Book review: 'The Making of Star India' untangles the knotted wires of media business in a refreshingly accessible way

Portfolio Penguin

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar is a reputed journalist and writer who observes the media business in India. She writes columns for Business Standard newspaper; earlier she worked with Businessworld magazine, among others. As for books, she has written two. Her first, The Indian Media Business, is said to have sold over 14,000 copies and has been translated into several languages. This year, her second book, The Making of Star India, was launched. The book is, at 200-odd pages, an extremely breezy, well-researched and well-written read.

The writer points out that The Making... is “not a comprehensive history of Star — that would require volumes.” But it does cover Star India’s story from day one up to the present day. The writer says she has “chosen episodes that define, illustrate and elucidate a point or a milestone...” If one were to compare the book to a painting, this one is a pen-and-paper drawing, and while it is a detailed, proficient and attractive one, it is no oil painting. It will not attract the reader who is interested in deep analysis about Star India’s impact on Indian culture.

I suppose one can look at the media behemoth called Star India in at least two ways. One, (as per the book under review) it is one of India’s top media firms, which offers over 60 channels with a reach of 70 crore people. In 1992, as per this book, India’s whole media and entertainment industry was worth Rs 1,500 crore; today, it is worth Rs 1,67,400 crore. Star has been in India since 1994. It is an indivisible part of the growth story of the Indian media industry.

The book hits its stride in summarising the conflicts that shaped Star India’s story. Conflict, it is said, feeds drama, and this book documents these conflicts briefly and with flair. For instance, the troubles faced by Star’s first CEO, Rathikant Basu; the games played by the government that was suspicious of Star’s foray into direct-to-home services; the blockbuster that was Kaun Banega Crorepati; the advent of the soap operas, notably one starring the character Tulsi Virani; the Star India-NDTV breakup that shook up the news landscape in India; and, of course, the stints of the head honchos, Peter Mukerjea and Uday Shankar. All these turning points are succinctly and satisfyingly dealt with. The writer does not shy away from statistics and figures, and, to her great credit, manages to hold the reader’s attention even through a number-dense paragraph. Of which, there are a few. And she untangles the knotted wires of the media business, for instance the cable and DTH landscape, in a very refreshingly accessible way. All well and good.

Cultural impact

The second way of looking at Star India, however, is as a cultural phenomenon. Here I take ‘culture’ to mean ‘the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organisation of a particular country or group’ (as per Oxford Learner’s Dictionary). It can be argued that Star India shaped the culture of India in a major way. As the book puts it, “Over the years, Star brought many things to India: Channel [V], India’s first music channel, in 1994; Star News, its first news channel, in 1998; and Radio City, the first private radio station in India, in 2001. It also revived an ancient Indian game through the Pro Kabaddi League, and created one of the country’s biggest video streaming apps with Hotstar. It resurrected Amitabh Bachchan’s stardom thanks to Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2000 and changed the rules of television for good. It gave us Ekta Kapoor, and along with Zee, kick-started the whole Oshiwara/Link Road-based Mumbai TV production industry.” The book also mentions the Indian Premier League (IPL) being in the Star kitty, of course.

What are the cultural effects of these developments? To answer this question is not the brief of the book, but the answer to the question is an indivisible part of the Star India story. Popular culture plays a major part in shaping the values and politics of a nation, which, in turn, play a part in shaping the quality of daily life (although this relationship is not quite linear or clear-cut). To understand the cultural impact of Star India, therefore is very important. The book, given its tight brief and average page count, dwells on the cultural impact of Star India in passing. For instance, Star News is mentioned against the backdrop of a liberalizing India that wanted to know about itself and the world. A few pages treat of Ekta Kapoor’s soap operas, that were termed regressive by the urban media and embraced whole-heartedly by the Indian heartland. The book cites a study that found how women in rural areas got a degree of emancipation through the advent of cable TV in their villages-- “... women’s preference for male children fell by 12 percentage points after a village got cable TV. There was change too in how women felt about men beating them, something that had been considered acceptable in many of those villages until then.” But that’s about it. In a few sentences, the book is done with the effect of cable TV on Indian sensibilities. And so much for the positives-- the book is silent on whether this or other studies found any ill-effects of cable TV or daily soaps.

Even if we erase the cultural angle as being somehow extraneous, The Making...is still too short by quite a few pages. The book would have benefited by incorporating thorough profiles of the key people behind Star India: Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Basu, Mukerjea, and Shankar, at the very least, if not profiles of the heads of Star’s competitors, such as Subhash Goel. One need not stress the fact that the psychology of owners and helmsmen plays a massive part in the life of an organisation. But what we learn about the mind of Murdoch senior, for instance, is tantalisingly little; we get the caricature of a bold and ruthless media baron who backs his lieutenants to make the right choice. And, given that Mukerjea was recently in the news in connection with a crime as heinous as murder, the reader would be justified in wanting a peek at the space between his ears. Fortunately, we are given more material about what makes his successor tick. Uday Shankar, who led the successful turnaround of Star India, is shown in slightly greater detail. But it is nowhere near a comprehensive profile.

Many or even most readers will like the book just fine, the way it is. The Making of Star India has many things going for it. It is impeccably written, which is refreshingly rare in the world of Indian business writing. It is thoroughly researched. It is pacy and at times even exciting. It stirs up nostalgia in those of us who came of age in the ‘90s. If only the book was longer and more ambitious (though it is easier for a reviewer to say than for a writer to do, this book not being commissioned by Star India). As the book stands, it is exceedingly good, and thoroughly recommended.