Landmark moment in Indian Media...

Not that the independent Journalism died with this takeover. But it has died slowly everyday and this is just the swelling of the body after death. I don't expect perfection, but media has lost its glory and dignity and it was seen clearly by the way they covered the whole 2014 elections. The topics they chose to debate and to exclude showed much.

In my opinion the main reason of this rot being the urge to be politically correct (which denies justice) and to seek permanence in high positions (withers new talent) and self-seeking behaviour (merit is ignored). People, just like politicians, just dont want to live life ahead. They want to retain the honey, money and position till the grave. There was a huge disconnect with the larger India and none of that seems to be going to change with the takeover. But, yes, it seems one thing will change- earlier one party and person who was made to be a demon may be looked from a different light...

For journalism, things have changed but yet remained same and will remain so until 1. some of the czars become truly professional and ethical2. media is delinked from corporate and,3. a wider debate on the correctness of profit-targets of media houses is held and resolved.4. A self-regulating working mechanism is implemented with some external inputs too.

Read more on the news here: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghabahree/2014/05/30/reliance-takes-over-network18-is-this-the-death-of-media-independence/
Reliance Takes Over Network18: Is This The Death Of Media Independence?
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In two words? Quite likely.

India’s largest company Reliance Industries Ltd., which is owned by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, announced Thursday that it was taking over one of India’s largest media companies–Network 18 Media and Investments Ltd.

Network18 owns TV channels (including CNBC TV18, CNN-IBN, CNN Awaz), websites (firstpost.com, moneycontrol.com), magazines (including the license for Forbes India), entertainment channel (Colors, MTV and Homeshop Entertainment) among other businesses. RIL said it’s board approved funding of 4,000 crore rupees (or roughly $730 million) to Independent Media Trust (IMT), of which RIL is the sole beneficiary” for taking over Network18. (You can read the financial details of the deal here.)

Network18′s CEO, CFO and COO quit in the days preceding Thursday’s announcement. Earlier today the company’s founder and managing director Raghav Bahl and his wife, a director at the company, announced their exit as well, while there are strong rumors doing the rounds that the news division’s top editorial team too is on its way out. Indian newspaper Mint cited a few employees who described the situation as a “hostile” takeover.

Anger, panic and pandemonium aside, the takeover is a strategic move for RIL which is expected to launch its 4G network later this year and can use the wide range of content produced by Network18 to feed its telecom play. In its press release RIL said: “The acquisition will differentiate Reliance’s 4G business by providing a unique amalgamation at the intersection of telecom, web and digital commerce via a suite of premier digital properties.

This takeover, once combined with RIL’s telecom business, makes the combined group likely bigger than media baron Rupert Murdoch’s empire in India and bigger than any other media group in India. And that should raise some serous questions about it.

“If India’s biggest corporate conglomerate is also India’s biggest media company, what does it do to diversity of opinion, plurality of opinion, what it does do to unfavorable news coverage?” asks Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an independent journalist and teacher who was a member of the Press Council of India where he co-authored a piece on “Paid News: How corruption in the Indian media undermines democracy.”

To be sure, India has several thousand newspapers and about 900 tv channels and a thriving social media. Despite that, there are only a handful of media companies that dominate the market and mainstream media still has a significant role in setting the agenda.

“What happens when big business interests get into the media business?” says Thakurta. “They influence what comes out into the public, what is heard and read…. [Suddenly] You have your large business groups, conglomerates determining what people read, hear, watch. It does raise concerns and questions about what happens to the voices of not just those who are contrary to RIL, but the marginalized?”

While the Network18 deal may be the biggest media deal in India, it is a very tiny part of the giant that is RIL. But the deal is important for other reasons, points out P. Sainath, an independent, award-winning journalist.

“It has the power to reach into every drawing room; the power to tell you what to read, see and think,” he says. “How will they [the Network18 journalists] have any chance of doing a decent story on the KG gas deal [where RIL has the rights to dig for gas and is in dispute with the government], the Radia tapes [taped telephone conversations between publicist Nira Radia and a former telecom minister and senior journalists where she's lobbying on behalf of several big corporate clients], how will they cover any damn thing? The greater the monopolization and corporatization of media, the less the space for smaller voices, differing voices, dissenting voices.”

RIL made its first investment in Network18 in January 2012 with a minority stake in the company via IMT. At the time it said it was merely an investor, recalls Thakurta.

“Now that Chinese wall has come crashing down,” says Thakurta. “Earlier the people who were investors are now the people who call the shots.”

Critics of the deal have also raised concerns about how this will impact the media’s coverage of India’s newly elected government. India’s corporate sector endorsed–and donated to–Narendra Modi and the BJP’s election campaign. So what are the chances that media companies–owned by some of those same corporate houses–will encourage independent reporting of its favored Prime Minister and government?

“Once upon a time the media took its role to question people in power very seriously,” says Sainath. “Media was the adversary. It would take on those in positions of power, whether in government or the corporate sector. Time alone will tell how that adversarial role will exist under these sort of corporate deals.”

Agriculture, i.e in Bharat..

In my opinion, Agriculture, Defence, Science, Art and Spirituality are the five natural directions Bharat must move towards.....and contribute immensely to the world fraught with despair.

Modern parasitic professions like Marketing and Advt, economy, Media etc (though can't be done without) must be subservient to the above and not vice-versa, as some would have us believe!! _/|\_

For agriculture, here is an 11 point agenda from Shri Devinder Sharma, which i totally agree with..

Please read below:

http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/2014/05/my-11-point-agenda-for-resurrecting.html


An 11-point agenda for resurrecting Indian agrculture and restoring the pride in farming




Time to usher in "Acche din..." for the Indian farmers.

Indian agriculture is faced with a terrible agrarian crisis. It is a crisis primarily of sustainability and economic viability. The severity of the crisis can be gauged from the spate of farm suicides. In the past 17 years, close to 3 lakh farmers reeling under mounting have preferred to commit suicide. Another 42 per cent want to quit agriculture if given a choice. The spate of farmer suicide and the willingness of farmers to quit agriculture is a stark reminder of the grim crisis.

Even at a time when the country was in the midst of elections, there was a spurt in farm suicides. In the past few weeks, on an average five farmers ended their lives in Vidharbha every day, another five in Telengana, three in Bundelkhand. In Marathawada in Maharashtra, news report say 101 farmers have taken their own lives in March-April. In progressive Punjab, 14 farmers have ended their lives in past two months.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi blames UPA for the plight of jawan and kisan during the past 10 years, he raises a lot of hope for the beleaguered farming community. During election campaigning, he had specifically talked of farmer suicides, farm prices, crisis in agricultural marketing and also touched on local agricultural issues in different parts of the country. After all, kisano ke bhi to aache din aane chahiye …












What should therefore be the agriculture agenda for the new government? What should be the strategies and approaches that Narendra Modi has to follow to pull farmers out of the deep morass? Knowing very well that India cannot compromise with its food self-sufficiency, there has to be a number of short-term as well as long-term measures. I am being asked this question time and again. Here is my 11-point agenda:

1) Providing a guaranteed assured monthly income to farmers. According to the Arjun Sengupta Committee report the average monthly income of a farm family is Rs 2,115. This includes Rs 900 from non-farm activities. About 60 per cent farmers are dependent on MNREGA activities to survive, and an estimated 55 per cent farmers go to bed hungry. But these farmers produce economic wealth for the country in the form of agricultural, horticultural and dairy produce. It is high time they are adequately compensated for generating that massive economic wealth in the form of food. My suggestion is that the new government should set up a National Farmers Income Commission which should have the mandate to compute the monthly income of a farm family depending upon his production and the geographical location of the farm.

2) The time for price policy is now over. Every time the Minimum Support Price (MSP) is raised questions are asked about its impact on food inflation. Moreover, the Bali Ministeral of WTO has questioned India's subsidies that it provides to farmers by way of MSP. It is therefore an appropriate time to move from Price policy to Income policy. The income that a farmer earn should be de-linked from the price that his crops fetch in the market. That is why I have been asking for a guaranteed monthly income for for farmers. Let us not forget, if inflation is rising it is also rising for the farmers. While the Govt employees get DA instalments every 6 months to compensate for inflation, and get a pay commission every few year, farmers get only MSP and that too is un-remunerative. In an interesting study from Kerala, it was computed that if paddy price rise was to match the salary rise of govt officials, paddy price in 2005 should have been Rs 2669/qntl. It's Rs 1,310 today. In other words what paddy farmers are getting in 2014 as paddy price is 50 per cent of what they should have earned 9 years ago.

The burden of providing cheap food therefore to 1.25 billion people should not be only on the shoulders of farmers. The society too must share the burden.

3) There is an immediate need to strengthen the network of mandis (market yards) across the country whisch provides farmers with a platform to sell their produce. Leaving it to markets will result in distress sale. To illustrate, let me take the example of rice farmers in Punjab and Bihar. In Punjab, which has a huge network of mandis linked with roads, farmers bring the produce to these mandis. Last harvest, Punjab farmers got an MSP of Rs 1,310 per quintal for paddy. In Bihar, where APMC Act does not operate, farmers resorted to distress sale with prices not exceeding Rs 900 per quintal. The Commission for Costs and Prices (CACP) is now pressurising Punjab Govt to dismantle the mandis and let markets operate. Which means, Punjab farmers will soon go the Bihar way.

4) For a country which was able to build up an excellent marketing network for one of the most perishable commodities -- milk -- I see no reason why a similar approach cannot be adopted in providing a viable marketing network for fruits and vegetables. If the National Dairy Development Programme could ensure that milk is procured from each and every village, and then through a cooperative chain it is finally delivered to the consumers in the cities, I see no reason why India cannot carve out a marketing chain for fruits, vegetables and other farm commodities.

5) Cooperate farming need to be encouraged. Appropriate laws must be framed to make cooperatives more independent and effective. Drawing from the experience of the Amul cooperative in dairy farming, a similar system needs to be adopted for vegetables/fruit farming. I know of small cooperatives of organic farmers which have done wonders. Why can't it be replicated to rest of the crops?

6) Aim at making villages self-reliant in agriculture and food security. Feeding the population has to be linked with farming. Chhatisgarh has given an excellent model of self-reliance in agriculture and food security. It has shifted the focus to local production, local procurement and local distribution. This is exactly what needs to be done throughout the country for which the National Food Security Act needs an amendment. Instead of providing 5 kg of wheat/rice/millets every month, the focus should be on making the villages take care of their own food security needs. This will help reduce the huge subsidy bill on food security that is required every year and thereby reduce fiscal deficit. Such a programme will also help in removing hunger in the long term.

7) Green Revolution areas of the country are facing a crisis in sustainability. With soil fertility devastated, water table plummeting and environment contaminated with chemical pesticides and fertiliser, the resulting impact on the entire food chain and human health is being increasingly felt. The new Government should launch a nation-wide campaign to shift farming to non-pesticides management techniques. In Andhra Pradesh, no chemical pesticides are used in 35 lakh acres. Farmers have even stopped using chemical fertiliser in some 20 lakh hectares. Production has gone up, pesticides pollution has come down, insects attack has also come down, and more importantly farm incomes have gone up by 45 per cent because of reduced health expenses. There has been no farm suicides in these areas. The same system now needs to be extrapolated to the entire country with local modifiations/adaptation.

8) Agriculture, dairy and forestry should be integrated. Agricultural growth should not only be measured in terms of increase in foodgrain production but should be seen in the context of the village eco-system as a whole. This will also shift the focus to low external input sustainable agriculture (LEISA) practices. At the same time such an approach will limit the ecological footprint.

9) Importing food is importing unemployment. Recently, apple growers in Himachal Pradesh have been protesting against the low import tariffs for imported apples as a result of which the local produce goes abegging. There are no buyers for Himachal apples, and the prices have plummeted . Similarly for other crops. The Govt must raise the import duties on agriculture, horticulture and dairy products and refuse to buckle under the pressures being exerted through the Free Trade Agreements. It should not accept the European Union's demand for opening up for dairy products and fruits/vegetables by reducing the import duties. Studies have now shown that indiscriminate signing of FTAs and bilateral agreements has been disadvantageous to the country. Time to revisit the trade treaties and protect domestic agriculture thereby millions of livelihoods.

10) Climate change is certainly going to affect agriculture. But instead of looking at strategies only aimed at lessening the impact on agriculture and making farmers cope with the changing weather patterns, the focus should also be to limit greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Considering that agriculture share in greenhouse gas emissions is about 25 per cent, the thrust must shift to reducing the application of chemical fertiliser/pesticides in farming. Following the AP model of non-pesticides management being the right approach, the cropping pattern too needs a revision. In the dryland regions of the country, for instance, at present hybrid crops which required almost twice the amount of water than normal crop varieties, are grown. Common sense tells us that in rainfed regions, which occupy 65 per cent of the cultivable area, crops requiring less water should be grown. But it is just the opposite in reality thereby accentuating the water crisis at times of rainfall delay.

I see no reason why Rajasthan, a semi-arid region, should be cultivating water guzzling sugarcane, cotton and rice crops. Similarly I see no reason why Bundelkhand should be cultivating mentha crops, which requires 1.25 lakh litres of water to produce 1 kg of mentha oil. Why can't the cropping pattern in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh shift to pulses, oilseeds (like mustard) and millets? Why can't the Goovt provide special incentives by way of a higher price for these crops so that farmers can willingly shift to more sustainable cropping patterns?

11) Lack of storage for foodgrains is appalling. It was in 1979 that under the Save Food Campaign, the Govt had promised to set up grain silos at 50 places in the country. This should be the top agenda for the new government. Not even a single grain should be allowed to go waste. #