 As you approach the 70th anniversary of your independence, it's never stood out more starkly the great paradox of the Indian press, the time press now media. If you look at in 1893, Reuters appointed a special correspondent to tour the famine-affected districts of India and write a rebuttal in his forward of the book he writes, in the forward of the book the guy writes, to give a rebuttal to the noisy riffraff of the nationalist press. It's just amazing to think that in 1893 there was a press that could make so much noise and he writes that he was sent there by Reuters on a special request of her Majesty's government. Her Majesty's government was so disturbed by the noisy riffraff of the nationalist, we talk about 1893, okay. How old was the Congress, 8 years? That they could, a tiny press was putting the mightiest empire on the world on the defensive. By the way after the 1857 uprising, tens of thousands of pamphlets, the newsletters of those days were all proscribed, tens of thousands. And it's also very interesting how they handled censorship, but getting back to the guy who, you know, the Reuters, his name was SHM Meriwether, here are many wonderful things that this independent objective news agency called Reuters readily appointed a correspondent at the request of Her Majesty's government just to tour the, and to respond to the noisy riffraff of the, it was also a period when people like Tilak were writing on the famine, on hunger, even willing to join hands with the British in the famine situation and things like that, in that kind of place. So even it means that there were a lot of others whom we don't know, beyond Tilak, they were very small, but they were able to make an impact. So much that the British felt the need to reply to the noisy riffraff. Fast forward to today, this is your paradox. In 1893, a tiny press, circulations in hundreds, a tiny press played a gigantic social role. Today, a gigantic media plays the narrowest social role. That is the transformation over the last hundred odd years. Now you've got a huge, huge media, look Gandhi at his height, 5000 print order. There's another reason why it had such an impact because it was the journalism of moral authority. You had the Hindu Mahasabha, you had the Muslim League and their publications that starts around 1925, 1930. But you had a journalism of moral authority where Gandhi wrote something or one of the others wrote something. Every major imperialist newspaper had to reply, had to quote him, rebut him. The fact is that his journal may have had a print order of 3000, 2000, whatever it was. But the impact was across the spectrum. So you had a very different kind of situation. The point I'm making to you is as you're coming to your 70th anniversary of independence, you have two things. One you have a regime. For the first time, not a single person in the establishment had anything to do with the freedom struggle unless it was in the role of an approver or something like that. And not even connected to anyone who had anything to do with the freedom struggle in terms of fighting British and freeing the country from imperialism. And the second is that you have the most corporatized media in your history. Never before has so much been owed by so few to talk to so many in India, in the Indian media. The levels of monopoly are simply stunning. What you call, I find that audiences are simply unaware of it that when I go to Kerala or Maharashtra or ETV they think is the largest regional language spread, 19 languages. But ETV is not Inadu TV, it is not owned by Ramoji Rao, it is owned by Mukesh Ambani. Only the Telugu channels, only the Telugu channels remain with Ramoji Rao. All the others are owned by Mukesh Bhai who simply does not know how many channels he owns or how many media outlets he owns. I could probably tell him much more than he knows, but he owns. The second is in that monopoly that has happened, a gigantic change has occurred in that type of monopoly. 30 years ago Ramnath Goenka had a monopoly in print media in some regions. Times of India had a monopoly in Bombay, Maharashtra, that side. Hindu had its monopoly in the south. You had monopoly within media, media monopolies and within sectors. Say none of that is relevant, none of that is relevant. What we thought were very large media monopolies are small departments of much larger conglomerates. So network 18 is the biggest media network, but it is such an insignificant part of Mukesh Ambani's empire, it is such an insignificant part of reliance. It is a very significant part in the role it plays, but in terms of assets, money, its value, its reach, I mean it is very tiny compared, I mean how would you say compare it to reliance in manmade fiber or petroleum or any other thing, you cannot make a comparison. The media operations, so it is like what were the media monopolies of yesteryear are departments of super conglomerations, that is not true only of India. It happened much earlier in the United States and Australia, it happened much earlier. If you look, take all of us watch or sometime I mean many of us have given up watching Saturday Night Live, NBC, CBS, ABC, these were the biggest media monopolies in television. They are not half as important as they were and anyway this process of change in the nature of monopoly had already occurred. NBC, the parent company of NBC was RCA, Radio Corporation of America, seventh biggest military contractor of the Pentagon and one of the most important military contractors in human history because every missile of the NATO alliance has Radio Corporation of America in the warhead, that is your guided missile. That computer guidance comes from the Radio Corporation of America. So NBC was owned by Radio Corporation of America, a serious, serious military contractor who was Radio Corporation owned by, Radio Corporation was owned by General Electric. The second biggest military contractor in the world. Now how the heck can that not have an impact on the coverage of Cold War, of conflict, of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of NBC, Jack Welch called the heads of NBC and told them to get in line, which was completely unnecessary in my opinion, they were just trying to figure out what the line is so that they could implement it immediately and so you have what Ben Begdickian who wrote the greatest book on media of the last quarter of the 20th century, he looks at media conglomerates, banking conglomerates, armaments conglomerates and shows you how fast they are merging and they are so connected, the directors of the media companies sit on the boards of the armament companies, armament companies, directors sit on the board of the banks and on the media companies, the bank companies of banks of course sit on the boards of everybody, it was so intricately, Armand Matelar once drew a diagram which is crazy for the number of lines of intersection, Begdickian called it corporate incest within corporate incest, mind you this guy was the national editor of the Washington Post two times Pulitzer Prize winner whose book called Media Monopoly was read by anybody in any significant way because it was unshakable and how the hell will you review a book that is telling you that your newspaper is really a front for the Pentagon or whatever it was he was implying, right. So you have that process of moving from the localized single monopoly into becoming the media monopoly is becoming arms or PR departments or whatever you want of much larger conglomerates and that is the process now that rapidly unfolding in India in the thing and then you have got millions of other inflict you know the conflict of interest which you used to have between one shipping tycoon and who is a newspaper owner and the government or that is now replaced by more layers of conflict of interest than anyone can count. Last week the times of India and the DNA and I believe a couple of others I have not been able to confirm but the times of India and DNA both withdrew stories entirely in the public domain out of fear, okay. What were the stories the election affidavits of Amit Shah and Smriti Irani now see how many things you have got to be afraid of how many things you have got to be afraid of you know as I said the conflict of interest in the 80s 90s where time Bennett Coleman and co had shipping jute cement steel it is not much it is it is so large that what you used to call the rat race and all that that is all gone yeah the rat race in the media is over the rats have won.