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| Can India, without expressing opinion on major global issues, hope to assimilate support to push for reforms at the UNSC? Photo credit: UNGA |
India has long
had aspirations to get a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.
Many other states have had to. But who is to get this seat? Who is to give it? Can
there be just one more such seat and not a bigger set of reforms? And how is
this complex yet institutionalised power relationship panning out? These are
just a few questions that come to mind whenever the subject is stirred. It again
came up a few days ago as the United Nations marked its 70th
anniversary.
The following essay
is an extract from my dissertation that I wrote last year and it argues for the
establishment of a globally active state-backed Indian media house and states
that such an establishment will only aide India’s bid for that permanent UNSC
seat. After all, it’s all about communication, right? And that’s what the media
does. It informs, it communicates. But it is essential for such state-backed media
to have pluralistic and constructive values.
While over the
course of the past few months, I continue to abide by this argument. However, what
has changed is that the establishment of a new government in India in 2014 and
its rightward tilt has made it primitive to talk about this state-backed media
as a voice of the state, and not the government that is in power.
Institutionalising such a media outlet and recognising the distinction between
the state and the government have never appeared as paramount as they do now.
Where’s the global Indian voice?
India, as an
economy and a regional power and potentially a global one, has been registering
significant growth and has shown visible desire for inclusion as a permanent
member of the council, but neither this growth or this desire has been
reflected in the global media space by Indian actors. Nor has any Indian state
media channel informed the world or even its neighbours about its opinion on
major world issues, let alone spreading Indian norms and values through
delivery of world news. And it is when speaking of norms that the distinction
between state and government becomes even more critical because both, as
entities, may favour a partially overlapping, yet separate set of ideas and
norms.
I must here underline
that to adjudge the sanctity and the pertinence of this ambition of acquiring a
permanent UNSC seat is not the aim of this argument. The argument is premised
around the factors that influence such an argument, especially the global
activeness of Indian state-backed media.
“If any
country has a right to be on the Security Council, India does,'' AP
Venkateswaran, a former foreign secretary of the country had noted once (Monitor, 2007) . The former foreign
secretary, along with others who make the case for India permanently being on
the UNSC, has lots of parameters to base their argument on – from India being
the largest democracy in the world to being among the top ten states with the highest
spending on defence. The only element that seems evasive in that equation is
India’s representation in the global media space and the absence of an Indian
perspective on global issues. How then, does India, without expressing opinion
on major international or regional issues, hope to assimilate support to push
for reforms at the UNSC? Maybe economic and military might may get India there
eventually, but wouldn’t the soft power of media hasten the process? Ever since
taking charge in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his numerous foreign
trips have created a certain global buzz about India, but should he be just the
only public spokesperson for India? And can that buzz really last?
What further
makes these questions demand urgent answers and subsequent actions is the
certitude that all of the five permanent members of the UNSC, contemporarily,
have strong presence in the global media space. This may not have been a
necessary condition for such an inclusion in the council or reformation in its
structure when China became a part of the permanent set up in 1971 or France in
1958, as these states were not represented as actively in the global media
space then, as they are now. But in the contemporary scenario of world
politics, a lot has changed and the soft power that state media may
internationally accumulate may well be the missing ingredient to seal the
argument for a permanent seat for India at the council. China’s CCTV and France’s France 24 have been vehemently active globally over the past few
years; so has Russia’s RT; UK’s BBC has always been a sort of benchmark
for global media actors and US’ Voice of
America and CNN among other
actors have never allowed America to be under represented in global media. With
so many disparate voices in the global media, an Indian state-backed voice may
face competition, but it will also only furnish the ground-work in terms of
global and regional public opinion that needs to be urgently addressed in order
for India to strongly pitch for a UNSC seat, if it is really desired/ aimed to
be sought.
Of course, the
establishment of such a voice must not be understood to be an easy route to that
seat, but a factor that could multiply those chances. And who knows, over time this
voice may grow into a regional voice given that the global system is moving
towards a multi-polar structure that’s likely to be influenced more by
regionalisms than individual states. And perhaps, India’s immediate neighbours
could pitch in as well and could this collaborative media in a sense then, lead
to constructive pathways across the most militarised border in the world too? Well,
economic lobbying among all other channels of diplomacy is needed to try and
get that moving, but, one can always hope. Meanwhile, it appears that
the path ahead is certain to be guided in many ways by the construction of
communication and the communication of construction.
