The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, First Edition. Edited by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Introduction This chapter engages with the conflicting relations between media research and public policy in India. It follows the trajectory of “policy-making in com- munications” as well as the “history of communi- cation research” in universities in India. In doing so, we find a lack of fit between the two. We ques- tion the discursive formation by analyzing the forms of expertise and knowledge practices that were being constituted in the post liberalization period along with the entry of new stakeholders in the field. The chapter emphasizes the need for con- ceiving of and operationalizing an intense dialog between higher education and policy-making bod- ies, so as to highlight the lessons to be learned from experiences in India and elsewhere. Policy-making in the domain of media in India has always been a site where competing interest groups were at loggerheads. Several such encoun- ters were observed in the century before 1947. While colonial governmentality sought to recon- stitute the public sphere, native public opinion, itself highly layered, incessantly questioned the colonial covenant (Kalpagam 2002; Das 2005). Early newspapers, telegraphy, and cinema were the obvious playing fields of the colonial government. This was complemented by the streamlining of traditional networks of communication, from the village upwards, to institutionalize the manage- ment of “information” (Bailey 1993). While both of these dynamics are readily visible in the organi- zation of propaganda, 1 the deeper intention of this complex strengthening of communication systems was the attainment of effective and efficient admin- istrative means to support colonial modes of appropriation. On its part, the Congress Party’s concerted attempts throughout the 1920s and 1930s to develop a countrywide communication network, forced the colonial administration to deploy sweeping policies of proscription. 2 All in all, as much as the colonialists deployed a plethora of media and social technologies as a strategic aspect of their administration of Indian society, all shades of anti-British forces also used various kinds of media for mobilizing and protecting their interests. The anti-colonial struggle would have been a case in point for the votaries of freedom to create a synergy, harnessing multiple voices to make media policy in independent India. On the contrary, the struggles for freedom could not escape the colonial legacy of centralized structures of policy-making; but nor did they want to miss the benefits of laissez-faire. The independent government did not want to script any policy for the media in an inte- grated manner, as both press and cinema evolved 15 Media Research and Public Policy: Tiding Over the Rupture Biswajit Das and Vibodh Parthasarathi Mansell_c15.indd 245 Mansell_c15.indd 245 12/29/2010 1:01:19 AM 12/29/2010 1:01:19 AM