The very rapid growth in the Indian media industries and the vibrancy of India's popular culture are making a working understanding of the Indian scene a prerequisite for any serious study of media in the twenty-first century. As one of the largest and most influential emerging economies in the world today, India now plays a crucial role in any serious discussion of social and economic change taking place at the global level. As new commercial and political alignments take shape in the face of new global circumstances, thinkers and decision-makers are inexorably drawn towards the reality of a new India being forged in the technological and cultural flux of global media flows. Taking an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the complex field of Indian media and society, this book combines a rich descriptive account with critical analysis designed to engender informed debate amongst students, academics and other researchers.

Indian Media Giants is an analytical chronicle of six Indian mega media conglomerates' individual odyssey from their beginnings in the pre-independence era to their transformation into powerful business empires in the digitised modern India. The book traces media metamorphoses, contours of growth and development, travails and trajectories, organizational structures, editorial policies and business dynamics of print majors in India, namely, The Times Group, The Hindu Group, The Hindustan Times Limited, The Indian Express Group, Dainik Jagran Limited and DB Corp Limited.

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of India as a major media producer and consumer market increasingly engaged with the global economy. Aided by rising incomes, technological remediation, regulatory strategies, and a shifting political terrain, the business of media has been given official recognition as a substantive component of India’s economy and as a prominent feature of its economic thinking. In light of these developments, these two pioneering volumes investigate the dynamics of an increasingly integrated media economy encompassing television, film, music, sport, and telecoms. Volume 1: Industrial Dynamics and Cultural Adaptation illustrates the distinctive industrial dynamics of India’s media economy, tracking the deeply embedded cultural, political, and economic forces that determine its everyday operation. The selection of essays serves to demonstrate the unique patterns of development and the complex field of exchanges that have constituted India’s media economy. As a whole, this volume posits a comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of media resources, the negotiation of industrial norms and the cultural context of a media economy firmly situated in the realities of India’s distinct regions, cultures, and human networks. Volume 2: Market Dynamics and Social Transactions provides a comprehensive analysis of the interlocking markets that constitute the media economy, focusing upon its particular commodity forms, labour conditions, and spaces of consumption. Taking account of a rich set of case studies, this volume argues for the necessary consideration of multiple and interdependent markets in explicating our everyday encounters with media. By foregrounding the social transactions that encapsulate market exchanges, it begins to illustrate some of the novel aspirations, meanings, and relationships arising with India’s media economy.

This book examines the historical trajectory of the growth of the television news and critically analyzes the role of private television news in framing the nature of public discourse in contemporary India. Set in the context of a transformed media landscape, the book attempts to understand and analyze the role of two private national news channels, NDTV 24×7 and Aaj Tak, in producing mediatized narratives that offer a commentary on the various social, political, cultural, religious and economic issues in the public domain. This is achieved by critically examining the process and techniques of production, representation and consumption of current affairs programs such as studio debates, panel discussions, audience talk shows and documentaries aired on both the channels. Highlighting some of the key trends that impinge on the structure and mode of operation of television news media in contemporary India, the book offers a simultaneous examination of how the production, representation and consumption of the mediatized discourses shape the nature of public discourse and have social-political ramifications for the functioning of Indian democracy. The book will be of interest to researchers in sociology, media and communication studies, popular culture and South Asian Studies.

Examining anew the notions of media imperialism and globalization of media, this book disrupts the generalised consensus in media scholarship that globalization of media has put an end to media imperialism. One elemental aspect of media imperialism is the structural dependency of television systems in the global South on the imperial North. Taking India and Pakistan as its case studies, this book views globalization of media as the unleashing of processes that have translated into the liberalization of air waves and privatization of television systems whereby commercialization of television is privileged over public interest television. Additionally, it argues that the globalization of media has contributed to corruption, tabloidization, and marginalization of subaltern classes in the Indian and Pakistani media.

When Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively. Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India's blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War. Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility—especially mobilized armor—in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms. Brimming with new insights, Citino's study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post-9/11 era.