Abstract
The news media in a neoliberal economy often act as channels through which the values of neoliberalism are articulated and perpetuated, being shaped by advertising-driven content and deployed as instruments of reforms. This article examines how the recent global recession was covered in the three most circulated English dailies in India. The two themes that emerged from a thematic analysis of the news stories discuss the local–global linkages in the framing of the financial crisis, as well as attend to the moral panics and responsibilities that are put forth as legitimating responses to the crisis, voicing the flow of affect in logics of financialization.
In his essay, titled ‘Infotainment International’, on the influence of globalization on news media in developing countries, Thussu (1998) states that ‘post-Cold War media globalization has ensured that U.S.-made or -inspired news and entertainment programs have come to dominate the mediascape of much of the South’ 1 (p. 64). Thussu (1998) goes on to explain how under the dictates of structural adjustment programmes imposed by organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the opening of markets in developing nations over the last few decades of the twentieth century has commercialized their news media, turning the media into a ‘vehicle for promoting the free-market capitalism’ (p. 75), instead of it being a ‘forum for public discourse and the articulation of public opinion’ (p. 76). According to Bourdieu and Wacquant (2000), within a neoliberal 2 economy, the news media act as the very channels through which the logic of neoliberalism is articulated, disseminated and embedded in the social psyche through the perpetual repetition of neoliberal ideas. With their existence inexorably tied to profits and advertising revenues, the news media in a liberalized market ‘lose their function as institutions of the public sphere and are absorbed into the world of commerce and consumption as mere vehicles for advertising and for a commodified entertainment industry’ (Hallin 2008, p. 43). In India, for instance, ‘neoliberal reforms and structural adjustment have contributed to the rapid commercialization of the Indian news business’ (Rao 2010, p. 717). To boost profits, the media often adopt ‘pro-industry measures’ (Rao 2010, p. 717) and target an urban, educated middle-class audience to please advertisers (Rao 2010). Reporters engaged in this ‘feel-good journalism’ (Rao 2010, p. 717) ignore the financial woes of the vast majority of Indians while engaging themselves in circulating aspirational soft news such as discussions about the country’s growing ratio of billionaires globally, symbolizing India’s burgeoning prosperity in the global arena (Chakravartty & Schiller 2010).
Sonwalkar (2002) used the term ‘Murdochization’—borrowed from Indian journalist Praful Bidwai—to refer to the commercialization of the Indian news media since the early 1990s, when India first opened its market to foreign investors. Despite initial hesitations among other newspaper managements to adopt ‘the “marketing-to-the-exclusion-of-editorial” and “dumbing down” approaches’ (Sonwalkar 2002, p. 828), once The Times of India Group made profits; other publishing houses followed their journalistic and business strategies (Sonwalkar 2002). Incidentally, The Times of India Group—also known as the Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd (BCCL)—publishes two of the largest circulation English dailies in India, namely The Times of India and Hindustan Times, reaching a total of 11.4 million readers (Indian Readership Survey 2012), as well as The Economic Times—the world’s second most widely read business newspaper in English (Auletta 2012) with a circulation of 753,000 (Indian Readership Survey 2012). This is all the more noteworthy because historically the readership of English dailies has consisted of the English-speaking elites of India, including policymakers and the middle-class consumers in the neoliberal economy (Sonwalkar 2002; Swami 2007).
How then do these media–market policy linkages play out in the context of the financialization of the globe? Chakravartty and Schiller (2010) note the role of the media as a part of the system that brought about the recent financial crisis. They refer to studies on 24-hour business news channels in America that demonstrate ‘that their blurring of market news and advertising into infotainment not only provided a venue for promoting investment interests but also helped spearhead a culture of credit, risk, and individual responsibility and the potential for unprecedented reward’ (Chakravartty & Schiller 2010, p. 680). This profit worshipping is a hallmark of neoliberalism (McChesney 2008) and Chakravartty and Schiller (2010) demonstrate in their essay through numerous examples how the media ‘has been no mere reflection but a constitutive element of the [financial] crisis’(p. 671) in the United States. The financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007 with the collapse of subprime mortgages provides an entry point for interpreting elite discourses of financialization. The financial crisis, on the one hand, renders visible the limits of growth-driven market fundamentalism and, on the other hand, offers an opportunity for examining closely the relationship among media, markets and financial structures under neoliberalism (Harvey 2005).
Contextualizing the articulation of neoliberalism in the realm of market reforms in India, how then did the English-speaking elite Indian news media respond to the global economic downturn? In recent times, India has emerged as a key economic and political ally of the United States in Asia and has been celebrated as a market of growth. As Inderfurth and Lombardo (2010) noted, during his first term, President Obama called the Indo–US relationship as ‘a defining partnership of the 21st century’, and his administration characterized India as a ‘regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region’. In this article, we will examine how three Indian dailies—The Times of India, HT and The Hindu that have the three highest circulations among English newspapers in India (Indian Readership Survey 2012)—covered the recent global recession. The reason why we chose to explore the print media—and newspapers, in particular—is because India is one of the few places in the world where newspaper circulation and advertising revenues are still rising, with a substantive presence of the English language newspapers in India among the middle class (Auletta 2012). Due to growing literacy, where 20 million more Indians become literate every year, and the relative lack of the pervasiveness of digital access, newspapers—both in English and in India’s 22 official regional languages—have a growing readership (Auletta 2012). In addition, the reason why we chose to examine English dailies only, instead of including newspapers published in Indian languages, is because English dailies in India have traditionally had among their readership the country’s ruling elite and policymakers as well as the burgeoning middle classes that actively participate in the neoliberal economy (Sonwalkar 2002; Swami 2007).
Media, Markets and Neoliberalism
In the introduction to his book, The Political Economy of Media, McChesney (2008) calls neoliberalism ‘the guiding principle behind capitalist globalization’ (p. 16). He captures the crux of neoliberalism as follows: Neoliberalism, put crudely, refers to the doctrine that profits should rule as much of social life as possible, and anything that gets in the way of profit making is suspect, if not condemned…Markets are infallible, the unquestionably superior way to regulate human existence and the basis of all other freedoms. (McChesney 2008, pp. 15–16)
One of the main ideas that emerges from McChesney’s take on neoliberalism is its insistence on profit-making at the expense of everything else. What also comes across is how neoliberalism favours the interests of the rich over those of the working classes—privileging the wealthy few over the masses. Most importantly, it conveys the idea that financial prosperity in itself is an answer to all problems surrounding human existence through an underlying logic of trickle-down.
Before the last two decades of the twentieth century, national media systems usually comprised of domestically owned radio, television and newspaper industries (McChesney 2001), but all that changed over the past 30 years with big transnational corporations taking over the market through mergers and acquisitions (McChesney 2001). According to McChesney (2001), the guiding force behind this trend is ‘the incessant pursuit of profit that marks capitalism, which has applied pressure for a shift to neoliberal deregulation. In media this means the relaxation or elimination of barriers to the commercial exploitation of media and to concentrated media ownership’ (p. 5). Such global media expansion has been made possible all the more through measures like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (McChesney 2001).
The link between global commercial media systems and the neoliberal global capitalist economy is apparent most clearly in the role that advertising plays in the media (McChesney 2001). It is this link with advertising that often prevents journalists from questioning the structures of neoliberalism in society, and instead to become mouthpieces of a neoliberal culture that celebrates consumerism and unbridled consumption. In newly expanding media markets like in India, the zeal among newspapers to attract advertisers has caused the editorial content to be geared more towards ‘feel-good’ journalism (Rao 2010). Infotainment is now the norm to increase circulation and revenue (Rao 2010). Rao points out that the reorientation of news along the lines of a neoliberal business culture seems to be fetching positive results for media outlets in India in terms of profits (Rao, 2010). The media are, therefore, immersed in propagating ‘the image of a “shining India” that has profited from embracing the values of neoliberalism’ (Rao 2010, p. 722). Becoming a part of a global system that thrives on encouraging people to spend and want more, the media and the advertising community in India are ‘promoting an elitist consumerist culture within the larger society of what is still a Third World country’ (Herman & McChesney 1997, p. 188).
In the context of the financial crisis, Chakravartty and Schiller (2010) criticize the way in which the media have given unfair coverage to ‘Wall Street bankers and investors on one hand and U.S. autoworkers on the other’ (p. 682). The former group, according to Chakravartty and Schiller (2010), has been accorded too loud a voice in spite of receiving generous government handouts, while the latter, despite being worst-hit by the US auto manufacturers going bankrupt, have hardly received a fair say in the media. But the kind of disparity brought to light by Chakravartty and Schiller (2010) is hardly surprising because, as McChesney (2001) points out, ‘a highly concentrated media system in the hands of huge private concerns violates in a fundamental manner any notion of a free press in democratic theory’ (p. 12). What then are the frames through which Indian media cover the financial crisis? What do they include and what do they leave out? What do they foreground and what do they background? In the following section, we will review the relationship between neoliberal reforms and the state of the Indian press.
The Indian Press and Neoliberal Reforms
In the early 1990s, the Indian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, encountered a fiscal crisis and was compelled to make policy changes to relax restrictions on multinational companies, which subsequently began investing in the Indian market (Rao 2009). According to Oza (2006), foreign direct investment (FDI) between the fiscal years 1991–1992 and 1995–1996 totalled $3.4 billion and countries such as the United States, UK, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands emerged as the leading investors in India. The financial policy changes ushering in liberalization, however, favoured the country’s elites, while disadvantaging the majority of Indians (Oza 2006). Within the media industry, liberalization revolutionized broadcast media the most. The capitalistic, consumer-oriented ideology of a free market reflected in the rapid growth of advertising in the press as well as in the impact of advertisers on the editorial content. According to Jeffrey (2000), ‘driven by the “liberalization” of the Indian economy and the arrival of multi-national corporations, advertising expanded “at a frenetic pace” according to an industry magazine, “making it resemble the California gold rush”’ (p. 62). Indeed, following the liberalization of the economy, the Indian advertising industry grew by an average of ‘30 per cent a year through the 1990s’ (p. 58) and was ‘worth at least $1 billion a year by the middle of the decade’ (p. 58).
Auletta (2012), in a New Yorker feature story about Vineet and Samir Jain, two brothers who own The Times of India Group, portrayed in detail how successful newspapers in neoliberal India have been integrating advertising into their editorial content and—in the case of The Times of India—openly running advertorials. A case in point is the eight-page section called ‘Bombay Times’ or Page 3 within The Times of India’s Mumbai edition that is entirely devoted to entertainment news from the Indian movie industry. While the stories in this special section are written by staff reporters, they are, however, paid for by celebrities or their publicists (Auletta 2012). Here, we see the perfect instance of how the press in a liberalized economy becomes a vehicle for advertisers to boost consumerism (Auletta 2012).
Another feature of post-liberalized Indian media that Rao (2009) points out is the increase in the regionalization of news, where newspapers are increasingly being published in more Indian languages and also in more editions to cater to a wider audience. According to her, ‘the content of news in India is a good example of the mutuality of the global and the local; the increasing use of globalized news format and technologies has simultaneously increased local news content’ (Rao 2009, p. 485). So, for instance, astrology—which is central to Hindu Indian social life—is given significant column inch space as are matrimonial advertisements where prospective brides and grooms can ask for matrimonial offers and give out specifications they have in minds regarding their partners (Rao 2009). Therefore, while the English press focuses on the concerns of the urban middle class, the regional news caters to rural India (Rao 2009). Rao (2009) uses the term ‘glocalization’ to explain this interaction between the global and the local. Keeping then in mind this aspect of glocalization as well as the criticisms we have reviewed regarding to the commercialization of the press, we ask: How has the logic of the neoliberal market been articulated in the coverage of the recent global economic downturn in major English daily newspapers in India?
Financial Crisis in the Indian English Press
The two themes that emerge in the news stories covering the financial crisis discuss the local–global linkages in the framing of the financial crisis, as well as attend to the moral panics and responsibilities that are put forth in the backdrop of the crisis. Although our broader analysis covered three key newspapers, for this article, we will draw from excerpts from HT to depict in-depth the narratives and tensions that play out in the pages of this one newspaper in 2008, the period around the early emergence of the financial crisis. We selected the HT because of its articulation as a newspaper rooted in the Indian identity, with strong associations with the Indian independence movement and with the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi, and with the second largest circulation in India after The Times of India. HT is particularly relevant because of its intertwined relationship with the discourse of the nation state, voicing of a nationalist identity, and long history of involvement with the Indian freedom movement (HT n.d.).
Local–Global Linkage
The media coverage of the recession focused on the global–local relationship of the Indian financial sector, pointing out the ways in which the US economic slowdown was likely to impact the global market and subsequently the Indian market. News stories, therefore, framed the recession in terms of the specific influences of the recession on the Indian market: The economic slowdown in the United States has already had some impact on the Indian market. The rupee has been strengthening against the dollar for over a year now, causing worries for Indian exporters. The New Year and Christmas fervor in Goa and other foreign tourist destinations in India are likely to dampen this year, as a result of the financial crisis that has hit the US. The inbound tourism in India will slump by 20–30 per cent in 2008 compared to last year. As the fears of recession in the US and European economies mount, travel and holidays would be the last priority on foreign tourists’ list. The crisis in the US financial market will hit the Indian real estate sector hard. The sector was already reeling under tremendous pressure as RBI increased the interest rates to contain inflation besides restricting the fund flow in it. The fund flows from all the possible ways are getting constrained. Funds from banks are already not available. Private equity source has also dried up. And the demand from end users is also getting affected. However, as the crisis widens in the US, the companies, including outsourcing units and IT entices that heavily depend on their overseas clients for getting their revenues, may get affected in days to come. The subprime crisis may lead to a slowdown and then to a recession in the US economy as well as it has affected third world countries like India’s capital flight. (HT, 11 October 2008)
In this article, the emphasis is on the tourism market and the likely impact of the slump on tourism during the holiday season. Similarly, the real estate market is projected to be hit hard, with several constraints converging on the sector. The article ultimately wraps up by articulating a global–local linkage between the US economy in the backdrop of Third World economies. Worth noting in the article is the reference to the US economy as the basis of comparison, as the reference frame in the backdrop of which India emerges as a Third World economy. The narrative of the linkage situates the global amid the United States, framing the United States as the point of reference for the global market economy, centring the discussions of Indian economy in reference to the United States. The local is connected to the global under an imperial logic that is predicated on the frames of development and underdevelopment. Even as neoliberal speak flows from discourses of global free markets, these discourses thrive on the age-old colonial frame of development–underdevelopment, framing India as a Third World economy.
The articulation of the impact of the downturn in the global economy on local development is further noted in the following piece, thus further localizing the effects of the downturn: The global recession in the industry is putting a dampener in the industrialisation in Uttarakhand also. The state is vying for extension in the concessional industrial package till 2013 and in such a scenario, the economic slump has hit the pace of industrialisation. But the effects are not very drastic as many industries have yet to begin production and are in the stages of recruitment. The state has seen more than 30 thousand crore of investment in both heavy and medium industries. Industry majors as Wipro have also set up units in Haridwar and Kotdwar. Apart from this, the IT Park project at Danda Lakhond promises to propel Uttarakhand as an IT hub on the lines of Bangalore. But the current economic crisis seems to have affected the expansion plans of many units here. (HT, 26 November 2008)
Once again, evident in the framing of the crisis is the emergence of the taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the universal goodness of the logic of industrialization in neoliberalism. Here, the news story situates the global recession in relationship with the industrialization and development processes in the state of Uttarakhand, thus offering a local narrative on a global axis, framed within the broader neoliberal frame of development that articulates expansion as the basis of development. The news story then walks the reader through specific local development projects that have been stopped and expansion plans that have been halted because of the global economic crisis. The logic of expansion and industrialization is taken for granted as inherent goods, without an interrogation of the basic values that underlie this logic and the relationship of these values to the financial crisis. Unlike the framework of nationalist development that dominated Nehruvian articulations of the nation state, industrialization in the neoliberal framework of development is tied to financial capital, global flow of capital and global networks of financial flow. Terms such as trust and consumer confidence emerge as the symbolic resources of financial capital mediatized through stories of anxieties reproduced by the financial crisis.
The movement from the global to the local is further personalized in stories of job losses, unemployment and financial worries for individual workers in the Indian market. Stories of loss are personalized. Here is an excerpt from a story that appeared in HT on 19 December 2008: The wife of a diamond company manager in Surat committed suicide after killing her three-year-old daughter, all attributed to the severe losses in the diamond industry that is severely hit by global meltdown. The bodies of Sonal Bhatia, the mother and her daughter Shreya were found at their home in Katargam area. According the local police, the deceased Sonal’s husband Deval was a manager in a diamond company who didn’t get his dues for over two-months. These trends made it difficult for the family to survive. Further, Deval also suffered heavy losses in the share market and this could be one of the reasons for his wife’s suicide.
In this narrative, the story of the suicide of Sonal Bhatia is situated amid the pain and anxieties brought about by the global recession in the form of job loss, albeit focusing the narrative on the upwardly mobile middle class. Heavy losses in the share market are articulated as the reasons for the wife’s suicide, thus individualizing the risks in the narrative. Once again, within the specific discourse about the global meltdown and its impact on a specific family, the interrogation of the broader culture of risk in the financial market and the vulnerabilities of labour constituted within these networks of global flows is absent. Similarly, another HT story ties the anxieties over jobs in the information technology (IT) sector to the shifts in demands for IT grooms: The global recessionary trends have affected the young employees of the Indian software industry in Hyderabad in more than one-way. While on one hand it is has spelt job loss fear, on the other hand, the parents of brides-to-be are no longer in search of IT grooms for their daughters. (HT, 15 October 2008)
The stories of anxiety are interrupted by stories of hope and confidence, as voiced in the following story reporting a Nielsen survey: The survey says Indians are optimistic about employment too. Around 26 per cent felt job market in India is excellent, while 60 per cent felt it was good. Sixty nine per cent were worried about inflation, but 58 per cent said the country was not in the midst of a recession. India is one of the few markets that can benefit from a global recession—cost-cutting in the developed world would lead to more outsourcing. (HT, 24 June 2008).
Note here the juxtaposition of the worries about inflation amid articulations of benefits for India from a global recession, particularly through the pathway of more outsourcing. Here is another articulation of hope, ‘Though the slump is felt in India and the heat has impacted various sectors, still many entrepreneurs have expressed optimism about overcoming the current recession’ (HT, 20 November 2008). Here’s another articulation, ‘People in steel industry are equally enthusiastic about the demand for steel picking up on the presumption that fundamentals of the country’s economy are strong’. In a 19 December 2008 article, the reader was informed: Raman Roy, Chairman and Managing Director, Qarttro, said a ‘huge market’ lay untapped outside the large companies in the U.S. He suggested that small and medium IT companies in India had enormous potential for growth by targeting this segment of the global market. ‘Once the dust settles down after the recession, India will be part of the solution, not the problem,’ he said.
The recession gets reframed as new opportunities for Indian IT companies.
The discussions of the global recession then draw attention to the consequences of the recession for the Indian market. The emphasis on Indian economy is constituted amid anxieties over the consequences for the global economy, although these anxieties are packaged amid hope: One thing is true that we depend more on external market to sell our goods and services. In 1995–96 we sold 9.1% of our goods abroad. In 2007–08 we sold 13.5% of our goods to foreign buyers. This signifies that we depend more on external funds to support our growth. We borrowed 29 billion and received 34 billion foreign direct investment. With financial crisis can we expect any help now? As global recession would hurt us, can we achieve 9% growth rate? It is impossible. Though Finance Minister is hopeful to achieve 10% growth I am not. I personally feel if we can achieve 7% growth even we should be considered lucky. This however does not mean that we are doomed. (HT, 18 October 2008)
Worth noting in this article is the articulation of the personal collective pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’ in reference to the narration of the national economy in the face of the global economic crisis. The story about Indian economic growth then is situated amid doubts about the global economic crisis and more specifically the US economy. In discussing the effects of the global recession on the Indian economy, the author constructs a collective identity that foregrounds the economic growth of the nation state. The anxieties regarding the market and the articulation of hope then are played out on this canvass that portrays the nation state as the site for economic growth, with the narrative situated around debates about the percentage of growth.
Even as the logic of the global free market gets punctuated in the articulation of the local–global tensions, foregrounded in this logic is the economic prospect for the nation state. Note the voicing of assurance in the following: RBI governor reassured from Washington that the money of the depositors in Indian banks are safe. He said that RBI is geared to inject more liquidity into the country’s financial system and that there is no cause for anxiety. He, however, agreed that the banking sector has some exposure to distressed financial instruments and troubled financial institutions. But that exposure is part of the normal course of their business and is quite small relative to the size of their overall business. One thing must be kept in mind that only a few banks have exposure in troubled spots and most of the Indian banks are out of it. Yet even if international scenario would affect the country’s bank one way or the other we must face the reality with a pinch of salt.
The articulation of anxiety and assurances are situated amid the questions of the inter-linkages between the global market and the national market. The premise of the story, therefore, lies in offering assurances to the reader regarding the protection of the Indian banks from the crisis because the banks have limited exposure to the troubled spots. The voice of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor is injected as an assurance to the reader. The following news story depicts the calming role played by the RBI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reacted swiftly to restore liquidity and calm the markets. It reduced the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 2.5 percentage points in two steps, created a special Rs 20,000 crore window for bank lending to mutual funds, and provided another Rs 25,000 crore as part reimbursement for farm loan waivers. These measures generated extra liquidity of Rs 1,45,000 crore. It also reduced the re-purchase (repo) rate, and relaxed norms for both external commercial borrowing and FII investments to encourage dollar inflows. (HT, 9 November 2008)
The local–global linkage is further played out in noting the similarities of India with the global economy, and the simultaneous dissimilarities of India with the global economy: For obvious reasons, India could not remain isolated from the ripple effects of financial crisis in the developed world. Some of our industries have certainly been affected to the extent of their growth prospects depending on export market of the US and European countries where lies the epicenter of global turmoil. Even though a section of our manufacturing infrastructure and service sector has witnessed deceleration along with the associated evil of employment erosion, the impact is not more than marginal when compared to turmoil in developed countries…The biggest strength of India against the kind of current global crisis lies firstly in the vastness of our domestic market which generates enough demand to absorb most of the output produced and, hence, is able to keep fueling the economic growth, though at a lower pace now, despite the current global crisis. Secondly, our economic fundamentals are not only strong till now, but reforms and liberalisation have remained conservative enough to keep the economy less than open-ended so that it remains more or less free from the grip of developed nations. The third strength of our economy is its security system of banking business which has never been too risky, while our insurance system is strong enough to deal effectively with the current crisis. (HT, 3 November 2008)
Note once again the reference to the connections between the local and the global. Even when the article, on the one hand, spells out the implications of the economic crisis on the Indian market, it sets the Indian market apart from the global market, on the other. The interconnection with the global market is established in the backdrop of differentiating the Indian market from the global market. The articulation of neoliberal policies in the context of liberalization is set in the backdrop of the conservatism of the Indian market that has protected the Indian market from the global crisis. Once again, the narrative of the nation state and its economy is situated amid the discussion of the global market, drawing out the comparison between the Indian economy and the global market.
It is, however, in this context of stories praising the conservatism of Indian-style regulation that public discourses in the mainstream media warn against protectionism that might be triggered by the recession, ultimately resulting in recommendations for participation in the economy through consumption, investment and risk taking: Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari Tuesday said India’s economic growth will dip to six percent this year but stressed that it will still be one of the highest in a recession-hit world. Ansari also warned against the perils of resorting to protectionism in recessionary times. ‘Despite the current global financial crisis, we are determined to make the economy expand at a healthy rate,’ Ansari told leading industrialists and fund managers at the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry here. ‘During the last five years, our rate of growth was at an average of around nine percent. This year it will be about six percent, still one of the highest globally,’ he said. ‘Winds of global recession should not mean erection of new walls and protectionist barriers for trade, investments and free movement of service-providers and professionals,’ he said. Underlining the need for inclusive growth, Ansari said India’s ‘calibrated, stable and sustainable’ process of growth has contributed to the ‘economic empowerment of millions of citizens, paving their way out of poverty’.
Here, protectionism that might result from recessionary times is mentioned and warnings are issued against protectionism, simultaneously privileging notions of growth. Carrying out the story of the local–global linkage, it is noted that the winds of global recession should not lead to the setting up of protectionist walls that create barriers to free trade, further bolstering the agendas of neoliberalism. Worth noting here is the inherent paradox of the neoliberal frame in the news stories that, on the one hand, connect crises in the Indian market to global crises and, on the other hand, warn against protectionism. In a 20 June 2009 piece, the Union Minister of Trade and Commerce was quoted, ‘trade relationship between India and the U.S. were healthy, and India would be willing to further open up its markets to US business’. Similarly, another news story quotes the Indian President, Pranab Mukherjee, ‘Be it through shared experience of overcoming economic challenges or collective action, particularly within major international forums, we should grab these opportunities with both hands’. Therefore, evident in this narrative is the tension between the articulation of the recession as a product of the free market economy and the simultaneous exhortation to participate in global trade.
Panics, Moral Responsibilities and Market Confidence
The news stories in the mainstream media narrate the importance of personal responsibility in addressing the banking crisis. Urging individual consumers to respond with responsibility towards the market, the rhetoric of neoliberalism, punctuated in the context of the economic crisis, operates on the basis of direct appeals to the individual consumer to participate in the market. It is in this role of offering assurances to the consumer then that news stories offer hope and courage amid the voicing of anxieties experienced by the middle classes: In today’s great financial turmoil the greatest victim is not the money and wealth. It is the mind of people. The crisis of confidence in the mind of people will make or destroy the economy. The bad time does not last long but weak minds can destroy life and organization, and economy of country. Banking runs on confidence. Let us hold hands march to forward with head high and build up our strength. (HT, 18 October 2008)
Note here the articulation of the economic crisis in terms of the moral responsibility of the consumer, exhorting the consumer to be strong and offering a network of solidarity with the consumer in marching ahead. Situating the financial crisis as the crisis of the mind, the article suggests that weak minds can destroy life and organizations, and can have negative impacts on the economy. The article notes that banking runs on confidence and, therefore, suggests a politics of solidarity during the economic crisis, asking readers to hold hands and build their collective strengths in order to carry out their moral responsibility towards the market. Worth noting in this narrative is the emphasis on the collective agency of the readership brought together under the framework of national governance, framed as individual responsibility to participate in the market. The logic of the global economy enters into the logic of the national economy, and a language of patriotic responsibility is brought forth to urge readers to come together in confidence and to gain moral strength to prevent the economy from being destroyed.
Here is another story that reiterates the call made by the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to not indulge in panics: Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday advised investors not to indulge in panic sale of stocks. Chidambaram’s comment came after Sensex (the country’s main stock index) plunged to its lowest since June 2006 amidst a gloomy economic outlook all over the world. The Finance Minister also assured that there was adequate liquidity in the banking system and that banks should lend aggressively. Benchmarks opened below psychological levels (10,000 for Sensex and 3000 for Nifty) following sharp declines overnight in US and Asian stocks, which tumbled to 5-year-lows, amid heightened worries over a global recession. (HT, 23 October 2008)
Note the inherent paradox in the reporting of the worries about the recession captured in the voice of the finance minister that urges aggressive bank lending amid assurances of adequate liquidity in the banking system. The assurances of the finance minister were focused on urging investors to not panic. Offering assurances that there is adequate liquidity in the banking system operated as a mechanism for creating stability in the market, and the state emerges as the mouthpiece for the market with the accompanying role of HT in delivering the appeal to the reader. In the preceding excerpt, references are made to banks about the need to continuing to lend aggressively in order to keep the economy alive, ironically reiterating some of the very fundamental notions about credit and lending that underlie the economic crisis. A 10 November 2009 HT article quotes Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director of ICICI Bank: Kochhar pointed out that, going forward, India’s growth story will be driven both by domestic consumption and investment, as long standing investment projects, which were held in abeyance, are again becoming operational. She concluded by commending the Finance Minister on his message that protectionism cannot be the answer to the problems being faced by the global economy today.
Similarly, as articulations of cost-cutting are made in the news media, references are made to the moral choices that are constituted around it. These moral choices are often framed around cost cuts and where these cuts need to be made. The stories for instance discuss the different priorities and the ways in which these priorities ought to be considered in the context of the economic downturn: Global recession trends and weak dollar has hit India’s Information Technology industry with many companies resorting to cost cutting measures. The key challenges faced by the industry now are inflation and the psychological impact of the US crisis, leading the companies to hit the panic button. Though analysts feel, recession is a short-term phenomenon, it still has taken a toll on the industry. Bonuses, perks, lavish parties, and many other benefits are missing as companies look to cut cost. Many feel that the cost cutting is not being done in a democratic manner. It is the lower management, which bears the major brunt of it. Unions say cost cutting should be across the board. ‘Somewhere down the line, if you are planning for a cost cutting, it should be across the board. Everybody should participate, from CEO, who gets the biggest pay cheque, to the last man in the line, the office boy. Everybody should be involved and they should say that, we are going through this problem. Our revenue has dipped by so much, and so this necessitates so much of cut. So across the board, we are cutting so much, then it is democracy,’ said R. Karthik Shekhar, Secretary General of Union for Information and Technology Enabled Service India (UNITES), Bangalore. (HT, 23 October 2008)
In this article, the discussion focuses on the IT industry in India and the ways in which the IT industry is going to implement cost-cutting measures. Note here the emphasis on the psychological impact and the panic created by the US crisis. It is precisely within this framework then that the article discusses the toll the crisis has taken on the industry, and in proposing solutions, the article foregrounds the need for decision-making in a democratic manner. Appeals to moral choices are constituted within the framework of needing to cut across the board. The discussion of democratic decision-making is articulated amid the framing of the need to make cuts throughout the hierarchical rungs of IT organizations and not just at the levels of lower management.
Along similar lines, an HT article on 23 November 2008 points out: The company had stopped production for five days beginning November 5 following the global downturn and its adverse impact on the automobile industry. Bachcha Singh, spokesman, Telco Workers Union said, ‘The union is with the company’s decisions during the global recession. Neither worker nor the union would continue if company continues with production without demands. However, the union appeals the company management for using all possible measurers of cost control before such closure and temporary removal of company employees from job’.
Here once again references are made to the prospects of job loss in the backdrop of the economic downturn. Here the article refers to the appeal by the Telco Workers Union to management to try out every possible option before cutting jobs. The discussion of cuts and employment is constituted amid broader logics of the economic downturn and the moral responsibility to respond to the downturn. Note the placing of responsibility on the individual as a moral participant, aligning the union with the goals of the company in the backdrop of the recession.
Discussion
Our analysis offers insights into the public discourse in mainstream Indian media on the constructions of the economic crisis, reflecting the aspirations constituted in the English speaking middle classes that make up the readership of English language newspapers in India. Neoliberalism in a nutshell captures the logic of the free market that has been deployed globally in order to carry out the agendas of transnational corporations through trade liberalization, opening up of markets to foreign trade, the privatization of the public sectors and the minimization of tariffs, and has been integral to the large-scale political, economic and media reforms in India since the 1990s (Thussu 2007). Therefore, neoliberalism is played out through the local–global linkages that underlie the opening up of markets to global trade, privileging the taken-for-granted notion of growth as the framework for understanding the economy. Particularly in the context of India, neoliberal reforms have been carried out since the 1990s with an increasing emphasis on the minimization of tariffs and trade barriers, the opening up of the commercial sectors, including the media sectors, and the corresponding financialization of the Indian economy (Dutta 2011; Mazzarella 2003; Thussu 2007). How then does the economic crisis get taken up in mainstream Indian media, and how do the media constitute the economics of the market? Similar to the analysis offered by Chakravartty and Schiller (2010), our analysis suggests the constitutive role of mainstream English media in reifying the market tropes of neoliberalism. The news media frame the financial crisis predominantly in the language of consumption, reifying the overarching ‘free market’ logic that has inundated mainstream political as well as media structures in India (Mazzarella 2003). Given the nationalist history of HT, it is particularly relevant to note the re-reading of the financial crisis in tropes of consumption, constructing nationhood as expressions of consumer behaviour.
Our analysis of mainstream media discourses in India on the economic crisis draws attention to the local–global tensions that are continually negotiated through these discourses, situating the interpretation of the economy within the context of the market, and simultaneously reading the nation state in the narrative of the market. In articulating the political economy of the crisis, the media stories make references to the linkages and interpenetrations of the local and global, connecting questions of global capitalism to frames of national interest. However, as opposed to frames of development that promoted national interest through the building of public infrastructures under the umbrella of Nehruvian socialism, the market-driven model of a neoliberal India interprets national development as individualized consumption. The political and economic contexts of local portrayals intersect with the political and economic contexts of the global agendas. Even as the media discourse pays fleeting reference to the problem of the free market in the context of the neoliberal configuration, it also ironically points to the free market as the solution to the problem. In depicting the economic crisis, on the one hand, the news stories set up the frame in terms of a cause–effect relationship, pointing to the global inter-linkages underlying the economic crisis, noting that the crisis has caused specific ramifications within the national context of India; on the other hand, the stories urge against protectionism, thus serving as mouthpieces of the neoliberal order, quoting Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, a long-time advocate of neoliberal reforms in India. In the backdrop of the narrative of trade liberalization, the ownership of the Indian economy emerges as a frame within the articles that seek to punctuate the story of the Indian market. Even as specific stories draw attention to the effects of the crisis on specific sectors and local spaces within India, they also point towards the organization of the Indian economy that prevents it from being impacted by the global economy. The discursive space around the economy is contested. Media discourse foregrounds the good effects of conservative liberalization that safeguarded the Indian markets against the global recession, and simultaneously issues warnings against protectionism that is seen as being harmful to the Indian economy. Worth noting are the absences of reasons offered for the warnings against protectionism, depicting the gaps in logic in media promotion of the free market. The production of affect in the news stories in the form of anxieties amid the uncertainty of the markets is calibrated against appeals against panic. Appeals to participation in the economy and the market are framed as moral responsibilities, holding the investor/consumer responsible for the state of the economy. The dutiful citizen is constituted as a consumer in a global economy whose active role in the marketplace is critical to the functioning of the economy. Nationhood is rearticulated within a neoliberal interpretation of the nation state, as a participant in the global networks of capital flow.
The tensions between the local and the global articulations of the global economic crisis then create entry points for projecting the crisis in terms of moral and ethical responsibilities, superimposing the moral responsibility of recovering from the crisis in the hands of individual consumers and investors. The individual consumer emerges in the discursive space as the locus of moral responsibility for the functioning of the market. The individualization of responsibility further reiterates the paradox of neoliberal organizing that perpetuates the global hegemony of the market through the shifting of responsibility to the individual consumer and simultaneously working through the terrains of the nation state to do so, as depicted in the voices of ministers and public officials. The discursive framework around the crisis articulates the economic state of the nation state and simultaneously engages the responsibility of the individual consumer in perpetuating the global–national–local market. Terms such as confidence, responsibility and strength emerge as frames for engaging with understandings of the crisis. Also, in this backdrop are questions about the distributions of resources, democratic decision-making and addressing issues of employment, which then are framed in terms of necessary moral and ethical responses to the crisis. Note here that in the individualization of responsibility, questions of corporate responsibility and accountability are absent. Also, questions of collective labour organizing in the contexts of unemployment and job vulnerability are absent. The trope of democratic decision-making is put forth to suggest the notion of pay cuts across organizational structures, oblivious to the large-scale inequalities between the managerial and working classes within organizations.
Ultimately, this article delves into the complexities of the interpenetrating discourses that converge and diverge in their portrayals of the global economic crisis constituted within the framework of neoliberalism. The invitation to consume offers a sense of solidarity in the face of the anxieties constituted by the crisis. Worth noting in this appeal to consumption is the irony in the image of HT as a nationalist newspaper with strong roots in the Indian independence movement and in the inspirations of Gandhi. The neoliberal turn of HT, captured in its market reforms, partnerships and financial movements, is also captured in the lens through which HT frames the financial crisis. The market rationality depicted as the norm in HT is antithetical to Gandhi’s notions of self-rule, sovereignty and boycott of consumerism.
This article is limited in scope. It examines English dailies only and not any of the Indian language newspapers. Given that four of the five most circulated dailies in India are in Hindi (Indian Readership Survey 2012), it would be interesting to see how the global recession was covered in these Hindi daily newspapers, especially given the linguistic, cultural and class differences in readership. Also, as stated earlier, this study does not examine the Indian broadcast media which have expanded exponentially since the liberalization of the Indian economy. It would be interesting, therefore, to see how the recession was covered in the numerous 24-hour news channels that broadcast in English as well as in vernacular languages. This study also does not take into consideration the various magazines that are published in India, both in English and in vernacular languages. It would, for instance, be interesting to conduct a similar study of the coverage of the global recession in the most widely circulated English magazines such as India Today, Outlook and Business Today (Indian Readership Survey 2012) that reach approximately the same urban, educated, middle-class readership as the English dailies examined in this study. One could also conduct a study of the top English magazines and newspapers in India and make a note of the difference in the way the two forms of print media covered the global recession. To sum up, this study provides an examination of a very small slice of the Indian media and, thus, the observations we have made are not generalizable. However, these observations do offer rich insights into the constitutive role of mainstream English language media in constructing a neoliberal economy.