ROLE OF MEDIA IN COVERAGE OF INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS PARTICULARLY PROXY WAR

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS
Needless to state, but imperative to be highlighted at the very outset of my addressing the subject of my talk “Role of Media in Coverage of Intra-State Conflicts Particularly Proxy War”, is that the Indian Armed Forces and other forces engaged in battling threats to India’s internal security along with the Indian people view the Indian media and should continue to view the Indian media as a pillar of the Indian nation- state when other pillars of state have lost their sheen in Indian public’s esteem.
Naturally, the expectations of India’s Armed Forces and the Indian public from the Indian media in coverage of internal security threats are very high.

Through this paramount perspective I would wish to address the subject of my talk. It would be intellectually dishonest if while delving in the examination of the theme one is hesitant to share truthfully one’s perceptions on the Indian media’s role in the coverage of India's internal security challenges that plague India.

Most of my observations would be borne out by analyses available on the Internet, nationally and internationally, especially after Mumbai 9/11.

The Indian media is doing yeoman’s service in keeping India's political leadership and the Indian bureaucracy under scrutiny and highlighting waywardness and misgovernance wherever and whenever due. The Indian media would be well within its rights to keep India's political leadership and the Indian security forces too under scrutiny in terms of being vigilant and prepared to meet India's national security challenges.

However, there is one vital difference when it comes to Indian media’s scrutiny and coverage of India's intra-state conflicts and proxy war.

The vital difference that Indian media needs to recognize is that in the coverage of Indian security forces operations in an intra-state conflicts environment, there are two distinct and different DEFINING CONTEXTS and DEFINING PERSPECTIVES – the first is political and the second “National Security.”

Political coverage and analyses of root causes of intra-state conflicts should be kept separate by the Indian media in their coverage from “operational coverage” of security forces operations. The latter falls in the ‘national security domain’ and any adverse or indifferent media coverage impacts India's international, regional and domestic image. More importantly, Indian media should not fall prey to the disinformation strategies of the anti-Indian terrorists, insurgents and militants who tend to use the Indian media for vilifying the Indian security forces and lower their morale.

INDIA’S INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS: THE LARGER GEO-POLITICAL PICTURE

India today stands at strategic and political cross-roads as never before. Poised on the verge of emerging as a global power on the strength of her economic resurgence and national attributes of power generate their own set of problems from nations adversarial to India centering on arresting India’s rise.

Major inter-state wars are no longer a policy option in today’s global security environment to secure one's national objectives to cut down opposing nations to seize. Limited Wars and Asymmetric Warfare are however a more attractive policy option.

India’s emergence as a regional power in South Asia and its ascendancy towards global power status is adversely viewed by Pakistan and China.

Is it not a curious coincidence that India’s rise in power potential is matched by an increase in India’s intra-state conflicts encompassing a wide spectrum from proxy war, terrorism, insurgency, militancy and fundamentalism. Therefore, there is a BIGGER GEO-POLITICAL ANGLE involved.

INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS: THE DEFINING CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND

The defining contextual background that the Indian media needs to reflect in their coverage of India’s intra-state conflicts can be summarized as follows:

· India’s security environment today is embattled both externally and internally.

· India’s main adversaries, namely Pakistan and China despite peace overtures by India continue to be intransigent and adversarial.

· India’s internal security environment today in coincidence with the growing intransigence of Pakistan and China has become more turbulent, disruptive and threatening.

· The Indian Army is over-stretched in meeting its primary role of defending India’s external and internal security and meeting calls for disaster relief etc

· The Para-military and police forces are overwhelmed by handling increasing incidence of terrorism, insurgency and militancy.

While defining the contextual background of India’s intra-state conflicts it needs to be stressed to the Indian media that Pakistan and China would continue to be long range threats to India’s security and asymmetric warfare in the form of fomenting and facilitating intra-state conflicts within India would be a recurring phenomena.

The Indian Army and other internal security forces are not likely to have respite from these threats for decades to come. The Indian media therefore needs have this contextual background as an in-built component of its media coverage.

INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS: FRAMING THE CHALLENGES IN THE CORRECT PERSPECTIVES

The wide spectrum of intra-state conflicts comprising proxy war, terrorism, insurgency and militancy spanning the entire length and breadth of India should no longer be viewed by the Indian media through the narrow prism of being localized law and order problems afflicting a particular State. Intra-state conflicts particularly Pakistan’s unending proxy war needs to be viewed not as an intra-state conflict but as ‘Pakistan’s War Against India’ by asymmetric means

Mumbai 9/11 marked Pakistan’s escalation of its proxy war against India from terrorism and suicide bombings to an armed assault on India by commando groups which held India’s might and sovereignty to ransom for nearly three days in the full glare of international media publicity. Hence forth Pakistan’s proxy war against India needs to be viewed from the perspective of ‘War Against India” and Indian responses fashioned accordingly.

Indian media’s coverage of intra-state conflicts plaguing different parts of India need to be viewed from some significant perspectives as follows:

India’s intra-state conflicts are not the creation of the Indian Army, Para-military forces or the police.
India’s intra-state conflicts with the exception of Pakistan’s proxy war arise from policies or lack of policies of India’s political leadership and its inept and corrupt civil bureaucracy.
Indian Army and the Central and State police forces in intra-state conflict environment have to face the wrath of the affected people which really should be directed at the political leadership and civil bureaucracy.
In combating intra –state conflicts the Indian Army and police forces involved are not only hampered by people’s wrath but also poor intelligence, political interference and political considerations arising from vote-bank considerations especially in proxy war situations.
In combating Pakistan’s proxy war the Indian Army is hampered by the political leadership being susceptible to external pressures and prevailing on the Army to hold its hand in the name of CBMs with Pakistan.
The battle of the security forces against proxy war, terrorism, insurgency and militancy needs to be covered by the Indian media in a manner in which the above perspectives get framed so that accountability is asked from where it is due and not from the Indian Army or police forces.

The security forces cannot provide “instant –fix” solutions to situations which have been allowed to fester for decades by the Indian nation- state due to under-development and social and economic inequalities. The Indian media therefore has to exhibit more understanding, patience and a sense of sensitivity to those battling daily to protect that India lives.

INDIA’S INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS: THEIR COMMON DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS

Briefly the common threat that runs through all of India’s intra-state conflicts are:

Armed conflicts intended to attack the sovereignty, national integrity and national fabric of India.
The core aim externally is the diminution of India’s regional and global standing.
The core aim internally is to project that India’s governance is incapable of meeting such challenges when violence and there are used against security forces, government machinery, infrastructure and innocent civilians.
Terrorists, insurgents and militants, in essence, challenge the Constitution of India and the legal provisions that are enshrined in it.
If these are the defining characteristics and in which there could be no dispute, it is pertinent to ask the Indian media whether these defining characteristics are truthfully projected in their coverage.

Is it not a common occurrence in Indian media coverage, where India’s ‘bleeding hearts’ are given more prominence in their allegations that terrorist, militants and insurgents human rights and legal rights are not being respected and that the security forces have been harsh and repressive. Nobody in the media emphasizes that the security forces too have human rights and that the State needs to protect them against false allegations and unsubstantiated charges.

Has the Indian media ever questioned or pondered whether terrorist, militants and insurgents who challenge the Indian Constitution and operate outside it are eligible for refuge and rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution?

ROLE OF INDIAN MEDIA IN COVERAGE OF INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS

Before one ventures to lay out what are the expectations from the Indian media in terms of its coverage of intra-state conflicts and with particular reference to proxy war, one is tempted to ask how does the Indian media itself perceives its role in such an environment where the anti-Indian forces are bent on eating into India’s entrails?

Does the Indian media perceive itself as an inquisition tribunal to castigate the security forces? Does the Indian media perceive itself as a ‘shield’ to protect the political leadership and the civil bureaucracy from its culpability in the generation of such conflicts? Does the Indian media perceive itself as a ‘crusader’ on behalf of India’s “bleeding hearts?” Does the Indian media perceive it has the moral high ground to be judgmental on India’s security forces as they battle for India’s integrity? Or does the Indian media perceive themselves as a pillar of the Indian nation-state as it battles the multiple threats being inflicted on it through the medium of intra-state conflicts and proxy war?

Needless to say that it is the last role that the Indian media should adopt in such an environment and reinforce the impression that it is indeed a pillar of the Indian nation-state.

If that is accepted then my next point is that the Indian media should assert that it would not like its role to be discussed as ‘The Role of Indian Media in Intra-State Conflicts and Proxy War’ but more importantly be discussed as “THE ROLE OF INDIAN MEDIA AGAINST INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS AND PROXY WAR”.

If that be accepted then the role of Indian media as a ‘Force Multiplier' in all its connotations would come fully into play and needs no further elucidation

More importantly in their coverage of such conflicts, if the Indian media has to err it should err on the side of national security imperatives and the security forces, rather than on the side of terrorists, insurgents, and militants and “humanizing” them and glorifying their causes.

Does it need to be emphasized that in intra-state wars and proxy war the security forces are fighting an “invisible enemy” with their one hand tied politically. Does India want to repeat Indian history of yore by letting divisive forces within to tear apart the Indian nation-state?

INDIAN MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF PAKISTAN’S PROXY WAR AGAINST INDIA

In the examination of the theme assigned to me I have been asked to particularly dwell on the role of Indian media in proxy war which we all know is being directed, facilitated, financed and facilitated by the Pakistan Army and lately by exploiting the fringe elements of the minority community as local modules and sleeper cells.

These create their own challenges for the security forces both by external parameters and internal political compulsions where each so- called secular political party is competing to outdo the other in terms of minority appeasement.

Rather than highlight where the Indian media has failed in this direction, I would just like to dwell on what the Indian media needs to do and that is “framing” Pakistan’s proxy war and terrorism against India in the correct perspectives which have been touched earlier. Specifically, the perspectives that the Indian media should bear in mind while reporting on Pakistan’s Proxy war against India and which need emphasis are:

Pakistan’s Proxy War and Terrorism is no longer confined to Jammu & Kashmir aimed at the secession of the State from India.
Pakistan’s Proxy War and Terrorism against India is no longer militancy or terrorist activities, or insurgency arising from indigenous root causes.
Pakistan’s Proxy War and Terrorism against India is a full-fledged “War Against India" by Pakistan by applying all the instruments of Asymmetric Warfare against India by a combined and coordinated use of militancy, terrorism, insurgency and possibly tomorrow use of nuclear terrorism.
Pakistan’s Proxy War and Terrorism is no longer targeted at Indian security forces. Today, it targets the Indian Republic as a whole. It targets innocent civilian population and India’s economic, financial, scientific and other strengths including its social fabric.
The root causes of Pakistan’s Proxy War and Terrorism against India, and which transcend any other root causes, is Pakistan’s unrelenting hostility towards India. India is Pakistan’s “Enemy No.1”. Pakistan could not cut down India to size in four wars. It now intends to down-size India strategically by asymmetric warfare which is akin to unleashing termites to eat into the very entrails of the Indian Republic.
The Indian media therefore has to breakout of the fixation that media coverage of Pakistan’s Proxy War needs to be confined or viewed through the myopic lens of militancy and terrorism as some law and order problem. Pakistani apologists, separatists in Kashmir Valley and modules and sleeper cells in heartland India need to be mercilessly exposed by the Indian media in their coverage of Pakistan’s proxy war.

In this sphere one would recommend that the Indian media should transcend the domain of national security and give a laser focus on the Indian Government’s policies which encourage Pakistan to follow its perfidious policies against India without restraint and reciprocal punitive measures.

Concluding Observations

Finally one would like to emphasize that the Indian media’s coverage of India’s intra-state wars and particularly Proxy war should be devoid of politicization, devoid of “humanizing” the anti-national elements waging war against the Indian nation state and devoid of creating panic and fear by speculative reporting.. More importantly the Indian media should not fall prey to the disinformation strategies of the terrorist and insurgent groups and nor should the Indian media emerge as the mouthpiece of India’s “bleeding hearts” who only have a one-point agenda without regard to national security sensitivities.

The latter impression of the Indian media prevails amongst the security forces engaged in battling India’s internal security threats and that too in an agonizing manner. Such thoughts and perceptions are best captured in the agonizing eloquence of a police officer, Abhinav Kumar, SSP Dehradun, in the latest issue of OUTLOOK weekly October 26, 2009). In the ‘Cover Story Opinion page, without naming the media but implicit in the message, the senior police officer states:

· “How did the defense of a pluralist tolerant vision of India acquire moral equivalence with a rebellion based on a murderous ideology”

· “Our bleeding hearts forget all too easily that it is not the PUCL or the PUDR that really underpin our rights: instead it is the readiness of the men in green and khaki to die for the country that remains the ultimate guarantor of our national freedoms.”

· “Our civil society must give up this dangerous flirtation with the ideologies of hatred and murder and must give honest support to t those of us who are being asked to make the supreme sacrifice.”

The coverage of India’s intra-state conflicts and Proxy war by the Indian media should not be viewed as one more mundane professional activity but approached with a sense of purpose as a ‘national mission’ against those who threaten India’s internal security and nationhood.