Before the Gulf War, one of the most culturally prudish
countries in the world had a choice of exactly one channel,
Indian National Television. Then came the dish-wallahs.
So, are Indians glued to their sets, or repelled by the
godless depravity beaming down at them from the stars?
(Hint: Santa Barbara is the number one show in the country.)
Story by Jeff Greenwald
Just beyond the shadow of South Delhi's ancient Red Fort lies the Lajpat-Rai market, a sprawling maze of dusty passageways and tin-roofed stalls that
at first glance looks like any other Indian bazaar. Carts piled with boxes weave between cattle and pedestrians, oily smoke rises from fast-food booths, jets of crimson beetle-nut spittle sail through the air, briefly catching the sunlight before splattering anonymously into dusty corners.
But Lajpat-Rai is not a typical Indian market. Within this musty labyrinth, littered with trash and dung and spittle, you'll find not saris, spices, or sandals, but the raw ingredients of India's current television revolution. In a mad atmosphere reminiscent of Blade Runner's futuristic funk and William Gibson's orbiting
ghettos, turbaned hawkers sell the latest in satellite dishes and signal splitters. Shoppers sift through bins of transistors, men haggle over the prices of LED displays, and rolls of fresh video cable hang on crooked nails, framing lush paintings of the Hindu gods.
Along with a few similar electronics bazaars across the Indian subcontinent, Lajpat-Rai is a crucial link in this vast republic's exploding market for satellite television - and a central supply port for a new generation of opportunistic entrepreneurs called "dish-wallahs" - wallah being a common Hindi phrase which translates to something between "hack" and "specialist." Using no-frills satellite dishes, simple modulators, and hundreds of meters of cable, these inventive television hackers are affecting a transformation that many locals feared would never come: propelling Mother India out of information limbo by hard-wiring its living rooms directly into the global jet stream of satellite news, live sports, and the geosynchronous gyrations of MTV.
Although it's touted as the world's largest democracy, India has managed to remain one of the most culturally prudish countries in Asia. The news that flesh-filled MTV and violent, sexy American shows are now being watched in Hindu and Muslim homes may shock people who have long viewed this country - quite accurately - as a stronghold of ascetic spirituality, religious tradition, and deeply rooted taboos against public displays of affection. But thanks to an ever-increasing cadre of dish-wallahs, satellite television - with its enticing western immorality and materialism - is here to stay.
Meet the Wallah
Deepak Vishnui resembles an Indian Spike Lee: wide-eyed yet vaguely bored looking, with a rough black mustache and thick round glasses. A 31-year-old New Delhi electrician, he's also the president (and entire staff) of Channel Vision - a company he founded in July 1992.
"The World Cup cricket games were beginning," he said, "but the Indian government wasn't broadcasting all the matches." Sensing a classic case of demand outstripping supply, Vishnui borrowed 60,000 rupees (about $2,000) from his brother, bought a dish, and started his business. "I began with about 40 households," he said. "Each one paid 300 rupees (about $10) for installation, and pays a regular monthly fee of 100 rupees." With 60 apartments hand-wired to his rooftop dish, Vishnui may be one of the smallest dish-wallahs in Delhi, but his operation is completely typical. With subscriber bases ranging from 50 to 1,500, all of Delhi's 200 to 300 cable networks (a fraction of an estimated 20,000 scattered across India) are privately owned, bare-bones businesses with tiny overheads.
The initial investment, of course, is the dish itself. Prices have plunged from $6,000
in 1990 to less than $300 today. The dish-wallah's "control room" is usually a corner
of a living room. There you'll find a simple modulator, amplifier, and VCR stacked on wobbly shelves above the family TV. Beyond this, the only remaining costs are for cable, connectors, and dirt-cheap signal amplifiers.
"There is no doubt," said a salesman for
a New Delhi dish-wallah, "that anyone with 25,000 rupees (less than $1,000) can walk into the Lajpat-Rai market and walk out with everything they need to build their own cable television station."
A Speedy Revolution
Rooftop dish antennas and the dish-wallahs who pipe their signals through India's urban sprawl have become a fixture of contemporary Indian life. Yet just three years ago, India was still wallowing in an information backwater - cut off from the rest of the world by government apathy, xenophobic censorship, and limited access to even the most rudimentary hardware. Not that the hardware alone would have done any good. Back then there were precious few signals to receive.
Before the satellite boom there was one dull and unwelcoming channel. Doordashan, or Indian National Television, featured saccharine soaps, official exhortations, and numbing cultural documentaries, all carefully engineered to offend (or inspire) no one. Videocassettes reached India in the early 1980s; but VCRs were well beyond the means of most people in this underdeveloped country. It was in the mid-1980s (and mainly in the high-rises of Bombay, India's equivalent of Hollywood), that the first real video entrepreneurs appeared. Their strategy was simple: Wire up willing neighbors to a single VCR, then show rented films for a monthly subscription charge.
For countless Indian city dwellers, January 1990 will be remembered as the month when the world at large - long an impenetrable nut - was finally cracked open. As US troops assaulted Iraq, the satellite revolution struck India with equal force. Anyone with a 12-foot dish antennae could receive CNN. Among the educated but news-starved classes of the subcontinent, linked to the Middle East by decades of oil dependency and a millennium-old Islamic heritage, the market for up-to-the-minute broadcasts was immediate and enormous. Government officials made no attempt to limit or control the profusion of dish antennas that bloomed over the city skylines. Kilometers of cable snaked through apartment buildings, over trees and across roads, bringing the world's first real-time spectator war into hundreds of thousands of living rooms from Bombay to Calcutta.
CNN remained a fixture in many Indian homes for well over a year; but in April 1991 a new company called STAR TV, broadcasting out of Hong Kong, began offering a nearly irresistible alternative. In contrast to CNN's single channel, STAR's satellite broadcasts four: BBC Asia, MTV, Prime Sports, and Star Plus - a channel featuring contemporary western programs and soap operas (Santa Barbara has become the most popular show in India). Best of all, though, STAR requires a much smaller dish than CNN; even a 3-foot-wide model can easily capture its powerful signal.
Within weeks, nearly all of India's satellite antennas had been reoriented. STAR became the new standard; and its strong, accessible beam inspired thousands of would-be dish-wallahs to leap into the fray. In the first six months of 1992, the number of households receiving STAR TV jumped a staggering 211 percent - from 720,000 viewers to 1.6 million viewers, according to the Indian Market Research Bureau. For a network that relies on international advertisers, the figures were ambrosia - and the end is nowhere in sight. In early December, the BBC's immediate and even-handed coverage of India's Hindu-Muslim riots ignited yet another mad scramble for hookups. And the boom continues; in New Delhi alone, dish-wallahs are still wiring up more than 250 new subscribers every day.
Regulation? What Regulation?
Aside from the sheer speed of the process, the most astonishing thing about India's video revolution is that it remains totally unregulated. India's bureaucracy is one of the most sluggish on earth, and only now is there any talk (so far it's just gossip) of imposing taxes and/or licensing fees on dish-wallahs. Any attempt to limit broadcasts or impose official censorship would be utterly impossible: There are tens of thousands of satellite antennas, and nearly all of them could be folded up and hidden within a matter of minutes. The only recourse - one that the Indian government is rather unlikely to take - would be to shoot the offending sputnik out of the sky.
The Indian government may find a way to squeeze a few rupees out of the dish-wallahs, but they will never be able to control the revolution that began in those first tense months of 1990. India is wired in, and nothing can turn back the clock. Meanwhile, Doordashan is bravely attempting to compete: It added a second channel, and even took the huge ethical risk of broadcasting the Miss World Beauty Pageant. But it seems unlikely that it will be able to hold its own against STAR, much less the new ATN (Asia Television Network), which will begin broadcasting an all-Hindi channel later this year.
What, one has to wonder, are India's teenagers making of this stuff? Are they glued to their TV sets, or repelled by the godless depravity beaming down at them from the stars?
The answer, so far, seems to be neither. While western fashions, hairdos, and country music are experiencing a surge in popularity, and some wild outfits are surfacing in the trendier districts of Bombay, all of the teenagers I spoke with had similar reactions. Their favorite programs, far and away, are the BBC documentaries. Asked about MTV and the ultra-suggestive content of western rock videos, they simply smile and shrug.
"A few of the songs are good, but we still feel ashamed seeing some things," admitted Geeta, whose older brother is a dish-wallah in New Delhi. "When we're alone, okay, we'll watch; but if another family member comes in we must change the channel."
Their Indian parents, however, have different ideas. A recent documentary about the impact of western television on Indian society soberly warned of headaches, blindness, and epileptic fits. Even the dish-wallahs themselves have expressed mixed feelings about the new world they are helping to create.
"There is a problem," admits Vinod Tailang, president of the 120-member Cable Television and Dish Antenna Operators Association of Uttar Pradesh, and father of two teenagers. "Much of what we show is totally against Indian culture. It is definitely changing the way Indian boys and girls react to each other. I see them dancing and moving all the time. Jumping, jumping. They have become action-packed."
Free-lancer Jeff Greenwald is a former Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent.
