In ‘robust vs rowdy opposition’ binary, Big Media blanks out parliamentary traditions

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 11, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/07/11/in-robust-vs-rowdy-opposition-binary-big-media-blanks-out-parliamentary-traditions

Who would have thought that a session of the Lok Sabha would draw eyeballs the way the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha has?

Since it adjourned, it has been discussed and analysed in a way we haven’t seen in any other session of parliament in recent times. The reason is obvious. There are other voices that are heard, not just those of people on the Treasury benches. And some of these, especially the first-timers, are making a mark.

For the media – which is used to turning everything into the equivalent of the Big Fight, such as the programme that was once aired on NDTV – the focus has largely been on what the newly-minted Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, said in his 100-minute speech that was marked by many interruptions. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-hour-long speech, which was not interrupted although opposition members shouted slogans such as “Justice for Manipur” while he spoke.  In those two hours, Modi did not mention Manipur even once.

The media sat in judgement to decide who did better, Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi, as if that was the burning issue of the day. Also discussed was whether it was appropriate for the opposition to shout slogans when the PM was speaking or stage a walkout as it did in the Rajya Sabha during his address. The fact that this has been done before, including by the BJP when it was in opposition, was not emphasised.

Rononjoy Sen, a former journalist who is with the National University of Singapore, reminds us in an op-ed in the Hindustan Times that the BJP had disrupted parliament using precisely these tactics in 2010-11 during the 2G scam row. In fact, Sen quotes Atal Bihar Vajpayee as saying that the “most effective way to oppose someone is a walkout” and that, in his view, this ought to be seen as the “highest form of opposition or antagonism”. 

Sen concludes: “A popular news channel recently made a distinction between a robust and a rowdy opposition. That’s a false dichotomy. The opposition can be both as long as it does not stall parliament. In a noisy and cacophonous democracy, such as India, it is unrealistic to expect otherwise.”

The day before Modi spoke, Manipur was mentioned, not just by Rahul Gandhi but more eloquently by the MP from Inner Manipur, professor Bimol Akoijam, a first-timer. Speaking close to midnight to an almost empty House, Akoijam’s words need to be heeded. I doubt if too many people were still watching the live telecast on Sansad TV when he spoke, but what he said was noted by several newspapers, and his entire speech was widely-circulated on social media.

According to The Hindu, Akoijam said, “The hurt, the anger has thrown a nobody like me to be part of this temple of democracy, beating the BJP cabinet minister. Think about the pain. I will keep quiet the moment the Prime Minister opens his mouth, and the nationalist party says that Manipur is a part of India and we care for the people of that state.”

While I doubt that the Prime Minister heard Akoijam, the next day in the Rajya Sabha, he did mention Manipur. In another long speech, he devoted five minutes to Manipur. Yes, five minutes after maintaining silence for almost 15 months.

This momentary mention made front-page news in most national newspapers the next day. But there was little by way of a critique of what he said in those five minutes, most of which was devoted, as usual, to criticising the Congress and placing the blame for what has happened in Manipur on the past. There was not a hint of acknowledgement that perhaps his government at the centre, and his party’s government in the state had fallen short. 

Only The Hindu, in a strong editorial, called him out and pointed out that “Manipur, unlike what Mr Modi asserts, is not any close to normalcy.”  It emphasised that “bluster and mere acknowledgment of the crisis will not solve the problems in Manipur and Mr Modi has to become proactive in leading changes that will lead to peace and reconciliation.”

As for others, the Indian Express waited until Rahul Gandhi visited Manipur on July 8 and met the displaced from both sides of the divide to comment. Compared to the editorial in The Hindu, the Indian Express editorial was muted in its criticism of Modi’s government. Instead of pointing out the centre’s role in allowing the situation in Manipur to deteriorate as it has, the paper praised Modi and wrote: “In his RS speech, the PM rightly spoke of the necessity to ‘go beyond politics and bring peace and stability’ to the state.” It is inexplicable that the media cannot see the politics that the BJP, at the centre and in the state, has played in allowing the crisis to fester.

The Manipur story doesn’t begin and end with statements made in parliament or slogans shouted by the opposition.  As Akoijam eloquently stated, “The silence on the Manipur tragedy is not unique, it reflects this general continuity of colonialism. A national party like BJP will be comfortable with the silence on Manipur... If you hear the anxiety and pain in my voice, please go back and see the 60,000 people languishing in relief camps, don’t talk about Partition Remembrance Day till then.” He was reflecting on the reality of his state, which is now divided to the point where it appears inconceivable that it can be put together again.

The other story that could be drowned out, literally, by all the shenanigans that we have yet to see in the forthcoming budget session of parliament is the appalling state of India’s infrastructure.

In the state of Bihar, more than a dozen bridges collapsed within a fortnight. How could this happen? Will anyone be held accountable? 

Hindustan Times followed up with this story that tells us about the pathetic situation in the state, where a maintenance policy is formulated after a bridge collapse rather than after it is built.

 

Apart from the bridges in Bihar, in the last month, there have been multiple reports about airports where roofs have collapsed or where there are serious leaks. In Delhi, the national capital, Terminal 1 had to be shut down because the roof over the driveway collapsed, killing a taxi driver and injuring others. The same thing happened at a new airport in Rajkot. And Lucknow, Guwahati, and the north Goa airport also reported leakages. Why is this happening, especially in newly-built or refurbished airports? Who is responsible?

I am waiting to be proved wrong, but I doubt if this story will be pursued as assiduously as the one of the collapsing bridges in Bihar. Many airports are run by Adani companies. Who will dare to bell that cat?

From health emergency to parliament, little changes for the media under new govt

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 27, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/06/27/from-health-emergency-to-parliament-little-changes-for-the-media-under-new-govt

The death of a poor person is rarely front-page news, especially in this post-election season when the daily drama of the 18th Lok Sabha is understandably drawing attention. But even as we watch this session of the Lok Sabha and note the changes and the repetitions from the past, it is important to remember that in the last month, hundreds of Indians have been killed, not due to the spread of a disease but because of extreme heat.

But first, coverage of the Lok Sabha session. Thanks to Sansad TV, the live telecast is available for anyone interested in knowing who says what on the floor of the House. This also facilitates the sharing of video clips on social media. So, even if television channels and newspapers pick and choose what they report, much more is circulating by way of social media. 

Take, for instance, the statement by first-time MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi from Kashmir.  When he got up to speak, he reminded the newly elected Speaker, Om Birla, of what had occurred when he occupied the same chair in the previous Lok Sabha. He mentioned how a Muslim MP had been called a terrorist, and also spoke about how little time had been allotted to debate the reading down of Article 370. 

Reminiscent of his actions in the previous Lok Sabha, Birla interrupted the MP and asked him to stop and sit down. The next day, this exchange did not make it to any of the prominent English language national newspapers. It had, however, already been circulated on social media platforms.

Then take the invocation of the Emergency by both the Speaker and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Solemn sentiments were expressed about democracy and the dangers of dictatorship. The reason for this, one assumes, was that the session was held on the anniversary of the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi in 1975. However, the motive behind bringing this up was obvious. The government, and the Speaker, who is supposed to be non-partisan, used the occasion to hit at the largest party in the opposition, the Congress.

The next day, only one paper, The Hindu, called out the blatant hypocrisy. The Congress Party was in power when Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency. And it was a dark period, as anyone – including this writer – who lived through it will confirm. For journalists, it was particularly dire, with direct censorship and the threat of imprisonment hanging over your head if you dared to publish the truth.

Yet today, 49 years later (not 50 as Modi and others insist it is), where do we stand regarding freedom and fundamental rights? Has there been any indication so far that the coalition government headed by Narendra Modi will backtrack on some of the laws and regulations that are on the anvil to curb freedom of expression and restrict the media? That it will reverse its actions that are reminiscent of the Emergency? 

As The Hindu points out in its editorial:

“If the government of the day is truly committed to undo the damages of the Emergency and not repeat its grave errors, it would have not taken recourse to the same measures in the recent past, seen in the attack on the free press, the use of enforcement and investigative agencies to selectively target Opposition representatives, and draconian preventive detention laws to keep political prisoners, activists and journalists in jail without trial, including by the foisting of charges against them.” 

By attacking the Congress on its record on fundamental rights, the government is clearly trying to deflect any attempt by the united opposition to raise questions around fundamental rights and freedom.  We will have to wait to see if any of the parties in the opposition decide to call out the government on this issue. 

Even as we wait for that, we will probably have to wait even longer for our elected representatives on either side of the political divide to wake up to the ugly reality of climate change and its devastating impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable in this country.

The whole of northern India, and in fact the subcontinent, has been reeling under high temperatures accompanied by high humidity. The combination is a killer. And those dying, literally collapsing on the streets, are poor people who have no choice but to continue doing back-breaking manual labour in this heat.  An estimated 300 million of India’s adult workforce is engaged in this kind of manual labour.

Yet, it is difficult to come across any reporting on this health emergency in our major newspapers. Fortunately, independent news platforms are reporting on this unfolding tragedy that has been invisibilised by an indifferent media.

Take this excellent story by Anumeha Yadav in the Migration Story. She visited one hospital in Delhi to track the impact of the heat wave. In Delhi in May, temperatures exceeded 45 degrees Celsius for 16 days. She describes the condition of a migrant worker, identified simply as Rohit, who lay unconscious with a body temperature of 40.5 degrees Celsius.

Rohit is typical of the men who work as manual labourers, pushing handcarts, working as construction workers, or as cooks in hot kitchens with little ventilation, or as delivery workers. They get no respite even when they return to their rooms in poor settlements where there is practically no ventilation, and the tin roofs make them like ovens. No human, even a perfectly healthy person, can survive in these conditions.

The heat crisis might not be like a pandemic, but it is a silent killer of the poorest and the most vulnerable. The minority, people who earn enough to afford coolers and air-conditioners and who need not step out in the heat, are also affected but have ways to survive. Not the poor. And it is their story that we in the media must tell because ultimately the crisis the world faces with a rapidly warming planet will affect everyone. 

Will mainstream media, obsessed as it is with the rich and the powerful, turn its gaze towards such a story? Again, like this government’s past record on human rights, it is unlikely that the media will suddenly change. 

In the meantime, we must appreciate that some determined journalists are stepping out and reporting. This video by the team at Newslaundry is another example of such reporting as is this article in Migration Story on the specific impact of the excessive heat on women workers.

An added complication is the fact that medically, it is challenging to certify a death as that caused by heat, as this story in Scroll explains. Furthermore, we do not get accurate mortality figures because there is no clear system of certification. The only way, as several experts have emphasised is to look at normal mortality figures and check if these are noticeably higher. Such an exercise was done during the Covid pandemic to give us a more accurate count of deaths due to the virus at a time when the government was attempting to downplay the real mortality numbers.

Dealing with the impact of climate change in a poor country like India calls for policy interventions by the government. The people most affected, the poor, cannot push for this. The responsibility lies with the media to put pressure on policy makers by reporting on the current heat crisis that is daily killing hundreds of Indians.