"There is hardly a nation that is not interested in leveraging the potential of the Information Marketplace," says Prof. Michael Dertouzos, Director of MIT Laboratory for Computer Sciences. India woke up to this potential somewhat late. Four years back when the Parliament framed a Media Policy neither the word Internet nor Convergence even appeared anywhere in the document. But in 1998 an IT Task Force was set up. The announcement said:

"The Government of India, recognizing that the impressive growth the country has achieved since the mid-eighties in Information Technology is still a small proportion of the potential to achieve, has resolved to make India a Global IT Super Power and a front-runner in the age of Information Revolution. The Government considers IT as an agent of transformation of every facet of human life which will bring about a knowledge based society in the 21st Century..."

Once implemented, the recommendations of the Task Force would have far reaching consequences for the media in the country.

Already Internet licenses are freely available at a nominal license fee of Re 1 only. In a country accustomed to bureaucratic control, all restrictions on Internet have been removed. Sixty-seven licenses have been granted for national, regional and local Internet Service Providers. Over 500 district headquarters will have Internet nodes by coming January. Competition has been allowed even among Internet International gateways bypassing the monopoly of the government owned VSNL in international traffic.

To back this projected growth, a new telecommunication policy has been adopted. Facilitating Convergence is the quintessence of that policy. This will allow multi-media services over different type of networks and local loops unlike the current restricted players in basic wireline and wireless services. A GMPCS policy has allowed global mobile personal communication services like Iridium, ICO and Global One to set up shop.

Broadcast medium has still not been freed from complete Government control though an autonomous board has been set up to manage the Government owned radio and television that reaches out to nearly 90 per cent of the population. The uplinking of satellite broadcast services from the Indian soil has recently been allowed. A policy for Direct to Home television was about to be announced when the Government fell. There are demands for a single regulatory authority covering telecommunication and broadcast and private radio and television broadcast facilities. The media convergence thus has been accepted as a fact of life but specific policy frameworks covering all the media are yet to be in position.

Indian news and broadcast media was quick to jump to exploit the business opportunities presented by the telecom revolution and the satellite TV. In the workplaces, computerized editing and page making replaced hot metal and manual copy. VSAT networked district editions of a centrally published newspaper also has begun. This has led to a drastic reduction in staff requirement.

Staff Strength of Big Newspapers

Staff Strength of Medium Newspapers

Staff Strength of Small Newspapers

Several newspapers diversified into satellite television but success rate has not been uniform- One of the largest newspaper groups that partnered a British satellite TV company soon gave up after suffering huge losses. Except the Rupert Murdoch owned Star TV and Subhash Chandra's Zee TV network, all others are incurring huge losses as advertisement support is not equal to expectation especially with the current business decline. Advertisement growth for all the media including newspapers peaked 49 per cent plus in year ending March 1996-97 but declined to five cent in 1996 and recovered to 10 per cent in 1997-98.

The newspapers have also been quick to exploit the potential of the Internet. Many of the dailies are on the web now. The Indian Express group reported last March that it has earned Rs. 100 million in the first year of Internet projection of its newspapers. The 30 million Indians abroad are a potential customer base for the newspapers on the Internet. Net news, information technology developments, cyber café doings have become hot news items over the last two years.

For working journalists all along accustomed to the print media and typewriter copy, the media challenge has been sudden. The newspapers that installed computers have given minimal training-- mostly in editing and accessing but hardly any training in group working, use of Internet, researching and multi-media use. No newspaper has set up an internal network covering all aspects of newspaper production. Journalists have not been supplied laptops and transmission of stories connecting laptop to the telephone line is not generally prevalent. There are fax machines in all the newspaper offices but most of them are stand-alone devices without any networking with the desktops in these offices.

The two wire agencies PTI and UNI have started on line news service to commercial users like stock markets, banks, hotels etc. The format of the on-line news service hardly differs from the earlier teleprinter news services and journalists have not been given any special training for switch to on-line news casting. With satellite and cable TV services also starting continuous news and current affairs broadcasts, the on-line services of the news agencies has a competitor with the added benefit of visuals.

Newspaper publishers who eagerly carved out a web page for their publications, have, however, viewed Internet and the convergence as a threat rather than as an opportunity. This is clear from their statement before the Wage Board:

"The Future of the newspaper industry is indeed bleak - it is viewed by many as a sunset industry.

In the immediate run its continued viability is threatnened by the qualitative by strong competition from TV and the cut throat competition from within the industry.

In the not-so-distant feature, its viability becomes a question mark with 'the steady' dismanting of the product through competition from Internet.

The Newspaper Industry does not have an alternative to an aggressive search for avenues of cost managements." -- from the memorandum submitted by the Indian Newspaper Society to the Wage Board.

In India and I suppose in other Asian countries too, the employers may have taken to new technologies but they have not taken to new attitudes to workers in the context of new technologies. The result is that the type of freedom from fear that prevails in many corporations abroad does not prevail here. By and large employers are rooted in the 19th century mindset. In India the publishers organization, INS, says it needs pay only minimum wages to the newspaper workers and that it considers a working journalist as deserving the salary of only a clerk.

There is no hiding the fact that most of the trade unions whether in the media or other employments perceived the computer as a threat to jobs. The powerful among these unions like those in the banking were able to successfully resist computerization for years at a stretch. Their views have not changed radically in the years since liberalization changed the economic environment after 1991. The Railway unions agreed on limited computerization only ion the reservation system but public response forced them to remove all restrictions. Banking union resisted computerization till 1991 but agreed for limited computerization of only the ledgers after 1991. They too had to allow further liberalization after the Indian banks began to face strong competition from foreign computerized banks. Online financial transactions are yet faraway but some banks have begun to offer home based banking. Stock market has been the first and fastest in moving to on-line deals and electronic stock holding has now been legalized. All stocks in future would be in demat form. This is bound to have an impact on the media especially on the economic journalists who would now have to understand the new paradigm in e-commerce. The farthest the media has gone is to use the fax machine to establish contacts with corporate world and use access to Internet to get backgrounders.

The media unions virtually ignored the emerging information technology revolution throughout the 80s and what it would mean to their tradition of collective bargaining. The National Union of Journalists (India) could claim that it is the only union that sought to make its members aware of the challenges of Information Technology. It installed a PC in its office in 1992 and a fax machine in the next year. In 1993, this writer gave the first lecture on the impact of IT on the media unions at the national executive of the NUJ (I) at Bokaro in eastern India. Subsequently several lectures were organized by the affiliated units of the NUJ (I).

The first Internet demonstration and workshop was held in 1997 in Delhi for working journalists. A three-day Internet demonstration cum hands on experience was organized to coincide with the biennial conference of the NUJ (I) last year with the active participation of VSNL, the country's then sole Internet provider and international traffic carrier.

In 1998 the NUJ (I) through its school, NUJ (I) School of Journalism and Communication, launched a major programme called CYBER JOURNALISM INITIATIVE in July. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, himself an IT enthusiast, inaugurated this initiative by opening a silken scroll at the biennial conference of the NUJ(I).

Under the initiative the School with the active partnership of the most important educational and software company of the country, NIIT, intends to train a large number of working journalists in the use of both hardware and software relevant to journalism including extensive use of Internet, preparing a web page, and creating data bases and their retrieval. The training is divided into two phases, the basic and the advanced course. The basic course is of eight hours duration and the advanced course is of 15 hours. However, the progress of the scheme has not been as fast as we would like it to be. This year it is expected to pick up momentum.

Yet, another initiative we have undertaken is to create a database of working journalists especially stringers in far- flung areas of the country. This is intended to help both the journalists and the union in many ways. Once such a database is there, we could inform newspaper publishers, radio and TV channels that when and if they need a journalist's service in any remote corner to cover a contingent event, we could provide the information at a price. It could also mean a break for the journalist in a remote area. However, we must confess that we have not been able to persuade the journalists to part with the data but the effort is on.

There is no doubt in the minds of the NUJ (I) leadership that Internet and Convergence would radically change the relationship between workers and the newspaper publishers in the coming years. This is bound to affect their membership of trade unions and what they expect these unions to do.

According to our considered opinion, IT and Convergence would turn working journalists into knowledge workers of a high order. Once information is freely and instantly available in the network and accessible to all, the journalist's job undergoes a radical change. This universal accessibility strikes at the very root of journalism in so far as the journalist is not the sole person who has access to information. Anyone can access the information in the public domain and read it directly rather than wait for the journalist to expose it to him. In India this year the budget papers became available on the Internet within few minutes of their presentation in Parliament. This changed the perspective for the print media and they had to ensure they were not dishing out information that is already well known. Working journalists are now aware that spot news is no longer their main concern. That job has been taken over by the TV, which with the cable help is now reaching out to over 50 million homes 54.5 million homes have TV and 18.5 million homes with cable as per 1997 figures in the country. The journalist has to depend more and more on in-depth analysis and community explorations apart from independent investigative reporting.

In these circumstances, to whom does the working journalist turn to get trained in this area? The newspaper managements are not providing any help or training. It is worth considering whether trade unions can step in.

The Internet is supposed to have opened the opportunity for working journalists to be independent publishers. Theoretically this is true but as yet there is little effective evidence of this happening. The newspaper publishers have joined up with other media organizations and mega corps like Time-Warner- CNN, Sony-Disney, News Corp. may threaten this opportunity by monopolizing the channels as PC and TV, cable and telephone lines converge. DTH is another technology that clearly favours monopolies in media. Trade unions of media people could create a countervailing force, especially in developing countries by concentrating on community interests, exposing dark spots and anti-social developments, threat to ecology from powerful combines and corporations, human rights violations, etc. Trade unions could also act as powerful forces for moulding public opinion utilizing the power of on-line access to people across national and regional boundaries. A united trade union force as a voice of the people against crass commercialism and for protection of ecology and human rights should be a desirable goal in the Information Age.

More thought has to go into these avenues for making trade unions relevant in the new environment.

Journalists' trade unions are also beginning to feel the pinch of contract employment in many newspaper establishments. Many members are accepting such contracts partly because otherwise they have no chance of getting into a newspaper and partly also because these contracts give far better emoluments than what collective bargaining or wage boards could provide. Many younger journalists are in journalism not because they need a job but because they look to fulfilment. They want flexibility in employment; contract system gives them that flexibility. This is also behind many media persons turning into free lancers over the years by choice. Trade unions have not been able to convince them that even as free lancers the unions can help them in many ways. There is general apathy to trade unionism among journalists and it is growing.

Another aspect of Convergence that we have ignored is the disappearance of the line that separates the reporter from the cameraman, librarian and news desk. The PC and networking, even Intranets or LANs would enable the reporter and the subeditor to freely move from one position to another. This is to a large extent welcome. In future managements themselves may pressurize working journalists to be both a reporter and subeditor at once or in alternate shifts. Traditional boundaries would disappear. With digital cameras, the reporter would be a reporter cum cameraman. On the multimedia PC he could also edit photographs (digital images). What would be union attitude in such a situation? Should we see multi-skilling as anti-labour?

Most of us are also not in a position to negotiate with the managements for wage increases following introduction of computerization and convergence of jobs. Unions lack databases for such a negotiation apart from technical knowledge. Creation of these should be a top priority.

The IFJ and its General Secretary Aidan White deserve congratulations of all of us in that they have taken the lead in reinventing trade union in the Knowledge Age.

The promotion of copyright awareness is a major gain. In India, most of the contracts contain the clause under which journalists give up their copyright on their material in favour of the newspaper establishment. This is clearly illegal but members are not coming forward to get this tested in a court of law. Unions have also not given adequate thought to creating awareness of this; perhaps this is partly because we did not have a good patent law so far and the value of copyright over news items is not known widely.

This seminar should discuss a specific programme for awakening journalists in South Asia to their birthright over their news items. But this should also be followed up by concrete action on how to use the trade union platform to enhance value of the copyright and how to convert that value into cash.

Yet another programme should be to recast trade union functioning to meet the challenges of the Knowledge Age. This means that trade unions must have a strong research and development wing. The IFJ has done well to have an officer especially devoted to this job. Each national union could also have such a wing and an official and there could be networking. May be IFJ would be able to find some funds for such networking. Once working journalists find they could approach the trade union to deal with the problems created by convergence, they might return to trade unionism.

Equally important are the regional workshops in which trade union activists should be retrained to cope up with the new situation. An important decision should be how to deal with closures of newspapers, pressures for voluntary retirement or early separation etc. In Delhi we are facing this problem in the light of liberalization. One newspaper, The Patriot closed down and even arrears of wages could not be recovered as the assets were already pledged to a bank and a venture capitalist. Many other existing newspapers are thinking in terms of giving up their newspaper business and using their real estate for other commercial purposes. Most newspapers have changed their articles of association and are going for other jobs like banking, real estate, wholesale trade etc. Unions have virtually been foxed in the face of such changes. There is a price war that threatens newspapers with little staying power. Hence more jobs are in jeopardy.

It seems to us that trade unions must reorganize their structure. Apart from an R&D wing, creation of databases and networking with other unions in the country and outside, TUs themselves should be organized on functional basis and the head of the union should be the chief executive with top leadership dividing responsibility within itself on functional lines. The entire approach should be more service oriented rather than power oriented. In the past trade unions got things done mainly on the basis of their power; in the new era they should achieve on the basis of their service and competence, core competence if you like to put it that way.

There is salvation for us in such a reinvention of our role and relevance.

The alternative is unthinkable.