You can also read about Roughly 70 per cent of Indians are from the OBC/SC/ST castes, 15 per cent are Muslims, and 15 per cent are ‘upper caste’. The numbers do not necessarily reflect the proportions of every occupation. That is, we cannot expect the proportion of people in, say, banking and sports to be 70 per cent OBC/SC/ST, 15 per cent Muslims, and 15 per cent upper caste. The representation of different people in various professions is bound to be diverse. But, if 100 per cent of successful startup unicorns belong to upper caste people and 100 per cent of manual scavengers are Dalits and tribals, then it cannot be dismissed as a mere statistical oddity or a natural outcome. Why is it that 94 per cent of senior officers in the government are upper caste while 80 per cent of the MGNREGA labourers are OBC/SC/ST? This is a legitimate question that every society should ask and answer.
Rahul Gandhi’s “jitni abadi utna haq” call raises this question while his demand for a caste census is an attempt to find the answer. But the caste census is just cold data and only one part of the information puzzle of India’s social inequality. The more important missing piece is the warm human stories, ground reports, and actual life experiences of people suffering such inequalities and caste prejudices in their daily and occupational lives.
One’s ‘birth lottery’ shapes one’s professional future in caste-ridden India. The birth family of a child determines their future. The magnitude of the impact of this ‘birth lottery’ can only be studied better with quantitative and qualitative information. The caste count may be the quantitative component, but media, who are responsible for the qualitative part, have failed.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi & the tale of 2 truck drivers. What it says about India and US ideas of freedom
Why is the language stilted?
Stories of caste discrimination in social mobility do not get nearly as much attention and space as stories that impact the privileged do. For example, why do tax rates that impact 33 million professionals who are predominantly upper caste dominate television news and newspaper stories much more than, say, the stories of 150 million MGNREGA workers who are mostly backward castes or Dalits? If backward castes, Dalits, and tribals constitute 70 per cent of India’s population, why is 70 per cent of daily reportage or opinion pages in media publications not about issues that affect these people? Perhaps the answer lies in the identities of those that make such content decisions in these media organisations
Nearly all of the 44 senior editors and chief editors who we analysed from the 18 top national English media outlets (print, television and digital) are members of the upper caste. They are the people who influence the daily news, make editorial choices, create narratives and guide the policy discourse. None of them belong to the OBC, SC, or ST groups that constitute nearly three-quarters of India’s population. In the six English-language national print newspapers that published opinion articles between January and April this year, 96% of authors (including myself), are from the upper castes. It is not surprising that national media discourses are heavily skewed towards issues that affect only upper caste people when editors and opinion-makers are overwhelmingly upper class.
To be clear, I am not insinuating that upper caste editors and opinion makers won’t or can’t raise issues of the oppressed and argue cogently in their favour. It is more effective for the oppressed to have people from higher castes make a case than to do something as insignificant as dedicating a column to Dalit writers or similar. It is difficult for upper caste opinion writers and editors to articulate and understand the lived experiences that are often subtle and subconscious. Proportional representation of various identity groups in editorial and opinion positions in media is a very critical and necessary ingredient in shaping society’s ability to acknowledge, confront, debate, and resolve identity cleavages and social inequality.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Jitni abaadi utna haq’ call isn’t about elections or Mandal. The goal is reform
Do you caste blind people or those who are privileged?
The standard response to the lack of social diversity in leadership teams is that these organisations are ‘caste blind’. Which means that they do not ask for the caste of people they recruit, and hiring is based entirely on ‘merit’. This is as flimsy as Narendra Modi’s response of ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’ to the Wall Street Journal reporter’s question about the persecution of minorities in India. When any individual or organisation claims they are ‘caste blind’, it is very highly likely they are from the privileged caste. Only the privileged can claim to be ‘caste blind’, when caste is such a big fault line in Indian society that is empirically so evident.
In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) pledged to ensure newsrooms reflected America’s racial diversity when just 4 per cent of the media workforce was black. This was not a law or a mandate, but a conscious attempt to reflect the diversity in the population. As a result, 22 per cent of newsrooms in the US today are black, and the number of stories on diversity and inclusion has shot up by more than 10,000 per cent. No matter if you call it “wokeism”, the American society has benefited from its ability to discuss and acknowledge racial issues.
Civil society, and in particular liberal democracies, must confront and acknowledge identity faultlines. Media plays an inordinately important role in the nation’s ability to witness, experience and debate these issues. Media organisations should ensure that their newsrooms, leadership teams and editorial content reflect the diversity of society they cover. Perhaps, media organisations in India should be the first practitioners of Rahul Gandhi’s “jitni abaadi utna haq”.
Praveen Chakravarty, a political economist is also a senior official of the Congress Party. He tweets at @pravchak. Views are individual.
Edited by Zoya Bhatt