Who controls the media today? There are many media systems across the globe that claim to be free yet whose independence has been eroded. As demagogues rise, independent voices have been squeezed out. Corporate-owned media companies that act in the service of power increasingly exercise soft censorship. Tech giants such as Facebook and Google have dramatically changed how people access information, with consequences that are only beginning to be felt. This book features pathbreaking analysis from journalists and academics of the changing nature and peril of media capture—how formerly independent institutions fall under the sway of governments, plutocrats, and corporations. Contributors including Emily Bell, Felix Salmon, Joshua Marshall, Joel Simon, and Nikki Usher analyze diverse cases of media capture worldwide—from the United Kingdom to Turkey to India and beyond—many drawn from firsthand experience. They examine the role played by new media companies and funders, showing how the confluence of the growth of big tech and falling revenues for legacy media has led to new forms of control. Contributions also shed light on how the rise of right-wing populists has catalyzed the crisis of global media. They also chart a way forward, exploring the growing need for a policy response and sustainable models for public-interest investigative journalism. Providing valuable insight into today’s urgent threats to media independence, Media Capture is essential reading for anyone concerned with defending press freedom in the digital age.
This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India. In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign ‘West’. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, desī, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt. Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India. This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.
Reimagining India brings together leading thinkers from around the world to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by one of the most important and least understood nations on earth. India’s abundance of life—vibrant, chaotic, and tumultuous—has long been its foremost asset. The nation’s rising economy and burgeoning middle class have earned India a place alongside China as one of the world’s two indispensable emerging markets. At the same time, India’s tech-savvy entrepreneurs and rapidly globalizing firms are upending key sectors of the world economy. But what is India’s true potential? And what can be done to unlock it? McKinsey & Company has pulled in wisdom from many corners—social and cultural as well as economic and political—to launch a feisty debate about the future of Asia’s “other superpower.” Reimagining India features an all-star cast of contributors, including CNN’s Fareed Zakaria; Mukesh Ambani, CEO of India’s largest private conglomerate; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria; award-winning authors Suketu Mehta (Maximum City), Edward Luce (In Spite of the Gods), and Patrick French (India: A Portrait); Nandan Nilekani, Infosys cofounder and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India; and a host of other leading executives, entrepreneurs, economists, foreign policy experts, journalists, historians, and cultural luminaries. These essays explore topics like the strengths and weaknesses of India’s political system, growth prospects for India’s economy, the competitiveness of Indian firms, India’s rising international profile, and the rapid evolution of India’s culture. Over the next decade India has the opportunity to show the rest of the developing world how open, democratic societies can achieve high growth and shared prosperity. Contributors offer creative strategies for seizing that opportunity. But they also offer a frank assessment of the risks that India’s social and political fractures will instead thwart progress, condemning hundreds of millions of people to enduring poverty. Reimagining India is a critical resource for readers seeking to understand how this vast and vital nation is changing—and how it promises to change the world around us.
The concept of National Security in the 21st century has expanded beyond our traditional dimensions of security as purely national defence by a state and its military, to policies that accommodate security from the perspective of state and its people. In this context, the powerful tool of media, colossal and integrated, has become an inseparable tool for information dissemination and a continuum in policy intervention for states to secure their integrity and sovereignty. Also, for a democracy like India with a diverse society, its multilingual media becomes an available and active platform for deliberation of actions and rationale to develop opinions and decisions that serves the purpose of independent and palpable citizens involved in the broader decision making. Thus, moving beyond the textbook definition of media to educate and inform, the book focuses on the Indian media in particular as influential and imperative in the current scenario and its role in fighting the psychological war alongside the state and its forces, and against contemporary national security threats such as terrorism. It tries to understand the Indian media in its varied theoretical forms and the projection of its power to the people who employ it and those who synchronize its events. The book also tries to understand the intermingling of conflict and the Indian media, while indulging in newer concepts such as peace journalism and strategic education. However; the role of the Indian media continues to be under question due to its nascent pragmatic endeavours, and thereby needs to be defined categorically and holistically in the Indian domain. This exercise aims to centre the Indian media on its role as an eminent player and collaborator of policies on security and at the same time futuristically assess the extension of its perceived role in the larger dimensions of India's national security.
The Indian Constitution is the country's primary and highest legislation. It outlines the basic structures of the Indian government, including its guiding principles, the laws that govern it, and the authorities it is vested with. The rights and responsibilities of its residents are spelled out in detail. It has the longest constitution in the world. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the committee's chairman and a primary architect of the Indian Constitution, penned the document's bulk. On December 9th, 1946, Constituent Assembly convened for the first time. On December 11, Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected as the permanent chairman of "India's sovereign constituent assembly". The Indian Constitution gives constitutional primacy instead of parliamentary supremacy since it was formed by the Constituent Assembly and not the Parliament. In force since January 26, 1950, it was adopted by the "Indian Constituent Assembly" on November 26, 1949. After the "Government of India Act" of 1935 was replaced by the Indian Constitution, the Dominion of India became the Republic of India. The Indian Constitution's opening prologue is included. This introductory section of our Constitution serves as a compass for all Americans. Freedom, justice, and equality are promised to the people of India, who live under a secular, socialist, democratic government in this document. It was during the 1976 Emergency that the prologue was changed to incorporate the words "socialist" and "secular."
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage examines the social, cultural, political and economic value of popular music as history and heritage. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, the volume explores the relationship between popular music and the past, and how interpretations of the changing nature of the past in post-industrial societies play out in the field of popular music. In-depth chapters cover key themes around historiography, heritage, memory and institutions, alongside case studies from around the world, including the UK, Australia, South Africa and India, exploring popular music’s connection to culture both past and present. Wide-ranging in scope, the book is an excellent introduction for students and scholars working in musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, critical heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies and other related fields.