Nalin Mehta

Alistair Maclean

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. This work tells the story of satellite news that is also the story of India's encounter with the forces of globalism.

How Satellite News Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act

India on Television

What is happening to India's television industry? How is it adapting to the rapid changes in the country? And what does India's television programming tell us about the state of the nation? Television touches almost everyone. It is rapidly expanding and becoming socially ever-more powerful, but is simultaneously facing a crisis of credibility. In Behind a Billion Screens, Nalin Mehta looks closely at how television works in India, how TV channels make their money - or not - and what this means for the cacophony that appears on our screens. Given that television is a strategically vital social gateway for power, he also probes the ownership of television networks - politicians, corporations, real-estate tycoons - and tells us why this matters. Based on extensive research and wide-ranging conversations with industry leaders, channel heads, policy makers and politicians, this is a comprehensive report on the state of the Indian television industry, how it is shapeshifting in response to the ferment of mobiles and social media and its vital role in the wider Indian story. Everybody watches television, everybody has an opinion on it and everybody claims to have solutions, but Mehta brings new research and understanding to illuminate a topic that often raises a lot of heat and smoke but little light.

Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India

Mona G. Mehta

The birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi and the land that produced Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, Gujarat has been at the centre-stage of South Asia’s political iconography for more than a century. As Gujarat, created as a separate state in 1960, celebrates its golden jubilee this collection of essays critically explores the many paradoxes and complexities of modernity and politics in the state. The contributors provide much-needed insights into the dominant impulses of identity formation, cultural change, political mobilisation, religious movements and modes of communication that define modern Gujarat. This book touches upon a fascinating range of topics – the identity debates at the heart of the idea of modern Gujarat; the trajectory of Gujarati politics from the 1950s to the present day; bootlegging, the practice of corruption and public power; vegetarianism and violence; urban planning and the enabling infrastructure of antagonism; global diasporas and provincial politics – providing new insights into understanding the enigma of Gujarat. Going well beyond the boundaries of Gujarat and engaging with larger questions about democracy and diversity in India, this book will appeal to those interested in South Asian Studies, politics, sociology, history as well as the general reader. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Identity, Society and Conflict

Gujarat Beyond Gandhi

Boria Majumdar

In most accounts of Olympic history across the world, India's Olympic journey is a mere footnote. This book is a corrective. Drawing on newly available and hitherto unused archival sources, it demonstrates that India was an important strategic outpost in the Olympic movement that started as a global phenomenon at the turn of the twentieth century. Among the questions the authors answer are: When and how did the Olympic ideology take root in India? Who were the early players and why did they appropriate Olympic sport to further their political ambitions? What explains India's eight consecutive gold medals in Olympic men’s hockey between 1928 and 1956 and what altered the situation drastically, so much so that the team failed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Games? India and the Olympics also explores why the Indian elite became obsessed with the Olympic ideal at the turn of the twentieth century and how this obsession relates to India's quest for a national and international identity. It conclusively validates the contention that the essence of Olympism does not reside in medals won, records broken or television rights sold as ends in themselves. Particularly for India, the Olympic movement, including the relevant records and statistics, is important because it provides a unique prism to understand the complex evolution of modern Indian society.

India and the Olympics

'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.

India On Television

The Commonwealth Games are Delhi's biggest sporting event ever. As the promise of hosting them envelops Delhi there are questions that loom large, unasked and ominous: Who will emerge the winner in this contest to present Delhi as a true global city? Will Indian sport gain at all? How much is it costing the person on the street? Who has actually benefited from all the digging and window-dressing? And who has lost livelihoods, dreams, perhaps even lives? This book is the story of the politics of these Games, the money that is being spent and the priorities that have shaped it. With access to hitherto unused archives, including primary documents from the first-ever British Empire Games in 1930, this book is also the first and only attempt to place Delhi 2010 in perspective within the history of the Commonwealth Games, their meaning and indeed the larger question of why we need a Commonwealth at all. Explaining what all this means for India, it provides a unique understanding of the Delhi Games in its entirety.

Nalin Mehta

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