 He is the Head of the Department of Assam University, Silture, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism. Welcome, sir. Thank you very much. Sir, like we have to know about the latest trends in media education today, like media, we know what is media, but actually we just want to know from you what is the general media education is all about. Well, if you want me to highlight the global perspective, it is quite interesting because media education has become more important than many other social sciences. In fact, today, after medicine and engineering and business administration, learning mass communication or media has become very important. And in the Indian context, there has been a big boom in media education during the last 20 years. And it has, in terms of quantity, there is leapfrogging. But if you ask me about the quality, we have to move a long way to achieve the global standards. I must tell you, you see, many of the public sector institutions which are offering media education. Let me be very precise, it is university departments. They have a serious problem of manpower as well as infrastructure. The funds are less. I must confess, being in this profession for the last almost four decades, I must confess that there is still a lot to be done in terms of improving the quality. And when it comes to money, most of the state universities do not have money. And in the central universities, now the focus is on increasing the quantity of enrollment rather than improving the infrastructure. Of course, it varies from one university to another university. And also, somewhere I think we do not have a clear-cut idea of what we are teaching, which medium we should focus upon. And the syllabi, which are current in different universities, I do not believe in uniformity, but at the same time we must have a kind of standard that is missing totally. And nomenclatures are also different, leading to confusion. One department is department of mass communication, another uses journalism and communication. Some are communication. Now we have a new trend, media and cultural studies, which has almost become outdated in the West. And when they leave everything, we grab it up. And again, some departments are media studies. I don't understand why there should be different nomenclatures. Let us be quite honest. Honest means, you see, everybody joins the departments of mass communication or media studies, whatever nomenclature you give, keeping in view the job market. Every young man or woman wants a job. And by producing people unfit for the market, we are not doing any justice to the present generation. That is number one. Number two, I must tell you, journalism is not merely writing news or giving headlines or translating or just designing. It is beyond that. So there is an urgent need for us to have a meaningful balance between theory and practice. And also making some courses purely academic, purely theoretical, it does not serve any purpose. You see, in this country where unemployment is a very high ratio, we have to produce quality people for the profession. And this profession is one which is now in a mode of expansion. And you have to produce people who fit into the profession. So let us consider this fact as the basis of our media education. In other words, there is an urgent need to overhaul the entire system. The entire system means your teaching. See, I always talk of one thing, which the business management people use, total quality management, TQM. It means, you see, the administration should be of quality, teaching should be of quality and the learners should also be of quality. And journalism is not, you know, like any other liberal arts or social science. It demands a fair knowledge of all the other disciplines. And it includes every other discipline on earth. So we have to understand, we require language, we require technology, we require a sound background in other disciplines, especially social sciences. So if it is the case, I think there is a need for us to change the course of media education. And we hash the whole syllabus and try to, you know, make media education student-centric. See the whole problem in higher education today it is teacher-centric. We think teacher knows all and the students know nothing. I think we have to come to the conclusion that both the teacher and the student are learners. And learning is lifelong learning. That is the new concept. And media education should move away from teacher-centric education to student-centric education. When I say student-centric education, a teacher becomes a friend, guide and philosopher. And the futile attitude of that I am teacher and your student and I will come to the class and I will not, you know, think of you, but I will teach and go, it doesn't gel. I believe certainly we have to make students learn on their own, make them independent learners at the highest level. No, we are spoon feeding. We are trying to spoon feed, perpetuate the same old system of learning. In fact, I tell you, we should start unlearning and de-learning, what all we have learned till now. The focus should be on to learn new things. The world is changing and people are changing. Why should we not change? Media education should change. Sir, like you have talked about, just now you have mentioned about the quality of teaching that has to be improved. The media has undergone a huge change now. What about broadcast use of media in teaching? Like we know what is print media and everything ends up in print media. But what about broadcast media or electronic media which can be used? I think this question is quite relevant for the simple reason. Now we have started having departments of electronic media as well as departments of visual communication down south. There is a great debate going on whether there should be electronic media course, whether there should be visual communication course which do not become part of the mainstream media education. I feel that we have to sit and finalize a nomenclature. My contention, my opinion is that if you are good in one medium, you will be good in another medium also. But because I come from print medium, I have perhaps a parochial attitude towards the whole issue. If I can become a good print journalist, I can also become a good electronic media person because print journalism is the basis. If you learn how to write for print, you can very easily migrate to the other media which I have seen very recently, print journalist moving to television journalism and becoming very successful. In other words, there is no need for a kind of attitude towards print. Many people think there is glamour in television and it should be separate. I have no problems with that if some exclusive education is being given in broadcast. But I believe that still people can have grooming in print and then shift over to. You can have two strengths. One is you can give a general instruction and at the end of the course, maybe during the fourth semester, you can offer a specialization in electronic media. That is one way of doing. The other one is teach electronic media totally for the two years, which many departments in the south are doing. In fact, the UGC way back I think almost 10, 11 years ago, I was on that committee to give money to the establishment of electronic media departments all over the country. Somehow, I was not happy with that kind of situation because they wanted us to identify departments within one day. I said, unless I have got a very clear idea of what each department is, it becomes really difficult. Later, somehow the idea was dropped by the UGC. But people who already got the wind of the idea, they started the departments. Many of them started under the self-finance scheme. For example, you have electronic media department in Bangalore University, Tumkur University, Anna University, Madras University in Chennai, both of them are in Chennai. You will find them being totally oriented towards electronic media. Unfortunately, what is happening is unlike print media, electronic media are not good paymasters at the ground level. When they appoint the remuneration or the salary, whatever you call, is very low, whereas good print publications are paying better than satellite television channels. These TV channels pay the top people more, but they treat the ground level people very shabbily. This is not the case with print media. I am depicting a reality, but still people think there is glamour. More than that, what kind of broadcast education we are giving, electronic media. I think we are not preparing technicians, we are preparing software people. As I told earlier, yes, hands-on experience is relevant because a functional knowledge always helps. There is no doubt about it. But we are not aiming at preparing engineers. There are polytechnics which can prepare technical staff for all these with their diploma courses, which some of them are doing very fine. So that way, I believe we have to have a reorientation of broadcast media education. And of course, in the West, there are exclusive departments, for example, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in the U.S., has an exclusive department of radio and television. We don't have such departments. Of course, we have the omnibus nomenclature, electronic media. And now there are departments known as new media departments. Still, I have to educate myself with these departments as to what they are doing and what is the market acceptability. You know, ultimately, we are aiming at the market, the job market, the employment market. And then only perhaps we will be able to understand. One point I would like to mention is today, there is a boom in media education. But there is no regulation of media education. Should we not think in terms of a regulatory authority which can ensure standards, professionalism and quality of media education, whether it is print or broadcast, it is immediate here. As a whole, I think we have to think on those lines. Perhaps this is the time for most of the teachers in university departments of mass communication or journalism to put their heads together and take a collective initiative for a meaningful policy making. And you know, unless we ensure quality in media education, we will not be able to make the grade and the distrust that media have or has whatever construction we use, you know, will continue to be there with our products. You know, the quality of our products are our students. And they are the future of media education or media as such, whatever it is. I think the nation depends upon them. And if you give a quality product and if the market accepts and all of us will be happy, all of us will be satisfied. And that's where I think we must think of. Like the students along.