Has journalism lost it?

The way ordinary people consume and interact with media is light years removed from two decades ago. This shift has been so massive that all of us are still grappling with understanding it. We have never had a media landscape like this. There is a very vocal left-wing media machine that has proven to be every bit more effective than the mainstream media. 

Now there is an emergence of a right-wing media machine, as effective as the left-wing media machine or even the mainstream media. What the emerging right-wing media machine lacks in terms of its effectiveness, it is attempting to make up for it through the social media. The general public has never been networked the way we are now. Unfortunately, however, both, the left-wing as well as the right-wing media machines, are building the sculptures of Networked Disinformation. The mainstream media is sitting outside of the arena where these ugly bouts are taking place.

Let us acknowledge that there have been mass media layoffs. Uncompromising media outfits have shuttered, leaving dozens of upright journalists without jobs. Reporters-on-rolls and editors have vacillated between feeling extremely energized and extremely demoralized in such circumstances. Unstable job environments have become the norm, and unfortunately, those who have stayed back in journalism have confused average for acceptable. There are now “full-time freelance” positions in journalism.

Editorial teams are shrinking, workers are forced to accept lower rates (due to increase in competition), and they are bearing the psychological impact of repeated layoffs as they navigate financial insecurity.

Journalists and reporters are constantly in a state of stress and scarcity; they are constantly working too much and fearing that it is still too little. They don’t know how they are going to pay rent, and if they do, they can never be sure the checks are going to come in on time. Health insurance is either a luxury or a distant dream; and getting sick is not an option.

The distinctions between regular, freelance, contract and outsourced labour is increasingly porous. The press and publication houses are unionising but the unions of their employees are nearly defunct.

Is journalism a vocation, profession, business or an errand? With confusion getting compounded, the losses of talent, freedom, standards and ethics are a natural corollary.

(First published 22 April 2020)

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COVID-19: Postscript

During the Pre-COVID days, most of the people attributed positive meanings to the word ‘Western’ and would not believe that black people are getting beaten up in America. COVID era has shown that people in the west were dying because of a lack of care, their economies face financial ruin and their people are caught in a wave of violence, gang warfare and toppling of statues.

Post the pandemic, the world will stop looking at the US and West-Europeans to learn how to live properly, how to govern, and how to run a democracy. Countries will come down heavily on foreign funding of civil groups because such funds will be seen as attempts to apply a form of “liberal imperialism” to “force their worldview onto countries that think differently.” Even the courts will begin to realise how they often get involved in such subversion of national goals in the name of freedom and liberalism advanced before them by people who have ties to such international networks. Political groups masquerading as NGOs, GROs and VOs, which mobilise public opinion and public action without participating in electoral processes, will face regulatory heat.

The Chinese LAC trouble of 14-16 June has established beyond doubt that even when the government stood for Indian sovereignty and national consensus, it faces a “constant struggle” with “internal agents” doing anti-national bidding and with people abroad. All Indians must demonstrate the same position on certain issues, and this entails forming a national consensus on how to handle any national issue – a cross-border problem with China, Nepal or Pakistan, a pandemic or the rebooting of the economy. Nationalism movement will be strengthened.

Experience over the last five months in terms of how the world has dealt with the pandemic has exposed the hubris of populist politicians and the  complacency of scientific ‘experts’ who work as the  government’s scientific advisors. Time was squandered resulting into thousands of lives being lost.

This pandemic, which has killed nearly half a million people out of nearly nine million people already infected so far will leave humanity transformed; with new norms of individual and social interactions, increased pressure for universal vaccination and a new shape of the modern  world. Tensions will arise over the interests of communities versus individuals. The vast number of deaths will precipitate new waves of xenophobia against the Chinese and also the French and the Italians.

Governments and scientists will be accused of not doing enough and an intellectual crisis may ensue.  People will notice a striking gap between the extravagant claims for 21^st century medicine and the dismal reality. The sense of scientific and medical failure will lead to a growth in alternative medicine, back-to-nature movements, spiritualism, and new prophets for a post-COVID age.

A new era of research into the control of viral diseases will be born. Alternative ways of looking at causation of diseases will emerge. Scientists will break away from the present thought that simply knowing the identity of a pathogen and the aetiology of a disease is sufficient to bring an epidemic under control. Community mitigation of disease, cutting across poverty and inequality will be embraced with new political energy. The success of such mitigation will be possible when designed on “military logic” of discipline and unity. After poverty and hunger, health will become the next political slogan. A new public discourse on themes like pessimism, irony, and absurdity will become common.  Societies will thrive after the COVID pandemic subsides.  The 2020s will see a period of flourishing economic growth.

It is to be hoped that, after Covid-19, no one will be foolish enough to make the same mistake again though it seems to be characteristic of human behaviour that, indeed, we are foolish enough and we will repeat our mistakes. COVID-19’s effects will be profound and long-lasting; how profound and long-lasting will be up to us.

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Internationalisation of Management Institutes in India

In response to the wave of globalisation, B-schools reacted by promoting the idea of Internationalisation of Management Institutes. There were two major pitfalls in the idea – first, it was a delayed reaction and not a proactive action and secondly, in the name of internationalisation, higher education became a tradable commodity like any other commodity under globalisation.

While the central role of management institutes and universities was to help people understand this world and to improve their dealings with it, which always improved through multiple angles of viewing, different lenses and varied description, internationalisation brought in commoditisation leading to reduction in differentiation. The European accreditation systems, AMBA and EQUIS paddled internationalisation as one of the core drivers of excellence in b-schools or management institutes as they are called in India.

But the direction that accreditation systems gave to management institutes was one of copying the already prevalent commercially competitive approach of the United Kingdom - recruitment of international students, development of cross-border education for revenue, competition for teaching-talent (skilled immigration) and reputation (rankings). Internationalisation as a tradable commodity has become a crucial source of income for higher education in some of the countries like the UK, France, Canada, Australia and the US, compensating for a reduction of public support by national and state governments.

Indian management institutes, ever so eager to imitate the Whiteman, started signing up for international exchange of students, faculty, research and executive-education; of which the last three were more of flaunting and less of action. Statistics like ‘one in every four of our student gets a chance to spend a term abroad’ were plastered on every marketing material with no attention to the fact as to what became of the remaining three out of four or what was the imbalance between incoming and outgoing exchange students. The greed took some Indian institutions to create what was termed as ‘twinning programmes’ which was another way of selling foreign degrees in India. Western schools were too happy to sign up for twinning programmes because it gave them steady stream of international students and fees.

There was yet another model of imitative-innovation by the ‘jugaad’ minded Indians, where they recruited Indian students in India but took them abroad for off-shore delivery of content by Indian faculty peppered with some Whiteman here and there. Terms like ‘internationalisation of the curriculum’ for domestic students emerged as a favourite exaggeration used for consumption by public.

Campuses in the west are already worried about fewer Indians choosing to study abroad after COVID-19 and many experts have predicted that this will be the end of internationalisation as we have known it in the management institutes. Possibly a new thought around ‘internationalisation at home’ will replace the so far dominant thought of ‘internationalisation abroad.’ But this may be a pipe-dream because human greed knows no limits. The political and educational leaders may like to return as quickly as possible to the glorious days of international trade before COVID-19.

Will the craze of Internationalisation among the Indian management institutes survive the COVID-19 pandemic is anyone’s guess but for the moment the obsession is breathing through a ventilator support. 

(First published 27 May 2020)

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Coronavirus Agony for Indian MBA

Top students, who come to multi-crowned management institutes in India, are more than just a 20-year-old college student. They have been involved in a very active campus life while pursuing their undergraduate degree. They have set up clubs and groups; bagged scholarships and awards; pursued hobbies and interests; travelled and not to mention, most of them can speak at least 3-languages.

There are two cohorts of students who arrive at the beginning of each academic year at the management institutes. One of the cohorts is of fresh students who had been dreaming and slogging hard for over a year to enter a premier b-school and who finally aced the selection process by beating thousands of competitors to win an entry to their coveted management institutes. The other cohort is of the students who had experienced the management institute for a year, having been admitted in the last academic year, and then taken off for a mandatory internship of two months or so, at a popular business enterprise; and now returning to finish off their final year before they get the ever so weighty and mighty MBA.

Students come to a management institute for assured career prospects (read campus placements), building new networks (different from their school and undergrad colleges), picking the jargon and grammar of contemporary business (not necessary the skills) a good social and community living which can put a chip on their shoulder and wider awareness (of 20 odd subjects and not much of a deeper understanding); most usually in this order of importance. 

COVID-19 disrupted the mandatory internship of two months for a lot of students in the second cohort while for the first cohort even the entry-tickets to their dream management institutes have been delayed or disrupted.

What if classes stay online next academic year due to COVID-19 - the first consequence of such a scenario will be that no one is coming or coming back to institute’s campus. For everything which students seek from a management institutes, the students have to be there and be present. The students will have to choose between graduating on time versus all the experiences and benefits they were expecting to have. They may find that once-lively classroom sessions and seminars are less engaging over Zoom and there may be practical complications that make virtual learning less than ideal.

Given an option, many students may like to take leave for a semester or a year. They may consider taking the online classes at the Number #1 b-school instead of Number #2 or Number #2 or their own school, if the Number #1 school so allowed them and simultaneously engage in some work which could pay them a little and add embellish their profile so that they could return even better credentialed to their management institutes when the classes resume face-to-face.

These experiences help explain why the Indian management institutes, a longstanding access point into adulthood and the middle or professional classes, is suddenly looking precarious. The pandemic has exposed the harsh economic reality of the Indian management education, and it could be a breaking point for students and institutes after years of growing queues of aspirants at the doors of premier management institutes, not to mention the debate over the benefits of a hefty price tag for their degrees. It is regrettable that most webinars and discussions are being setup to discuss the content of the MBA education post COVID-19 and very little is being debated about the processes involved. This may well be a symptom of the mental ailments caused by novel coronavirus which may be afflicting the leadership of management institutes.

In order to survive, many top management institutes need to prove that they can replicate the campus experience virtually— and many may not succeed.

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