Media sponsored imagined communities: national and transnational in the Indian “socially conscious” mediascape

In this paper I examine the imagined community that is being created by some 'socially conscious' campaigns recently flourished in the Indian mediascape. . Transnational forms of solidarities that reflect the more globalised character of society are now emerging, but they have yet to go beyond the limits on the imagination imposed by the territorial nation-state. Modern media play a particularly significant role in the process of creating a genuinely intemationalist language, able to clearly articulate new political possibilities and aspirations.The circulation of people, goods, ideas, and capitaI have created transnational spaces, internationalized spaces of cultural production, reflecting the heterogeneous cosmopolitan realities of late twentieth century capitalism. Focussing on the transmission of messages through the technologies of media, television, and film, I ask whether the 'socially conscious' campaigns are contributing to the definition of a new South Asian citizenship, which is based on a transnational globalised identity and caters to the needs of the urban middle classes.