The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, currently in India, is expected to address concerns in India over attacks on Indian students.

The issue blew up in May this year after a spate of attacks on Indian students amid allegations of racism.

The Australian leaders have been defending the safeguards and measures taken since then, but every time there is a fresh attack the media goes to town with the issue.

With over 80,000 students enrolling in Australian every year the attacks, whatever their nature, have hardly dampened the outflow of students.

Rudd won’t be the first to offer a reassurance and given the regularity with which incidents are reported it doesn’t look like he would be the last.

Indian students continue to be interested in Australian education.

Is this because they can sense that the issue is has been blown out of proportion?

Or are they voting with their feet on the state of Indian education system?

Are we still sold out over the lure of a ‘foreign degree’ and willing to run the risks for it?

The war of words between the billionaire Ambani brothers took an unexpected turn when younger sibling Anil offered an olive branch to elder brother Mukesh in a bid to resolve a feud over the split of the Reliance business empire in 2005.

The widespread coverage the Indian media has given to the squabble between the brothers has led to a debate on social networking sites such as Twitter, with some accusing news organisations of playing host to a reality show or soap opera that stars the Ambani family to boost ratings.

Prominent columnist Vir Sanghvi wrote through his Twitter account virsanghvi: “Do you think some network should plan a reality show on the Ambani battle? Or are they doing it already on the news?”

But the battle between the billionaire Ambani brothers is not a manufactured product for mass entertainment, as it involves two of the world’s wealthiest men and could pose a stumbling block to India’s goal of achieving energy security.

The siblings have been involved in several disputes since the family business was split in 2005 following the death of their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, a legendary Indian business tycoon who built Reliance from scratch.

The latest of these disputes is over a deal for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to sell gas to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources at below-market rates as agreed in the 2005 family settlement, brokered by their mother Kokilaben.

The dispute has drawn in the government, which claims it is the rightful owner of the gas. The government can also decide who can buy gas and at what price, but it has been accused by Anil Ambani of supporting Reliance Industries.

India’s highest court has not excluded the government from the dispute between the Ambanis’ firms, and will hear the case on Oct. 20.

India, Asia’s third-largest oil consumer and which imports two-thirds of its crude oil, is hoping to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and become a new frontier for oil and gas exploration.

The Indian exploration and production sector will need $40 billion in investments by 2012, the Investment Commission of India estimates, while consultancy KPMG expects the Indian energy sector will require between $120 and $150 billion over 2007 to 2011 as Asia’s third-largest economy expands.

However, India’s latest auction of oil and gas exploration blocks evoked a tepid response, with the government indicating the Ambani dispute may have put off investors.

Now, with the stakes being so high, surely the media cannot be blamed for helping its audience navigate through the twists and turns of the maze that is the Ambani tussle?

It’s actually on page 17 of the Hindustan Times. The Mail Today, which leads on liquor being allowed for sale in shopping malls, puts it on page 16. The Hindu, which also finds space for liquor sales liberalization on its front page, puts it on page 20.

What is it? News of the Indonesia quake and the Samoan tsunami. Last night, when these papers were being put to bed, we knew that hundreds (now probably thousands) of people had died.

Why is such major news in Asia relegated to back pages of Indian newspapers (there are some exceptions, of course) ?

The Indonesia quake especially was close to India – there was a brief tsunami alert for the Indian Ocean — and how Indonesia copes will be of immense interest to people in India who wonder how authorities have learnt from the last 2004 Asian tsunami. And of course there is the simple humanitarian issue – the stories of suffering and hope that we all can identify with.

My pet theory is India is such a huge country, that rather like the United States, it has a tendency to look inwards.

There is a strong current in India and the U.S. that the rest of the world does not matter too much – India itself bases its economic growth on its 1.2 billion domestic consumers rather than selling stuff to the outside world. Much political and social attention in India is focused on the immense problems within its borders.

It comes down to details, too. Take for example, India’s airports. New Delhi is one of the few capital cities I know in the world that has done a first class modernization of its domestic airport, but left its international airport trailing way behind.

Most other capitals I know, it’s the other way round. In Chile, a small country that depends on exports and the outside world to survive, the first thing they did was modernize the international airport. In Venezuela, home to socialist President Hugo Chavez, their international airport dates from the 1970s — symbolic of the oil-rich country’s statist, nationalistic stance.

But one wonders if the relegation of foreign news (aside from Pakistan), is really healthy for a country that is increasingly playing diplomatically a global role, from climate change to trade and the Commonwealth Games?

Should the media be leading the way?

The toll in India from the H1N1 pandemic rose this week, but a look at the screaming TV headlines and graphic visuals in newspapers would suggest a country under siege from something akin to the bubonic plague.

Dramatic headlines and graphic visuals in the media; reporters looking alarmed behind their masks; commuters with handkerchiefs and scarves around their mouths; and long lines of people outside screening centres, imagining the worst.

Even as the health minister and state officials appealed for calm and warned against hoarding masks and flu drug Tamiflu, the red splashes of breaking news and the tone verging on hysteria were unabated.

The World Health Organisation estimates the H1N1 swine flu could affect 2 billion people globally, and experts consider the pandemic to be moderate.

That hasn’t stopped the breathless media coverage, selling of masks and sanitisers at several times the usual price and panicky schools shutting down.

In fact, new U.S. guidelines discourage early closure of schools because the benefits of closing schools are outweighed by social costs such as unsupervised children and missed education.

Some newspapers did play down the hysteria: The Hindustan Times daily said many deaths could be attributed to late diagnosis and other complications, and reminded readers that 16 people died of malaria in Mumbai in the last two days alone. During the monsoon, gastroenteritis is a bigger threat than swine flu.

So how about some perspective and some calm?

[Join the Great Debate on whether India is ready to tackle swine flu ; for slideshow click here]

A crucial part of gunman Mohammad Ajmal Kasab's confession at the Mumbai attack trial has been censored by the judge on the grounds that it could inflame religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India. After stunning the court on Monday by admitting guilt in the the three-day rampage that killed 166 people, Kasab gave further testimony on Tuesday that included details about his training by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group on U.S. and Indian terrorist lists.

The front-page report in today's The Hindu, which noted the judge's gag order in its sub-header, put it this way:

Ajmal made some crucial statements on Tuesday as part of his confession. They pertained to the purpose of the attack as indicated by the perpetrators and masterminds and the message they wanted to send to the government of India. Ajmal also wanted to convey a message to his handlers. However, this part of his confession faces a court ban on publication.

In view of the communally sensitive nature of Ajmal’s statements, judge M.L. Tahaliyani passed an order banning the publication and broadcast of Ajmal’s statement recorded on Tuesday by any media or person, except the part which pertains to the CST. Mr. Tahaliyani remarked that the trial was at “a delicate stage.”

Given the complex mix of religion and politics in India, it's not unusual to see the media playing down the communal aspect of tension and violence. In the recent general election, the party that usually plays up these differences, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hardly used the "religion card" in its losing campaign. But that doesn't mean things are getting better. According to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, the "unfortunate year of 2008 ... proved to be worse than 2007." See their two-part report on 2008 here and here.

But Kasab's testimony could shed important light on what role religion plays in Islamist militancy. How could a young man who wanted to become a dacoit (bandit) be convinced by Islamist militants to try to become a shahid (martyr) instead? Was he actually convinced, or did he do it for other reasons?

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel burns, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

Kasab told the court on Monday that he originally approached the militants to get weapons and training and won (surprisingly easy) admission to their office by saying he wanted to wage jihad. He was taken in and given extensive training in preparation for the Mumbai attack last November. All of this is detailed in published accounts of his statement in court on Monday. In earlier statements, police say, he showed little understanding of Islam or jihad, saying the latter was "about killing and getting killed and becoming famous."

What role did Islamist ideology play in this, and what part the confused ambitions of a poor and impressionable young man? In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad?, Lashkar-e-Taiba listed its goals as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.

Did his handlers stress all this to Kasab? Did he want to do any of the above? What did his Islamist handlers say about Hindus? If they fed him a diet of anti-Hindu hatred, might it be better to publicise the details so they can be debated and discredited? Some of the most interesting contributions to such a debate could come from Indian Muslims, who live in the kind of secular democracy the LeT rejects.

(Photo: Kasab in detention, 3 Feb 2009/video grab from CNN IBN)

I'd be especially interested to hear the reaction from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is a traditionalist Sunni school but has urged Muslims to reject terrorism and vote in elections against extremists.

Right now may not be the best time to publish Kasab's censored confession. But revealing it at a later date, for example after the verdict, might do more good than the harm Judge Tahaliyani fears. What do you think?

“I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism.” This was how Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began his crucial meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia’s Yekaterinburg on Tuesday.

The comment, made in the full glare of the media, hit Zardari like a well-aimed arrow as the embarrassed Pakistani leader quickly interrupted to ensure the reporters were asked to leave the room.

Those few dramatic moments may have served Singh two crucial purposes: Pakistan could not showcase the meeting as proof that it was again business as usual between the two countries. Second, Singh managed to preclude any criticism back home that India had capitulated before Pakistan.

Indian newspapers such as The Hindu prominently speculated if Singh’s comments were by “design or happenstance”.

The Times of India too highlighted Singh’s acerbic comments with a front page photograph of the two leaders.

In their 60 years of hostilities, one weapon that India and Pakistan has used with much success is the media.

When then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf famously offered a handshake to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002 — while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 — he was aware of the media arc lights.

Musharraf also won the “media war” during the famous Agra Summit in 2001 when he addressed Indian editors, seeking to highlight the Pakistani point of view and upstage India.

But Singh seems to have turned the tables, possibly leaving Pakistan on the backfoot for now.

“As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too…Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn,” wrote London Times’ columnist Alice Miles.

The phrase “poverty porn” spread across the Indian media as commentators nodded in agreement or shook their heads even before the film premiered in its native Mumbai and India could (legally) watch it.

A group of the city’s slum dwellers, including children, protested against the word “dog”. A social activist filed a defamation case in Patna. And this week, hundreds of slum dwellers in Bihar’s capital ransacked a movie theatre demanding the title be changed.

So, is it really “poverty porn” for the Westerner’s delectation? Are beatings, torture, and the maiming of street beggars a sick form of adult exotica?

Perhaps the question can be rephrased: does a morbid fascination with the suffering of others find a place in art and is “Slumdog” are a striking example of this?

Be it a film on the Nazi holocaust, or based on crime, or a painful examination of the horrors of drug abuse (Trainspotting?), viewers can gawk at the world’s dirty underbelly whether or not they would describe themselves as pain perverts.

But the film has caused real offense in some parts.

“‘Slumdog’ is just every scrap of dirt picked up from every corner and piled up together to try and hit back at the growing might of India. And the awards almost seem like a sadistic effort to show the world — look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to,” wrote management consultant and film producer Arindam Chaudhuri on his blog.

Chaudhuri and others say the film crosses the line into stereotype in a way that “stinks of racial arrogance” and is designed to undermine India’s inevitable rise on the world stage.

According to Chaudhuri, the film serves up “India as the accidental millionaire, which in fact happens to be a slumdog”.

But take the critically acclaimed movie “La Haine” (Hate), about life in the grim suburbs of Paris. Riots, needless bloodshed, police’ brutal treatment of immigrants and monotonous poverty are its subject matter and there is no happy ending.

Should France have rushed to the city’s defence and said the (French) director wallowed in the city’s troubles when Paris has so much more to offer? Could he not have made a film set in the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the world-famous catwalks?

Should “City of God” have apologised for being set in the troubled slums of Rio and because it didn’t address Brazil’s own emergence on the world stage?

The director of “Slumdog”, Danny Boyle, is up for an Academy Award. But some panned the film on its own perceived demerits and said it does not deserve 10 Oscar nominations — three for music director A.R. Rahman will do. The three people I went to see it with were underwhelmed.

Some saw the film as trite and inconsistent. For example, the hero’s sudden knowledge of English after his stint as a guide at the Taj Mahal came under scrutiny, especially since it allowed Boyle to shoot large chunks of the film in his native tongue.

Whether or not a moviegoer wants to spend his money on a film set in slums seems a matter of taste, but with more expected protests in India, the controversy has not died down.

Rahul Gandhi spoke at a news conference in Amritsar last month. Somewhat predictably newspapers and TV channels covering the event focused on his comments on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and his defense against being called a rookie by a seasoned political rival.

They ignored the context of his visit — to review preparations for the local youth Congress elections, being conducted with greater involvement of party workers at the grass-roots level. It’s a practice he apparently wants to replicate across other states.

If Gandhi is serious about it and succeeds in doing so, it will further the cause of internal party democracy, which is a major blind spot in the working of our democracy.

The expression ‘political party’ did not even enter the Indian Constitution for the first thirty-five years of its life and even afterwards it did so cursorily in a Schedule.

The Constitution ensures that we elect our representatives but does not specify how political parties should choose the candidates — it’s a decision that does not involve citizens.

For me, the most fascinating aspect of the the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, even more than the final outcome, was the manner in which candidates are chosen.

Constant and intense interaction between the potential candidates and the party members brings out with a degree of clarity the political agenda of the candidates who in turn get a chance to tweak them to the expectations of voters.

This brings more transparency in the political domain. If a candidate loses or wins in those conditions then one knows the reasons for it.

If there were more internal democracy India’s pre-election opinion polls would probably be more accurate.

The result of the state elections as well as the general elections in 2009 would also make more sense.

Ashutosh Varshney, writing in the Times of India, mentions the lack of intra-party democracy as a major reason why India may not produce a Barack Obama.

He argues that lack of internal elections means that “rank outsiders like Mayawati, tend to create new political parties, but it is well known that it is much harder to create a new nationwide political organization than use an existing one.”

This reduces the probability of a candidate like Obama coming to power in India.

I find it a bit ironical that Varshney writes about the importance of internal party democracy in the same issue of the paper that also covers Rahul Gandhi’s Amritsar news conference but overlooks his initiative towards firming up the election process.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in Outlook magazine that “most political parties do not institutionalise internal party reform because it could jeopardise the hold of current party incumbents.”

Given that, I think such a step by any politician needs to be appreciated for its boldness. It also needs to be followed up and scrutinised.

If the media focuses more on this lacuna of Indian democracy perhaps it will help put the issue on the common agenda and make the elections more meaningful.

After all there is something called the ‘observer effect’ which causes a change by the very act of looking at something. 

The question is how soon will the media start focusing on the selection process that precedes the elections.

The concept of a televised war was born in January 1991, when news networks reported live on the missiles slamming into Baghdad and millions watched from the comfort of their living rooms as tracer fire lit the sky above Iraq's capital. A decade later,  the world watched in minute-by-minute horror as the twin towers came crashing down in New York. 

Now, with the ferocious militant attacks in Mumbai, we have arrived in "the age of celebrity terrorism". Paul Cornish of Chatham House argues that apart from killing scores of people, what the Mumbai gunmen wanted was "an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion". 

It's too early to tell if governments will respond with extreme reaction, but the saturation coverage of the drama in the world's media would suggest that, at least on this level, the killers were successful.  

"Almost within minutes, television screens showed harrowing scenes of pools of blood where people had died or been injured, hotels ablaze, Indian army snipers firing at distant targets, and CCTV images of the attackers," Cornish writes.

The first reports of shooting in the streets of India's financial capital did not actually come from the mainstream media.  A BBC news technology blog suggested that the social networking site Twitter  "came of age" during the attacks because it carried messages on the shootings some time before television networks and news agencies started reporting them. Indeed, according to a Reuters report, blogs fed an information frenzy on the 60-hour gun rampage and siege, underlining the emergence of citizen journalism in news coverage.  

However, the live coverage that followed on television networks, particularly Indian ones,  was shrill, sensationalist and bordering on the hysterical. As the Financial Times points out, this is not new in India's competitive television market, where some channels flash the words "Breaking News" all day and "the only thing that matters is to be 'first', even if first is wrong".  The blizzard of reporting inaccuracies over this incident was astonishing. In a despatch on why we should take reports from the scene of a massacre with a grain of salt, Jack Shafer catalogues the instances from Mumbai of what he calls "crap masquerading as authoritative news".

How does high-octane reportage like this feed into the popular mood, and how far could that influence the hands of policy makers in New Delhi and Islamabad?

To find out, watch for Breaking News.

Just when I thought news trivialisation by a section of Indian media could not get worse, it did. And how.

In a control room somewhere on the French-Swiss border, scientists of CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, waited for the first signals to come in from a $9 billion particle collider as they embarked on an experiment to unlock secrets of the universe.
 
In a town somewhere in Madhya Pradesh, farmer Biharilal’s daughter Chayya sat glued to the TV screen, taking in the graphics and amateur video game imagery put together by vernacular news channels who said the experiment would bring about the end of the world.
 
The fact that I’m sitting here writing this is proof enough the world did not end. But Chayya, who killed herself fearing what doomsday prophets said would be the experiment’s cataclysmic effects, is not around to see that.
 
Sensationalism in 24×7 news coverage is relatively new to India — a concept borrowed from the larger and more prolific western media. In India, every road accident, murder and rape makes delightful copy for news channels vying for the attention of elusive viewers with serious commitment issues.
 
In a country where a sudden media boom led by rapid economic growth and freeing of entertainment and media markets has resulted in a plethora of channels all “bringing news first”, viewers switch loyalties before you can utter the word ‘TRP’.
 
The viewers have seen it all, they control the remote control and unless you hold them down with the right concoction of sensation, sleaze and news, they just won’t stay.
 
Which meant that the fear psychosis created by vernacular channels on the biggest scientific experiment of our time spread like wildfire across the country. The rationalists logged on to the internet to know more about the Big Bang project while the religious held prayer sessions.
 
What shocked me was how ill-informed and factually incorrect some of these channels were on scientific trivia. A channel repeatedly referred to this “big dark hole” in the universe in the same hushed tone little Red Riding Hood’s mother would use to caution her against the big bad wolf.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 to two Indian TV channels asking them to show restraint in the coverage of the Big Bang  experiment.

The Big Bang episode brings back flashes from the Aarushi murder case and the murders in Nithari. The media hijacked both of these cases in its tearing hurry to break sensational and gory news.
 
Doctors say youngsters came in to report nightmares soon after the murder of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar when news media pointed an accusatory finger at the girl’s parents.
 
Psychiatrist Samir Parikh advocates the judicious use of the power of information that rests with the media.
 
“Do not give out half information, act responsibly,” he says.
 
For the impressionable section of India’s uneducated population without access to correct information, speculations based on a colourful imagination could act as a trigger, as in the case of Chayya.
 
Most vernacular channels and newspapers have realized the untapped marketing potential in the semi-urban and rural populace who in turn are indirectly redefining content by wanting their own spin and refusing to be force-fed news from mainstream English media.
 
On the whole, media does more good than bad, says Parikh. And I agree. It was the pro-active role by the Indian media that led to the triumph of justice in the murder case of model Jessica Lall.
 
I could go on about the countless times my brethren saved the day, but among other things, this post is mainly about restraint.