The anti-corruption movement has enabled the Indian middle class to feel smug about itself. Its members have gone through a vast range of emotions during the last two decades, from self-hatred to self-righteousness. Liberalisation of the economy has created for this class an excitement of many kinds. It has meant the freedom to pursue the quest for wealth without guilt and, at the same time, it has meant feeling set...

‘There is no such thing as self-regulation, every institution is accountable to the people.' We publish here an edited excerpt from a clarification issued by Press Council chairman Markandey Katju. The full text of his clarification can be read at www.thehindu.com. ‘No doubt, the media should provide some entertainment also to the people. But if 90 per cent of their coverage is devoted to entertainment, and only 10 per cent...

-The Hindu   Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, has issued the following clarification on his critical observations of the Indian media.   I have expressed my views relating to the media in several T.V. interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including many media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Many media people (including several T.V. channels)...

Till a few years ago, the final arbiter of what is and is not permissible programming was the Union information & broadcasting ministry. In this scrupulous act of discernment, it was aided by the central monitoring services: college students would be appointed as monitors to watch television programmes and listen to radio shows round the clock and report to the ministry. Any channel or radio show that transgressed the programme...

In this Idea Exchange moderated by Senior Editor Archna Shukla, I&B minister Ambika Soni speaks about self-regulation by the media, empowering the Press Council of India and the Congress party’s stand on corruption Archna Shukla: There is a growing perception that the government is unhappy with media criticism. The editor of a leading English daily publicly claimed that government advertisements have been stopped to his publication. Is the government being vindictive? I have...