Olympics-The India Story

by Boria Majumdar

92. Ibid., p. 29.

  93. Textual and audience studies since the early 1980s have shown that different audience respond to the same television product in multiple ways, based on local cultural and social factors, and that responses are often different from those intended by producers. See for instance, Lean Ang, Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (London: Methuen, 1985).

  94. Bhaskar Ghose, Doordarshan Days (New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2005), pp. 28–30.

  95. Sumit Mitra, Anita Kaul, ‘The Tedium is the Message’, India Today, May 31, 1982, p. 16.

  96. Sevanti Ninan, Through the Magic Window: Television and Change in India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995), p. 30.

  97. Audience Research Unit, Directorate General Doordarshan, Cited in Joshi, Asia Speaks Out, pp. 5–8.

  98. David Page and William Crawley, Satellites Over South Asia: Broadcasting, Culture and the Public Interest (New Delhi: Sage, 2001). p. 56.

  99. Audience Research Unit, Directorate General Doordarshan, Cited in Joshi, Asia Speaks Out, pp. 5–8; NRS 2006.

  100. Atul Kohli, ‘Politics of Economic Liberalization in India’, World Development, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1989), p. 308.

  101. Ibid., p. 312.

  102. Nikhil Sinha, ‘Doordarshan, Public Service Broadcasting and the Impact of Globalization: A Short History’, in Price and Verhulst (eds.), Broadcasting Reform in India, p. 35.

  103. Ibid., pp. 63–64.

  104. Ibid., p. 35.

  105. Doordarshan, http://www.ddindia.gov.in/About + DD/Commercial + Service accessed 10 July 2005.

  106. Mohammad Khan, head of Enterprise Nexus Lowe advertising, quoted in William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 74.

  107. Mohammad Khan interviewed by Tara Sehgal, ‘In London, I Felt a Fool. In the US, I Felt so Superior’, Tehelka, Vol. 5, Issue 4, 2 February 2008.

  108. See for instance, Government of India, An Indian Personality for Television: Report of the Working Group on Software for Doordarshan, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1985.)

  109. Purnima Mankekar, ‘National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 20, No. 3 (August 1993), p. 547.

  110. Quoted in Victoria L. Farmer, ‘What a TV Epic did to India’, the Hindu (17 November 1996)

  111. Lavina Melwani, ‘Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana Serial Re-Ignites Epic’s Values’, India Worldwide, February, 1988, pp. 56–57. Quoted in Philip Lutgendorf, ‘All in the (Raghu) Family: A Video Epic in Cultural Context’ in Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley (eds.) Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. 224.

  112. Arvind Rajagopal, Politics After Television, p. 15.

  113. Robin Jeffrey, ‘An Unbottled Genie: Television in Asia, An Introduction’ in Nalin Mehta, Robin Jeffrey (eds.), ‘Television in Asia’ section, Biblio: A Review of Books, Vol. XI, Nos. 9 & 10, (New Delhi: September—October 2006, p. 13).

  114. Marshall McLuhan in ‘Playboy interview’ reproduced in Eric McLuhan & Frank Zingrone (eds.), Essential McLuhan (London: Routledge, 1997, first published 1995), p. 239.

  115. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge, K. Paul, 1964) and Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Makings of Typographic Man (New York: Mentor, 1969, first published 1962).

  116. McLuhan quoted in William Kuhns, ‘A McLuhan Sourcebook’ in McLuhan & Zingrone (eds.), Essential McLuhan, p. 272.

  117. Ibid., p. 273.

  118. Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister of India, in ‘Foreword’, IX Asian Games Delhi 1982, Official Report Vol. 1 (New Delhi: IX Asian Games Special Organising Committee, 1985). Page number not listed.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Hockey Isn’t just Cricket’, the Indian Express, 7 September 2002.

  2. Sundeep Misra, ‘Don’t Compare Hockey with Cricket’, reproduced on www.indianhockey.com/html3/sundeep20.php accessed 2 November 2007.

  3. The manager and the channel cannot be named for obvious reasons. However, I have permission to quote the conversation, without identifying the source.

  4. ESPN-Star had the T20 World Cup broadcast rights for India.

  5. Nalin Mehta, ‘The Great Indian Willow Trick: Cricket, Nationalism and India’s TV News Revolution, 1998–2005’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 24, No. 9 (September 2007), pp. 1187–99.

  6. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 90. For Indian cricket and the nationalist imagination, see for instance, Ramachandra Guha, Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport (New Delhi: Pan Macmillan, 2002); Boria Majumdar, Twenty Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004); Ashis Nandy, Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of the Games (New York: Viking, 1989).

  7. The players were S.V. Sunil, Vickram Kanth, Ignace Turkey and V. Raghunath. They were accompanied by Ramesh Parameshwaram, assistant coach of the national team and R.K. Shetty, Karnataka State Hockey Association President. Report telecast on Times Now, 26 September 2007.

  8. Live phone interview with Nalin Mehta on Times Now, 26 September 2007. The Indian Hockey Federation acted fast to nip the hunger strike but the point had been made.

  9. Quoted in T.N. Raghu, ‘Starved Hockey Ready to Fast’, the Asian Age, 27 September 2007.

  10. The union ministry of information and broadcasting has a master list of 290 channels: 207 of these are licensed Indian private channels, 54 are foreign-owned and 27 are run by the state-controlled Doordarshan. http://mib.nic.in/informationb/CODES/frames.htm (5 November 2005; 11 November 2006), accessed 30 November 2006 and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Answer to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2056 (9 March 2006), http://l64.100.24.208/lsql4/quest.asp?qref=26637, accessed 29 May 2006, [hereafter MIB + date].

  The actual numbers of channels is much higher because a large number of foreign and local channels are not covered by official data. A good example is the Delhi High Court order of 17 June 2006 that restrained 92 cable operators in 11 states from telecasting the FIFA World Cup through free-to-air satellite channels like TV5, Cambodia TV, CC5 Channel, CCTV1, Super Sports, Multi-choice and Dream Satellite because none of them were registered with the MIB. ‘Delhi High Court Restrains 92 Cable Operators From Unauthorized Telecast of the FIFA World Cup’, 17 June 2006, http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k6/june/june240.htm, accessed 21 June 2006.

  11. Interview with Lalit Modi, vice-president, BCCI, 12 October 2006, http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/262512.html, accessed 13 October 2006.

  12. Samyabrata Ray Goswami ‘Man U Model for BCCI’, the Telegraph, 28 December 2005, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051228/asp/nation/story_5652982.asp, accessed 6 January 2006.

  13. India had 34,858,000 TV sets in 1992. Joshi, Trivedi, Mass Media and Cross-Cultural Communication, p. 16. The National Readership Studies Council 2006 survey estimated a total of 112 million television sets in India. NRS 2006 Press Release—Key Findings, p. 4.

  14. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry [hereafter PwC-FICCI], The Indian Entertainment Industry, p 36.

  15. NRS 2006 estimated 68 million satellite and cable households, NRS 2006 Press Release—Key Findings, p. 4.

  16. India and China are not very big revenue earners for global corporations yet. For instance, Rupert Murdoch’s pan-Asian network, Star, contributed less than 2% of News Corporation’s total revenues until early 2005 but in strategic terms, the pure numbers of China and India mean that these two countries are key focus areas for the corporation over the next decade. Interview with Peter Mukerjea, chief executive, Star India, 1999–2006, Mumbai: 12 January 2005. For Chinese television, see for instanc
e, Zhenzi Wang, Zhi-Qiang Liu & Steve Fore, ‘Facing the Challenge: Chinese Television in the New Media Era’, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, ‘Copyright, Media and Innovation’, No. 114 (February 2005), pp. 135–46; Michael Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

  17. See for instance, Kausik Bandopadhyaya, ‘1911 in Retrospect: A Revisionist Perspective on a Famous Indian Sporting Victory’ in Boria Majumdar, J.A. Mangan (eds.), Sport in South Asian Society: Past and Present (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 27–47.

  18. Amrit Bazar Patrika, 31 July 1911.

  19. Quoted in Mohun Bagan Platinum Jubilee Souvenir , (Calcutta: Mohun Bagan Club, 1964), p. 25

  20. Nayak, 4 August 1911.

  21. Swami Vivekanand, quoted in Boria Majumdar, Kausik Bandopadhyaya, ‘From Recreation to Competition: Early History of Indian Football’, in ‘A Social History of Indian Football: Striving to Score’, Soccer & Society, Special Issue, Vol. 6, No. 2/3, June—September 2005, p. 135

  22. Boria Majumdar, Kausik Bandopadhyaya, Introduction to ‘A Social History of Indian Football: Striving to Score’, Soccer & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2/3, June/September 2005, p. 122.

  23. Mihir Bose, A History of Indian Cricket (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1990), pp. 16–17.

  24. For details see Boria Majumdar and Kausik Bandopadhyaya, Goalless: The Story of a Unique Footballing Nation (New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2006).

  25. Boria Majumdar, Kausik Bandopadhyay, Introduction to ‘A Social History of Indian Football: Striving to Score’, Soccer & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2/3, June/September 2005, p. 288.

  26. Alarm bells rang in India when Helsinki, in 1949, expressed its unwillingness to host all hockey teams for 1952 because of lack of accommodation. The Indian Hockey Federation immediately proposed to the IOC to host the hockey event separately in Delhi. Eventually Helsinki did host the event but the Indian offer was indicative of how important hockey was to Indian sport. Letter from Dr. A.C. Chatterji, honorary secretary, Indian Hockey Federation to Demaurex, honorary secretary, Switzerland Hockey Federation, May 10, 1949, CIO FI FIH PROGR OU MO 0114 33 FIH-Hockey Programme 1946–1949.

  27. Anthony De Mello, Portrait of Indian Sport (London: P.R. Macmillan, 1959), p. 3.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. See Ramachandra Guha, Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport (New Delhi: Pan Macmillan, 2002). Mihir Bose, History of Indian Cricket (London: Andre Deutsch, 2002).

  31. Boria Majumdar, ‘When the Sepoys Batted: 1830–50 on the Playing Field’, in Boria Majumdar & Sharmishtha Gooptu, Revisiting 1857: Myth, Memory, History (New Delhi: Roli, 2007), pp. 73–91.

  32. See Boria Majumdar, Twenty Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004).

  33. Anthony De Mello, Portrait of Indian Sport (London: P.R. Macmillan, 1959), p. 9.

  34. Ibid, pp. 9–10.

  35. Ashwini Kumar, ‘Whither Indian Hockey-I?’, Indian Olympic Association Official Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2, January—March 1960.

  36. Eastern Railways advertisement, published in Indian Olympic News, Vol. 1, No. 3, June 1962.

  37. South Eastern Railways advertisement, published in Indian Olympic News, Vol. 1, No. 2, May 1962.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Air India advertisement, published in Indian Olympic News, Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1962.

  40. J. Butalia, Jwalamukhi—the Olympia of India, Indian Olympic Association Official Bulletin, Vol. 2, January—March 1960, p. 35.

  41. Ibid, pp. 36–37.

  42. Ibid, p. 38.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Mir Ranjan Negi’s Interview with Shekhar Gupta, the Indian Express, 17 September 2007.

  45. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Hockey Just Isn’t Cricket’, the Indian Express, 7 September 2002.

  46. Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (India: 2007), pp. 736–37.

  47. Sevanti Ninan, Through the Magic Window: Television and Change in India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995), p. 30.

  48. David Page and William Crawley, Satellites Over South Asia: Broadcasting, Culture and the Public Interest (New Delhi: Sage, 2001). p. 56.

  49. Audience Research Unit, Directorate General Doordarshan, Cited in Joshi, Asia Speaks Out, pp. 5–8; NRS 2006.

  50. Audience Research Unit, Directorate General Doordarshan, 1995. Cited in Joshi & Trivedi, Mass Media and Cross-Cultural Communication, p. 16.

  51. William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 98.

  52. See for instance Purnima Mankekar, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); Arvind Rajagopal, Politics After Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Indian Public (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  53. Quoted in William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 74—75.

  54. Vir Sanghvi, ‘A New Middle Class Fidelity?’ the Hindustan Times, New Delhi, 20 May 2006, http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1702508,00300001.htm, accessed 21 May 2006.

  55. Shalimar Mary, letter to editor, the Indian Express, 5 October 1986. Quoted in Nandy, The Tao of Cricket, pp. 1–2.

  56. Harsha Bhogle, ‘India Needs to Rediscover Another Sport’, the Week, 27 July 2003.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Rohit Brijnath, ‘The Lopsidedness in Indian Sports’, Sportstar, 5–11 June, 2004.

  59. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought a controlling stake in Sky in 1983 and re-launched as Sky Television in 1989 but it made heavy losses until 1992 when BSkyB (Sky and BSB merged in 1990) acquired the rights to broadcast Premier League Soccer games for $465 million. Almost a million subscribers signed up immediately and by 1993 it reached financial stability. Bharat Anand & Kate Attea, ‘News Corporation’, Harvard Business School Case No. 9-702-425 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, rev. 27 June 2003), p. 8. For a concise history of Sky Television and News Corporation’s television operations see also, Pankaj Ghemawat, ‘British Satellite Broadcasting Versus Sky Television,’ Harvard Business School Case No. 9-794-031 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, rev. ed. 22 August 1994).

  60. In 1999, for instance, News Corporation owned the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball club and had shares in the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers basketball clubs, and the New York Rangers. In September 1998, BSkyB launched a takeover bid for Manchester United, the world’s richest football club, which was blocked by the British Mergers and Monopolies Commission on grounds that it was ‘anti-competitive’ in broadcasting. David Rowe, ‘To Serve and To Sell: Media Sport and Cultural Citizenship’, Paper at How you Play the Game: First International Conference on Sports and Human Rights, Sydney, 1–3 September 1999, p. 186, http://www.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/1999/nsw/p182-191.pdf, accessed 27 August 2006.

  61. Emphasis is mine. Rupert Murdoch to his shareholders in Adelaide, 15 October 1996. Quoted in S. Millar, ‘Courtship Ends as Soccer and TV are United’, the Guardian, 7 September 1998.

  62. Boria Majumdar, Twenty Two Yards to Freedom, p. 176. ESPN is part of ESPN-Star, which is jointly owned by News Corporation and Walt Disney.

  63. Boria Majumdar, The Illustrated History of Indian Cricket, (New Delhi: Roli, 2006), p. 198.

  64. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P. Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995, The Secretary Information & Broadcasting, Government of India & Others vs. Cricket Association of Bengal & Others, with Writ Petition (Civil) No. 836 of 1993, Cricket Association of Bengal vs. Union of India and Others (decided on 9 February 1995).

  65. The Indian Telegraph Act, Act XIII of 1885, pt. II.

  66. Section 7 of Act 47 of 1957, an amendment
to the 1885 Act. There were five amendments to this Act from 1957 to 1974. Sevanti Ninan, ‘History of Indian Broadcasting Reform’, in Monroe Price & Stefaan G. Verhulst (eds.) Broadcasting Reform in India: Media Law from a Global Perspective (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 1–2.

  67. The five nations that eventually participated in the Hero Cup were India, South Africa, West Indies, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

  68. Doordarshan put in a bid of Rs 10 million (roughly $3,18,471 at 1993 exchange rates), as against TWI’s vastly superior minimum guarantee of $5,50,000. It was specified that if TWI received any sum in excess of the guaranteed sum, it would be split in a 70:30 ratio in favour of CAB. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P. Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  69. Boria Majumdar, ‘Cricket, Television, Globalization: Defining India in the 1990s’, paper presented at the ‘Television in Asia’ conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 14 December 2005, p. 2.

  70. VSNL was created as a public sector undertaking in 1986. The Government of India first disinvested some stake in 1999 but remained a majority stakeholder till 2002. It is now managed by the Tatas.

  71. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  72. A senior ministry official quoted in Boria Majumdar, ‘Cricket, Television, Globalization: Defining India in the 1990s’, paper presented at the ‘Television in Asia’ conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 14 December 2005, p. 7.

  73. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  74. C.R. Irani, ‘Someone is Remembering Sanjay Gandhi’, the Statesman, 13 November 1993.

  75. Boria Majumdar, ‘Cricket, Television, Globalization: Defining India in the 1990s’, paper presented at the ‘Television in Asia’ conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 14 December 2005, p. 8.

  76. Supreme Court Case 161 before Justices, P.B. Sawant, S Mohan and B.P Jeevan Reddy, Civil Appeals Nos. 1429–30 of 1995.

  77. Boria Majumdar, ‘Cricket, Television, Globalization: Defining India in the 1990s’, paper presented at the ‘Television in Asia’ conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 14 December 2005, pp. 9–10.