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Articulation as a Site of Discursive Struggle: Globalization and Nationalism in an Indian Media Debate

Journal of Communication Inquiry 2014, Vol. 38(2) 113–130 ! The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0196859914524439 jci.sagepub.com

Sangeet Kumar1

Abstract This article uses the theory of articulation to analyze the debate surrounding the decision by the Government of India to open up the Indian print media to foreign investment. The decision was preceded and followed by intense wrangling within the pages of the very newspapers that were to be affected by it, thus resulting in a contentious debate around the move. Using the theory of articulation to explore the mechanism of discursive power exercised by each side within the debate the paper argues that each side articulated the same four themes with culturally specific meanings to shape the government’s decision in their favor. This exploration seeks to emphasize the discursive dimension of globalization as a key site where power struggles are played out and consensus about policy choices is created. Keywords articulation, globalization, newspaper, regulation, India

Introduction Debates about foreign ownership of national media are invariably contentious the world over but have been particularly so in India, where allusions to a surreptitious return of colonial hegemony frequently recur during these

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Denison University, Granville, OH, USA

Corresponding Author: Sangeet Kumar, Denison University, 302 Higley Hall, Granville, OH 43023, USA. Email: [email protected]

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deliberations. This article analyzes one such debate surrounding the Indian government’s decision to allow foreign investment (up to 26%) in newspapers. Announced on June 26, 2002, the decision was arrived at after years of intense wrangling within the very pages of the newspapers going to be most affected by it. Almost a decade since the decision, the Indian media’s expansion has been fueled in part by the foreign direct investment (henceforth FDI) enabled by the decision. The exaggerated fears and hopes expressed in the debate have proved unfounded, but the decision’s importance in shaping the trajectory of Indian media’s growth since then and the insights the debate allows us into the discursive dimension of globalization drive this article’s analysis. In analyzing the media debate surrounding this consequential decision about Indian print media regulation, this article uses the theory of articulation (Grossberg, 1992; Hall, 1985, 1986; Slack, 1996) to conduct a morphology of discursive power exercised by newspapers. Articulation theory illuminates the struggle to suture meanings with concepts (DeLuca, 1999), unmasking how particular meanings are privileged over other equally plausible ones. This article extends conversations on articulation by using its insights to understand the discursive dimension of globalization (Fairclough, 2006). As newspapers took opposing positions on allowing foreign money in the Indian print media, they did so by making contingent connections between concepts and culturally specific elements to persuade decision-makers. A close analysis of the debate reveals that both those arguing for as well as against the decision sought to rearticulate the same four themes with favorable meanings to advance their positions. These themes of (a) globalization, (b) the status of print media vis-a`-vis other sectors, (c) national interest, and (d) public opinion were each subjected to dialectical pulls from both sides to create a discursive formation that would drown out opposing views. In emphasizing certain themes as opposed to others, newspapers expediently tapped into their preexisting emotive potency in the Indian public sphere making them function akin to a “floating signifier” that Laclau (2007) uses to understand how rival hegemonic pressures co-opt democratic demands. Just as for Laclau, a demand has to be malleable enough to be emptied of its specificity and appropriated for new purposes, the debate on FDI too saw this attempted redefinition of pliable concepts that were open-ended enough to be redefined and yet whose resonance within the Indian national consciousness could be tapped. Factors unique to India made the debate about the loss of national sovereignty (Collins, 2003; Edge, 2009; Valcke, 2009) particularly contentious and hence a rich case for a scholarly study that this essay attempts. The nationalist role of Indian newspapers in the anticolonial struggle (Parameswaran, 2009), as well as a government decision in 1955 (8 years after India’s independence) to disallow foreign stake in Indian newspapers (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010), presumably due to their historical significance, further complicated the

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government’s move. The process of economic liberalization initiated in most industries in the early 1990s had also left the print media untouched, thus acknowledging this special status. Notably, the government’s decision also went against a recent recommendation made by a parliamentary committee set up specifically to study the issue,1 thus providing ammunition to opponents.

The Economics of Indian Newspapers In the years of growth since the FDI decision2 (Foreign Investment Promotion Board [FIPB], 2010), the newspaper industry in India has defied Western trends of declining circulation and revenue with high growth numbers,3 making India one of the largest newspaper markets in the world (Federation of India Chamber of Commerce & Industry [FICCI], 2011). The size of the industry and the number of papers participating in the debate necessitate a narrowing down for the purposes of close discursive analysis that this article attempts. I chose four newspapers that were representative of the polarized positions in the debate. Of the four selected, The Times of India and The Hindu argued against allowing FDI in the news print media, while The Indian Express and The Telegraph took positions in favor of FDI. These dailies also allow for a geographical diversity within my study, as The Telegraph is published from the eastern region and headquartered in Kolkata; The Hindu, a multiedition daily, is published from the largest southern city of Chennai; and both The Times of India and The Indian Express are headquartered in the national capital of New Delhi. Analysis of stories about FDI in these dailies saw the emergence of common themes that were contrarily articulated by opposing sides in the debate. News stories, opinion pieces, and editorials appearing close to and on the day of the decision were analyzed, and relevant stories prior to the decision were included to support claims that newspapers’ positions were consistent over a period and not informed by the lofty ideals they touted. Not surprisingly, the circulation of the two newspapers opposing FDI far surpasses (both at the time of the debate and at present) that of those supporting FDI. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (n.d.) in India, the circulation figure for The Times of India was approximately 2 million copies in 2002 and had risen to 3.2 million copies in 2011. For The Hindu, the circulation was 0.8 million in 2002 and approximately 1.4 million copies in 2011. For The Telegraph, the circulation numbers were 0.3 million in 2002 and 0.4 million in 2011. The circulation figure of The Indian Express in 2002 was 0.7 million, and its current circulation numbers are not available. The choice of four English newspapers for the study is deliberate and dictated by the unique dynamics of English versus non-English languages, both within the newspaper industry and beyond in India. Even though far outnumbered by the non-English press in terms of circulation numbers, English newspapers in India wield significant economic, political, and cultural capital (Jeffrey, 2000;

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Ninan, 2007; Rajagopal, 1997). Scholars have shown (Rajagopal, 1997) that the English and the Hindi press divide replicates a split public, with the former claiming to be the bearer of the agenda of modernity and progress, thus differentiating itself from the traditional and conservative India.4 Their economic power as well as their perceived proximity to the corridors of power in New Delhi reinforces the English media’s simultaneous distance from a majority of the nonurban Indians who do not read or speak English. This distance underscores the artifice in claims made by both sides that their position was dictated by true public opinion. Instead, the correspondence between their circulation figures and position on FDI validates insights from critical political economy of the media (Golding & Murdock, 1991; Mosco, 1996) that elucidates connections between financial interests and communication practices of media institutions. This is underscored by the fact that for many newspapers, their stand on FDI in print media was the exact opposite of their position on foreign investment in other sectors of the economy, where just as strong a case for protection could be made as they made for the print media.

Articulation Theory In exploring the operation of discursive power in the FDI debate, this article uses insights from the theory of articulation (Grossberg, 1992; Hall, 1986; Slack, 1996) that helps unravel the contingent coming together of hitherto disconnected tropes to show the emerging correspondence between them. The concept of articulation traces its etymological roots to jointed structure in classical Latin (Oxford English Dictionary) or connection by a joint in postclassical Latin (OED; Slack, 1996), and its appropriation from the material to the discursive realm taps into its connotation of relationality. Hall (1985) extends the concept as committed to the dialectic of “unity and difference,” of “difference in complex unity, without becoming a hostage to the privileging of difference as such” (Hall, 1985, p. 93 cited in Slack, 1996, p. 122). In a discursive analysis of the kind this study attempts, the concept of articulation helps unravel incipient chains of signification, wherein meaning emerges as the terrain of social struggle, and borrowing from Laclau (1977), articulation theory studies the displacement of struggle from the material to the symbolic, assuming that “the social operates like a language” (Hall, 1986, p. 57). As we will note in the FDI debate later, meanings for concepts were not pregiven but constructed, correspondence not necessary but forced, and the “shifting field of forces” could only be understood by locating them within complex “planes of effect” (Grossberg, 1992, p. 54) that were uniquely Indian in their persuasive charge. Analysis of the FDI debate shows the processual and dynamic (Slack, 1996) nature of articulation, as every attempt to privilege a chain of meaning disarticulated it from already-entrenched significations to create new rearticulations. This dialectical process must push “against the grain of historical formations”

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(Hall, 1986, p. 54) to contend with the force of existing meaning in the signifier. Participants in the FDI debate shackled the four contested themes to ongoing historical and political conversations in India to tap their cultural and emotional resonance. This instantiation of articulation using culturally specific themes in India finds correspondence in similar studies (del Rio, 2012; DeLuca, 1999; Kraszewski, 2002; Sikka, 2008; Vavrus, 2002; Yin, 2005) that have explored processes of discursive and symbolic suturing to privilege particular meanings. For instance, applying the insights of articulation, Vavrus (2002) shows how the discursive apparatus of the state was used to articulate and rearticulate the cultural category of tradition to advance opposing goals in postcolonial Tanzania, and Sikka (2008) similarly unravels the affirmation of the political ideology of neo-liberalism through aligning the missile defense shield with emotive issues specific to the United States. Yin’s (2005) study reveals how articulation functioned intertextually in The Joy Luck Club to reify a hegemonic American culture by differentiating it from an Othered Chinese culture. Kraszewski’s (2002) study similarly analyzes advertisements for blaxploitation films to show how Black identities were constructed through multiple articulations of anxieties around race, class, and Black nationalism. Each of these explorations uses articulation theory to study symbolic linkages and is thus symptomatic of “a world without foundations, without a transcendental signified, without given meanings,” where “the concept of articulation is a means to understand the struggle to fix meaning and define reality temporarily” (DeLuca, 1999, p. 334). The dialectical pull exercised on the concepts of globalization, the status of the print media, national interest, and public opinion sought to privilege alternate versions of reality through a structure of multivalent signs in the FDI debate, which I turn to now.

Globalization as Progress Versus Globalization as Threat Globalization is a polarizing topic within political discourse in India, not in the least because India’s colonization began in the garb of a trade offer by the East India Company to erstwhile rulers of India. Having consciously chosen to prohibit foreign industry under Nehruvian socialism in the decades since independence, the Indian economy was compelled to accelerate its embrace of the global free market by an imminent credit crisis in the early 1990s (McDowell, 1997). The resulting restructuration initiated as a condition for International Monetary Fund loans, while reinforcing wealth disparities (Pal & Ghosh, 2007), has also galvanized nationalistic movements against multinational corporations. Opposing sides deployed contradictory readings of globalization (Jameson, 1998; Kellner, 2002) that were celebratory on the one hand and power-centric on the other. Opponents of FDI portrayed globalization as an unequal process and

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a threat to Indian national sovereignty, thus aligning their position with the supposed global consensus. Supporters of FDI, on the other hand, argued that the integration of the world would lead to a flow of opportunities along with capital and technology. This bivalent articulation of globalization showed that the struggle over the material consequences of the government’s decision was actually a struggle to “fix meaning” (DeLuca, 1999, p. 334). An editorial appearing in The Hindu, a strong opponent of FDI, elaborated on this global consensus by stating that “a number of democracies in West Europe, North America and Oceania continue to maintain prohibitions or restrictions on foreign ownership of print (and electronic) media” (June 27, 2002, the day after the government’s decision). Similarly, The Economic Times, the business publication of The Times of India, another strong opponent, cited China as “the world leader in attracting FDI,” but one that still disallowed foreign investment in publishing and print media (“Most Newspapers Are Against FDI,” 2005). It cited the case of Brazil, where 70% of the shares in newspapers must remain with Brazilians, and of Australia and continued: Even countries belonging to the G-8 have restrictions on FDI in print. France does not allow more than 20% foreign ownership in a company that produces a newspaper. Italy has reciprocal relationships with countries outside the European Union as regards foreign ownership. (The Economic Times, April 17, 2005)

The global resistance to foreign ownership of print media was further highlighted by The Hindu (June 27, 2002), which mentioned World Trade Organization negotiations where “the one service that no country has tabled a proposal on is the print media.” These examples are some among many cases where disconnected and selective examples were clubbed together and the unique sociohistorical reasons dictating each country’s policy were erased to present a unified global opposition to the idea. The supporters of FDI, on the other hand, defined globalization as a progressive convergence of economies and cultures, criticizing opposition to it as anachronistic. They argued that holding on to a decision taken in 1955, when India was still an unsure and newly independent nation, would isolate it in a globalizing world. An editorial in The Telegraph (a supporter of FDI) emphasized this by stating that “a large part of the official mind in India is still stuck in 1955” (“Coils of the Past,” 2002). It called the old decision “the last relic of an era in which state ownership and state regulation were the watchwords of policy, and foreign capital was perceived as an extension of imperialism” asking sarcastically that India be allowed “to enter the 21st century” (The Telegraph, June 25, 2002). Supporters sharply contrasted the present from 1955 when India: was a country that was tentatively finding its feet in terms of its own identity and a place for itself in the comity of nations. [. . .] But what can possibly justify hanging

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on to such a restriction in this day and age? In circa 2002? After we’ve been through 13 general elections and have defined ourselves as a self-confident democracy? (June 25, 2002)

This implied that by overtly protecting the national media, the government underestimated its strength to carve its own niche on the global stage. Narratives of globalization as inimical to the national print media clashed with the story of globalization as progress, as each side tried to favorably define the phenomenon. They could present competing narratives about the same thing (DeLuca, 1999; Hall, 1986) because opposing, yet equally true, stories can indeed be told about the phenomenon of globalization (Jameson, 1998; Kellner, 2002), thus enabling either articulation and underscoring Hall’s (1986) point that each articulation illuminates the circumstances under which it was forged.

Holy Print Media, Profane Electronic Media Despite the expansion of other forms of media such as television and the Internet, the Indian newspaper industry remains the flagship media institution in India. Its continued growth due to increasing literacy and an expanding middle class is helped by a cultural and national emphasis on learning as a means of personal advancement. Indian newspapers’ historical role as a powerful agent against colonial struggle (Parameswaran, 2009; Sonwalkar, 2002) adds to that prestige. Opponents of FDI strategically deployed this salience of the written word. The supporters meanwhile challenged this claim of exceptionalism by equating the print media with other media. Justifying their opposition to FDI in print, opponents frequently touted the phrase “The Fourth Estate” to differentiate the print media’s role in a democracy. This argument for exceptionalism was necessary to justify newspapers’ own contradictory positions on foreign investment in other sectors where they welcomed it. Making such a case for their privileged status, Katyal writing in The Hindu (June 26, 2002) asked: “Will the first three estates—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary—be opened up later?” That this position was a long-standing one among opponents of FDI is shown by an earlier echo of this comparison in an essay by Ramachandra (1999), who notes: “If the fourth estate can be opened for foreign investment then by what logic can foreign participation be kept out of the other three estates, namely, executive, judiciary and legislature?” (The Times of India, December 12, 1999). An editorial in The Hindu (June 27, 2002) appearing on the day of the government’s decision emphasized the sacrosanct status of the written word by ascribing to it the role of “an informer, educator and watchdog in a democracy.” Notably, there is both a disarticulation (between newspapers and other sectors of the economy) and an attempted articulation (between newspapers and their special role in a

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democracy) at work within this claim (Hall, 1986). Opponents of FDI distinguished newspapers not only from other sectors of the economy but also from other existing and newly emerging forms of media. This differentiation was crucial because the presence of many television news networks, including many foreign ones (e.g., CNN, BBC, and Murdoch-owned Star News), would make claims about loss of national sovereignty untenable. The supporters of FDI, on the other hand, argued against this exceptional status of print media, citing the case of television news where full foreign ownership was already allowed5 without adverse consequences. One supporting newspaper (“Reading the Fine Print: Finally,” 2002) quoted a survey stating “TV news viewer-ship has increased by 285 per cent. With an estimated 38 to 47 million cable and satellite TV households in the country, how is television any less intrinsically related to the democratic processes than newspapers?” The other supporter of FDI, The Telegraph (June 25, 2002), echoed this sentiment to argue that “The contradiction between allowing foreign television channels and disallowing foreign capital in print media is especially striking because in a country like India, television has far greater impact and reach than newspapers.” Continuing to dismantle claims of exceptionalism, The Indian Express sardonically questioned: “If public opinion has not been mortgaged by CNN News or BBC World, why would foreign equity in print—which has far less popular reach—have such an insidious effect?” (“Papering Over Facts: The Idea,” 2002). The reach and spread of television was repeatedly presented as an antidote to the salience of the written word, thus showing claims about print’s exceptional status to be unfounded. The supporters also used the very argument about the exceptional status of print media against FDI’s opponents and argued that if newspapers were indeed so consequential, then the infusion of capital and technology accruing to them from liberalization would only make them more competitive as had supposedly happened to the other sectors. Hence, The Telegraph pondered: Better performance was seen to be the immediate result of the openness that would follow the removal of the license raj and regulated markets. There existed no grounds for cocooning the newspaper industry from this process of opening up. (June 25, 2002)

The Indian Minster for Information and Broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj, who took the consequential decision on FDI, used this precise telos of progress during a debate in the Indian parliament, stating: “It is natural that liberalization must take this route. First, the manufacturing sector was liberalized; then it was services, followed by the electronic media. We had to come to print.” Similar to the opponents, the position of the supporters requires a double movement of articulation: first, of delinking print media with an exceptional status and then, second, of linking it with other media, thus showing its ordinariness.

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The delinking pushes against the “grooves that have articulated it already” (Hall, 1986, p. 54). The deployment of this theme of print media’s status (exceptional vs. ordinary) by both sides showed how meaning was essentially a site of struggle as the written word was rearticulated as a bivalent sign of special or ordinary.

The Expediency of Nationalism Nationalism is invariably the vantage point from which anticolonial resistances emerged (Chatterjee, 1993), and it has functioned both as a ruse to galvanize community and to usurp power by the national elite in the postcolonial setting. Conceived at the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and having mutated significantly in its journey from Western Europe, the nation-state replaced religion while retaining its affective charge as a guarantor of mortality and transcendence (Anderson, 2006). Its emotive appeal was frequently invoked in the FDI debate as both sides swore to be acting in the national interest while conveniently conflating their own interest with the nation. Opponents of FDI evoked memories of India’s anticolonial resistance and the role of newspapers in it to draw parallels with their own opposition to FDI. The supporters of FDI, on the other hand, articulated national interest with an open and competitive print media system where smaller newspapers (that would gain from the inflow of FDI) would thrive just as much as the bigger monopolies. The opponents’ argument was moored to the nationalist claim that foreign entities could have undue influence on domestic political opinion and hence could not be trusted with India’s national interest. Katyal, writing in The Hindu (June 26, 2002), dramatized this fear by beginning his piece with “Welcome back East India Company” and then asking his readers to “recall, how modest was the beginning of the East India Company and how it spread its tentacles first in the realm of trade and then to areas connected with the country’s governance.” The convenient argument that only Indian-owned newspapers could be trusted with national interest was repeated by The Hindu (June 26, 2002) in an editorial where it stated: “The press has actively participated in shaping the agenda in democratic India and it has done so because it has been rooted in the country—owned, managed and staffed by Indians.” The editorial’s title “An Indian Institution Under Threat” emphasized its position quite unambiguously. Underscoring print media’s vital role, commentators also frequently equated it with other sectors vital for national interest like the defense industry, arguing: Both relate to national security (in the case of the Press in the broadest sense of the term), and it can be no one’s case that “economic liberalization” should be permitted in these areas when it is demonstrably proven that such investment will lead to a weakening of that security. (Choudhury, The Hindu Business Line, March 25, 2002)

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Hence, by repeatedly invoking the threat of neo-colonialism, opponents of FDI capitalized on the affective resonance of nationalism, implicitly also portraying the supporters of FDI as antinationals. To counter this emotional appeal, supporters of FDI rearticulated national interest with the interest of smaller papers and a diverse media system. They called out the hypocrisy of the big papers, showing how their nationalist arguments barely concealed a fear of competition and was merely selfish protectionism. Giving up the high ground of objective and neutral debate, supporters of FDI explicitly argued that national interest in fact lay in protecting the smaller, financially insecure papers by allowing them access to foreign capital. This mention of their own financial need and the direct allusion to the hypocrisy of rival publications on the edit pages was unprecedented but also a sign of the high stakes in the polemical debate. An editorial in The Indian Express (June 27, 2002) stated that the move to protect the print media from foreign investment was “illogical and unfair to those players who may require a financial fillip to stay alive.” Similarly, The Telegraph (June 25, 2002), criticizing the continuing ban on FDI in the print media lamented: “The only fallout of this is that Indian newspapers and magazines remain starved of capital and of new technology.” The supporters, just like the opponents, spoke on behalf of the reader (and hence the nation) and made direct references to the monopolies allegedly protecting their turf. Hence, The Indian Express (June 27, 2002) wrote: The polarized response underlines how contentious the move is and how fiercely it had been resisted for over a decade by powerful media houses in the country, which want nothing more than to be allowed to continue with their long, unchallenged reign in the marketplace. Their accusations do, nevertheless, need to be answered if only because what is at stake is the interest of the reader.

These direct attacks on “powerful media houses” appeared along with other indirect references to rival publications as in The Telegraph’s (June 25, 2002) lament about “the play of narrow vested interests.” By openly claiming that smaller newspapers needed to be protected not for their own sake but for the larger national interests and highlighting the so-called hypocrisy of the opponents, the supporters of FDI conveniently deployed the ruse of nationalism in their own favor while simultaneously disarticulating it from the protection of print media.

Faking Consensus and Constructing a Public As in any other democracy, the concept of public opinion is a pliable signifier within democratic discourse in India. First attributed to Jean Jacque Rousseau’s Social Contract (Book IV) where he delineates the conditions for the formation of the general will (Noelle-Neumann, 1984; Rousseau, 2002), the idea’s

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elusiveness and expedient misuse through history have been well documented (Lipari, 2000; Lippman, 1922, 1925). India’s parliamentary democracy frequently witnesses the invocation of “public opinion,” the “people’s court,” or “people’s voice” to provide the garb of legitimacy to political actions. In the FDI debate, the concept of public opinion functioned akin to a floating signifier that Laclau (2007) argues operate by creating “chains of equivalences” between disparate groups and demands. Each side in the debate conveniently constructed chains of disconnected voices in the national discourse to present an illusory alliance of the public in favor of their position. They therefore brought together “different, distinct elements” to construct a “unity” (Hall, 1986, p. 54). What remained cleverly unsaid by either side was that English being the language of their publication belied both their illusory fantasies of representing public opinion, on whose behalf those claims were being made. The opponents’ strategy was clearest on the day after the decision, as each news report selectively presented reactions only from critics of the government’s decision. Both The Times of India and The Hindu expectedly carried large frontpage stories on the topic, and the main story in The Hindu claimed in its very first sentence that the decision had been taken “In the face of stiff opposition from a section of the polity and the media” (Joshua, 2002). The story carried in The Times of India (the other supporter) also emphasized its disagreement by noting: Significantly, the Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, overruled an earlier Parliamentary committee recommendation that the government should not allow FDI in the print media. (“Govt Allows 26% FDI,” June 26, 2002)

The Times of India story furthered showed the decision’s unpopularity by claiming that out of the top 50 newspapers in the country, as many as 34, representing a circulation of 76.3%, were opposed to FDI. The implication that since 76.3% of the top 50 newspapers were opposed to FDI, the public opinion was against the decision, conveniently ignored newspapers beyond the top 50, and proved the supporters’ contention that most financially strong newspapers opposed FDI. Even the headlines of stories in the opponents’ pages unequivocally conveyed the unpopularity of the move, often burying details of whom it was unpopular with deep inside the story. A story in The Hindu headlined “Decision on FDI in Print Media Deplored” extensively quoted a little-known director of an unknown entity called the Centre for Bharatiya Marketing Development. Other sample headlines from The Hindu that sought to fake an alliance through creating these chains of equivalence were as follows: “Jayalalitha Opposes FDI in Print Media” (June 27, 2002), “Sena Condemns Decision on FDI in Print Media” (June 28, 2002), and “Newspaper Employees Protest FDI in Print

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Media” (August 27, 2002). As is evident, these headlines sought to convey the perception of widespread opposition to FDI from various stakeholders. Stories in The Times of India followed a similar pattern with headlines such as “Few Takers for FDI in Print Media” (March 24, 2002), “Media, Parties Deplore FDI in Print” (June 26, 2002), “TDP, Oppn to Oppose FDI in Print” (June26, 2002), “Opposition Raps FDI Decision” (June 28, 2002), “RSS, BJP Allies Opposed to FDI in Print” (June 25, 2002), “Most Publications Oppose FDI in Print” (June 26, 2002), and “Jaya Opposes FDI in Print” (June 26, 2002). These stories often included comments against FDI from little-known politicians in regional state capitals such as Hyderabad, Trivandrum, and Patna, who were otherwise unlikely to find mention in the national press. The supporters of FDI used a similar strategy but articulated the signifier public opinion with the government in power, the business community, and the stock markets whose support for FDI was in line with their enthusiasm about all foreign investment. The Indian Express (June 26, 2002) exemplified this strategy in a story headlined “Cheers to FDI in Print From India Inc, Markets,” in which it tried to present the impression of widespread support for the issue by stating: “The country’s most hi-profile and powerful industry body, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), termed it as a ‘bold and significant step’ and stock markets greeted the news by pushing up the stock prices of print media companies sharply.” Similarly, the day before the cabinet was to meet to decide on the issue, The Telegraph nudged the government toward a favorable decision, claiming widespread support from the industry: Voluble support from within industry for a new media policy is expected to shape the Center’s stand as it ponders over a 47-year-old Cabinet resolution barring foreign investment in the print media. (June 25, 2002)

The editorial claimed that the backing from corporate India had created a crescendo of support and “we have never seen it reach the sort of level it has since the parliamentary standing committee’s report.” Continuing to present the business perspective as representing public opinion, The Indian Express, the other supporter of FDI, quoted a stockbroker, Gagan Banga, from one of the largest stock trading companies in India, Indiabulls, on the day after the decision (June 26, 2002): Foreign direct investment is certainly going to improve valuations of print media companies, especially the smaller ones. With the infusion of fresh funds, they would be able to aggressively market their publications leading to increased competition and better quality.

Interspersed between reports of rising stock prices of media companies after the decision, the quote was meant to show that a positive vote from the market

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was a vote from the public. As with all attempted articulations above, the conflation between stock markets and national opinion too was premised on key elisions like the fact that less than 1.15% of India’s 180 million households invest in stocks (Sainath, 2004) or have any interest in its functioning. Besides the business community, the government itself, given its favorable decision on the issue, became a true representative of the people. As stories, one after another, showered praise on the government, the minister instrumental in taking the decision was portrayed as a hero and hence a true representative of the people. A story in The Indian Express (July 18, 2002) titled “FDI in Print: Sushma Rips Into Cong, Mulayam” lauded her daring move as it said that she had launched a “blistering attack on the Opposition and some newspaper groups for condemning the move.” The privileging of favorable voices and the deliberate suppression of oppositional views by both sides operated similar to pressures on a demand that Laclau (2007) claims must form chains of equivalences either to resist power or be co-opted by the very hegemonic power being resisted. Deploying the ruse of public opinion by both sides was premised on an erasure and suppression of contradictions (Laclau, 2007; Slack, 1996) among the elements they were creating a fictive alliance from.

Conclusion This study has sought to instantiate the theory of articulation by highlighting its uniquely cultural contours as it operates within the framework of globalization. The neo-liberal expansion of Western capitalism (Harvey, 2006) has witnessed deep contestations around the world that invariably play out in the discursive realm (Fairclough, 2006) before resulting in concrete policy choices. In exploring the mechanisms by which consensus was generated and certain policy choices about globalization made to appear inevitable by both sides in the debate, we understand how chains of meaning use diachronic (historical) and synchronic (contemporary) associations (Cloud, 1998) to create “lines of tendential force” (Hall, 1986, p. 53). As the earlier analysis shows, contradictory articulations of the same four themes were undertaken precisely because they allowed a conjugation of historical as well as contemporary affective resonances in the signifier. Their choice and repeated invocation sought to present certain policy choices as commonsense and a fait accompli. Through unraveling this functioning, this study’s key contribution is to extend insights about the discursive modality of power to the realm of globalization. Although the relationship between language, discourse, and power has been much explored in the Western context (Cloud, 1998; Foucault, 1982, McGee, 1980), the emergent ways in which this relationship is beginning to redefine power and shape north–south relations remain a relatively unexplored terrain.

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When transferred to the global realm, any such exploration must account for the cultural valences that allow chains of signification to operate in particularly persuasive ways. In the FDI debate, abstract and universal terms were connected to contingent cultural and historical nuances. These connections illuminate the dialectical osmosis between universal ideas and their particular cultural manifestations around the world. This exploration is important because these discursive struggles do not remain within the symbolic realm but invariably have material consequences. After all, the struggle over meaning in the FDI debate craftily displaced the conflict over material interests to the epistemic realm, and my analysis has tried to peal off the discursive mask to show the pecuniary material stakes that motivated positions within the debate. Extending lessons from articulations within the FDI debate in India to similar global contexts must locate other instances where this discursive modality of power can be seen in operation. As neo-liberal policy choices emerge to be the default proposition the world over, close analysis of discursive debates around them can potentially show us their strategic advance, thus allowing for more successful resistance to them. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes 1. The said committee on Information Technology headed by Somnath Chatterjee submitted its report opposing FDI in the print media on March 22, 2002. 2. In the 10 years since, several approvals big and small have been granted by the FIPB for FDI in print media. According to the latest numbers, about 4% of the approvals made by in 2010 were for the print media (FIPB, 2010). 3. Newspaper revenue in India grew 11% between 2009 and 2010. Overall, there are more than 77,000 registered newspapers in India with a combined daily circulation of over 107 million copies, and despite stiff competition from television and digital media, Indian newspapers remain the leading recipient of advertising revenue (126 billion rupees in the year 2010) beating television (103 billion rupees in 2010) and the Internet (10 billion rupees; FICCI, 2011). 4. This divide has an economic dimension, too. Even though the English press reaches only 40 million readers, as opposed to almost 470 million for the non-English press, it receives advertisement revenue of approximately 1,248 rupees (approximately $23) per reader on average as compared with only 148 rupees (approximately $3) per reader for the non-English press (FICCI, 2011).

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5. This rule was changed to limit FDI in television news soon after the decision on print media.

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Author Biography Sangeet Kumar (PhD, University of Iowa) is an assistant professor of communication at Denison University. His current research interests focus on questions of power and desire within globalization of popular culture and digital networks. His recent research has appeared in journals such as Popular Communication, Global Media and Communication, Journal of South Asian History and Culture as well as in several anthologies.