 Ladies and gentlemen, as the world progresses rapidly towards digitization in all forms of life, media too has undergone a substantial change. But does this evolution also reflect on the educational framework in this country? Our next panel discusses the theme of media education back then and now. To chair the panel, I'd like to call upon Mr. Tarun Nangia, associate editor at News X to kindly join me on stage. Can we have a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen? I would request everybody to please settle down and maintain silence. Joining him on the stage to debate the motion, please welcome Professor Sanjeev Banavat, former head center for mass communication, University of Rajasthan. Professor Divakar Shukla, director, Jhagran School of Journalism and Communication, Jhagran Lake City University. Dr. Meera Desai, Professor in Communication Technology and HOD, SNDTWU, Department of Extension Education. And the previous two panelists, who were delayed, Professor BP Sanjay, Pro-Vice Chancellor Tamil Nadu University and Professor Sibi Patnaya, Director Institute of Knowledge, Societies and Centurion University, Bhuvaneshwar. Can we have a round of applause for all our panelists, ladies and gentlemen, please? I would like to welcome my panel and welcome all of you for this afternoon today. There is always an inherent risk in chairing a session which is a pre-lunch session because most of the people in the audience as well as my panelists look forward to their lunch eagerly but we have a schedule and we have to keep that schedule. So I would like to start by first welcoming my panel for this afternoon. Since we are running short on time and we have just about 30-31 minutes to finish this panel, we want to get to the brass tacks really and I would like request my panelists to speak one after one. But I would like to lay the ground for this discussion. A lot has been said since today morning on the state of media education but it is also said that when standards decline in society, they decline for every field and every vocation and profession. Media is not something which is out of the box. So when a lot of people say the media has gone down, well the whole society went down. Look at what our universities were, be it the Alabad University, the Pune University or the University in Baroda, all those things. And Infosys, I read an interview of Narayan Murthy around 12 years ago. They set up a center of learning in Bangalore. Many people in the audience would know about this center and we in the media went to interview Mr. Murthy and we asked him that why are you setting up a center of learning? You already hire engineers who pay a lot of heavy fees to get graduated and then you hire them. So Mr. Murthy then had said that we couldn't bother less if these were engineers and no. If even these boys were 12 pass boys, we would have recruited, trained them for our needs because what they are being talked is so outdated that any which way we trained them, put them through a one year course. And now in this Bangalore center, we hire fresh engineers, put them through a course, pay them stipend and then skill them for our purpose. Just oppose this with the news media today, what is happening? A whole new meaning has been given to the term learn, unlearn and relearn. Learn in the media school. The first thing when you step into office, the first is you have to unlearn. Your boss will tell you, okay, forget all that. This is how it works. You taught that. And then relearn the ways of the working world. This actually tells you about the mismatch between academia and the industry. Laying this ground, I would now request my panelists one by one to lay down the ground. I would, we would go left to right, my left to right. Sir, if you may please introduce yourself and then share your comments. Okay, my name is Devaka Shukla. And I work with the Jagan School of Journalism and Communication at Jagan Lake City University. That's in Bhopal. Background is that, I mean, since this is a very illustrious gathering, not only of the speakers, but also possibly of the audiences. Most of you are highly proficient in terms of academics and you come from a, done your researches and a whole lot of things and then come into education in terms of teaching. There are lots of professionals, I'm pretty sure, who have, after a profession, getting into the work stream and then got back into the universities and teaching. So I'm also part of the second lot, which is essentially, I worked a lot of times in the industry, in the diverse industries, worked in the social sector with the World Bank, worked with European Union actually, a commission at the point of time. And then I worked for a long years with Ogilvy and Mether, which was an advertising agency. But I used to specialize in communication and strategies. Another point of time as always happens with all of us as people who are working, that is, you called over the weekends to do some lecturing, some guest lectures, so to say. And as time passed, I realized that, and something which we were talking in the morning as a part of a panel, there is a slight difference between the practice and the theory. Not too much of a difference, but I think it's a question of a deployment. Theories come out of the practice and eventually, if we lost the big compass, that why the theories are there, then eventually, the theories start becoming irrelevant. And that's where the industry would start telling you, whatever you teach in the universities is not relevant to us. So somewhere this was a kind of a challenge and dilemma and thoughts which used to get. So I said, let me take a complete break from the corporate world and from the industry and start working in the university. And I'm very happy that Professor Ranade is also there because he was part of a university there. And why I took his name is not because of the fact that he's there and I've known him, but something which is part of the session that we are going to have and I won't take much time, I'll just put up a couple of points and then everybody can take it forward. You know, the question was the media education then and now. So I was wondering what does it mean? What is the imperative behind this done and now? I realize it is more of a question of how and why. The world has changed and eventually we realize in universities and academicians we often, you know, lose the sight of the fact that when we tell our students also that you know, you are ready for the complex world, you'll succeed and so what? But the fact is any curriculum in the media education has to be enlightening, has to make them inspired and aware media professionals. Problem is that a lot of journalists and a lot of advertising professionals as well I'm taking a broader view to it, they know about media. They know about the nuances of writing 5Ws and Natchin, whole lot of things that come into play, but they really don't know the journalism and communication and media works in a society. So there was a question which Vikram and somebody else raises. He said that you're not learning, you're not reading. So how do we teach media and journalism and advertising to students? I mean when I say students, I'm not taking it in a cynical way. I'm talking about ourselves as people who are teaching. We never realize the fact that they should be learning the tricks of the taste reading literature and a lot of I know professors are trying to do that and recently I was talking to a student who's specializing in Hindi journalism. Hindi journalism, so I asked him casually, have you read Ragh Darbari? Because Ragh Darbari is a very seminal work in Hindi literature. It's a 50 years competition. I said have you read Ragh Darbari? So he said no. Then I pushed another student to ask have you read Ragh Darbari? And that student was good. She said sir I've read Ragh Darbari but translated version by children right. I've not read it in Hindi. How many of you have not read Ragh Darbari? You will never understand the nuances and dynamics of an Indian village in North India. Now how do you do journalism in North India in the village until unless you know the nuances of it. So my point is and that's where I raise the case is that it's not a question of the theories being right or wrong, what was there and we are not romanticizing the past as well. What I'm trying to convey is I think the context has changed so should be the universities and professors and accommodation as well as the scholars. We need to understand the dynamics are different, context are different. We just need to tweak ourselves from that particular perspective. If you are able to do that, I think we will again become very very relevant including the education part of it. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Shukla for sharing your experience and your opinion with us. I'll go to Professor Sanjeev Bhanawat and sir I would like you to first introduce yourself and then share your opinions on this subject. In the last 25 minutes, a media journal called Trima is communicating with us today. It's two languages and I'm working on it. From the last four minutes, Aakashwani Doordarshan and other channels like Jaipur, Rajasthan and their nation are working with them as well. Although there is a lot going on since morning and there is a lot of time left. Like Satrik Adaksh Maud said, there are challenges in pre-lun session and also in post-lun session. I mean I'm not even thinking about it. What will be the situation after the food session? So let's talk about all the major issues in this era media, first and now. There has been a journey of about a century. Dr. Neeb Desent, from the Adyaar University who had tried to do the paramedic after that, I think almost all the international students of the country are getting educated. And the circumstances that have been discussed are not hidden from our story. I have some issues regarding the person and the biggest challenge is the textbooks. I am not talking about English in particular. In fact, there are many books in English too. There are some efforts in Europe mass communication and in some era the Press Institute of India. There were some such books that were published while we had studied the literature. But now those books are almost unrecognizable. When we buy mobile phones in the morning in the evening, it hurts in the mind that I wish I could wait for a few more hours. I wish I could get a new technology mobile. So with the rapid change of technology how can we connect with it and connect to our media education? Because in Rajasthan, I had the opportunity to start the literature education in a way. In that government system, as much as there is research and development, there is a lot of difficulty. I think that the fact that the technology is being developed, the UGC is taking money, the studio is being built, the labs are being built, we order the equipment, until it is installed, then it is absolutely absolute from the world of this media, it is unrecognizable. Despite all these techniques, the challenges that we have for their management such as experience, trainer, teacher, this is a big challenge. We have to be patient, the people who are working in the profession come there. So the problem of textbooks is the second challenge to be able to use the power of those techniques. The third challenge I think is the heavy feeling of journals we have here. Some foreign journals were mentioned in the morning but in Indian literature like the kind of journals, there is still some light in English but for the students of Hindi and Indian languages I think for them to light up their books is a big challenge. Because of this discipline, some years ago it has started to grow as a discipline to accept it in different universities. This is a different challenge. In different universities, the journalism has been taken with the social science faculty, with the arts faculty. There are two or three courses in some universities, there is also a different faculty so all these challenges are that in the form of a discipline it has not been accepted as a discipline which has accepted our other issues. When I was talking in the morning in the context of the media director I also said that it has been in my mind for a long time the way political science, sociology, commerce these kinds of issues have been included in the legal form almost every year. But in journalism, I have done all-indian media juker conference three times the media is being enclave. I have done all of these but in the form of a discipline where the students have to follow all the lessons and sit somewhere and think about the challenges of the discipline to become a subject association which can work in that direction. Talking about the media council I don't know how much the media council can do but the way UGC or AICT are monitoring bodies they are able to become bodies and in order to implement them it is mandatory that before starting any division because I have got a lot of opportunities to use committees even if we have at least 20-25 committees in Rajasthan so the kind of situations that the AICT and the mandatory bar council of India have one threat in our discipline our bodies won't develop until the elections of the faculty I have been running the department for 28 years and after that the constitution has been shut down and all the lessons have been transferred to the river so there are so many challenges in different areas so I think that the challenges of the language keep them in mind our local language please let me know the way digital media is someone asked me how long do you want to speak I said if you want to speak for 5 minutes then at least 1 month first if you want to speak for 15 minutes then tell me 15 days first if you want to speak then you are ready to go and I have got the idea of the topic which topic should I speak and the teacher doesn't leave the class for an hour so the students have time but on the radio and on the television you have finished 5 minutes I said 4 minutes you can tell me 5 minutes and the last thing I want to say is that the digital device is also part of the section the UGC has started with the help of video lectures we should say that we can get people to know ultimately when they go they will be able to learn what happened to the driver and asked him how he learned from the driving he said he learned from the school in such a situation in such situations how important is the teaching the challenges of the future we should be able to prepare for the media what I often talk about value based education you have all the courses we are starting in the name of job oriented the subjects of our communities what will be done on their section so that the positions or the values that we talk about so that the worries that you are expressing in the media you have given me time thank you he is experienced but one comment made by him which stood out that for 28 years he ran a department with a single person anybody in a western university would be shocked that this happens in India single man runs the whole department students are enrolled they get educated but since we are short of time I will go to Dr. Meera Desai and ma'am if you would like to introduce yourself and also she has a presentation to make very quickly and ma'am you said you will stand and would like to make it please I don't have much of a power even if you want to sit and make a presentation if it is convenient thank you so much I am a single person department just now we were making a mention so I am a part of women's university and we have lot of them here who are single people departments so that is the status of media education actually in our country right now I just came across this one particular thing which I thought was very exciting because since morning we are saying things are changing and I feel nothing much has changed we are making a location that we still are being born and married and making children and doing all sorts of things so I don't think things are changing dramatically only the way we are doing things is changing so probably that is the context that I take I came across this one particular person in Virginia Island yesterday only actually very interestingly and I thought this is kind of very appropriate secondly I thought visual we were talking about visual so at some point I thought I will only talk about visuals I want to talk about words but then as teachers we can't escape as we all know next so next when I joined as a media student 30 years back 1988 I was confused I was not sure what I wanted to do what I am seeing now is the student comes with a very clear goals so that is the change that I am noticing next I had all sorts of teachers who came and taught me like sociologists political scientists anthropologists what I am now seeing is the kind of teachers as a teacher educator or teacher administrator I am giving my students are not that dynamic honestly I am kind of pretty pained about them because I look at them as sunflowers because they look at what needs to be told rather than what should be told so lot of times the problem I have is that they play to the gallery rather than what they should be doing as a teacher so that is kind of one concern that I have next when I was taught the syllabus that I had was kind of anything and everything what is increasingly now happening is that and we are aware with the private institutes that the teacher is setting the syllabus the teacher is taking the class teacher is doing assessment and the student is out so what kind of education that we are creating I have kind of one question that I have next just do next next so right now as we all are aware and I think most of you are aware of the fact that we have all sorts of kind of people doing media education because my context was that we have public universities and we have all sorts of kind of institutions that are kind of offering education sorry sitting here next I think your frame is breaking next you will have to just do next because I had assumed that I will have power to control my power point which I don't have just do next quickly what I have noticed as a because it's been about 10 years if you Google Meera Desai SNDT I have done kind of last 10 years lot of research on media education itself and what we what kind of personally I feel is that that when we talk about different aspects of media practice next you will realize that that we don't have much of planning strategizing being taught we don't have much of execution being taught so most of us who are kind of where in practice and landed up in teaching or those who are kind of in teaching directly without having any media experience they've all done it by kind of experimentation and as since morning we are seeing lot of people have kind of by accident landed up into media education so that's a kind of another challenge because there's no pedagogy of media education that we can kind of very confidently talk about so there is a kind of a shift that we notice I have a kind of a problem here because since morning we're talking about media education as a kind of a kind of open-ended thing you will realize that there are lot of variables to a kind of a pedagogy in that sense of the term and lot of times we look at this as a kind of a carrot to a student who comes into our institutions and we say that you will get a kind of very good job and we also do examination which is like a balloon because I'm not sure because all the media practitioners are saying that the kind of students that we are training are not kind of good enough I have kind of serious doubts because lot of us landed up 30 years back as the same students that now kind of claim and talk about how media education should be so that's a kind of a complexity and paradox and then when we talk about a kind of a degree there is no monitoring at all in terms of because the student that I am giving a first class is not getting first class in kind of media practice or there is a media practice where the employer is very happy but I was very disappointed with that student so there is no kind of a consistency of assessment that I am noticing next what I am kind of facing as a media educator for about 20 plus years in kind of a university is that that what will we teach and how much will we teach because we all kind of ideally know a student who needs to do everything know everything should have the idea who is a vice president of India at the same time also should know how to operate a camera now is it kind of possible it's kind of pretty complex and very ambitious in that sense so these are some of my challenges I feel and what Banaji also talked about this technological aggregation of classrooms and all that and then when I am kind of facing it as a media educator and a media education administrator what I have realized is that there are kind of problems in terms of the motivations of the teacher and the student because a lot of people said in the morning also that good editors doesn't know how to teach editing but Raji said we want people with spine so that they will not crawl but we see a lot of people crawling rather than having a spine so how do we kind of is there a measurement there is no thermometer to measure whether the person has a spine or not so that's the kind of problem that we all need to kind of recognize and also the learner diversity in classroom is extreme in my 30 years of experience because I am getting also student in my classroom who would never come into a higher education system in our country so that's kind of a complex problem I have because I have a student who is 24 by 7 online and I have a student who is not having a mobile phone actually honestly I'm when I'm saying that I recognize that the data pack is expensive and she says that that I cannot I have only incoming and I cannot call you so that's a real I'm not I don't think the India that we all are aware of is India there in that sense of the term next so broadly the point that I wanted to make was thank you for your time and attention you can kind of we can take this dialogue ahead but just to kind of put a one liner in that sense of the term I feel that something like this in a more conversational more dialogue mutual understanding level if we can kind of make in terms of solutions because we all are I think aware of problems and challenges that we all are aware of. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for finishing in pretty much in time and she said that she'll finish it in five minutes and she's done in five minutes I would like to thank her for quickly rushing her to the presentation but I would like to now welcome professor Chandrabhanu Patnaik sir if you quickly your introduction as well as your three or four points that you want to make on the state of education. My name is Chandrabhanu Patnaik right now I am the director of an institute called the Institute of Knowledge Societies in Bhuvaneswar I've had quite a checkered career so I shan't go into that but talking about media education I've been hearing people talk about the fact that you know somehow it was better in the past and it's not so great today. Now Ivan Ilyich many many years ago wrote a book called the de-schooling society okay now most people here talk about learning and unlearning and relearning when he when he talked about de-schooling it was not about unlearning it was actually de-schooling and I think the problem lies there and not with learning that's one. Number two I think that I'll give you one or two sort of anecdotes and I'll finish today people talk because of the way that we have created our education system people are talking about everywhere I go people are talking about outcome based education now this is something that really befuddles me because I don't know what is the outcome of education if it is not education itself okay so therefore I have no clue what is this outcome based education and what is it that we are trying to achieve or get to. Now there are also people who talk about technology and especially media technology social media technology being democratizing to me that is also a fallacy I work essentially with a lot of tribal people in very interior Odisha doesn't seem to me that technology of any kind is democratizing in fact by the time they get some technology we have moved ahead so technology is always hierarchical and it is always non democratic okay so this is the other thing the third thing I wanted to say was that in 1973 Mysore University introduced a certificate course in journalism for the first time I took that course many years later I came back from traveling all over the world I went to see what was being taught in journalism and communication schools it wasn't much different from what I had studied in 1973 what was happening was essentially cosmetic changes so I am not sure where how we go about doing this now one more small anecdote and I will finish Fred Jameson some of you may have heard great guru of post modernism was asked that if you had to define post modernism in one sentence how would you do it that's a really tough one but he came up with a single line definition and he said it is the acknowledgement of plurality so if you take that definition then India by its very nature is post modern because we have nothing but plurality right but when that question was posed to Fred Jameson he said he was very angry he was livid in fact and he said that you cannot be post modern until you have been modern in other words I have to be like you in order to be like me I think our whole education system is premised on that we are trying to be somebody else trying to take some other theory and try and fit our own data into this and hope keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best okay now just one last thing which is that reading and we all our arguments to date is based on the premise of literacy we have we are saying that all this theory all of this media everything based on the premise of literacy if somebody asked who did the printing press actually help okay certainly not the oral traditions of the world okay thank you thank you professor Bhattanag for finishing it in time I would like to go to professor B.P. Sanjay, former vice chancellor Central University of Tamil Nadu and a known industry professor your comments on this issue please thank you chair fellow colleagues the subject matter seems to be like old people like us suddenly being asked to be in the world of twitter all our experience to be shared shared or discussed in less than few minutes but that's okay that's challenging and that's what media is all about the past nothing to romanticize about the past except to say that journalism education situated itself in the broad university system not because the university wanted to open up another discipline called journalism it wanted to posit its liberal arts institutional framework and situate journalism in the context of the society in which we live so the first part of the past is actually a saga of university education it's public pressures on resources etc and some of my friends here have talked about single person departments etc fortunately I come from a stream where 11 faculty and we have all stream faculty in our university it's a public university probably we are blessed and I've also had an occasion to work with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication which institutionally has been more blessed than any of the public institutions in the country the the dilemma then and even now as we heard the panelist was that there seems to be some kind of a disconnect between the dynamics of what we wish to educate and train and what the industry or the so called industry captain expect us and who is an industry captain today is a very difficult question are they editors or are they commercial entrepreneurs or they network operators etc we really do not know but nevertheless we do accept that there is an industry out there and for which we are we are obligated and we are committed to provide human resource but the challenge came in the 80s and the 90s post liberalization when the very same media institutional framework that critiqued and even today criticizes media education set up media institutions as revenue model for their sulking revenues and this is the paradox of a country like India where we have seminars decrying public institutions but upholding some of all values are being imparted in media back school and that's the second dilemma that we are talking about the third dilemma is are we trying to catch up on a daily basis if seven apps are discovered or applied in every minute what is the gestation period of a learning of a youth can I go to the class and say that oh as I came in a new app has developed and if I don't teach you that app the industry will say that you are not aware of this app then what are you teaching I think teaching has to be contextualized in the society that we live in India is a big country we come from different regions we escape the complete social gestic dynamics in the media which media in India actually upheld about the social gestic dynamics which was churning the society if media indeed is a war stock or was a war stock it should have shaped the motilities of that particular chain so there are there are problems with the media as well and what happens is this tutu may continues in all seminars and we I think the time has come when one of the finalists suggested do we sit in dialogue over what we are teaching what are the shortcomings what do you want us that is not possible it's always saying that universities are bookish and we are practical I think time has come when you have to seize media as a larger communication process recognize the power equations that are taking place negotiate the commercial dynamics of the media and the modification of news which is masked as journalism then it was journalism today it is commodity and entertainment thank you very much I would like to thank Professor BP Sanjay Professor CB Patnayak Professor Sanjeev Bhanavad Professor Divakar Shukla and Dr Meera Desai for if I may say I requested them to put their opinions in very concise format in 4-5 minutes and I am so happy that all of them complied in fact we have been a bit unfair to them they should have got more time but this generally happens in events and they have been understanding I would like to thank each one of the panelists for being so understanding I would also like to thank Dr Anurag Bhattra and Dr Surabhidhaya for putting up this wonderful panel today and all the panels that I have been seeing I have just read the list and we were sitting in a pre-lunch session and I think you should all thank us we have finished in time and I will hand over the mic to my colleague there Thank you, thank you really Thank you delegates I would request you to stay on stage for a minute I would like to call upon Dr Surabhidhaya who is the co-convener of today's summit please come on stage and present our delegates for the token of our appreciation can we have a round of applause for all our delegates please Thank you Thank you delegates Ladies and gentlemen we will now be breaking for a quick lunch and I will see you back here in the next half an hour to continue this exciting day Thank you