms of sales figuration, as they accord, five macroscopic firms that rule the world media business [specially television production, film, etc.] are, AOL-Time Warner, Walt Disney Corporation, Viacom, Bertelsmann, News Corporation. But along with them there are four more firms in the ‘first-tier’ [McChesney & Herman]. These are, General Electric, Sony, Polygram, Seagram.
The second tier media firms are mainly the leaders of regional and niche markets of the first world countries, like US, Canada etc. These firms have newspaper industries, cable broadcasting system & networks etc. collaborating often with first tier media giants. Some of these are, Dow Jones, AT&T, DirecTV, Brazilian Globo, Mexican Televisa, German Axel Springer, French Canal Plus and other regional or former nationalist media firms. According to the above theorist-duo, ‘the global media market is dominated by ten or so vertically integrated media conglomerates, most of which are based in the United States. Another thirty or forty significant supporting firms round out the meaningful positions in the system. These firms operate in oligopolistic markets with substantial barriers to entry. They compete vigorously on a non-price basis but their competition is softened not only by common interests as oligopolists, but also by a vast array of joint ventures, strategic alliances, and cross-ownership among the leading firms’ (18). Among all possible content-genres like, music videos, game videos, news, sports, and shopping, commercial entertainment vigour is the solitary output that is common to all global media firms.
However still a lot of space is left for more mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures to occur in the years to come. US command over global media market has already been beyond any doubt that regulates media-oligopoly and digital revolution throughout the globe withering natural plurality and native heterogeneities.

Mediation and Consumption: Third Phase of Modernity

Some years back noted poststructuralist Jean Baudrillard has distinguished the era of media globalization [conglomeration] as the phase of outright consumption beyond commodification [en route: classical bourgeoisie - social ruling under public institutions - liberalizing [corporatization through privatization] public institutions – transcorporatization and commodification of social elements – consumers’ choice as replicating social order] where he accords that consumption, which once he defined, "The truth about consumption is that it is a function of production and not a function of pleasure, and therefore, like material production, is not an individual function but one that is directly and totally collective" [The System of Objects- 1968, 1996], would now be the basis of social order in the coming time syntax. ‘Buying into a category of the market increase consumption, yet also begin to define the nature of the individual’(19). In this course media would be the social formulator. While mirroring the McLuhun’s proposition of Global Village, where explosion of technology is related to the implosion of understanding, into his theory of consumption Baudrillard has proposed that consumption [implosion] mirrors the explosion of information. In his words, it is true that we consume more products because of information, but it is more important to realize that we consume information. Consuming mere information creates an even greater illusion of technological explosion. However, when we consume information alone, we are consuming less and less meaning (20).
The above connotation grossly signifies the transformation of socio-political, socio-cultural orders into a hyperreal space [domain] where information rules over the information of ‘market and self’, providing with solitary but supreme identity, as consumers, that leads to generate a cognizant space for implosion [more about the product than buying it outright]. The ‘Shopping Malls’, ‘departmental stores’, amusement parks, water resorts and other new media mirror the explosion of technology and information and create a huge space for the self to implode something larger than the reality. In his words discussing Europe’s largest shopping mall PARLY-2, "Here we are at the heart of consumption as the total organization of everyday life, as a complete homogenization" (20A). In this process people become gradually engrossed into the information-mediation process where explosion of information neutralizes information and implosion of meaning starts, therefore reveals 3rd - 4th…the infinite order signification beyond classical social orders and statistical denotivity of consumption and utility pattern.
The prime instrumental or driving langue pattern, if at all, here is, according to Baudrillard, ‘packaging’ because more information of information-order destroys ‘communication’ and ‘social’ as a ‘system’ and ceases producing meaning. Thus packaging has become importantly the only morphology of the ‘produced’. Packaging naturally corrupts all earlier meaning making processes [communication] of information and meaningful mediation, thus leads to a complete destruction of meaning, as he defines it, ‘catastrophe of meaning’(21). Such destruction leaves over only individual ‘fascination’ [resulted from the neutralization of meaning] that reduces everything into some statements towards titillation, obscenity and pornography.
Thus as packaging of information explodes along with the explosion of media, it devours the traditional space of systemic derivation of meaning, and resultantly destroys public sphere and finally social structures. Media explode thus only packaging of the ‘produced’ that has a powerful branded [image making] effect on the individual consumer. Baudrillard while entitling it as ‘media invasion’ affirms that such media invasion would completely decompose both public and private spheres of life and produce something more real than the existing real e.g. fictions like, soap operas, reality shows etc. that let every individual simulate infinitely. Artlessness, worthlessness of such media contents hardly matter to any individual as he/she shows least interest to derive a systemic meaning while they watch them. Hyperreality dissolves the older oppositional [dialectical] systems of meaning. Fictions become more real to the individual privatized consumer and ‘real’ becomes fictitious. In this way the ‘mass’ in terms of mediation, as Baudrillard considers, makes no sense of culture; they get it from media to only become stimulated by it (22).
The most dangerous outcome of such hyperreal mediation, what Baudrillard considers, is that these consumers are not to be considered anyway the ‘victim’ of commodification. Masses get a hyperreal meaningless image from media and it works immediately on the behavioural development but ultimately it again [further] frees the mass from being systemic in behaviour i.e. right or wrong, good or bad etc. Therefore hyperreal mediation devours the classical distinction between every two class identities and a sense of class struggle.
So we live in a world, in which, prime relational aspect stands between mediated contents [advertisements, propagations] and individual self. We consume ad-meanings to ‘philosophize’ life; make social order to achieve optimum freedom of self beyond traditional social-democratic pattern or order and finally reject that mediated information. Only job remains, is to get more and more information and less and less meaning. No freedom lies there beyond this act. We have become proletariatized regardless of class existence.

Centres and Peripheries: The Gap is widening

Masses of Indian metropolis are facing such hyperreal transformation of life-codes which bumps up severe crisis between hyperreal mediated modernity [consumerist cultural homogeneity] and traditional social modernity. Majority [mostly rural, semi-urban and political] of people’s expectation toward transcorporatization and media conglomeration falls out very much restricted and reduced to the traditional conception of sustainable development. But the unpleasant truth still remaining is the ‘gap’ between communitarian people and the prospective consumers [yuppified in spectacular industrial centres] gradually widening. Moreover as the above two assemblages are not watertight in their structures, people from both centres and peripheries often remain in classical relational [mostly exploitative in terms of holding more symbolic power] terms with each other. Mumbai consumers [information elites] do never want ‘Dharabi’ to be washed out, and people of Salt Lake [Kolkata] would never protest to wipe out ‘Duttabad’ colony for various reasons despite having sufficient superiority discontents with them. On the other hand people from traditional assemblage [once identified as class or society] would also act accordingly to become impending consumers, thus destroying traditional boundaries of socialization. The distinction between these two demographic categories up to the outright consumption of mediated contents becomes negligible toward an apparent ‘classless’ environment. Class is being increasingly perceived in terms of mediated-cultural rather than classical socio-economic considerations.
It would yet be wrong enough if, now anyone tries to rule out the notion of domination or exploitation from the above homogenized mediated space. If the class struggle looks even blurring in the above hyperreal mediated space, the struggle between cultural identities [hence political also] would yet definitely continue because weaker consumers face more exploitation [in terms of more and more surplus labour] from the ‘information elites’ [officially guarded by other mediated factors, ranging from shopping malls, discs, night clubs, pubs, amusement parks, electronic gadgets, better educational space and above all unlimited exposure to life up to sophisticated timer-traffic signals] but this at the same time can hardly be measured binarily or traditionally. The theoretical distinction between weaker consumer and information elite is very common to measure but for the ‘mass’ highly viscid [specially when television is considered as the most powerful mass medium].
Nevertheless lots of differences still remain that finally occludes common mass to become information elites and these are the classical Marxian notions of class inequalities, say, educational, economic, conventional, bureaucratic etc. So a bitter confrontation between cultural homogenization and classical inequalities seem nowadays to be ruling the whole world. A new phase of struggle has thus become imminent between symbolic [synonymously neo-capitalists that own mediated symbolic power] domination and working class. But in the contemporary age of globalization neo-capitalism has gathered much more symbolic power, by owning media-production than ever before and working class looks, on the other hand, often swayed away and dispossessed with the hyperreality of newer symbolic parameters. But putting no ‘end’ to class-struggle, Ralph Milliband claims that ‘the working class not only still exists, but that the term should be expanded to include all white collar employees since they too produce surplus value for the capitalist’ (22A). This is very much evident in the recent retrenchment and salary contraction of Indian Airlines employees [Jet Airlines, Kingfisher Airlines and Air India], where all white collar employees at least for some days [until the authority paid back their employment] have no option but preferred to react as working ‘class’ and participate in ‘organized political demonstrations’. But in spite of all said and done things would not be simple to resolute anything favourably determinate as these neo-capitalists hold so much of symbolic power to overcome such demonstration than earlier days.
However toward accomplishment of the primary development agenda, people of India and the working class in many countries have already started uniting, as argued earlier, together because they need employment and better life first. Corporate conglomerates on the other hand hardly accept this view in comparison with their prime interest to let finance capital confluence beyond any nationalist or social hindrance. This is to be remembered carefully that the developmental agenda of such developing nations does have no match with the transnational objective to the consumerist mediation and must not transcend own territorial identities. But much before that most of the governments complying with US-led transnational agenda have sold their nations out to the global conglomerates. This is neo-imperialist domination.

Deprivation Vs Development? An aberrant polarization:

This binary oppositional category has been instated in all developing nations with the neo-liberal convergence of global social and market systems into a followed-up transcorporate, homogenized cultural format with western vigour. Though all reformist economic theories & propositions confirm the impending growth resultant to such transnationalization of economies, the initial phases of transformation of economic and cultural imperatives have widened the disunion between industrial centres and distant peripheries. The promise of cascading effect of newer developmental strategies from cntres to distant peripheries, as committed by both compliant nationalist governments and transnational institutions [WTO in consecutive Seattle-Genoa-Doha rounds], seems to be quite dim in these nations. But it has been argued earlier that for developing nations the primary notion is to industrialize their nations anyway, so they need to either promote indigenous industrial sector or open their economies in front of neo-imperialist domination. One third option is also there: to accept [US led] allied military invasion. However most of them, including India, have chosen the second option and deviants, like, People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, Venezuela and many other nations preparing themselves to combat allied [US-led] military attack.
Now the question remains whether contemporary Indian experience of ‘development and reforms’ would promote such destruction of its cultural territories? Whatever be the suited answer, as the developing nations like India have steadily come forward to set its own withdrawal [disappearance] from the nationhood complying with transcorporatization [agenda] of economy through rapid socio-economic structural reforms, such development route can never be sustainable in terms of internal economic and cultural security. If such analysis does not seem to have enough elements of maturity, let us consider that even after two decades of proceeding with globalist agenda, unemployment, impoverishment, malnutrition, and retrenchment disturb still two-third of the total population of this country. The situation becomes more vulnerable when an unprecedented volatility appears in organized job market, money market, labour market, that resultantly squeezing education, civic amenities, better infrastructure for majority people. The inevitable outcome, beyond much of hyperreal propositions, is a binary contradiction of statements: Mass Deprivation Vs. Development of Industrial & Cultural archipelago.
Noted Economist Prof. Samir Amin has broken this globalization juggernaut to its core: ‘…existing globalization is like an archipelago bathed in the ocean. The density of distribution of the islands of that archipelago varies: it is higher in the central areas where transnationals are concentrated, average in the peripheries…and very low in the peripheries of the Fourth World. It cannot be denied that the state powers are undergoing a double erosion, both from above and from below, through the emergence of local powers capable of acting as autonomous agents in the globalization process…’ (23). The emergence of new centres [overshadowing traditional centres of bourgeoisie and rural peripheries] of capital concentration has marginalized grossly the third world nations excepting those states having huge market expansion possibilities. India is situating in this exception.
Thus globalization reveals a two-fold outcome in developing nations. First one is the outright commodification of multifactorial elements of life and the second one is a post-commodified simulation of mediated elements. Prof. Samir Amin categorized commodification aspects of globalization into seven non-systemic items:
Commodification and privatization of health;
Commodification and privatization of education;
Commodification and privatization of pension funds;
Commodification and privatization of scientific research;
Commodification and privatization of intellectual, industrial, cultural and artistic properties;
Commodification and privatization of natural resources;
Commodification and privatization in general: false competition, oligopolistic competition; (24)

With this one can get hold of the degree of yuppifying concentration of global centres of finance capital in developing regions which leads to a severe polarization of ‘social’ in these regions brutally marginalizing the habitation of traditional places. In Samir Amin’s version, ‘…we have now reached a stage of advanced polarization, to the point where the majority of the world population has become superfluous to the needs of capital…the disintegration of rural world under the effect of market, together with…transcorporatization…that cannot absorb the villagers that have been made paupers…’ (25), because sponsored NGOs need these paupers not as clientele but commodities that let sell-out their innovative conceptions along with. However the turnover includes one more hyper-activated element, Religious Fanaticism or Communal Fascism.

Deterritorialization of Culture:

Therefore an involuntary culture-mix is going to be imminent in these nations. Unlike western regions where such culture mix has created a freakish monolithic cultural category [which has destroyed their social base on the one hand, and contrarily made a niche-individuality that fits the market], has seriously affected and devoured the ‘social’ of these nations that includes political struggle, people’s democracy, struggle against religious fundamentalism, ideological struggle, land reform strategies, struggle against partial-feudalism and religious fascism, dream of a balanced economic growth etc. People [common mass] have become brutally marginalized and atomized before unleashing mediated contents. Indian [mediation] experience reveals a massive influx of religious fictions, reality gambling, violence and terror, open projection of bloodshed and burning etc. that gradually have been deterritorializing common mass not only from their ‘social’ attachment but also from the mediated spectacles of development!! ‘Not without media’ as it is commonly argued, basically without such fictions and other entertaining contents it is going to be difficult nowadays to define the common atomized mass. Religious festivals, rituals, age-old conventions are being constantly projected in all media outlets to let them feel the ‘religiosity’ as prime social identity of Indian people beyond the ‘political’. Common mass, living below and just above the subsistence, have gradually become deterritorialized in twos from their social connection and spectacles. So we get everything about ‘what do media do with its audience’ in India, but do we really have any idea about ‘what do people do with their media’ in Indian context [uses & gratifications]? Just to remember here, in this juncture, the words of Jean Baudrillard that masses do not produce or make sense of culture, they are stimulated by it as shown in media. Culture is taken out of the hands of masses. How then can theorists measure ‘uses and gratifications’ that people achieve through mediation? It has become a complete ‘made of’ verdict imposed on common mass beyond their class and cultural identities. They live a very limited argumentative [quarrelsome] life-pattern that works in some aberrant binary categories [or syndromes], that grossly look like, no-media-phobia, no-mobile-phobia, between miking of Namaz and Pujas, dual sexual affairs [most powerful symbolic ‘deconstruct’ as new elite intelligentsia grooves upon in films, and other creative genres], extent of political criminalization in political parties, and many other indigenous subcultural syndromes.

Failure of the Structure?

There is no doubt about the whole process of transcorporatization, in the name of so called industrial development, being organized at the cost of long awaited notion of balanced economic growth in India and other developing nations, reveals, therefore, a sharp decline of democratic structure and selling out of the sovereignty as a whole. It would be implausible drawing a special Indian or the third world nations’ cases if we try to set a bottom line from the aftermath of the ended binary ideological debate between ‘Soviet System’ and ‘American System’. Even in the long frigid fifty years of cold war between these two superpowers the whole third world remained eternal victim of direct US oppression. So the Indian case, in the post-cold war, in particular, not only reflects ‘failure’ or frigidity of the internal system but represents also the neo-capitalist expansion or neo-imperialist invasion externally. What the neo-capitalist force led by US performs in their own lands rests on the notion of liberal-plurality, and perfectly ‘neo-liberal’ hegemonic when the same category is applied in other regions. The situation therefore justifies Chomsky’s version that US believes in high protectionism in its own internal economic format and forcibly propagates and disseminates the pluralist cultural message to other regions of the world (26). The motif behind such neo-liberal economic and cultural strategies behind the jacket of globalization has thus been as destructive for the developing nations as it works on the debris of systemic failure and severe deprivation.
Over and above the Indo-US Nuke deal claims an accomplishing permutation toward transnational reforms of the structure and interdependencies between each other. Whatever be its dimension, the basic tenets of this deal, so far come up, contempt the sovereign national structure probably for the last time in the history of mankind. Other than political prerequisites and diplomatic presumptions India would permanently settle herself as eternal recipient of impending need for infrastructure development. This would put an end to all critical theorization with the selling out of its core of infrastructure [specially power] that still needs indeed to cross miles to achieve sustainability. But remaining far short of that Indian bourgeoisie has vended all its internal potentialities to the western transcorporate agenda. It is not the question whether Uranium-235 is available in this region, but the issue of indigenous power-development research [and the whole infrastructure development] stands now on the verge of extinction.
However notwithstanding the dominant notion of transcorporatization overshadowing weaker nations, for India and many others alike, the query remains on ‘whether these [developing] nations always behaved as a real alternative to such invasive influx of transnational identities’? Basically the colonial hang-over, ever shortage of food, infrastructure deficiency, lack of industrial modernization, ever underdeveloped social sector [mass education, sanitation, civic amenities, rural infrastructure, endangered folk identities, etc.] have always perturbed the [territorial] nationalist identities of these nations. China by socializing its identity and nationalizing all properties could manage the crisis though the ‘emancipation of individuality’ question always disturbed the Chinese Communist Party until Deng Xiaoping freed the country from such political orthodoxy [chiefly from ‘cultural revolution’ jolt] giving a complete newer shape to Socialism altogether. But Indian identity being oppressed by colonization over centuries and subsequently ruled by ‘independent bourgeoisie’ and above all ‘religious fundamentalism’ in all facets of life neither appeared as an effective accumulator nor had it been proactive to initiate socialist effort to enhance mass production. After colonial repression Indian millions experienced massive ‘bourgeois ruling’ outbreak under a new polity of ‘family monarchism’. Despite many developmental items having written in consecutive seven five-year plans, each of them could hardly generate a sustained notion of development. From the first five-year plan to the liberalization policy taken in 1991, issues respectively were like,
· Mitigating food crisis: to enhance the agricultural production indigenously – result not at all satisfactory;
· Employment Generation: making giant public sector industries – partial success achieved but far short from moderate achievement; every budget still guarantees more employment opportunities both in urban and rural sectors. Lots of rural employment schemes have already been announced so far.
· Massive deceleration in industrial production – again severe crisis; economic imbalance;
· Political crisis: no five year plan for three four years;
· Green Revolution for the resurrection of agriculture – US cooperation – partial [regional] success achieved – popularly known ‘wheat revolution’; balanced growth between agriculture and industry yet to be achieved;
· Green Revolution did not lead to Labour displacement from agriculture to industry;
· Economic benefits went to better-of farmers and better endowed regions;
· Upper class consumption enhanced;
· ‘Garibi Hatao’ [poverty alleviation programmes] announced but later diluted;
· Lots of instrumental poverty alleviation measures announced: rural employment programmes, self employment programmes [for marginal farmers and rural artisans]: political [regional] polarization: far off sustainability (27);
· Promises [somewhere self contradictory] like, curbing inflation, employment generation, enhance food production and industrial production, about self reliance [increasing export and reducing import and aid, in economic terms] written, planned and communicated to the mass in every five year plan but balanced growth in socio-economic sector remains still a dream to achieve.
· With such bourgeois planning mechanisms, achievements were, first of all, one sided in favour of bourgeois societies, having strong political alignment in the Parliament.
Thus, since independence, a strong bourgeois hierarchical order largely dominated Indian notion of development until it was further diverged [the gap between privileged class and common underemployed, undereducated and underprivileged mass] since the liberalization programmes of ‘Indian economy and social sector’ undertaken by the government that let the whole nation-state identity become unfeasible to the western thinkers. The back-title of the famous book ‘The End of the Nation States’ writes: Nation states [like India] are dinosaurs waiting to die…not only have they lost their ability to control exchange rates and protect their currencies, but they no longer generate real economic activity. While governments cling to jingoistic celebrations of nationhood, within their borders a revolution has been born…’(28). But this so called anti-nationhood revolution falls in transcorporate hegemony and direct US oppression.

A new definition of culture and social peripheries?

However in the post WTO phase all earlier academic suppositions toward nation-state affairs are therefore gradually becoming obsolescent. Finance capital and financial institutions are coming into those areas whichever they consider more suitable for their capital to be invested. Nowadays nations remain no longer proactive to exploit structural resources for development but refreshing the ‘identity’ before foreign investors and convey the divine message “please favour us and our region”. So the structural [cultural] response has gradually been transformed in the last two decades. Indian opinion-leaders are nowadays trying to refresh their assertion with new prejudgements: ‘outlook’ of the state [country] system, and a ‘corporate-friendly environment’. People from upper middle class and rich may ultimately have common supportive opinion about such transformation so that they can breathe in such spectacular cultural outfits [and new market parameters] and seem to forgive the federal state and political structure for doing justice after a long last since independence. Middle class of Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore are staunchly fascinated with such mono-cultural elements: spectacular nightlife, easy-moving money, unlimited entertainment facilities, and most interestingly ‘good jobs for efficient people’ and ‘no vacancy for average fellows anyway’ thus re-justifying the Darwinian notion of habitation ‘survival of the fittest’. Trying hard to keep pace with these fast moving categories, they find no other option but paying full to get hold of the spectacular life. Thus an unusual convergence of generalized corporate cultural propositions dominates the Indian socio-cultural contexts.
Such cultural convergence has caused a further fragmentation and reorientation of natural pluralities of Indian society. It can be classified into some evident cultural categories, like,
(a) Re-territorialization of re-orientation of upper-middle class and rich around newly emerged neo-capitalist centres;
(b) Deterritorialization of marginal population [chiefly lower-middle class, poor, rural and subaltern] from the mainstream transcorporate culture and also from the traditional cultural bondages toward absolute marginalization;
(c) A more dissonant and binary oscillation in middle class population between the polar domain of reterritorial cultural centres [hubs] and traditional cultural format;
(d) Commercialization of political format and global media set people’s new identity as ‘consumers’.
(e) Outright consumption is the social order that signifies a hyperreality which destroys any kind of social connotation.
(f) Mediated categories for consumption debar people think about any sort of exploitation and their class identities slinging them in a mediated hyperreal world [Magaj Dholai].
Therefore a definite re-alignment of newer cultural praxis has become resolutely inevitable for survival. It becomes far more problematic and complicated to the people of other post-colonial nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. where such wide-ranging categorizations converge into the existing binary opposition between superrich [including invalidated middle class] and marginally poor. The marginality of common people, in these nations, remains the only criterion beyond the privileged identity and that is also measured in high religious stance. Prof. James Lull raises a question, “How can people find their way in a world where the stabilizing influence of culture as a communal project is being transformed into a far more symbolic, personalized panorama of images and dreams, fantasies and illusions, journeys and retreats?”(29) In his account he has plausibly projected communication technology, as pivotal to such transformation. Prof. Lull has however made an empirical definition of this reterritorialization or reorientation as “Superculture”, which as he accords, ‘transcends traditional categories of culture and cultural analysis’.(30) But the real account, projected so far in this paper, tells a different story of transcorporate domination altogether .
However I will end up this paper with this new categorization of culture which emits lots of indeterminate cultural lemmas out of which, it is difficult [to mention all] to resolute any ‘one’ in particular, the outcome of globalization. The entrance of newer parameters leads to a newer definition of culture, which would undoubtedly take a far more complicated shape and so far is yet to be measured. The concept of superculture is a post-industrial phenomenon and largely sets a neo-hierarchy in underprepared social formats. The contemporary Indian cultural formats experience lots of such post-commodified lemmas [often anomalously continual: Levi Strauss], like a ‘beautiful Hindu lady who is a graduate student, loves to get peace with Bible hymns, used to move around shopping malls with like-minded folks, believes in free-mixing and relaxed dress codes, desires to marry a Hindu-moderate-meritorious-sound careered boy, fascinated with but still fears to be open at night-life, finally proactive to the religious rituals. Statistical research methodologies cannot reach to this sort of factorization, though it is a clear example of postcommodified consumption decoding.
In his definition of Superculture Prof. James Lull has mentioned about a specific ‘cultural matrix’ that individuals create for themselves in a world where access to “distant” cultural resources has expanded enormously. At the same time, however, the superculture embodies traditional or “close” cultural resources too - the values and social practices characteristic of ‘local’ cultures as they are learned and reproduced by individual and groups (31).
Here the traditional “close” cultural form, according to Lull, implies the structural oppression which compels people follow a certain guided way. The prime agents of the structure or the power groups are ‘religion’ and ‘State’. Furthermore the matrix of superculture reflects an individual cultural perspective beyond social structuration, is very much discursive in contrast to the social bondage, he has accorded.
But oriental societies usually don’t comply with such cultural agenda. This is suitably a dual problem for them. Here the structure is as ruthless as that of west. But the superculture [toward transcorporatization] firmly connotes a newer form of structure to the corporate recolonization. For the privileged people, myriad of mediated symbols and images creates an ideation of ‘freedom from the structural domination’ but the hardcore reality is that they try to dissociate from others in an archipelago of their own choice. So not only they yuppify themselves in luxury but let other people remain marginalized also in terms of economic and cultural discriminations. This notion comes alive when mothers of Manipur stripping them off, shout at Indian Army, “Please Rape us…Spare our Children” (32). Still vast population of India lacks development for subsistence: food, shelter, education, clothing, proper medication and a cultural format where they can justify themselves as Indian.
So now if the state repudiates its responsibility saying that it remains people’s responsibility to formulate their own cultural accommodations, it would certainly be a deadly attack on them. On the other hand if corporate-structure says that it remains consumers’ responsibility to accept [use] mediated and marketed cultural parameters to gratify their needs, it would cause same disastrous effect to millions of marginal and middle class. Every Indian citizen would agree with the fact that corporate superculture eclipses traditional notion of cultural praxis, struggle and of course independence of identity.

Conclusion?

Is there any alternative? If not socialist revolution, what next comes suitably? Financial autocracy? Convergence of global capital market which often leads down to a severe crash? Unleashing inflation? Hallucinatory marginal increase of wage? Perpetual pauperism? Dual consumption: postcommodified simulation and consumerist explosion? Consumerist social order? Dreadful poverty and deprivation? How common audience would then survive?
Some critics [Walden Bello et al. (32A)] prefer to formulate alternative globalization where state systems would have the right to formulate their destiny. No country would propose any degree of hegemony over any state. Nation states would exist in a de-globalized world format but participate actively in international economic and cultural cooperation. But still the question remains on whether a counter economic reassurance can resolve the crisis within the system and the ‘global’. On the other hand transnational financial crises nowadays lead to a severe recession in global market operation. Transcorporate homogenization of cultural praxis leads to the destruction of all other statewide pluralist formats. But the transcorporatization and transnationalization of corporate, financial, socio-cultural institutions [beyond their own nationalist identities] have already initiated a massive transformation of older structures to [re]minting accumulated capital unhindered destroying economic and cultural identities of the nation-states. More so in all above situations only common factor is the dominant US linkage which causes a range of unacknowledged [before] outcomes but all featuring absolute liquidation of divergent human identities. So ‘De-globalization’ may appear quite a utopia at this moment at least in contrast to the ‘transcorporatization of earlier structures’ and ongoing outright US plunging operation.
Furthermore global conglomeration of media industries is fanning the transcorporatization process and investment-liberalization in developing countries like India. The problem becomes more viscid and complicated whenever any resistance [in India sometimes leftist resistance to globalization agenda] has taken place. But often such movements [specially rightist movements] have become reduced to the anti-investment movement. But number of multinational companies has been operating in India over the years with optimum integrity though again some of them created lot of controversy. The first such resistance was observed in India to the US-TNC KFC controversy. Western media conglomerates overhauled on India beyond all ethical notes. The Chicago Tribune storied when KFC was banned in New Delhi for allegedly selling food contained harmful and possibly carcinogenic ingredients (33), ‘…In a country where sanitation is so poor that people routinely die of diarrhea and outbreaks of plague still occur, reports now chronicle with considerable license the potential health hazards presented by western fast food’ (34). The story reveals a double-sided landing, one side of which states the controversy; but the other side reveals the western hi-modernist conventional hierarchy or superiority that nevertheless rules the whole transcorporatization and liberalized monetarism process. New York Times reported that ‘politicians bait KFC but consumers are not chicken…customers did not seem to care about criticism’ (35). A ‘Time’ headline also followed the same ethnic concentration, ‘American Firms Face an Anti-foreign Backlash’. Los Angeles Times reported at that time [KFC banning period], ‘in recent years other large US companies including Cargill Inc., Du Pont Co., Enron Corp., and Coca Cola Co. have been targets of protests and opposition’ (36). However quoting Amiya Kumar Bagchi quite suitably, multinationals may enter into any place where they want to sit or stay but if they are unwanted or not needed, people can choose to oppose them (37).
However besides whatever the extent of such protests had been launched, media conglomerates had dealt with the whole issue through a darken-ethnic fundamentalist eye [here western ethnicity, not communitarian at all] and not in terms of any simple intrusion [what it should have been, if free trade matters to them at all] occurred in free trade liberalism route. Modernist colonizing outlook still therefore has been very influential covering every sector of development in western nations. While they [chiefly US media conglomerates] are screaming for ‘freedom of the marketplace to let US multinationals do the business’, want developing nations to open their socio-economic defense, thus play a complete statist role within western territories.
But things do not move always into the way, as it is intended. It has been argued earlier that for all developing nations ‘industrialization’ becomes synonymous to their survival. On the other hand conglomeration [through merger and acquisitions, joint ventures] of institutions under few ‘Big’ transcorporate names hovers very close to the initial saturation mark devouring nationalist state controlled [administered] market structures [image beyond concrete], earlier relation[al]s between society and market, contemporary socio-cultural codes, human consumption patterns [principles] & state’s responsibilities, state-sponsored development modules, determinate diffusion of communication [its class-cultural orientation]. The role of top state financial institutions [i.e. RBI in India] has been drastically reduced to maintain only the follow-up on the boom and crash of global capital market but completely failed to curb down the swelling inflation and subsequent price hike of essential commodities.
In social sector the crisis is even more viscid to realize. The transcorporatization of media leads to a complete disintegration of earlier dominant social orders quite horizontally, so that [religious & traditional] conventions, despite being fragmented, can subsist on mediated consumerist signification; that also promote critical elitism and civil society’s domination. Naturally such significations immediately denounce organized political [ideological] struggle, impending class movement, and any form of revolutionary socialist progress but promote on the other hand any stray disturbance, fundamentalist [chiefly religious] outbreaks, corporate rivalry, judicial over-activism beyond democratic norms etc. It results even the threatening of traditional industrial development procedure, as observed recently in West Bengal, the withdrawal of ‘Tata Motors’ from Singur [West Bengal] because of such alien and separatist disturbances.
Media conglomeration and globalization of mediation are often being considered, in the west, as a postmodern [deconstruction of…] text, opposed to the traditional modernist hierarchy and metanarrative determinism. But in reality such postmodernist methodologies are all bizarrely [and aberrantly] situated in a common binary oppositional context between ‘state regulation’ and ‘withdrawal of state’ in reference to western superiority that is only applicable to the developing perspective. Few critics dare to establish that every state, including United States, holds optimum power to delimitate its people and possesses an inherent imperialist character. Their delimitation only confutes the third world nation-states. Therefore the transcorporatization of media and other nationalist institutions reflects no less than a newer phase of imperialist [third phase of modernity] modernity. But they all dare never to ignore the power bias. Furthermore vertical integration in media operation and transcorporate manipulation brutally destroys state mechanisms that naturally results in a massive deprivation within and across national territories. More and more mediation of contents leads to an enforced harmonization of privileged community. The market drives the formulators of mediated contents toward producing repetitive codes, deafening the ‘mass production’ [Baudrillard: on consumption (38)] to make them popular. ‘Popularizing’ codes become synonymous to ‘repeating’ codes to produce stereotypical categories. It deafens the [economically] privilege class gradually to get hold of [or realize] the social change and marginalize others to the perpetual social-darkness. Virtually the vast population of developing nations gradually becomes ruthlessly marginalized, [the situation] causing severe social unrest, civil disorder, insurgency, individual bankruptcy and promote outright depoliticization among privileged individuals.
However despite all modes of transcorporate hyperrealist vogue people’s movements across nations also have achieved sufficient momentum but far short of the mark to provide leadership toward any alternative. They denounce: US hegemony, transcorporatization of public institutions, media invasion, consumerist social order etc. But also to be remembered here, at the same time, that a sustainable political alternative is requisite to denounce all earlier statist metanarratives also, that produced criminalization in politics, thoroughfare of massive deprivation, large scale impoverishment, religious fundamentalist outbreaks, severe ethnic concentration etc. Therefore what would be the plausible ‘alternative pluralist’ resolution, if it is not socialist or ‘people’s democratic’!!!


References:

(1) Kenichi Ohmae: The End of the Nation Sates: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harper Collins (1996).
(2) David C. Korten: When Corporations Rule the World; Other India Press.
(3) Chitra Subramaniam: India is For Sale, UBS Publishers’ Distributors Ltd (1997).
(4) Kenichi Ohmae: The End of the Nation Sates: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harper Collins (1996).
(5) Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution, New York (1962), Columbia University Press.
(6) Anthony Smith: Towards a Global Culture? In M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity (1990). London, Sage.
(7) Arjun Appadurai: Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity (1990). London, Sage.
(7A) Vijay Prasad: The Collapse; Cover Story: Frontline, November 7, 2008.
(8) Kenichi Ohmae: The End of the Nation Sates: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harper Collins (1996).
(9) Ibid.
(10) Kavaljit Singh: Global Corporate Power: Emerging Trends and Issues [Asia Europe Dialogue Project; Public Interest Research Centre].
(11) Robert McCheseney & Edward S. Herman: The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Madhyam Books.
(11A) Douglas Kellner: Media Culture: Routledge.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman: Ethnic Cleansing: Constructive, Benign and Nefarious [Kafka Era Studies-1], Z-Net, August, 2006.
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ibid.
(15A) Francis Fukyama: The End of History: cited from Kenichi Ohmae — The End of the Nation Sates: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harper Collins (1996).
(15B) Anthony Smith: Towards a Global Culture? In M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity (1990). London, Sage.
(16) David C. Korten: When Corporations Rule the World;
(17) Robert McCheseney & Edward S. Herman: The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Madhyam Books.
(18) Robert McCheseney & Edward S. Herman: The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Madhyam Books. Also Columbia Journalism Review.
(19) Jean Baudrillard: The system of Objects, London, Verso;
(20) Jean Baudrillard: The Mirror of Production. St. Louis: Telos Press.
(21) The Consumer Society. Paris: Gallimard. 1998 [1970]
(22) Ibid.
(22A) Cited from Gary Day: Class; Routledge.
(23) Samir Amin: The Globalization of Resistance, Forum for Third World Alternative.
(24) Ibid.
(25) Ibid.
(26) Noam Chomsky: Class Warfare; interviewed by David Barsamian; Oxford.
(27) Sukhomoy Chakraborty: Development Planning; Oxford.
(28) Kenichi Ohmae: The End of the Nation Sates: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harper Collins (1996).
(29) James Lull: Media, Communication and Culture: A Global Approach, Polity Press, 1995, 1999.
(30) James Lull: ‘Superculture in the Communication Age’ and In Media, Communication and Culture: A Global Approach, Polity Press, 1995.
(31) Ibid.
(32) A Letter to My Daughter: A Documentary Film by Soumitra Dastidar, 2005.
(32A) Walden Bello — Deglobalization, Madhyam Books.
(33) Melisa Wall: KFC in India: Critical Issues in Media Commercialism; Oxford.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ibid.
(36) Ibid.
(37) Amiya Kumar Bagchi: Globalizing India: The Fantasy and the Reality; Social Scientist, 22/7-8.
(38) Jean Baudrillard: The System of Objects; London, Verso.

A death, pain and pangs of new individuals

A death, pain and pangs of new individuals

By Abir Chattopadhyay
abmo2020@yahoo.co.in
Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication
S.A. Jaipuria College
Kolkata

Abstract: This paper puts forward a profound cultural critique on lynching fatalities and uproar for justice as a common favoured aftermath, as referent to the detailed signification of the painful death of a young boy Rizwanur Rehman. In this course the paper introduces its readership barely with all the socio-cultural factors or parameters involved reaching the core of the truth. While moving into the content this paper rejects even a slightest presence of self-proclaimed narrative that may dominate the text and also refuses obviously arrive at a grand-narrative in favour of a sponsored myth. The death of an individual is no match to have a dominant and authoritarian social tag-line with it. So this paper moves into factorizing all likely socio-cultural facets with a secular outlook thus theorizing socio-cultural outcomes like pangs of such deaths occurred in the Indian subcontinent. Alongside, this paper is sharply directed to the premature growth of neo-liberal individuality as a deterrent to any form of state initiative that affects social and individual elites. However this paper briefly deals with some unsolved fatalities in West Bengal and India occurred in the last one or two years, offers a definitive indeterminacy and a compulsive puzzle that common people confront along with an array of metaphors as dominant narratives like ‘sustainable development’, ‘2nd generation economic reforms’, ‘nuclear powered nation’, ‘9% economic growth rate’, ‘twenty thousand SENSEX’ etc. whereas the statistical figures tell us nearly 40% of the population live in very close to the poverty line [below or above]. So this paper gives a detailed account of the situation rather than a mythic resolution.

Introduction: Our rights and lives
Be it not with the grand narrative of deaths caused by the dominant authority or even be it not with a research toward the statistical figuration of the lynching deaths caused by the authority or the state power, a painful death of a young man has set a massive uproar in West Bengal, toward ‘against’ an undifferentiable outcome of a power structure that is reported to have gained its momentum in the contemporary period of time than from its immediate past [history]. The whole narrative of the death tells us a single dimensional story of a young boy Rizwanur Rehman has been put to death after being forcibly accused by the Police officials for marrying a Hindu affluent girl Priyanka Todi. His body was found at a railway track, on 21st September, 2007, at 10-30AM(1) that prima facie puts up the issue as a case of suicide and at this moment a subjudice matter though the hue and cry certainly is not. In accordance with the culturation trade off process of postmodernity the narrative is gradually taken care of and sprung up by the media. As soon after the painful death as possible, Rizwan was first identified as the victim of state power by some individualists, like human-rights activists and journalists and of course by the political opposition. As the days are moving on, a phenomenal and very sensitive cultural segmentation of urban Bengal society is coming up visible. This segmentation is visible into distinct five categories; the government and its officials [specially Police], press & media, individualists [a handful portion of intelligentsia], mercantile people [includes the prospective investors coming in this region], and finally inevitably the common mass [an eternal absorbent of all possible signifieds of mediated message, who lit candles of protest, pray for justice and organize movements]. Though the above categories can also be put into two main structures of signification; i.e. mediator and the mass, but like undifferentiated conceptualization of power, a simple massification of people may lead to generate a false consciousness toward getting a radical signification of the text. So the whole narrative, as we the common mass is getting, needs to be analyzed in profound detail. This paper would en-route the ‘death’ toward a definite cultural loss incurred that has resurfaced the underlying cultural fragmentation terminating the spontaneous conception and manifestation of heterogeneity or individuality in a social format where individual human being might act as a social being if that is not an utopian ideation.
The death of Rizwanur has put forward many questions targeting multifaceted authoritarianism in the society. Most pertinent among them are, the question of both ethnic & religious regimentation and the question of exerting armed power [allegedly done by the police officials threatening Rizwan and Priyanka](2). At this moment in the whole country [India] number of cases are coming up that assure a massive acculturation toward concentration of administrative power that protects some, may be somewhere, upper caste, or upper class, or aberrant political decoding etc. Moreover against the national agenda of industrialization process in states rather among competing state governments the common feature of opposition becomes very prone to life-taking exercises where ethnic, religious decodings are predominantly used to oppose the authoritarian narrative that “India needs to be industrially grown to generate employment opportunities!!”. But in every case of movement against the state power the most subversive outcome is the rallying of deaths of common innocent people. Though this paper is nowhere directed to depoliticize every social outcome [both developmental and subversive] but determined also to identify the axiomatic presence of shallow provincial political outlook which is steadily coming up regulate the future of this country.
However meanwhile this painful and unnatural death of Rizwanur occurred and as not being at all a political murder a newer cultural signification is ruling all the coming up narratives which emit lots of mythic syntagms around us; say about the fundamental individual rights, constitutional provision toward legal social bondage, even the right to lead a secular life etc. as if, Rizwanur should have got that opportunity to enjoy those rights as others do!!!
But what if the death would have occurred in a political framing like thousands in the last forty years? Why I am asking this question backgrounds both political consciousness and growing socio-political criminalization in India specially the eastern region that have been contributed with so many deaths in the last forty years but very few voices asking for human rights were seen if it was not none. Huge number of cases was filed up though justice was hardly achieved. Even alongside the death of Rizwanur within last 5-6 months more than thirty deaths tolled particularly in West Bengal in such reining political situational context(3). Way back in 2002 thousands of religious minority people were killed in Gujarat and still the whole judgment is yet to get completed. In such earlier cases individualists along with different political sects have been protesting within the constitutional provision available, but in this particular situation public probing initiatives were denounced drastically and both central and state govts. were failed to establish control over this issue.

Failure of public initiatives?
However in this complex situation, where state govt’s effort investigating the death of Rizwanur were denounced and alongside the deliberate withdrawal of govt. following the mediated public demand [as announced by the state Chief Minister accordingly], the signification of the whole case seems to be at the custody of people’s own forum, as it is being mediated without a pause by all the media houses. All of them claim to remain alert and assure its publics accordingly. Some media assurances are even to fight till the last drop of blood. So the whole case along with the investigation by the top autonomous investigating agency of India [i.e. Central Bureau of Investigation- CBI(4)] is nowadays coming up at the day’s prime commercial slots. Though earlier the state govt. announced CID [Criminal Investigation department- a department under state home administration] enquiry and judicial enquiry simultaneously that wouldn’t be unbiased as signified by the family members of the deceased. Actually the signification was fumigated by incessant mediation of a prime mythic statement that if the police perpetrated the separation of Riz and Priyanka and is suspected to put Riz into death, then how a departmental [Home Affairs] enquiry would be unbiased. So the responsibility of investigation was thus given to CBI- the autonomous investigating agency [though is governed directly by the Prime Minister’s Office].

Clash of mythologies not civilizations:
Now the question is if CID enquiry is not unbiased what about CBI investigation? Does CID perpetrate its job efficiently? Or CBI does? These two mythic statements are both well supported by some second order myths and some amount of past records of both organizations. Basically if any one tries out sociological significations in Indian context, he or she has to confront such multilayered clash between mythic statements which is often justified as paradigms of debate, though everyone is confirmed about the indeterminacy of such issues. If CID is not unbiased, then CBI also has failed to conclude the theft of Nobel memento of Rabindranath Tagore [the first Nobel Laureate literateur in Asia] from Viswabharati University Archive, the killing of Tapasi Malik, the innocent village girl brutally killed and burnt in Singur [the cite where TATA group of industries is now setting up biggest automobile factory in Eastern India], on 18th December, 2006(5), but the CBI investigation is more looking highly motivated to malign state administration than unveiling the truth and thus failed to prove anything till date. Even in Tapasi Malik case CBI has failed so far to constitute appropriate charge against their proclaimed suspect and detained that person for over last five months. They failed to constitute charge against the prime accused of Nithari killing case in Noida [a psycho serial killer alleged to kill more than 50 children](6). But does this comparative study prove anything substantial? However this debate is probably a never-ending story and doubtlessly a mediated indeterminate format which claims indeed deconstruction of a dominated structured culture but ends up with a limited agency-ship where participatory value of an individual is culturally too ephemeral. The death of Rizwan has nowadays replaced that of Tapasi Malik in terms of ‘public opinion,’ howsoever both are equally painful.

Who are the publics and the individuals?
Now the question is if the public opinion is finally to be taken into ace consideration then who are these publics. Are they powerful to change the dominant ideation? When we are talking about public opinion, are we taking ‘public’ as an undifferentiable living object at least largest portion of them is living with a consensus? If it is so, how then largest portion of them vote for a political wing for last thirty (!!) years without a pause? [It is to be noted carefully that in West Bengal a particular political wing (left front) has recently observed their consecutive 30th anniversary of ruling the state from 1977 winning consecutive seven state assembly elections by absolute majority, thus setting up a new world record and of course a paradox in terms of the massive hue and cry for the death of Rizwan]. On the other hand when CEO, Time Warner Dick Persons and US Finance Secretary Henry Polson have been visiting the state capital Kolkata, two general strikes on 29th and 30th of October, 2007(7) on this particular issue and some other killing incidents are there probably receiving these two celebrities. In this juncture can the politics of individuality ensure the expression ‘public opinion’ so unique to be identified as consensus or even deviant? Answer is needless to be secret. Even if the public opinion, rather it does, call for an unbiased investigation, would it be reflecting such temporal agony against the govt. or specifically roar against the involved personnel? But in the myth of public expression a newer form individual politics comes out leaning on a very sophisticated cultural or market base to outrage the bit older form of political identity of an individual [which in global north countries is conditionalized as modernity]. So the politics of new individuality basically, of course in India, squeeze out the individuality from it older social base and conforms alternatively with only the bare symbols like ‘candles’ and ‘signatures of the passers by’ and forgets hundreds victims of lynching deaths like, Tapasi Malik, the poor village girl, Sadhu Chattopadhyay, the low grade police officer(8), and other more than fifty deceased poor identities who are invested to death this year in West Bengal. [Anecdote-1: Anyone may think beyond his / her imagination level the Indian situation in terms of death toll in political decoding, underworld decoding, social decoding [hunger, poverty (Table-1), and malnutrition], religious fundamentalist decoding, insurgency decoding and finally atrocities as perpetrated by the police]. A tree of general statistics (Table-2) on various deaths occurred in India in last few years is given below signifying the exact situation and flood of fatalities in India.

Table-1: Deaths in India 2006
2,765 people died in terrorism-related violence in India during year 2006.
Nearly 41 per cent of all such fatalities occurred in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) alone as a result of the Pakistan-backed separatist proxy war in that State.
27 per cent resulted from Left Wing Extremism (Maoism/Naxalism) across parts of 14 States, prominently including Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Karnataka.
23 per cent of the total fatalities in 2006 occurred in the multiple insurgencies of India’s Northeast.
Source: Institute for Conflict Management database

Why this individual politics is looking aberrant though shouting for justice?
Notwithstanding the candles reflect a firm and true symbol of homage and also protest against such painful death of a fellow, the opinion of public is still a much more mediated signification than what it should have been naturally. But before that we must question our individual selves that what if I am asked for spending some of my valuable time and space with this case in front of CBI enquiry in exchange of a signature? The most surprising turn would have been that last SMS-message of Rizwan “Mere jane ke bad awaz uthana” [After I depart raise your voice — 21st September, 2007, at around 10 in the morning, nearly half an hour before his body was found](9) to his student Mrs Alpana Joli [a part time teacher of ‘Arena Multimedia’ where Rizwan has been working as a teacher], but she has reiterated already that the SMS content was only ‘Awaz Uthana’ [Raise Voice] which adds hardly any value to this case in terms of investigation. If anyone is still apprehensive about the justification of the above implosive question to be asked to any individual, the clarification would then be, the degree of participation in both social practices or social structuration process otherwise as a free agent [if anyone considers social being is a cliché symbol for a human being to be identified properly] is totally an undecided or undefined syntax in terms of gross socialization process in India. Apart from extremely multifaceted ethnic concentration and langue-differentiation, the prime impeding factor for small civil [intellectual or high cultural] groups moving into an issue to set a trendy verdict for all, is virtually the array of distinguishable cultural gaps between urban and rural population, high and low cultural population, and above all higher and lower economic classes, which is sufficient to dislocate any form of social movement toward a deserted end and may dry it up ultimately. Therefore if anyone proclaims about ‘public opinion’, he / she either must pay prime attention into these factors or would definitely disseminate a mythic statement and try to overrule every step taken by the establishment and may even claim for some unexplored metaphors like public verdict, public court etc. and many other aberrant decodings.

Why so aberrant in India?
Does this interpretant have same structural composition at all in European context or in American context? Certainly no, because in India, people inhabit still in a very low grade capitalist socio-economic format where the state power, even after 60 years of independence from colonial repression [1947], could not propagate and hardly bother people to be conscious about the fundamental rights [forget about conscious effort] available for them. Moreover after the completion of 10th 5-year economic and social plan near about 25% of the total population live still in below the poverty line and even more than that live just in above the poverty line. Most interestingly if you try to eliminate this whole population as not required in any opinion formation programme, still knowledge gap is highly vicious in between high and low cultural categories of population. [Anecdote-2: therefore why global media find suddenly India as the future destination of neo-liberal capital and culture is not the percentage but the real number of people in this second most populace region in the world. Basically India is practicing neo-liberal globalization in economic and cultural sectors not as resultant of saturation of state-based [country] capitalistic practice, rather, on an incomplete capitalist base where the state only holds the power to mould its people and is also supposedly the prime initiator of all developmental activities]. Thus indigenous opinion-leadership decoding is not a very tiring job or something responsible one, compared to other global north nations or countries. But the final question at this juncture is that, are Indian people really unconscious? No, but they certainly need an open space to have a continuous interaction with all the surfaces on an equitably determinate cultural plane. This is the main reason why left front rule West Bengal for last 30 years without break. Though nowadays the situation is changing, still it remains determinant why individual politics looks so aberrant in Indian social format where general people hardly get a space to interact with each other. And above all, these individuals despite looking for justice belong to some hidden discursive political formats [chiefly different ultra-left political wings] which ultimately establish the ‘signified’ of pseudo-individuality. So in spite of the public or audience or the general people being conscious but don’t find enough collective exposure except the older decaying or degenerating political space [both left and right] that still available for them to form public opinion. So trying to set a narrative on any issue in Indian context is just equivalent to de-knot consecutive social tangles or imperatives.

New paradigm of media culture?
The globalization initiatives developed so far in this country does not scale a post-industrial cultural approach, so all efforts toward development taken by the federal governments [both centre and state] target its people for least amount of cultural reorientation of people of course in its favour [building new flyovers, better civic amenities, better housing development, better trafficking etc. all jointly with private investors nowadays], e.g. struggling hard for reorienting its people with a message signifying ‘industries are needed for employment generation’. Naturally all these efforts leave out some compulsive cultural gaps [knowingly or unknowingly hardly matters] while communicating this message-signifier. This is where media find its operating space and target the same unsaturated audience-psyche projecting arbitrary and conative signification of a text. So quite obviously they need some individuals neither financially or socially downtrodden [because they depend on establishments to organize livelihood] nor associated with any organized social struggle. These people are our newly found oriental critical individuals rather mediated leaders and gatekeepers of the society who are not at all a marked political figure and hardly ‘prefer’ [as they propagate in media] to be so, but all are surprisingly engaged leading mass movements [quite unlike the voices incessantly roaring against Israeli occupation over Palestine, or US constructive terrorism]. How can it be possible? This is where media and these individuals play a mutually complementary role to dominate the society. In this course they extensively use the ‘screen-space and paper space’ to fill temporarily such knowledge and cultural gaps which of course a determinate and doubtless creation of inefficient contemporary political initiatives and consciousness. These people [media persons and individuals] thus organize mass movements from the hot seat of the screen. Though social and cultural inequalities are augmenting like anything in this neo-liberal economic and cultural domination era, media is having the fastest growth toward its global conglomeration. Even regional media like Ananda Bazar Patrika [largest single edition Bengali newspaper in India] is financially tied up with Time Warner Group to launch Indian edition of Fortune Magazine(10). So in this yuppified spectacular concentration of media and its model individuals, all the issues even death of common people becomes a product to be culturally judged in terms of its glossy social attachment. If it is so, media coverage and analysis would continue to a certain period, what is not happened in the case of Tapasi Malik or brutal killing of the police officer Sadhu Chattopadhyay, or leaders of downtrodden [mostly tribal people] people Rabi Kar, or Bhagirath Karmakar and number of people have lost their lives within last two or three months in West Bengal.
Thus a new paradigm of media culture as a determinant of global media conglomeration is going to overlap the existing social culture and dominates aspiration[al] elements of common people. So interestingly and quite naturally governments are disseminating strategic developmental elements and appear to be failing to motivate its people whereas media attract many of them propagating newer cultural elements along with glossy advertisement texts. Now the question is ‘what do media do with its audience?’ Do they need general people? No certainly no, they only look for their audience who are to be necessarily prospective consumers and of course information-elites otherwise there is no alternative left for them to operate. So the death of Tapasi Mallick is now a sold commodity and the death of Rizwan dominates the market. Other fatalities like killing of Bhagirath Karmakar or Rabi Kar or Sadhu Chattopadhyay and many others leave no impression on the market because these are marked at a very low selling point category.
Therefore what they signify in the name of social movement in this particular case is proved nothing but to be a dominant myth which works in the spiral of people’s silence and of course in the free space where information elites do not meet common mass. It is a doubtless fact that many people have participated in the movement for nothing but a definite solution of Rizwan’s death and others also would definitely support silently. But what going on in the space between the investigation and the people’s desire, is a subversive ‘solely mediated politics of pseudo individuality’ denouncing polity and establishment without giving any alternative. Everyone should recognize the main factor that impedes the formation of civil society [that may feed information to others and control] and information consumers in such a ‘big’, ‘older’, and ‘developing’ country is the ‘incomplete sense of development of individual’ that chiefly differentiates the dominant narratives like ‘rural’—‘urban’, ‘elite’—‘common’, ‘intellectuals’—‘pedestrians’, ‘ethnic’—‘progressive’ etc. But who then will be taking responsibility to feed those ‘second categories’? or who will represent these toiling people? Individualists? or the political sects [though having very narrow mundane cultural signifiers to unite people]? What they demand is “state should properly investigate the uneventful deaths [even killing] of rural people though have to face their criticism and state should not have right to investigate such newsy death [which provides lots of followed-up news including profiles] so that the myth of social movements and civil society can be established in audience psyche”. But what if CBI takes equally more time to solve out this case? Would the media house continue parallel investigation and ‘sleepless night’ what they promise now? Would the advertisers continue giving advertisements against this news? Let us hope for the best otherwise for any delay media and individualists are not going to spend sleepless night doing parallel investigation only. They say, ‘we have many other issues to deal with’ but we the common people know Rizwanur won’t come back [though some turns of Rizwanur’s death may still possibly come out as investigation proceeds] nevertheless such atrocities against common people would again be perpetrated. Someone has to make news which people collectively can’t whatever history tells us about the story of movements!!!

References:

(1) Taken from the reports published in The Telegraph, 23rd September, 2007
(2) Taken from the reports of Ananda Bazar Patrika, 17th October, 2007.
(3) Ibid. March and September, 2007.
(4) Ibid. Wednesday, 17th October, 2007.
(5) Ibid. 19th , 20th December, 2006.
(6) Taken from PTI documents and Sinha, Varun. "'We first fished out remains from drain'", Indian Express, 2006-12-29, December, 2006.
(7) Taken from The Telegraph, 30th and 31st October, 2007.
(8) Taken from Aajkal [a regional Bengali Daily], 17th March, 2007.
(9) Reports from PTI, 29th October, 2007.
(10) Reports from PTI, 30th October, 2007.