India On Television ( Hb )

By Nalin Mehta

About the book

‘Excellent…an incisive and much needed study of how television is changing India.’ – Rajdeep Sardesai, Managing Editor, CNN-IBN and IBN-7More than fifty 24-hour news networks, operating in eleven different languages, emerged in India between 1992 and 2006. This book traces the evolution of satellite television and how it effected major changes in political culture, the state, and expressions of Indian nationhood. Explaining how television, a medium that developed in the industrial West, was adapted to suit Indian conditions, the book focuses specifically on the emergence of satellite news channels. It shows how live television used new forms of technology to plug into existing nodes of communication, which in turn led to the creation of a new visual language – national, regional and local – that altered politics and forms of identity formation in significant ways. Satellite television came to India as the representative of global capitalism in the early 1990s and crushed the governmental monopoly over broadcasting that had existed since independence. As such, the story of satellite news is also the story of India’s encounter with the forces of globalisation. ‘Accumulated with an insider’s knowledge…a genuine contribution to the literature, bringing together valuable material that deserves a wide audience.’ – Prof. Arvind Rajagopal, author of Politics After Television.