Communication, Democracy and Evasive Silences:A Preliminary Report on the Public Sphere in Karnataka

This paper looks at one of the most important conditions that defines democracy as a system of self-governance. This condition is that all individuals in a society must have the right to communicate freely with any other individual or group of individuals in the society. A substantial part of this paper looks at the empirical reality of the public sphere in Karnataka for two basic purposes: (a) as a diagnostic study of the nature of this public sphere, and (b) as facts that need to be looked at for any meaningful engagement with the state’s democratic processes, and for the task of the further democratisation of society.Our study has revealed that the public sphere in contemporary Karnataka is an enormously rich and variegated domain of socio-cultural and political life. While some elements in this sphere are in a state of recession/disintegration, others are well established and efficiently functional, and yet others are still in a state of emergence. But together they offer significant opportunities for any citizen wishing to participate in the processes of the public sphere to do so.