Draft-Not to be Quoted

Job Insecurities of Media Workers in India: Status, Determinants and Possible Corrective Policy

Babu P. Remesh1

I. Introduction

India is currently going through a `media revolution’. At present, the country is among the prominent and emerging media markets of the world2. Along with a steady growth of the traditional constituents of media (such as radio, newspapers/publishing industry and television), the recent decades also witnessed a proliferation of new media forms, enabled by novel technologies and innovative modes of production organisation. All these developments inter alia opened up a spectrum of new employment opportunities in media sector, for a large number of educated and skilled youth. Among this growing pool of media workers, journalists (in newspapers and television news channels) are the most visible lot, due to their ubiquitous presence in the day to day lives of all consumers (readers, viewers and listeners).

Journalists in newspapers and television channels continuously update us with new information on all aspects of the society, which often includes issues of labour and livelihoods - covering work and workers of various sectors and subsectors of the economy. But, what is quite curious in these `labour-beats’ is the near absence of information or a conspicuous silence of media on the issues pertaining to working conditions of media labour. Does it mean that the labour standards of media workers in India are too impressive to be reported? Is it a planned outcome or inadvertent omission? Does it reflect the limits of freedom of the media workers on choosing the contents of their news? Keeping these questions in mind, the present paper explores into the `not much reported aspects’ of job insecurities and working conditions of media labour in India. The term, `media’ itself is elusive. In its broader meaning, the term, `media’ includes several sectors and subsectors such as radio and television broadcasting, print-media (newspapers and publishing industry), cultural industries (film, music and many other performing industries), cable TV industry and a range of new media forms (e.g. internet, mobile). Accordingly, in a broader sense, the set of `media workers’ can include a wide array of workers such as: news room officials, editors, editorial staff, journalists, producers, anchors, reporters, photographers/camera personnel, designers, art-

1 Associate Professor, School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. Email: babu@ignou.ac.in. An earlier version of this paper was presented in a seminar held at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi (Remesh, 2015).

2 In India, as on December 31, 2012, there were around 93,985 registered publications, and 850 licensed television channels out of which 413 are in the news and current affairs category. State-owned broadcaster Doordarshan alone runs 37 channels. In addition, there are over 250 FM radio stations and countless internet websites (Sharma, 2013).

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directors, light and sound technicians, light-boys, cable TV network operators and even the unskilled staff laying cable lines for television networks3. Nonetheless, the discussion in the paper is largely confined to the work and labour issues of journalists (in newspapers and television channels4), whose images come first when one thinks about media workers.

The major data base of this paper is the primary information gained through in-depth interviews of print and television journalists in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR), during March 2014 to May 2015. In the absence of reliable data sets on the quantum and spread of journalists across categories and segments, the study was of exploratory nature, without engaging any statistical sampling techniques. The respondents were contacted mostly using personal networks and then through snow-balling techniques, where contacts provided by earlier respondents were used to identify prospective respondents. To gain a balanced picture, the respondents were drawn from both English and Hindi segments of the media industry, despite the striking variations in their socio-economic and human resource profiles5. Interviews were also held with some of the activists of journalists’ unions and with a few media-researchers. The information thus gathered, is supplemented with available secondary information and literature concerning media and media labour.

Broadly, the journalists in newspapers and television news channels can be divided into in-house journalists and the stringers (or free-lancers). As the name suggests, the former category of journalists are those who work directly with the media firms, while the latter represents an extended pool of workers who are often located far away from these firms but are roped into the labour network, mostly through informal contracts and piece rate payment systems. Based on their nature of appointment and terms of work, the first category of in-house journalists can be further divided into two, permanent journalists and contract-based journalists. Accordingly, the subsequent discussion in the essay focuses separately on the job-insecurities of each of these categories of journalists.

II. Job (In)securities and Working Conditions of Permanent Journalists

In India, majority of the news papers and television-based news channels are seemingly functioning within the organised sector, where the statutory regulatory and welfare framework of extant labour laws are applicable6. However, it is wrong to assume fair 3 These broader conceptualisations are based on insights from Mosco & McKercher (2008) and McKercher & Mosco (2007)4 Though the labour issues of radio journalists and jockeys are very similar to their counterparts in the print and television media, the present discussion does not focus on this segment of media workers. 5 Linguistically, most of the news papers and television channels catering to Hindi speaking states of India could be clubbed into two segments, English news papers/channels and Hindi news paper/channels. The profiles of journalists in both these segments vary considerably. In English-based media houses, most of the journalists are from urban backgrounds with sound English-education from metros, cities and big towns. As against this, a good chunk of the Hindi journalists are from rural backgrounds, albeit some of them may have done their studies in a city or big town, for some time. 6 Workers in the organised sector are normally benefitted from the provisions of various labour legislations applicable to the sector (stipulating minimum wages, permissible hours of work and so on). Further, right from recruitment till repatriation of the employees, the firms have to follow certain statutory norms

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wages and working conditions for all working journalists in the sector. In realty, the payments, working conditions as well as job security vary considerably, across various segments of workforce.

Permanent in-house journalists are the relatively more protected lot among the journalists, who work with regular, salaried jobs - with secured tenure of employment and better terms of work. Their working conditions are stipulated as per relevant labour laws and applicable statutory norms. Accordingly, this segment of the journalists enjoy better salaries, welfare measures and other fringe benefits (e.g. bonus, provident fund, paid leaves). For instance, the salaries and welfare provisions of permanent journalists working with newspapers in India are normally fixed based on the recommendations of Wage Boards7 set up from time to time, under the provisions of Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 19558 (WJA, 1955).

Due to their better salaries and improved working conditions, permanent in-house journalists are with more `protected’ and secure jobs. They are free from employment (tenure) insecurities, as the job is permanent till superannuation and the employers cannot fire them at will – as they are bound to follow a series of procedure as per the governing statutory guidelines. Naturally, this segment of workforce had been more prominent in terms of their participation in trade union activities and organised collective bargaining. Given this, in earlier times, the journalist unions were successful in realising the stipulated salaries and benefits as per Wage Board awards, announced from time to time. But this situation has changed considerably in recent times.

The recent episode of resistance of most of the big media houses to implement the recommendations of the Majithia Wage Board9’s award suggests that even for the permanent journalists it not easy to accomplish their lawfully eligible salaries and working conditions. The award was firmly resisted by majority of the media houses - citing that its additional burden would force the small firms in the industry to close down, while considerably affecting the financial viability of big firms10. Ultimately the case was

governing the industry/sector. All these, together assures fair wages, terms at work and some degree of employment-security.7 The wage boards for newspaper and news agency employees (including journalists) are statutory in nature. The prime responsibility for implementing the recommendations of the wage board rests with the state governments and union territories. The first Wage Board for journalists was constituted in 1956.8 Though the television news channels are not coming under Wage Board’s purview, the awards of these wage boards normally set the broader terms and conditions of work in television industry also, due to close linkages between the work and workforce of both these segments.9 This is the 6th and latest Wage Board constituted by the Government of India for journalists, under the Working Journalists and other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1955. The 6th Wage Board was initially constituted with Justice Narayana Kurup as Chairman from 24.05.2007. Later on, as Justice Kurup resigned the position with effect from 31.07.2008, Justice G.R. Majithia was appointed as the new Chairman. Justice Majithia took charge of the position on 04.03.2009.10 While this view was largely borrowed and propagated by some of the major media houses, the irony is that some of the smaller firms in the Industry (e.g. Assam Tribune) had implemented the Wage Board’s award much before the final verdict on this matter by the Supreme Court.

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brought into the court of law, by some journalist’s trade unions, which was fought aggressively by some of the big media houses. Though this case ultimately ended with a verdict of the Supreme Court of India in favour of implementing the award, the media firms could successively defer the implementation of the wage board’s recommendations for about 4 years since its award in 201011. Even now, there are several media firms where the employees are yet to get the benefits of the award, fully or partially12.

Over time, the number of journalists protected as per wage board’s provision is steadily declining in all the media firms, as new recruitments are mostly on contract basis. Most of the media houses are actively indulged in luring the `wage board employees’ to come out of wage borad’s protection by way of launching Voluntary Retirement Schemes(VRS)13 and by introducing company pay scales14, with relatively attractive provisions vis-à-vis wage board benefits. Several respondents told that many of the business houses offer better remuneration for contract journalists, especially at higher levels, mainly to tempt them to step out of the wage board schemes and to rejoin as contract employees. In some larger firms, the managements were even found using coercive measures to push permanent employees to short term contractual employment. Quite often, such pressures (for opting contractual positions or even VRS) are backed with threats of transferring those who are not falling in lines to far away places. Thus, often, the firms are found create compulsive conditions for the `wage board’ employees to forfeit their employment (tenure) security. This situation, along with recruitment of new employees only as contract workers, lead to a situation where the proportions of `wage board’ employees are strikingly on the decline in all media firms. The activists of journalist unions are finding this process as `killing of wage board’ as many of them doubt that there will not be any case for constituting yet another wage board in the future, given the rapid rate of extinction of this protected category of employees15.

11 Justice Majithia Wage Board submitted its report on 31.12.2010. Further to wage related recommendations, there were several welfare suggestions in the Majithia Wage Board’s award such as post-retirement benefits, suggestions for formulation of promotion policies, measures to improve enforcement of the wage board’s recommendations, possibility of granting paternity leave to male employees, extension of retirement age, exploring pension scheme possibilities and so on. On October 25, 2011, the union cabinet approved the recommendations of Majithia Wage Board. However, the actual implementation of the award got delayed for years due to protracted litigation by some of the big media houses and Indian Newspaper Society, a major industrial lobby. Finally, on February 7, 2014 the Supreme Court of India gave its final verdict in favour of the implementation of the award.12 Some of the interviewees pointed out that this act of non-implementation of Majithia Wage Board’s recommendations amounts to the contempt of the verdict of the apex court, which categorically stipulated that the revised salaries to be paid from April 2014 and the arrears to be settled in four installments within a year since the verdict.13 To some respondents, in certain firms `VRS’ often becomes `CRS’ (compulsory retirement scheme), as the employees are coerced to opt for `voluntary’ retirement, by introducing conditions that prompt them to do so. 14 The KSL scheme introduced in The Hindu and the company specific salary scheme offered in Business Standard are certain examples for this. 15 Thus, the saga of Wage Boards and Working Journalists Act, 1955, as an enabling mechanism for wage revision in the sector is seemingly nearing its end, with it natural death, due to non-availability of

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Mostly, the media houses are habitual in flouting the recommendations of awards of the Wage Boards set up from time to time. Further to the absence of effective mechanisms to ensure the implementation of awards of wage boards, there are also malpractices in human resource management that hinder the workers from realising these benefits. For instance, some contracts of hiring journalists even contain clauses that restrict the employee from proceeding with legal recourse, in the event of non-implementation of wage board awards (EPW, 2014). “We are unpaid workers dealing with paid-news!”. This satirical statement by a respondent aptly captures the dilemma of the journalists in contemporary times.

It is interesting to note that non-implementation of 6 th Wage Board’s awards for a long time did not even led to any visible protest or opposition from the working journalists in the industry. Such a striking feature of docility of workers is unanticipated in an industry, which has a long track record of trade unionism and collective bargaining, dating back to 1950s. The recent restrictions imposed by the Times of India Group on social networking behavior of journalists also confirm the abysmally weak bargaining status of journalists, besides reflecting on their awfully undignified positioning in the world of work. In August 2014, Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL) — publisher of the Times of India and Economic Times - directed all its journalists to disclose the details of their social media accounts (e.g. facebook; twitter) to the company. The employees are given with an option of either surrendering the credentials of their personal accounts or creating a new account for the organisation’s use. The employees were asked not to post any news links on their personal social media accounts, where as the company can post any material to these accounts as it deems fit. Subsequently, in response to the agitation in social media and blogs16, the BCCL had to dilute its position with amendments and compromises on its original stand. However, what is crucial here is that there was not much overt opposition from the employees on the company’s infringement into their freedom of expression in an industry which is generally vocal when it comes to matter of freedom of press. This is a clear indication that the degree of collective bargaining and job security in the media industry is too low to put an active voice of workers in the corporate business policies.

eligible beneficiaries! 16 Interestingly this story was not initially covered by most of the mainstream newspapers or television channels. It is only subsequent to reports in websites/blogs like Quartz India and Newslaundry, this matter of blatant intrusion into the freedom of workers came to lime light.

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III. Insecure World of Work of Contract-based Journalists

Available evidences suggest that, of late, in conformity with the global trends17 and the experience of many other service sector jobs in the new economy, the media jobs in India too witnessed a strong shift away from regular employment to more informal forms of employment. Accordingly, a considerable proportion of workers in media houses are now working with short term contracts or with project/output based work assignments. For instance, currently, as per rough estimates, it is only about 40-60 per cent of journalists are in the protected category of permanent workers, working with definite superannuation schemes, even in established media houses18.

Contractual employees are hired and fired at will. Payments are often done at consolidated or piece-rate (project) basis, which are normally far lower than the recommended levels as per Wage Board’s awards. For instance, the starting monthly salary of young print-journalists in Delhi, on contract, was in the range of INR 7000-INR 800019 in 2013 (Agarwal, 2013). At the national level (when we include the small cities/towns and regional press and television industries), the situation is still dismal 20. Quite often, even the meager payments are not paid regularly, which compel these workers to look for additional sources of income21.

No uniform system of wage payments exists for the journalists on contractual work. Accordingly, the modes of wage payment range from that of pure piece rate systems to strange arrangements that mix elements of both piece and time rate payments. To cite an example, PII (2009) reports the prevalence of a `voucher system’ in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh among the journalists working on contracts. In fact, the terms of this system are much worse compared to pure contractual arrangements. As per the `voucher system’, there are no written or formal contracts and the journalists take up their work on verbal instructions and at the end of every month sign in the muster rolls. The payment is given as a lump sum amount against a `voucher’ signed by the employee22 and hence the name. Journalists on contract/temporary work are usually over-exploited vis-à-vis their permanent counterparts, and are not covered by protective labour legislations and 17 ILO (2014) reports that, globally, the media and cultural industries are now characterised by a strong presence of temporary workers engaged through short-term contracts and project based work arrangements.18Even though there are restrictions for engaging contract workers in larger shares, these directions are often sidestepped.19 This is roughly about USD 110-125 per month. 1 USD = 63.92 INR - as on 26 May 2015.20 For instance, as per a study conducted in 2009, the starting salary of young journalists was as low as Rs.1500 and the proportion of those drawing less than Rs. 5000 per month was considerably high (PII, 2009). 21 Lower levels of payments (often coupled with inordinate delays) force many of the contractual workers to supplement their income by moonlighting or by occasionally taking up some piece-rate assignments. 22 While this is the consolidated payment for the employee’s work for several months, the firms are free from all the legal obligations and commitments that need to be fulfilled in the cases of permanent employees.

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welfare schemes available to permanent employees. Further, due to the constant fear of non-renewal of contract, these temporary employees work more diligently, compared to permanent counter parts. Short duration assignments and work on short-contracts restrict the workers to have any long term bonding with the workplace. In such circumstances, neither they can nor will they be inclined to entertain long term plans with a particular organisation, thereby weakening the scope for organised collective bargaining in the sector23. Accordingly, in most of the media houses, there are no actively functioning unions/collectives of journalists. Even if there are any active ones, their members are mostly those with higher degrees of job-security. Shorter spans of contract also results in low levels of socialisation24 and emotional bonding among peer workers, as most them believe that they will not be continuing in the same firm in the future. “Humko kya lena dena hai? Hum to ithar sirf mermen hai” (We don’t have any role here, as we are only guests”). This statement of a contractual journalist in a Hindi news channel aptly sums up the general shying-away tendency of temporary employees from larger issues concerning their work, firm and fellow-workers. IV. Stringers and the Flimsy Features of Freelance Work25

The job insecurities become much more severe when it comes to freelancers or stringers. Stringers are the extended pool of workers, located in far off small towns and rural areas, who continuously feed news to the media houses. Most of the television new channels in India (and to some extent the newspapers too) thrive on the services of stringers, who often are not professionally trained for the occupation. Stringers normally work without any formal appointments or work contracts and get paid on piece rate basis, on the basis of number of stories done by them for the news firms 26. Over and above the job insecurities, stringers also suffer acute levels of pay insecurities. Most of them work for firms on the basis of oral directions and get their remuneration irregularly. Many a times, the stories filed by these freelance reporters are rejected by editors. In such situations, they cannot even recover the production costs of the news item, not to tell about a reasonable and dependable level of income to survive.

In their race in the extremely competitive business, the media firms generally do not invest much on fixed costs (such as buying equipments) or training the stringers. In such situations, many self-trained stringers work with their own equipments. In such situations, to qualify as a freelancer, one has to have certain basic material resource base like a motor cycle/moped; a tape recorder; internet connection and so on. Quite

23 It is widely viewed that the waning of the active phase of trade unionism among Indian journalists partly owe to the large scale employment of contract workers and freelancers, who normally does not entertain longer plans with their present job/organisation24 The de-socialisation effects of contractual work are much deeper in the case of tele-reporters/journalists, who work from scattered and remote destinations. This aspect is further elaborated in a subsequent section.25 None of the respondents of the present study belonged to the category of stringers (freelancers). Thus, the discussion in this section is purely based on information gathered from other journalists and key respondents.26 Quite often, firms do not even issue ID cards to these journalists, in order to avoid the provisions of labour laws and other obligatory requirements.

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often, possession of a digital recorder and a two wheeler is a desirable `infrastructural-qualification’ or more or less the `sole qualification’ to become a stringer. “Have you seen `Bicycle Thieves’? Stringers’ case is like that - a job is assured only when you have a bicycle and a ladder! 27“ , told a young in-house journalist, currently working on contract basis, while referring to the plight of stringers.

Large scale employment of stringers or freelancers is a characteristic feature of most of the media firms in India. The success of most of the media business firms largely depend upon to what extent they can retain a sufficient pool of cheap labour force as stringers, who work on piece rate wages and mostly without any appointment order or formal tie-up with the parental firms. Engagement of stringers provides the twin advantages of cost-efficiency and numerical flexibility to the firm and thus, in the present competitive world of news journalism, maintaining a pool of cheap labour force is the most reckoned advantage for any business firm to thrive on (Roy, 2011).

Stringers in the rural area get low levels of wages (even as low as INR 500 month28). This force many of these workers to work for multiple news agencies or to combine their jobs with some other income earning activities (e.g. running a shop), which may not have any connection to journalism or media work. Due to lack of stable incomes and inadequate protection from their firms, many of these `own account journalists’ have to team up with local politicians, development functionaries and influential persons, thereby relegating their status as mouthpieces of the local elite. Even if some want to break this vicious circle of ill-paid and inferior journalism, they will find it very difficult to continue, challenging the money and muscle of local politicians and business (EPW, 2014; Roy, 2011).

Despite all these, journalism continues to be preferred job for many of these youngsters, essentially due to the glamour and sense of empowerment attached to this work. Connecting their identity with a big media house is considered as a status symbol that gives them a sense of empowerment. Roy (2011) points out that in spite of the lower monetary prospects, affiliation to a powerful media house as a reporter, often provides these youngsters an acceptance in their local society, which often provides them scope for raising brokering charges to mediate with government officials and politicians or sometime to fetch better `deals’ in the marriage market29.

27 This mention was about the acclaimed film ‘Bicycle Thieves’ (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, which portrayed a situation where the unemployed had to own a Bicycle and ladder to get selected as daily wage earner. In a pioneering study of domestic call centres in India, Remesh (2009) narrates a similar situation where possession of motorcycles/mopeds and a mobile-phone set increases the employability of job seekers in domestic segment of India’s call centres.28 This amount is less than 8 USD. 1 USD = 63.92 INR - as on 26 May 201529 Majority of the stringers are male journalists, though this pattern is gradually changing in recent years.

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V. Insecurities of Media Labour: Some Defining Factors

The growing job insecurities of workers and worsening work conditions in the media sector can be attributed to a multitude of factors. To begin with, the large scale emergence of television industry and news channels in the last two decades itself had some underlying employment implications. Further to challenging the print media’s monopoly over news, the television channels also poached many journalists from newspapers by offering better salary packages and benefits (EPW, 2014). As this period was an expansion phase for news papers too30, retaining a few resourceful journalists by offering attractive pay packages, but without considerably changing the total wage bill of the firm had become a central strategy of survival for media-firms. This inter alia resulted in a situation, where salaries of entry level journalists are hard-pressed to the bottom. In fact, the roots of the present situation of acute pay inequalities among journalists31 can be traced to this phase of cut-throat competition between print and television media houses. With large scale exodus of journalists from print media houses to television sector the strength and hold of trade unions in the news paper industry also shrunk, which provided the required climate for informalisation of workforce in the sector.

The past two decades also saw a discernible emergence of new technologies and production methods in the media sector, which also arguably intensified the job insecurities of journalists. Adoption and use of new technologies led to both positive and negative changes in the media work spaces. On the brighter side, advent of new technologies brought in new skills and opportunities for employees; allowed flexibilities at work; and enhanced productivity and capability of the journalists. But, on its flip side, technological change also implied skill obsolescence and redundancy of journalists (especially when they fail to continuously invest time and resources to learn new technologies and related skills).

Advent of new modes of work organisation such as outsourcing and tele-working also resulted in new challenges, as these options provided cheaper substitutes for erstwhile forms of news gathering, with less fixed cost on equipments and workers. Quite often, these new arrangements bring in worker redundancies, thereby helping the firms to eject some of the permanent technical staff, from the workforce. For instance, the role of a permanent editor is virtually redundant nowadays in the news rooms, as the broadcast reporters can independently record and edit sound and pictures, using new softwares.32

30 During this phase of emergence of television news channels, all over in the country, particularly in Hindi-speaking states, new news papers were launched and existing ones multiplied editions due to prevailing conducive factors such as rise in literacy, urbanisation and purchasing power (EPW, 2014)31 It is widely acknowledged that pay-Inequality is very high in the media sector – where the salaries of a few top class journalists in some of the media houses are even twenty to thirty times higher than that of their colleagues at the lower rungs.

32 Similarly, purchase of a new press and recruitment of workers to run and maintain them becomes unfeasible for a newspaper firm, given possibility of outsourcing its entire word processing operations, at a lower cost.

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The enormous scope for buying footage at cheaper rates from amateur and freelance reporters allows the firms to get rid of permanent in-house reporters and staff. In the current age of `Citizen’s Journalism’, where every person with a mobile telephone is a potential reporter, a media house need not bother to maintain a pool of permanent reporters at various places. Similarly, excessive use of graphics and other visual material help many of the media houses to repatriate bulk of technicians and reporters. In their place, young and easily controllable workers (who are ready to work for longer hours and with abysmal terms) are inducted (Bhushan, 2013) to attain the dual objective of cost minimization and productivity enhancement!

Many of the flexibilities for media employees, brought through new technologies, are with sweeping implications, though in a first glance, they appear to be empowering and enabling. The case of media workers on tele-working options is a classic case for this33. One the positive side, delocalisation of work and flexible tele-work options make the work more autonomous, independent and more productive than before. But, on the other hand, such atypical work-organisations also mean the `isolation of workers’, where one may not even know the whereabouts of his/her colleagues. Given this, it is natural to see that these `technologically isolated workers’ are less and less part of organised collective bargaining, and thereby more `productively docile’, from the firms’ point of view34.

The dwindling organised strength of workers also reflects the growing docility and submissiveness of workers to the decisions of corporate management. Despite their status as permanent journalists, job-permanency is only notional for many of the permanent journalists, as they believe that the firms can easily push them out, as and when required. The fact that many of them are not formally qualified for the work they are doing35 also adds to the insecurity of workers. Without saleable skills and approved credentials they often stagnate in the same organisation and find it very difficult to migrate to other media-organisations. As the sector is characterised by a high degree of inter-firm mobility and patterns of short term employment and free-lance work, missing standards or absence of formal certification often generates constraints in free access of employment. This situation forces many of the workers to continue with the same organisation with stagnated career options and let down self-esteem36. Along with this,

33 Jeffrey (2014) views it as a paradoxical development in today’s “networked individualism”, realised through digital revolution in sector.34 Further to this, the overarching presence of new technologies in media workspaces brings in newer possibilities of control and surveillance (e.g. CCTVs; networked tele-working), thereby further limiting the freedom of workers and enhancing their submissiveness to the management.35 There is a striking correlation between the age of journalists and the qualifications. A good proportion of elderly and experienced journalists are without any professional qualification in journalism. Most of them mastered journalism `by doing’. As against this, most of the new generation journalists are normally with a graduation in a general subject and a post graduation or diploma in journalism or in a related subject. Usually, most of the younger journalists have to work as interns or trainees for some time, before getting into a more regular option as a contractual employee or as a permanent journalist. 36 Absence of qualification of media workers came to discussions recently, when the Press Council India (PCI)’s Chairman Justice Markandey Katju set up a committee to recommend minimum pre-qualifications for entering into the profession of journalism. Though the primary thrust of this highly contested proposal was to “ensure higher standards and professionalism in journalism”, on the flip side, it also pointed out a

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the possibility of easily substituting permanent journalists by the temporary workers, from the vast reserve army of contractual workers (and, journalist-trainees37), provides greater scope for the firms to control and discipline the workforce. In such a situation, it is natural for the permanent employees to stay away from `undesirable’ collectivisation against the interests of the employers. The organising scene of contractual journalists is worse. While the constant fear about non-renewal of contracts prevents most of the experienced contractual journalists from joining in collective movements (such as trade unions), in recent times, even at the time of recruitment the young journalists are often to sign contracts that prevents them from joining a union38 (Sujata, 2011).

Yet another factor that constrains the freedom of journalists and intensifies their job insecurities is the active entry of business corporations in the print journalism and television news broadcasting. With the spread of practices like advertorials39, paid news40 and private treaties41, journalists have eventually lost their freedom to choose news items and areas of specialisations. In such a situation where conventional editorial functions are replaced by corporate business dictums, many journalists find it difficult to freely work on topics of their choice or to practice the skills on which they are trained. The sense of guilt and frustration in this context is evident from the words of a respondent: “Don’t think that we are bringing you reliable information and truth. Nor are we those who dare to expose anything unfair around. We are mere packaging workers

core deficiency in the occupational labour market of media labour – i.e. absence of `certified qualifications’ for bulk of the print journalists in India. Majority of the respondents though dispelled Justice Katju’s view that “certified qualifications would improve professionalism”, opined that formal qualifications would definitely help them to easily move from one firm to other (Thereby, avoiding a situation of stagnating careers at a single firm). Interestingly, many of them added that to survive and succeed in a given firm, more than professional qualifications what matters is one’s ability to gel with the industry’s requirement and corporate ethos, which primarily demand docility from workers, along with efficiency at work. To cite the words of a respondent: “Who told we are not qualified? We are qualified in many ways – long years of unemployment; some years of unpaid employment and continued years under-paid employment. Ready to work any time, any where and on any topic of Our Masters’ Choice; no hanky-panky on anything, no unions and not even a single word of dissent. Don’t you think all these are good qualifications?” 37 Engaging journalist-trainees with very little or no stipends is also a common system. A large chunk of these trainees are not absorbed eventually in the permanent positions. Regular and abundant availability of fresh pass outs from the mushrooming number of journalism institutes provides multiple advantages to the firms. Firstly, it assures availability of free or subsidised labour, thereby reducing the labour-cost of the firm. Secondly, it allows a cost-free recruitment of appropriately suitable workers. Thirdly, the system also helps the firms to retain a potential pool of job aspirants, and thereby ensuring a substantial degree of numerical flexibility to right-size the workforce, from time to time. The share of such trainees is likely to grow in future given the changes in overall policy with respect to engagement of apprentices. 38 This is similar to `yellow dog contracts’, which were widely used by employers in the United States to prevent formation of unions, till this practice was banned in early 1930s.39 In advertorials, advertisements are presented as if they are genuine news items, by blending the material for advertisement with editorial contents.40 Paid News is a pernicious practice, where some of the news papers and broadcasters provide positive coverage to some news items by accepting payments from the concerned parties. 41 Private treaties are a practice where media firm provides some dedicated advertising space to certain corporate entities (and assuring against negative coverage), by accepting (free of cost) a definite per cent of equity shares of those companies.

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and salesmen, busy making X as an icon or Y as not-worth-a-penny, on instructions from above.

In a sense, this can be viewed as a simultaneous act of `deskilling’ and `multi-tasking’42 – necessitated by changed business culture in the media sector. “We are like human machines, making and selling news as directed by the company, without applying mind”; `They don’t want `thinking’ journalists, they are only interested in “working journalists”!’; “Going for your passion is not the fashion in media”, these were some of the typical responses of frustrated young journalists, who had been working on matters which are far from his areas of specialisation.

Since early 1990s, Indian media sector is going through a process of `Murdochisation43’, which involves the `shift of media power from the public to privately owned, transnational, multi-media corporations controlling both delivery and the content of global information networks’ (Sonwalkar, 2002; Thussu, 2007; Thakurta, & Seabright, 2011). With increased participation of corporate capital in the media business, all firms are in a rat race for earning more advertising revenues; attaining higher viewer rates; and hunting more and more `breaking news’ and `exclusive stories’. As a result, the demarcations between marketing and editorial departments are rapidly disappearing. In this changed paradigm, `public service broadcasting’ feature of media is quickly waning. Now, the viewers are treated as mere consumers and the broadcasting, as a system of supplying media goods. Along with the corporatisation of the media business and transformation of `news into commodities’, there is also a visible advent and engagement of new business strategies including extreme localisation of viewership/readership and restriction of news/contents as per the liking of the affluent viewer groups (mostly consisting of middle class).

In this changed environment, the business culture in the newsrooms and media houses becomes increasingly akin to that in corporate business houses. The advent of new managerial styles, flexible employment and HR management practices44 testify this change45. As Bhushan (2013) reports, the increasingly promoter-driven television networks implies several alterations in news gathering, a prominent one being the marginalisation of the role of reporters in `news production’. It is viewed that with the `manufacturing’ of studio-based news, the role of reporters in the industry is now largely limited. Instead of hunting for news and reporting its details themselves, now their role

42 As, eventually, many of these journalists working as per dictums of business houses end up doing something else than what they were originally trained /hired for.43 The term is coined after Rupert Murdoch, who owned the Star (Satellite Television Asian Region), the advent of which had transformed the news and television scenario of India since early 1990s. 44 For instance, unlike earlier times, strict demarcations between lower and upper rungs of the workers do exist in the sector. In most of the media houses a “wall between the editorial team and management” exists, which prevents daily intervention of the bosses. 45 Bhushan (2013) reports that even the designations in the newsrooms are aped from corporate, as evident by increasing number of CEOs, Presidents and Vice Presidents in TV reportage and electronic broadcasting sector

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has been confined to that of a coordinator who arranges `external experts’ (for handy delivery of details of the news) for studio-based programmes46.

Mostly, Journalists do not have any control over their own work-schedule, in their continuous `run after news’. Working in night-shifts is a norm for most of the permanent journalists. Assigning time-wise, individual and team wise targets is quite common, which continuously force the employees to after their stipulated targets- word limits, articles, news-clippings. Given this sort of a situation, weekly holidays normally becomes `namesake holidays’ as most of them have to work for few hours on the holidays (or off-days) too - to complete their weekly targets. Many of them have to spend few hours on fishing out themes, data and material for next week’s work - as there will be hardly any time for planning during a normal working day – where they have to mechanically work for chasing the targets. Usually, owing to the peculiarities of their profession, most of the media workers have no choice but to be always available on call and willing to undertake field-based assignments, obviously setting limits to their own free times and work-family balancing. On top of it, the pressure to produce `saleable news’ leaves the workers with higher levels of stress47 and many of them eventually find it difficult to continue in the industry for several years. “Don’t call us press workers. We are hard-pressed workers!”. This was the response of a journalist, when asked about work intensity in the industry.

The firms do follow any clear-cut policies (or statutory norms) neither for recruitment nor for retrenchment. In the absence of stringent regulatory frameworks or restrictive labour laws, the firms enjoy a higher degree of numerical flexibility, where hiring and firing is done at will and whenever the firms can (not) afford to employ more. Accordingly, lay-off is a common trend in the highly competitive industry48.

Promotions are often decided taking into account the employees `closeness’ to the firm. Accordingly, instead of objective evaluation of performance of the workers, quite often `bar-room bondings’ and `good-relations’ with decision makers are the defining norms for going up in the career-ladder. In such situations, those who work diligently find it difficult to continue, resulting in higher rates of their attrition, soon after the announcement of each lists of promotion.

Pressing work demands and absence of defined time schedules make it difficult for most of the journalists to balance their work and family obligations. In the patriarchal society of India, of course, such a situation makes the work and workplace more

46 Again, this is a clear case of deskilling, where workers specialise on what they are not trained for. To quote the views of Bhushan (2013), who himself is a former television reporter, “The progressive deskilling of media labour has been accompanied by the scrapping of longer format, investigative reports and in-depth stories. The only skill expected of broadcast journalists is the ability to cover events and uplink sound bites. The reporter has never been as close to redundancy in India as he/she is today”. 47 `Peepli Live’ (2010), a satirical comedy film, portrays the continuous run of media workers (especially field level reporters) to `manufacture’ `saleable’ news.48 Sainath (2011) points out that during the financial meltdown commenced in October 2008, a minimum of 2,000 to 2,500 journalists lost their jobs—have been sacked, laid off, or retrenched— though there was no reports on this in the popular media.

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adversarial for women workers49. Consequently, many of them are forced to leave their jobs after marriage or during the time of pregnancy, maternity and child care.

IV. The Need for and Possibilities of Policy Interventions

The foregoing discussion suggests that the media revolution in India has been blooming at the cost of worsening labour standards, with growing numbers of print and television journalists having intense employment insecurities and dismal working conditions. In contrast to the outwardly rosy picture of the sector and its workers, in reality, majority of the journalists are hard-pressed and subjugated. New technologies, production organisations, changing business culture and novel ethos of human resource management together weaken the relative bargaining strength of the workers in this sector. This calls for a closer review of the work in media occupations and the insecurities faced by journalists, to design and introduce appropriate corrective policies.

As explained earlier, with the fast declining proportion of `wage board employees’ the efficacy of WJA, 1955 is steadily on the decline. This underlines the need for devising strategies to rejuvenate the Act and the wage board mechanism. The pernicious practices being followed by the media firms to get rid of the wage board protected employees need to be checked through introduction of effective clauses/amendments to WJA or through enactment of new act(s), if need arises.

The fast-increasing trend of contractualisation of media labour is essentially the root cause of most of the insecurities and vulnerabilities in the sector. Thus, there is a need to have certain effective interventions to check the evil of contractualisation in the media sector. Effective enforcement of existing legal instruments and introduction of new legislations for regulating contractual employment is one possibility in this direction.

Another area that warrants immediate policy intervention is right to association of journalists. At present, media labour is with acute levels of voice and representation insecurity. The degree of collective bargaining and rate of participation of workers in labour unions are abysmally low. On top of it, there are pernicious practices being followed by media corporate, which prevents the journalists from joining unions. In view of this, there is a need to strengthen collective bargaining in the industry. This warrants active governmental intervention through facilitating social dialogue and tripartism in the sector.

Both WJA, 1955 and Wage Board mechanisms date back to a time when the TV and broadcast media and other new media forms (e.g.web-journalism) were non-existent. Accordingly, the growing mass of journalists in the mushrooming television and on-line segments are deprived of the benefits of these protective measures. This situation 49 Tabassum (2013) views that the very industry is not designed for women. Child care facilities and maternity leave are still not a right in most media organisations. The author also cites instances of termination and demotion of women workers, at the time of maternity. Citing a specific case, the author shows that how a “responsible” women journalist became “not reliable anymore”, soon after pregnancy and child-birth.

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highlights the need for extending the scope and coverage of WJA and Wage Boards to journalists in television and on-line segments.

Right now, the purview of Press Council, a watch dog institution in the media world, is restricted only to print media. Given this, there is a need for expanding the terms of reference and scope of Press Council of India by converting it as a `Media Council’, with a mandate to cover not only the print segment but also other segments of media economy.

The appointment of a new Media Commission to understand the current status and issues of working journalists is yet another desirable policy requirement. Such a commission can come out with effective policy prescriptions to correct various issues concerning working journalists, including: growing informalisation of work; widening pay/wage inequalities; lack of adequate social security measures; dismal working conditions and so on. Such commission can also recommend on regulating unhealthy growth of monopoly practices, cartelization and anti-competitive behavior in the media sector.

Given the poor availability of dependable statistics on the sector, there is also a felt need to develop comprehensive and reliable data base on the quantum and spread of journalists across various categories. Availability of such reliable data sets will inter alia facilitate a ground for formulation of corrective policies that effectively address and remedy many of the job insecurities of working journalists of modern times.

References

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Bhushan, Sandeep (2013): `Manufacturing News’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No.23, June 8.

EPW (2014): `The Not-so-Fine Print’, EPW Editorial, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX No.13, March 29, 2014.

ILO (2014): Employment relationships in the media and culture industries: Issues paper for the `Global Dialogue Forum on employment relationships in the media and culture sector (14 and 15 May 2014), International Labour Office, Geneva.

Jeffrey, Robin (2014): India's 'Bully Pulpit': Media in a Time of Digital Revolution, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX No. 26-27, June 28.

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Mosco, Vincent & McKercher, Catherine (2008): `Laboring of Communication’, Lexington Books, Plymouth.

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Sharma, Anuradha (2013): `In Need of a Leveson? Journalism in India in times of Paid News and `Private Treaties’’, Fellowship Paper, Reuters Institute University of Oxford, London.Sonwalkar, P. (2002): `Murdochization of the Indian Press: From By-line to Bottom-line’, Media, Culture and Society, 24 (6)

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