Campus Calling | S3 Ep 8

[00:00:16] Welcome to 4C Radio. We are broadcasting from the central campus of Christ University, Bengaluru. 4C Radio is brought to you by the Department of Media Studies, Christ University. For all those who are looking for a platform that focuses on communities, commons, climate and communication, this is the place to be. What's more, this station is run by a diverse community of students and dedicated faculty members.

[00:00:43] Tune in to experience hard-hitting interviews, fact-checks and myth-busting, on-ground stories, campus news and more. In today's episode of Campus Calling, we bring you highlights from the International Conference on Popular Culture and National Identities 2026 held on 25th and 26th June.

[00:01:11] Organised by the Department of Media Studies, in collaboration with the University of Westminster, Curtin University and Taylor & Francis, the conference explored the intersections of popular culture, identity and nationhood. Across two days, conversation moved from memes and media to cinema, sports, journalism and politics, exploring the stories that define who we are and the societies we live in.

[00:01:42] Here is a report from our student journalist, Kale Steffi-Christina, on PCNI 2026. The conference moved across a plethora of topics. But one question surfaced repeatedly. Who gets represented and who gets left out? One of the defining moments of the conference was their plenary talk with veteran journalist, P. Sainath, titled, Whose Nation Is It Anyway? Rural India in the Mirror of Popular Culture.

[00:02:10] He spoke about how media and journalism are different and have different purposes altogether. As individuals, as small journals, a tiny Indian press could prove, could put the world's mightiest empire on the defensive. Today, a giant Indian press crawls before government and state. Journalism, however, demands something completely different. Look, that was my advice to the future journalists is,

[00:02:40] think journalist, not media, number one. Think, and why am I doing this? Who am I doing this for? PCNI also brought together academics from various disciplines. Dr. Pippa Cattrall, a history professor from the University of Westminster, focused on populism not as a recent phenomenon, but as something that repeatedly appears across history through symbols, public rituals and collective anxieties.

[00:03:06] So I think we need to think about populism in a more layered way as not just being about who is included, who do we trust and who do we exclude, but also in terms of assiduces to knowledge.

[00:03:33] Subversive frivolity refers to the fact that when something is under-visibilized, when it's underestimated, that is where it has power. When people continually frame your discourse as merely populist, merely sheer, merely small, remaining in the margins, inconsequential and being unproductive, allows you to survive for much longer. People don't see you as a threat. People don't very think much about K-pop or pop culture in general, let alone memes.

[00:04:03] And yet these are very powerful vehicles of ideology that can help us change our mindsets about anything from cat food, to shampoo, to big ideologies, to even government politics. The conference had more than 90 researchers from across the world presenting their academic work on topics such as K-pop fandom in India, caste and cinema, gender and representation, quiver memory, AI and journalism, digital nationalism, and questions of belonging across borders. Other events included a panel discussion,

[00:04:33] on sporting nationalism, a virtual keynote by Professor Kobi Mensah and cultural performance by the students. Dr. Melchor Thomas, the HOD of Media Department, aptly described the essence of PCNI. Pop culture is not merely entertainment. It is a mirror, a weapon, a shield and a bridge. It does not just reflect the society. It actively constructs our geopolitical realities,

[00:05:01] defining who we love, who we trust, and how we vote. As the conference ended, we were reminded that popular culture is not just a site of entertainment, but also a site of tremendous power and politics. P. Sainath, the founder editor of Pari, People's Archive of Rural India, a Maghse Se Award winner, a veteran Indian journalist

[00:05:29] who focuses on social and economic inequality, deprivation and poverty, delivered a plenary talk at PCNI. Student reporters, Shivangi Biswas and Ashley spoke to Sainath in a special interview for 4C Radio. Sir, in today's talk, you spoke about farmers' protest and how they don't receive enough attention in the national media. What do you think

[00:05:58] determines whether an agrarian issue receives that kind of national coverage? It becomes a national story? And why is there such an imbalance? Because certain farmers protest, the 2021s received international attention, and certain don't at all. It receives attention when the farmers, as a community, as a collective, take the media by the scruff of the neck and force it to cover them. That was what the 2021 protest was about. It forced the media because it simply

[00:06:27] sat at the gates of Delhi. Yeah? No one could go around without seeing a giant protest. And even then, it wasn't really covered in the mainstream media much. Have a look at People's Archive of Brutal India and see the detail and depth in which it was covered. Your media never told you that the Kisan Andolan, the farmer's struggle. Did it ever tell you, do you remember your media telling you that this was the biggest, largest,

[00:06:57] constitutional, democratic protest in the world in 30 years seeking justice? Before that, the most famous protest for justice was Occupy Wall Street 2009-10 where 8,000, 9,000 young people occupied Zuccotti Park in Wall Street and at the end of nine weeks the mayor of New York ordered them to be thrown out

[00:07:26] and they were thrown out in a few hours. Your farmers occupied the outskirts of Delhi for 54 weeks and nobody could throw them out. They brought Punjab police, Haryana police, Delhi police, they brought CISF, you know, BASF, I mean, all the paramilitary organization. They hit them with water cannon, with tear gas, yeah,

[00:07:56] and these guys won't give in. What they taught us and what you should learn is they taught us the meaning of the word resistance, right? They taught us resistance and that is the lesson to learn from them and that they could only, no one, no amount of goodwill or sweet talk was going to get the media to cover it. The media had to cover it when there were 200,000 human beings

[00:08:26] sitting on their doorstep refusing to much and even then they covered it with a pronounced pro-government slunt. Most of the newspapers supported the three farm laws that the farmers were protesting. Still, with the entire media against them, they went ahead and won that victory. They got them to remove those laws. Of course, the laws are being brought back

[00:08:55] backdoor but the fact is they fought and won. So, I take the permission to quote you here. You once said that if everyone who works hard is a billionaire then every woman from rural India would be a billionaire. In this context, what do you think were the circumstances that made an actual billionaire that favorable circumstances for them? Actually, I should tell you that it wasn't an original quote.

[00:09:24] George Monbiot said that of rural women in Africa and I was thinking I was of a very similar mind at that time and still am. The thing is this that, you know, the neoliberals and pro-capitalist arguments are that if you work as hard as Ambani you'll be as rich as Ambani. Let me give you an example of how that actually

[00:09:54] works out. let's take the now defunct Narega National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. So if I work that is the common Indian, right? The common person is someone working on Narega. That is the bottom Indian. So what was the Narega salary? I mean the daily wage national average

[00:10:22] was 294 rupees when it was shut down. At 294 rupees I checked can you build the wealth that Ambani has 100 days a year. Actually you can. It'll take 340.6 million years. But anyway longevity is increasing so let's be optimistic. Right? So

[00:10:52] that entire sham that if you work does Anant Ambani who spent on whose wedding they spent 5,000 to 6,000 crores. What's the hard work he's doing? Show me. Show me anything that can justify a trillion dollar wealth of Elon Musk. I mean you know you're talking about millions of dollars per minute.

[00:11:24] show me the work that merits that amount of money. Show me the job that merits that amount of money. Most of Indian billionaires their money has been made from contracts and leasing of public resources and privatization. They privatized banks so much and hurt the public sector banks so much. But by the way the data of the

[00:11:54] RBI and other data will show you maximum number of complaints against banks are against private sector banks. People still prefer putting their money which is the biggest company LIC where people prefer putting their money. Why don't they trust Ambani or Adani with that kind of money? When you're putting your life in someone's hands you want to know that they can be held accountable. These

[00:12:24] people cannot be held accountable. So the billionaires in India get their money from leasing of Bombay high gas fields from leasing of KG Basin Gas Krishna Godavari Basin. They get this from mines and minerals leases. They get it from privatization of public sector companies. So let's say you look at Air India.

[00:12:53] Do you know how many thousands of crores of public sector money went into building that from a five aircraft airline into a giant worldwide airline and now you hand it over to someone and isn't it fantastic how they're running it? So that's the thing. So what we wanted to ask you was how has your working in mainstream media influenced how you look at rural journalism and look at rural stories now and have there

[00:13:23] been any limitations in how you've approached them? Two things I told you. One, I came into media at a different time. When there was still some space, it was shrinking rapidly but I was able to exploit that space. Second, what did I learn from mainstream media? I learned an incredible mainstream media. First of all, it's a horrible term to use. A media that excludes 85% of the population, why do you call it mainstream?

[00:13:53] But I call it corporate media. And it was a huge education. You know, in UNI, it was an education on what news is like, how you react, how you respond. When you work later as a fellow for Times of India, you also learn how not to book manual.

[00:14:23] You learn negative lessons also, but it was a huge education. And even the corporate media of my time, in that period when I worked for them, were still better than what they are today. There was more of a sensitivity to public voice, which is completely slipped out. So, sir, following up from what you said, how do you think the journalism today has done a disservice to

[00:14:52] the vulnerable population and the voices that you are trying to bring up? the media today has done a disservice to the people. Many, many journalists, I know hundreds of journalists who would like to do the kind of journalism I do. Their publications will never allow it. you don't have beats in that. How many newspapers have a rural poverty beat? How many newspapers have a housing beat? Your education correspondent

[00:15:20] primarily covers entrance exams and college entrance exams and college students. How many education correspondents cover primary education? So, your education correspondent is really a middle class, upper middle class covering a guy who does college you know the board exams onwards, they are covering it all. And the

[00:15:50] higher schooling that's increasingly gone to the private sector which is being allowed to do absolutely anything it wants there. Yeah. And that's in universities as well. You had the wonderful example of Galgothia University producing a robo that was manufactured in China. Then do you see a sort of pessimism in journalists who come up to you today and talk to you? I see frustration a lot.

[00:16:20] But if they were pessimistic, I think there are times when they are pessimistic but if they are still being journalists, it means somewhere there is a lot of optimism in them because there is very little to be optimistic about but people sustain and continue to fight to be journalists. That tells me something about the determination. See this thing of optimism and pessimism. People ask me often when I've

[00:16:49] spoken, can you tell us something optimistic? Okay. Everything sounds so bad. The first thing of a journalist is that, I mean one of the first things, is that you ought to be able to call reality as it is. Not dress it up nicely to look good. The thing is this, that I don't dwell in optimism or pessimism. See, I'm saying that the fake

[00:17:18] optimist and the cynical pessimist are the same people, the same attitude. Fake optimism is like 10% growth, poverty will be history. You know how many prime ministers have said this? 10% growth, poverty will be history. And where are you? And growth for whom? You know the ultimate optimist was a guy who fell from the 50th story of a building. Each floor he passed on the way down, he said, so

[00:17:48] far so good. He was not available for comment after landing. The cynical pessimist says pretty much the same thing. Nothing is going to improve, so why should I do anything? The fake optimist is saying, economy growing at 10%, things are great, why should I do anything? Both extremes, both these positions, essentially, which are at the same position, essentially absolve you of personal

[00:18:18] responsibility of doing something. Between fake optimism and cynical pessimism, there is a territory called hope. I live there. So since this has turned out into corporate loop, is it still possible in the current scenario, social scenario, that one single independent media agency can move out of that trail? Does it require a trend set by different media agencies? I'm saying that long before that happens, many

[00:18:47] of the current media structures are crumbling anyway. What do you think is happening to television viewership? An independent guy like Ravish Kumar, he has, I think, more viewers than all of NDTV does. We look at these anchors and we think, boy, they're powerful people. And they are powerful people, as long as they are on the side of power. The minute they break with power, they're gone into nothingness.

[00:19:18] So the trend has to come from journalists uniting with public action. It has to come with us speaking and allowing for those voices to speak that the mainstream media won't. We found that when we were covering the farmer's agitation at Delhi, our viewership multiplied threefold. Then the government bashed Google which adjusted an algorithm and the

[00:19:47] searches for farmers' protests fell 60%. We will find a way. From the corporate control of the media to the farmers' protest and the enduring question of how journalistic integrity can survive even in moments of pessimism, this discussion offered much to reflect on. The conference also celebrated popular

[00:20:16] culture through music. Here are the glimpses from the Muttapufs band's performance. music. Music. Music. Music. I love you.

[00:22:21] That was Smutapaf's adding a musical touch to two days of conversations on culture, identity and media showing that music, like stories, has the power to bring people together.

[00:22:53] That brings us to the end of this episode of Campus Calling. Thank you for listening to this podcast. As always, stay curious and tune in for more. This episode was hosted by Diyadhanan Jain, edited by Guru Aditya and illustrated by Varnika Singh. Please write to us and follow us on X, Instagram and LinkedIn.