AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        Admiring friend: 'My, that's a beautiful baby you have there!'

        A mother glowing with pride: 'Oh! That is nothing — you should not miss seeing his photograph!'

        'Media' is defined by Webster's Dictionary as 'something in the middle position; a means of effecting or conveying something; a channel of communication, especially a means of disseminating ideas or advertising; and an intermediary'. Media is everywhere today. It is all pervasive, all embracing and all encompassing.

        With ever expanding globalisation and ever widening privatisation, many people in India have come to think and believe that all our ills are imported. But I am positively of the view that all social ills are indigenous. Especially so in modern democratic societies where each people asserts its divine right to go to hell in its own particular way. India is no exception to this general rule embracing all mankind.

        In my view, the main problem plaguing India today is what I call the 'Image problem' the new-fangled puzzle of what is really real, which plagues every aspect and facet of our national existence today. In India, as elsewhere, it is a native growth from native seed, carefully bred for the local Indian climate.

        Recently I was reading a brilliant book called 'The Image' by Daniel J Boorstin, one of the foremost historians of America. In this book he observes: 'Think of an image. Multiply by ten. Square the product. Add prestige. Take away the thing that first made you think of it. Sell it. Print it. Film it. Broadcast it. 'And the answer's UNREALITY'. He clearly demonstrates the devastating social, cultural, economic and political impact of the growth of mass media in geometrical progression on the world as a whole.

        Daniel J. Boorstin examines self-destruction and the manner in which modern man sees the world through the distorting mirrors of newspapers, television, films, advertisements and hundreds of Digest books. He documents for us the way in which newsmen create non-existent news, film companies fabricate stars, travel agents often adventure without risk, advertising agents inflate nothing into something, and non-entities are turned into heroes by celebrities and celluloid. He gives a closely reasoned analysis of the deprived mentality of technological society, which is for ever seeking to deceive itself with shams and images. Pseudo news is replacing real news in our newspapers and the readers are colluding in this change. Often representation of the news becomes more important than the news itself. An essay on the Taj is more beautiful than the Taj itself. With biting sarcasm Daniel J Boorstin speaks of the world of pseudo images and celebrities who are 'known for their well-knownness'. In order to understand reality we have to cut through what termed pseudo events or events such as press conferences, ministerial debates which are manufactured solely in order to be reported.

        The 'image' problem has generated a vast vocabulary of criticism and self-criticism. It has thrown up a language of catch phrases with which to censure the 'image' problem. The creation of this 'false image' and concurrently the invention of a new language for the purpose — all this is fostered and bred by mass media today. I am referring to phrases like 'organization man', 'hidden persuader', 'affluent society', 'man in a grey flannel suit', 'egghead', 'want of social conscience', 'infatuation for filthy lucre', 'irresponsible bureaucracy' 'anti-intellectuals', 'the power elite', etc.

        I am always suspicious of all mass medicines for national malaise and national purposelessness. The bigger the Committee, the more representative has to be its membership, the more collaborative its work, the less the chance that it will do no more than ease or disguise our symptoms. The problem of 'national purpose' is largely an illusion, although one of the most popular illusion of our time. In the ultimate analysis, our real problem seems to be personal. In actual fact, it is personal. Every citizen, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, contributes significantly to the total problem.

        The mafia of mass media creates the world for all of us. It describes the world of our making, how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology and our progress, to create the thicket of 'unreality' which stands between us and the facts of life. Of course, India has provided the landscape and given us the resources and the opportunity for this feat of national self-hypnosis. But each one of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience every moment.

        We are now part of the theatre of global consumerism. This global phenomenon throws up many images and illusions. We want and we believe these images and illusions because we suffer from the disease of extravagant expectations. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are extravagant in the precise dictionary definition of the word 'going beyond the limits of reason or moderation'. They are excessive.

        When we pick up our newspapers at breakfast, we not only expect but even demand that they should bring us without fail momentous events since the night before. We tune into the car radio as we drive to our place of work and expect sensational 'news' to have occurred since the morning paper went to press. As we return to our homes in the evening, we expect our house not only to shelter us but also to relax us, to dignify us, to encompass us with soft music. We expect our house to be a playground, a theatre and a bar. We expect our three day or one week vacation to be romantic, exotic and effortless. We expect a far away atmosphere even if we go to a nearby place like Tambaram from Chennai. We expect everything to be relaxing, sanitary and of course highly Europeanized or Americanized if we go to a far away place. We expect the arrival of new heroes every season, a literary classic or masterpiece every month and a rare sensation every night. In short, we expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We want small and compact cars which are spacious. We want luxurious cars which are economical. We want to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We are ready to be inspired by mediocre appeals for 'excellence'. We wish to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy. We expect to eat the richest food and yet stay thin. We expect to be constantly on the move and ever more neighbourly, to go to a 'Church' or 'Temple'of our choice and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and if possible without effort or cost to be even God.

        All this should not suggest the revolutionary idea that never before have people been more the masters of their environment than today. On the contrary, never have all the people felt more deceived and disappointed. It is a painful fact that never before in human history have people expected so much than the world could offer. We seem to live in a pseudo world of pseudo events ruled by extravagant expectations.

        By continuously harbouring, nourishing and even enlarging our extravagant expectations we create the demand for the illusions with which we deceive ourselves. And which we pay others to make to deceive us.

        Large scale manufacture of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of India today. It has become some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. I am thinking of not only advertising and public relations and political rhetoric and propaganda, but all the activities which purport to inform and comfort and improve and educate and elevate us: I mean the work of our best journalists, our most enterprising book publishers, our most energetic manufacturers and merchandisers, our most successful entertainers, our best guides to world travel, and our most influential leaders in foreign relations. Our every effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more extravagant and our illusions more attractive. The so called story of the making of our illusions 'the news behind the news' has become the most appealing news of the world.

        Daniel J. Boorstin sums it up brilliantly: 'We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world. We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in a world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid. They are the world of our making; the world of 'THE IMAGE'.

        We are haunted, not by reality, but by those 'IMAGES' we have put in place of reality. We are submerged in a flood of pseudo images and pseudo events. The crying need of the hour for all us is to disillusion ourselves. We suffer primarily not from our vices or weaknesses, but from our illusions. As individuals and as a nation, we are today suffering from an excess of narcissism. We have fallen in love with our own 'image' with images of our own making, which turn out to be images of ourselves. How can we flee from this image of ourselves? How can we immunise ourselves against its bewitching allusive power?