There is a new bogeyman out there for the paranoid swadeshis in the media business.
It is the foreign direct investment in print journalism, which in the hallucinatory vision of
some cosy monopolists in the Indian information market will mark the beginning of a new imperialism-and the end of the long-cherished national freedom. This is the fear of competition-maybe false intimations of mortality-doubling as patriotism. For, their rusty argument is not sustainable in the new marketplace of ideas where borders have long become redundant. McLuhan's global village has already grown into a sovereign republic where the flow of information-whether it is an image or a word-hardly recognises the restrictions of the state. Certain incorrigible Luddites in the Indian print business, though, continue to resist the natural laws of globalisation, that too by holding on to a 46-year-old cabinet resolution that prevents foreign ownership in print media. Since the early 1990s, the issue of foreign ownership has become a "disputed topic" between swadeshis and free marketeers in media, with the government taking no definitive position. Now, the debate has got a new forum in the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology.

It is all about postponing the inevitable. After all, the so-called foreign hand is very much active in the Indian media market. Some of the major television channels are partly or fully owned by foreigners and despite the demons in the sky, India is still India, owned and managed by Indians. Then there is the Internet that accepts no national borders, including India's. That is, you can have it on the screen and on the web, but not on the printed page. So, Nehru's swadeshi news vision has already been repudiated by market and technology. What is happening now is a mockery of open market by the beneficiaries of it. You can't propagate the gospel of globalisation and withdraw into the shell of protectionism when it comes to your own business, and that is what the anti-foreign, conveniently patriotic pressure group in print business is doing now. They are scared, but there is no need for the parliamentarians and the government to be scared of the market, of those who want to make the best use of it through competition and quality. Or, of those pseudo-patriots whose priority is not Indian democracy but their protected businesses. Market only enhances democracy.