A Deliberative Democracy Framework for Analysing the Role of Media in Representing Dalits Voices: Some Critical Reflections
Dr. Suresh.K
Email: sureshckesavan@gmail.com
ORCID: 0009-0006-3260-0571
Freedom of expression and the tolerance of different viewpoints from individuals and societal groups are essential for maximizing the potential of a democratic system. This will enable a larger public engagement which can be possible only when people are informed about the various activities of the system. Such information should be transparent, reliable, democratic and accessible to all sections of society. Here media, both conventional and modern, has a vital role in the effective participation of people in the democratic process through active deliberations. Through these deliberations media can make democracy transparent, representative, inclusive and democratic. However, marginalised sections, particularly the Dalits, are neither represented in media rooms nor their issues are adequately presented. They are also experiencing severe constrains in using new social media as an alternative platform for addressing their genuine concerns. This study seeks to critically examine the role of media as a democratic deliberative platform for representing the legitimate concerns of marginalised groups, especially the Dalits.
Keywords: Dalit, identity, media, deliberative democracy, participatory democracy
Media, popularly known as the fourth pillar of a government, occupies an important place in a democracy. The media not only entertains but also informs and teaches. It is essential for developing, expressing, and disseminating public opinion. It is, or ought to be, a protector of the public interest, a trustworthy eyewitness to events, and a device for holding the government responsible. Thus media link people and the government by encouraging dialogue for developing and implementing state policies in keeping with popular preferences. Additionally, it is an effective tool for raising transparency and accountability across the board (Ansari, 2019).
India has a robust media presence, both in quantity and quality. Recently, Indian media has been criticised for disregarding their obligation to social responsibility (Gupta and Agnihotri, 2022). Dangerous business practices in media such as sensationalizing news with communal slants and violence, political maneuvering, social fragmentation and emergence of media conglomerates have affected the fabric of Indian democracy. Post-liberalisation changes, the emergence of transnational media organisations with global interests, and the corporatisation of media and media ethics have ultimately threatened pluralistic viewpoints. All these things happened at the cost of a media which was initially thought to be an agent of ushering social change through championing developmental programs directed at the non-privileged and marginalised sections of society. Though the media has sometimes successfully played the role of a watchdog of the government functionaries and has also aided in participatory communication, a lot still needs to be done. However, in India, the question of deliberative democracy using social media is under severe constraints. Due to the widening digital gap and institutionalised conservatism, deliberations have been confined to authorised elites, primarily the educated middle class. Dalits, who neither have their media organisation nor are represented in media rooms, are adversely affected in this deliberation process.
Deliberative Democracy and Media
Deliberative democracy is a state of affairs in which people must reason out to each other for their respective positions. Thus an understanding needs to be evolved among them. For instance, if it is the issue of a painting or a novel, then the state could accommodate and encourage deliberations between the painter or the writer and the groups claiming to be hurt by the content of that piece of art. Thus both could be made to understand their specific viewpoints. Salman Rushdie pointed out on several occasions that people who criticised him had themselves never read his novel (The New York Times, 2024). Hence, the conflict is guided mainly by misunderstandings between groups or individuals. To a great extent, this conflict can be deflated by developing trust and mutual understanding through active deliberations. Thus deliberation is quintessentially a manner of collective decision-making in which everyone participates on an equal footing, and no one’s interest or feeling gets hurt. Deliberation thus believes that conflicts are best addressed and provisionally resolved through the give-and-take of a respectful argument with reasonable differences. This process will yield reasonable and fair outcomes because reason and proposals that everyone can accept will win the day. The underlying assumption is that individuals come together not primarily to pursue their pre-determined agendas or visions but to expect strategies and solutions through deliberation and discussions with other participants. The deliberation underlined here is not speculative but oriented towards decision-making. Therefore, an essential component of any democracy is trustworthy information sources (Habermas, 2006).
The process of deliberative democracy will also enable the individuals to pursue agenda setting and problem solving through deliberative decision mechanisms rather than through the conventional method of aggregating interest through voting or hierarchical command based upon political or bureaucratic authority. Media plays a significant role in this deliberative process, particularly in a representative democracy like India. There are four ways that deliberations can instill the spirit of democracy: by increasing the role of the public in policy-making through the development of trust in democratic institutions and government agencies; by encouraging deeper forms of dialogue and decision-making that lead to effective and shared decision-making; by producing better policy outcomes because it delivers significant public judgment rather than impromptu public opinion; and by giving deliberates a legitimate voice in the process (Keutgen, 2021).
Deliberative Democracy and India
The parliamentary system of government followed by India has two aspects; representation and participation. Although both are the two sides of the same coin, the representation part became more practical, undermining the role of participation in the political system. The meaning of political participation was reduced to the right to vote. Elections were conducted at particular intervals, and subsequent changes were brought into the political structure without substantive changes in people’s share in the decision-making process (Sachdeva and sharma, 2015; Oldenburg. 2007; Singh, 2023). Once elected the political parties and their representatives, regardless of flag and shade, exhibit the same character of deviating from public issues. The commoner increasingly realised that they had nothing to do with this political game. This realisation resulted in a widespread trust deficit and estrangement of various sections from active political engagement.
The apparent decline in the effectiveness of democratic institutions of governance, increasing corruption and deterioration of moral standards in public life, the increasing gap between the ideology and praxis of political parties, and the gap between the expectation of the people and the ability of the political system to fulfil those aspirations have led widespread apathy among the people towards politics. Besides, deregulation, privatisation, reduction of social services and reduction in government spending have become the watchword of government rather than participation, greater responsiveness, transparency and accountability. This can be illustrated by the fact that only 65.7% voter casted their vote in 2024 general election compared to 66.4 % in 2014(Election commission, 2024). The 2014 general election is unique as it was the first instance since independence the voting turn out crossed more than 65 %. The commission has also revealed that less than 40 per cent of voters under the age of 19 have registered to vote. Among this a sizeable number belong to urban and educated youth (Vinod, 2024). These estranged sections, comprising of the Dalits, began to evolve into up-political activities as a measure to engage in politics. In this context, social media has come forward to champion the Dalits’ interests from the state and society. However, they are facing so many constraints in using social media as an effective instrument for championing their interests.
Dalits and Media
Communication in India is a complex and obscuring process due to social stratification based on caste divisions. Casteism, the most complex and discriminatory social system practised worldwide, vehemently denied the legitimate right of Dalits to have an education. Thus Dalits were deliberately denied letters and literature for about three millennia. Things began to change with the positive intervention of the Christian missionaries, who introduced printing and publishing in India (Hindu, 2007). They wanted to spread Christianity and, for that matter, translated Bible into several regional languages. They also started schools and published news magazines, newspapers, books and pamphlets with the support of local dominant caste people who worked as their assistants. Still, the marginalised sections were not represented even at the periphery of the educational system.
Even though the colonial masters’ attempt to reform education was not sincere, it was a blessing in disguise for the Dalits in India. As the missionaries, especially the protestant missionaries, focused on the disadvantaged populations for mission work or conversion, access to education was open for the Dalits. It enabled the Dalits to use colonial power to overpower the dominance of caste power. This positive change resulted from the emergence of several eminent writers and scholars among the Dalits in the third or fourth generation. However, the casteist Indian media presented several obstacles as Dalit writers became powerful and began to exert their position. They are often labelled “Dalit writers” who produce “Dalit literature.” The suppression of the growth of Dalit writing as a rebellion against India’s casteist social structure has induced the employment of tokenism in the realm of literature. Thus the issues and concerns of marginalised sections, particularly Dalits, have got undermined in this new deliberative process. Neither Dalits are physically represented in media platforms, nor are their issues get wider public attention. Some of the issues faced by Dalits in media are;
1. Representation of Dalits in Media
In India, the majority of communication has been monopolised by the upper caste and has been elite-focused. Since the development of the modern communication system, Dalits have attempted to operate their media on par with the rest of the media houses (Venkateswarlu & Rao, 2017). However, for various reasons, they were unable to survive. For instance, the Dalit Magazine, Parayan, started by a Dalit scholar Rettaimalai Srinivasan, could not find its existence when Hindu, the daily English newspaper, started on the same day to commemorate its 125th anniversary in September 2003. Similarly, Dalit activists from different parts of the country launched several periodicals but were eventually locked down because they could not endure caste politics (Ravikumar, 2007). Thus, economic conditions and caste supremacy did not allow them to sustain themselves in the competitive media market.
With the introduction of neo-liberal policies and the emergence of media corporate houses, media ethics has lost its importance. In other words, the new economic policies and the corporate culture helped the existing Brahminical ideologies and forces to exert their influence in the mass media. Thus Indian media has become number one in practising caste segregation. Chandrabhan Prasad called this Media Varna Media (Prasad, 2006). The untouchability towards Dalits in Indian media is evident because there were almost no Dalits and almost none today in the newsrooms of India’s media organisations (Jeffry, 2012). Robbin Jeffry called it a calamity for three reasons; firstly, the Constitution has not lived up to the changing space. The concept of equality in the Constitution becomes shallow when a quarter of the population becomes invisible from the fourth estate. It is also impractical to practice fraternity with invisible people. Secondly, if they are underrepresented and their issues are not heard, resentment will bubble up, leading to social unrest and destruction. Therefore, the press has to give adequate coverage of issues confronted at the margin, which will ultimately turn barriers into bridges. Thirdly, genuine media people can never be satisfied with producing a newspaper, a magazine or a bulletin that instinctively overlooks a quarter of the population (except when there is violence and squalor, of course. Therefore, stories from the margins of the society, which is close to about 25 % of the Indian population, particularly Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, are unlikely to be known or much less broadcasted or written.
Even if they are represented, they are perched at the lower rungs of the hierarchy in newspapers and TV outlets. There are no Dalits or Adivasis in senior positions in Indian print, television, or internet media, with upper caste groups occupying about 90% of these positions. Over 70 % of the prime-time debate shows news channels draw most panellists from the upper castes. Dalits and Adivasis write less than 5 % of all articles in English newspapers (The Oxfam India, 2022). At the lower levels of media organisations, Dalits are experiencing harassment; deliberate targeting manifested through denial of recognition, promotions and increments. At the higher levels, they are subjected to snide remarks and name-calling, particularly their caste or community names. Due to this discriminatory treatment, most of the Dalits in the media argued that they would leave the media if they got better employment prospects (Ashraf, 2013). The underrepresentation of Dalits in the newsroom is a pointer to the disinterest of Indian mass media towards the retrogressive caste system in general and the plights of Dalits in particular.
2. Agenda setting by media
The news media not only provides readers and viewers with factual information about public events but also teaches them how much significance to give an issue based on how much attention it receives in the news (Mahapatra & Suresh, 2015). The term ‘Agenda Setting’ was coined by McCombs and Shaw to describe a phenomenon which had long been observed and studied in the context of election engineering. They discovered that, as opposed to persuasion or attitudinal transformation, the major impact of the news media was agenda setting, or telling people what to think about rather than what not to consider (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). According to agenda-setting studies, there is a connection between what the media prioritise and public awareness of it. The core idea of the term implies that the news media inform the public about the major concerns of the day, and this information influences what the public believes to be significant issues. While Indian media sets the agenda of the day, it ‘normally’ tends to avoid the issues faced by Dalits and discreetly support the status quo of the casteist Indian social matrix. Using tokenism for Dalit writers and thinkers, these print and visual media are trying to put them into boxes. Tokenism also helps to neutralise the emergence of Dalit consciousness and the genuine questions raised by them. Being the most disadvantaged group in Indian society, Dalits were to be treated with the utmost sympathy and compassion. The actual need is to portray Dalits’ needs and struggles without bias. However, unfortunately, Indian print and visual media miserably fail to meet this ethical aspect of journalism. Thus the Dalits in India find an alternative in social media such as social networking and mobile phones.
3. Characterisation of Dalits in Media
The indolent approach of Indian mass media towards Dalits issues is evident due to the amount and calibre of the news broadcast. Media often portrays Dalits in a distorted way. They paint Dalit people as weak, incompetent, oppressed, downtrodden, victims of caste-based discrimination, low performers and greedy for reservation and politics (Ojha, 2017). This portrayal often focuses on their poverty, lack of education, access to basic amenities, and the social stigma attached to their caste. They are also depicted as marginalised and excluded from mainstream society, living on the fringes and struggling to survive. Media also tends to stereotype Dalits- often with a negative connotation. For instance, if a Dalit makes a mistake in public life, the impression goes that ‘they are like that’. The whole community gets stigmatised and targeted. However, when a Dalit outshines in public life, the general impression is that ‘he/she is an exceptional Dalit.
There were also deliberate move against the emerging Dalit consciousness. They have to pose intense resistance against caste based marginalization and exploitation. Educated dalits and intellectuals began to engage with the problems confronted by the poor and the exploitation and humiliations from the upper castes without any hesitation. The emergence of various Dalit movements, inspired by the ideology and praxis of Dr. B .R Ambedkar, and their constant interface with the dalit issues have also contributed to this consciousness. But these resentments were often dubbed by the caste based media as mere caste politics. This can also be considered as a deliberate ploy against dalits consciousness about the existing socio-political realities. One such example is the reported death of Ilavarasan in Tamil Nadu. This row of events occurred due to the inter-caste marriage between the couples belonging to Dalit and Vanniyar communities, which ultimately ended up in their separation and eventually the death of the husband, Ilavarasan, who was a Dalit (Arivanantham, 2013). Instead of reacting to this issue as caste-based oppression of Dalits and the violent invasion of the right to live, mass media portrayed it as a clash between two caste groups. The discussion on inter-caste marriage, which could be used to overcome caste-based discrimination, was not initiated by mass media and thus revealed its casteist face.
Those who work in the mass media argue that they are giving what the public wants. The visual media is more interested in ratings, and the issues related to the Dalits, Tribals, Adivasis and other vulnerable people are not helpful, according to their assessment. Even though the media in India covers the people’s struggles, they often rallied behind the government and brushed the severe concerns about ordinary people’s safety under the carpet. However, one positive change in recent years is the resurgence of Dalit movements and active interventions of Dalit writers and activists, which compelled Indian mass media to give space, even though as tokenism, most of the time in the media.
4. Change in the character of media.
The characteristics of media have also undergone dramatic changes in recent years. From a serious affair of bringing news to the masses, it has been changed into entertaining people even with the news. There is no more news, but only ‘news stories’. Media have become an industry, and they are run like any other business enterprise. The media is a corporate endeavour wherein editorial principles come second to financial sustainability. The marketing department, which sells space, has become a powerful department in the news industry. Many journalists today receive instructions on what to write and what not to write. Sometimes their news stories are edited to align with the media’s policies. Therefore, the unavailability of the people’s basic needs from the margins and the sufferings of the vulnerable communities are not at all news, or they are overshadowed by the news about celebrities, entertainment, party politics and even sexuality. Information also becomes infotainment (Kaur, 2020; CSDS, 2022). These characteristics are actually against the interests and needs of the marginalised communities in India. Space in the print media and time in the visual media are sparingly kept apart from the Dalit issues. That is why Telengu journalist Mallepalli Laxmaiah - thought the media coverage is governed by the 5 five Cs- controversies, crime, cinema, cricket and corporate. Physical violence against Dalits comes under crime and is consequently covered. All other aspects of their life do not make for the story (Ashraf, 2013).
Social Media: An Alternative Platform for Dalits
The Internet, a relatively new entrant in mass media, has proved more democratic than conventional media like newspapers and television (Coronel, 2003). It has allowed citizens to actively represent their voices in the political process and express their views and opinions independently through deliberation without explicit or implicit compulsions. Thus it has brought about substantive changes in the role of citizens in the social and political discourses from a mere recipient to active participants in opinion-building and decision-making. Social media has reduced traditional media’s monopoly in information collection, processing, and distribution (Mahapatra & Suresh, 2015). The significance of social media lies in the fact that one party’s messages, opinions, and links are readily available, and a feedback mechanism can be easily generated. Thus, social media has gone beyond traditional media by incorporating adequate deliberations as the essence of democracy and as a means for achieving outstanding citizen engagement with politics.
Using social media, ordinary people can effectively participate in and influence policies through active deliberations, which directly impact their lives. These experiments are democratic in the radical sense as they rely on the participation and capacities of ordinary people. In many cases, individuals with the same opinion create organisations that discuss and argue about important political choices and look for fresh perspectives on the future. The lack of barriers to communication on the Internet enables each person to develop a deliberative and participatory environment. They are also empowered through their flexibility and opportunity to select media outlets. The significance of social media lies in its ability to be more personalised by offering user-created content (Flew, 2009).
Since social networking is free and open for all, unlike print and visual media, Dalits find it a viable and valuable platform for championing their interests. It is nearly impossible for Dalits to start and run a media firm, but they can quickly log in to any social media site and freely express his/her thoughts. This quality of information technology and the Internet, in particular, has provided the marginalised community of India to take part in the national discourse of civil society and to have discourse among themselves (Thirumal & Tartakov, 2011). Several blogging websites, YouTube Channels, Twitter Accounts, and Facebook pages have also been created to raise Dalit issues.
Dalits can also use social media sites to make new relations and friends and use them for information and socialising. Ambedkar and his philosophy have significantly influenced the Dalits in India, which signals the beginning of a shared consciousness in the age of information technology. Social networking sites provide the ideal platform for activists, writers, and critics of the Dalit community to present their cases, offer compelling counterarguments, and reshape the conversation in their favour. This use of social media is especially true given the many Dalit students who succeed in their fields of study (Venkateswarlu & Rao, 2017). Most now use social media to get information, interact with others, share opinions, and abstain from biased mainstream media.
Although this social media strategy and engagement are not significantly changing the attitudes of caste Hindus towards caste discrimination, social media is giving them an unheard-of chance to forge a new identity as empowered Dalits and unite them in the fight against pervasive caste-based discrimination (Singh, 2019). Dalits have been widely using social networking sites to generate debates about casteism and its associated issues. There is already the emergence of subaltern cyberspace with exciting and significant consequences for the Dalits and political culture in the age of digital media. A Dalit, Sam Pitroda, initiated this paradigm shift to the cyber age. He was the Prime Minister’s adviser on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations. He called this transformation of digital activism as the democratisation of information (Pitroda, 2015). Social networking has also speeded up the exchange of information between Dalits in India and abroad. It has also redoubled the offensive against Dalit movements through social networking (Sartape, 2013).
Social networking has allowed Dalits to find their peer groups from India and abroad. They frequently share shared concerns and pose theoretical, philosophical, and sociological queries about caste discrimination and oppression. It is significant to note that Dalit arguments frequently use Ambedkar’s ideas to support their claims. Ambedkar and his philosophy have significantly influenced the Dalits in India. Ambedkarism has created a shared awareness among the Dalits today more than in previous decades due to the development of information technology. Thus, Dalits now have the advantage of utilising democratic opportunities that can overcome caste and ritualistic obstacles and share interests and understandings with people who were previously out of their reach (Kumar, 2021).
One of the positive changes of Dalit online activism is its impact on visual and print media which ultimately began to give space to the issues faced by Dalits. The accessibility of social networking, even on mobile phones, makes things more accessible and more viable for the young Dalits to express their anguish related to caste and caste oppression. As a result, the caste system’s imposed silence on India’s roughly 165 million Dalits has been broken by an extensive ecosystem of blogs, websites, internet forums, and social media groups. Thus social media platforms are establishing new discursive platforms for debate and action mobilisation that might be crucial in assisting Dalits to reassert and recover their identity (DeLuca et.al, 2012).
Dalits and Social Media Activism: Some Constraints
In India, the question of deliberative democracy using social media is under severe constraints. Today discussions have been confined only to authorised elites, particularly the educated middle class, due to the growing digital divide and institutionalised conservatism. Under deliberative norms, the best proposal is not the one that receives the most votes or political power but rather the one that most closely aligns with the group’s shared interests. Since the introduction of the Internet in India up till the present, the percentage of users in rural India has consistently been low. The data on rural and urban internet use shows that India still has a wide digital gap. Dalits, who live primarily in rural areas, are victims of the digital divide (Kumari & Subramani, 2014).
Dalits cannot use the Internet because they lack access to fundamental amenities, including housing, subsistence, a basic education, a job, and a lack of English language skills. Only a tiny portion of this sizable, socially excluded urban and rural group is active in the public realm. They are primarily made up of males with college degrees who work for the government. Most Dalits only speak their native tongue, which is impossible for online communication. The low level of higher education among the Dalits in India and the situation of living in the remotest villages keep most of the Dalits away from being in tune with the new advancements in information and communication technology. Print media is still mostly restricted to metropolitan areas. Despite some progress, the rural regions still lack adequate power (Ojha, 2017). Encouraging more Dalit students to be competent enough to utilise modern technologies for a better assertion is the need of the hour. The government’s and citizens’ collective responsibility is to fill the ‘digital divide’, which is still prevalent in casteist Indian society.
The Dalits who engage in new media discussions are looked down upon with casteist comments. They are accused of creating identity politics and dividing society while discussing casteist discrimination’s complex realities. They are continuously told that they speak about casteism because of their ‘inferiority complex. Social networking sites are often flooded with casteist outbursts against the reservation system. The casteist people advise the Dalits to ‘work hard’ instead of ‘crying’ for reservation. While these criticisms are raised, Dalit thinkers and activists make prompt and befitting counterarguments. They profusely use historical and ideological materials to substantiate their viewpoints.
Deliberate and collective attack on social networking sites against Dalit affirmation is not rare case. Dalit activists like Manushyaputhiran, Meena Kandasamy and Kavinmalar were vehemently attacked on social networking sites on their stand in the death of Ilavarasan in Tamil Nadu. According to a recent study, 13% of Facebook postings in India are caste-based hate speech, including caste-based insults, disparaging references to caste-based vocations like manual scavenging, and anti-Ambedkar remarks’ (Soundararajan, Et.al, 2019). Further, it has been noted that “Indian casteist hate speech is part of an ecosystem of violence designed to shame, intimidate, and keep oppressed caste communities from asserting their rights. If this internet hate speech is not immediately addressed, Dalits may suffer significant psychological harm (Sajlan, 2021). Currently; casteist bigots have a free hand in using social media to humiliate Dalits. For instance, the founder of the online anti-caste platform ‘Ambedkar’s Caravan’ is regularly attacked by keyboard warriors through caste-based slurs (Attri, 2019). Hate activists leave no stone uncovered when posting comments on social media, sometimes anonymously or under colourful online identities (Kolappans, 2013). Though the criticisms are unfair and go to any extent to tarnish Dalits and undermine their arguments, Dalits in the social networking realm are capable enough to continue their theoretical and sociological arguments.
Conclusion
The Seventy-five years of India’s democratic experience show that the country has dramatically changed the social and political structures from economy to education, health to defence and justice to civic issues. However, the dividends have yet to reach the least advantageous sections of society. With all its manifestations, the deep-rooted caste system still perpetuates violence against the marginalised sections, particularly Dalits. However, now they are working for empowerment before the trickle-down effect promised by the government or its agencies. In the case of media, despite the limitations inflicted by the traditional media, Dalits carved out a space for themselves through social media when they realised that the mainstream media had deliberatively negated their concerns. Dalits skillfully utilise social media as a deliberative platform to assert their identity and counter casteist attacks. They are now using it to reach out to each other, pool their stories and experiences and exercise power and pressure as a block to prevent discrimination. All these measures have created a parallel means of information for Dalits, challenging the monopoly of traditional media and its agenda-setting process. However, caste and caste-based segregation continue to haunt Dalits while dealing with online activism. Any attempt by Dalits to increase their condition in society can be meaningful only when people, who believe in equality and justice, must give unwavering support for their interventions on social networking sites. Thus the study concludes that despite having its constraints, Dalits have been successfully using multiple social media platforms and asserting themselves to be self-confident, realistic, optimistic, and belligerent in fighting against the age-old social injustice.
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