From denial to claims it ‘maligns’ India, the government’s response to Pegasus is predictable

 Broken News

Published on July 22, 2021 in Newslaundry

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/22/from-denial-to-claims-it-maligns-india-the-governments-response-to-pegasus-is-predictable

 

The government wishes it would just disappear. It will probably try, as it has done in the past, to come up with a diversionary tactic. But Pegasus is here to stay. The unraveling story of the spyware sold by an Israeli company to "vetted governments" that could have infected as many as 50,000 mobile phones in several countries around the world cannot be pushed under the carpet. It is simply too big, and too important.

With daily exposures, some more sensational than others, how has the Indian media responded to this story? The independent digital platform the Wire was one of 17 international media partners, including Washington Post and the Guardian, in 10 countries that collaborated to bring together the Pegasus Project. It was based on material sourced by the Paris-based non-profit journalism organisation Forbidden Stories and assisted by Amnesty International's Security Lab. The vast trove of telephone numbers were suspected to belong to persons of interest to their respective governments, although proof that all these phones were hacked has not yet been established.

The story broke in India on the night before the Parliament reconvened on July 19 for the monsoon session. Typically, on day one, the Indian media's response was lukewarm. While Indian Express, for instance, gave it front page lead, given that amongst the 40 Indian journalists whose numbers were listed as possible targets of surveillance were three from the paper, the Hindu was more cautious, running it on an inside page without mentioning that one of its own correspondents had also figured on this list.

It was when the next tranche of names was released, which included Rahul Gandhi, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, and current IT and Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw amongst others, that the media woke up and took note.

Since then, the major national dailies have featured the daily revelations prominently. They also cannot ignore the story, as the Opposition has been vociferous in the Parliament demanding an independent inquiry or a joint parliamentary committee. However, Shashi Tharoor, the MP who heads the parliamentary standing committee on information technology, has said that they will take it up and that at the moment a JPC was not needed.

Several newspapers in editorials have also made demands for an independent inquiry. Amongst them is the Indian Express, which asked for an investigation and held that "trying to snoop unlawfully is what maligns Indian democracy". But then, it also asked for "the department of dirty tricks" to "come clean". That's a contradiction in terms as a "dirty tricks" department is precisely that, because it is not "clean".

The Hindu too emphasised the need for an inquiry and deplored the fact that "state agencies can trample upon the lives of citizens in such a manner while elected representatives plead ignorance is unsettling for a democracy. This is antithetical to the basic creed of democracy." And it asked the question that the government has still not answered: "Has any Indian agency bought Pegasus?"

What we have to constantly remind ourselves is that apart from the prominent individuals that featured in the list of 300 names from India whose mobile phones could have been compromised, phones belonging to the woman who accused the former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment, and her relatives, were also on the list. If it is confirmed that a spyware designed to help governments deal with terrorism and crime has been used against ordinary citizens, then every citizen has reason to be concerned, not just journalists or politicians.

Also, amongst the 40 journalists whose phones were identified, although not all have been checked to ascertain whether the spyware was planted, are people like Rupesh Kumar Singh from Jharkhand, a journalist who spent six months in jail for exposing the attacks by state actors against adivasis. It would appear that you don't have to be a Delhi-based journalist working for a prominent media organisation to be targeted. If you simply do your job of exposing the wrongs in our society through your journalism, you are a potential target for surveillance.

The government's response to the Pegasus story has been predictable: outright denial, obfuscation and the usual trope of this being a "bid to malign India". It also continues with the well-worn strategy; attack is the best form of defence. So instead of answering a direct question about whether it has used the spyware, the government skirts around it and instead attacks those who ask the question. And, not surprisingly, pro-government television channels have followed the same line.

So, did this government buy the Pegasus software and for how long has it been in use? According to this story by Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar in the Wire, WhatsApp had alerted the government in 2019 of attempts by Pegasus to break its encryption in as many as 121 accounts and that it had succeeded in hacking 20 accounts. Furthermore, in response to an RTI filed by Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the ministry of communication, electronics and information technology had acknowledged that WhatsApp had informed them about this attempt to break their encryption. Yet, in the Parliament, the newly appointed IT minister Ashwani Vaishnaw stated that there was no "factual basis" to reports about WhatsApp and the use of Pegasus.

As this column is being written, there are more revelations emerging. And apart from the Opposition, at least some in the media are asking the questions that need to be asked. They are demanding that the government explain whether and when it has bought Pegasus from NSO, the Israeli company, how much it paid for it, to what use has it been put, and what are the systems set up to govern how it will be used. The answers to these questions are crucial, irrespective of whether there can ever be conclusive proof that it was the Indian government that was behind the targeting of individuals with this spyware.

It is also important to remember that although most governments conduct surveillance at various levels, this particular spyware is deadly because it mines all the information people have on their phones, not just their voice calls or location. And it can do this in such a way that the uninitiated would never be able to detect its presence. Given that ordinary citizens are also on the list of potential targets, this is something that would concern more than just journalists, or people in public life.

Several Indian newspapers have done well to explain the process of how the spyware works with graphics. Readers also need to know the background of NSO, and how Pegasus has been used elsewhere. The Guardian provides useful background in its "Today in Focus" podcasts where it is focusing currently on the Pegasus Project.

The bottom line, as far as the media is concerned, is that this government really does not need sophisticated spyware to bully it to fall in line. The largest circulating Hindi newspaper, Dainik Bhaskar, has been consistently calling out the government's lies on the pandemic, especially the underestimates in the death count as well as the shortage of oxygen during the second wave. It has also prominently displayed the Pegasus story on its front page. As if on cue, on July 22, income tax raids were conducted on its offices in Bhopal and elsewhere.

This government's attitude towards individual journalists, or media houses, that attempt to do their jobs as guardians of free speech and expression, is an open secret. Hence, the fact that neither the prime minister nor anyone else from the government had the grace to issue a statement about the killing of the talented, award-winning Indian photojournalist from the Reuters news agency, Danish Siddiqui, in Afghanistan earlier this month comes as no surprise.

Danish's brilliant and evocative photographs will live on, calling out every lie uttered by this government, especially about the impact of the second wave of the pandemic, the mismanagement, the toll on ordinary people, and the deaths. These images cannot be erased. That is the power of an image, truly greater than thousands of words. And this is the uncomfortable truth that the Modi government simply cannot digest.

 

Will mainstream media show the same attention to the Bhima Koregaon case as it did to Stan Swamy’s death?

 Broken News

Published on July 8, 2021 in Newslaundry

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/07/08/will-mainstream-media-show-the-same-attention-to-the-bhima-koregaon-case-as-it-did-to-stan-swamys-death

In a time of constantly breaking news, when events such as the recent dramatic cabinet overhaul in the Modi government tends to sweep all other news off the front pages, it is imperative that the implications of Father Stan Swamy’s death in judicial custody are not forgotten.

On the afternoon of July 5, Father Stan, 84, died at the Holy Family Hospital in Mumbai. He was still in judicial custody in the Bhima Koregaon case, one of 16 who have been incarcerated without trial, charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Father Stan's death represents more than the passing of a fine human being who gave his life for the welfare of Adivasis in Jharkhand, which he considered home. It forces us to think about the callous and cruel nature of the criminal justice system in this country as illustrated in this piece in the Wire by Susan Abraham, one of the lawyers fighting for the Bhima Koregaon accused and the wife of accused Vernon Gonsalves. It also ought to make us question the manner in which laws like the UAPA are increasingly being used to suppress all forms of dissent and interventions for the rights of the most marginalised.

While the Bhima Koregaon case itself has drawn sporadic interest in the media since 2018, when the first arrests were made, Father Stan's death has provoked an unexpected and strong response from national English language papers.

Not only were reports of his death on the front page of practically every leading national daily newspaper, but there were also strong editorial comments. While the Telegraph held that "the State is responsible for Stan Swamy’s death. But the shame of it and the loss it signifies are the Indian people’s", Times of India held the criminal justice system responsible and argued for revisiting provisions of the UAPA. The Hindu saw in the treatment meted out to Father Stan in prison "institutional oppression" and wrote that his death "will weigh on the country’s collective conscience for long". And Indian Express called the attitude of the courts in delaying and denying his legitimate plea for bail on medical grounds a "dark blot"; it concluded that his death "has left the highest institutions of India’s justice system diminished".

At the same time, it must be noted that on the whole, barring routine reports about the cases for bail filed by the 16 (now 15) men and women in the Bhima Koregaon case, the mainstream media did little to highlight the injustice meted out to them or investigate whether the case had any basis.

It was the Washington Post that broke the story about the malware planted on the laptops of Rona Wilson, one of the accused, and subsequently another report about the malware on the laptop of Surendra Gadling. If this is true, then the very basis on which these arrests were made will be proven as baseless. Neither of these stories created more than a ripple in the national media, although Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV did report on it in his programme Reality Check.

The point I am making is that the coverage given to this tragic death of an 84-year-old priest, cannot end with some reports and a few editorials. There is clearly a larger story that needs to be pursued, not just about the Bhima Koregaon case but also about the rampant misuse of the UAPA. Only weeks before Father Stan's death, Akhil Gogoi, who was elected to the Assam assembly while still in jail under the UAPA, was exonerated of all charges. Bashir Ahmad Baba from Srinagar was released after 11 years in prison after being acquitted under all charges under the UAPA. We also have the Delhi High Court judgement granting bail to Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Tanha that draws attention to the misuse of this law.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only two percent of those arrested under the UAPA between 2015-19 have been convicted. The rest, one can assume, are still in jail. Each of them has a story that needs telling. Will at least those newspapers, which were moved to comment strongly after Father Stan’s death, take this on?

There is another death that took place a few weeks before Father Stan's that also calls for a pause and introspection about the kind of society we live in. That is the death of a 22-year-old woman in Kerala.

Vismaya from Kollam had been married for only a year to Kiran. Yet, despite complaining about the violence she experienced within the four walls of her home, she was persuaded to remain and give her marriage to an abusive man a chance. It ended with her death.

Within hours of the news about Vismaya, there were reports of a 24-year-old woman's death in Thiruvananthapuram. In both cases, there was a link to dowry.

The giving and taking of dowry was made illegal by the Dowry Prohibition Act in 1961. That made no difference. After campaigns by women's groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when newspapers particularly in Delhi carried routine reports about young brides dying in "accidental" kitchen fires, Section 498A was introduced in the Indian Penal Code making the unnatural death of a woman within seven years of marriage a cognizable offence.

Even this has made no difference. Despite the increasing levels of literacy amongst women, and their participation in the workforce, the scourge of dowry remains, and perhaps has become stronger if you go by this well-researched report by Haritha John in the News Minute. What then does this say about Indian society that in the 21st century, a woman's worth continues to be determined by the amount of gold and other "gifts" that her family sends with her to her marital home?

According to this article in Article 14, "Over 38% of murders of women are committed by current or former partners finds the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), and Indian women account for 36% of global female suicide deaths, finds the Harvard School of Public Health despite making up less than 18% of the world’s female population. Suicide is a leading cause of death among women aged 15-29 in India."

The article in the News Minute also raises several important points about the role of the media in perpetuating the prevalence of dowry. In the opinion of Burton Cleetus, an assistant professor of history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, "When we enforce conventional marriages, the fundamental factor in it is wealth transfer. Though we romanticize marriage, it is basically a market for this wealth transfer. It is the same people and media who speak against the dowry system, who run matrimonial sites. It is the same media that promotes a luxurious lifestyle which creates a desire in people, a desire that is above our income. So on one hand, they promote consumerism, and on the other, they criticise these systems. This is pointless. All these are causes of the problem in a larger perspective.”

Whether one agrees with this analysis or not, it is evident that Vismaya's death has reminded us again how a woman's worth is calculated in modern day India. Economic progress, education, pro-women laws have failed to dent the patriarchy that ensures that most marriages remain a transaction. And the price for an unsatisfactory deal, as viewed from the man's side, is always paid by the woman. For every one report that comes to light, there would be thousands that are never reported.

These are the truths about our society that the media needs to report. Of the thousands unjustly incarcerated under laws that have no place in a democracy. Of an unjust, cruel and callous criminal justice system that denies bail even to the old and ailing. And of the way regressive, patriarchal values continue to ensure that women are treated as little more than a commodity.

 

Should Indian media constantly call out the powerful for peddling falsehoods?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 24, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/06/24/should-indian-media-constantly-call-out-the-powerful-for-peddling-falsehoods

How does a half-truth or an outright lie become a "fact"? When it is uttered by a politician or a celebrity and amplified unquestioningly by the media.

That is one of many challenges facing India's media. How often should you call out the powerful when what they are saying is patently untrue?

The media in the United States did not spend much time debating this when they regularly fact-checked every utterance of former president Donald Trump, who had a habit of being rather liberal with facts. Leading newspapers and TV channels regularly ran fact-checks to inform readers and viewers of the exaggerations and lies that were routinely mouthed by their president even as they had to report what he said. In some instances, television networks chose to stop live relays of his speech when what he said was particularly problematic during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

We have not seen the media doing this in India. The pronouncements of the powerful are routinely telecast or reproduced in print. The next day, an opposition politician might point out that what was said was untrue. If that is reported at all, it will pass without notice. Or an expert could write an article on the edit page contradicting the politician. This again would be read only by the converted, so to speak. Thus, what lives on in public memory is what the powerful person has said.

Does fact-checking the public pronouncements of the powerful even matter?

According to Prof Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and author of the recently released 2021 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, many Indians thought that much of the misinformation about the pandemic often came from the top. In an edit page piece in the Hindu, he writes, "Study after study around the world has found such 'network propaganda', where misinformation is spread by some top politicians, nakedly partisan news media who cheer them on, and well-organised communities of political supporters active on social media and messaging applications."

Nielsen's advice to the Indian authorities if they want to check misinformation is to " take a cue from the fact that much of the Indian public clearly recognise that misinformation often comes from the top", and "spend less time worrying about activists, journalists, and Twitter".

Indians already paid a heavy price for believing the messages that "come from the top" earlier this year when we were told that the coronavirus crisis was behind us. The media ought to have been more vigilant and could have amplified the voices of those advocating caution and pointing out that even countries with good healthcare infrastructure in the West had been hit by a second and even a third wave of the pandemic. Given the poor state of India's health infrastructure, there was simply no place for the message of Indian exceptionalism that was being propagated.

The impact of the second wave was horrific and sudden only because the warning signs were not heeded. For the media, the story was so stark that it could not be ignored. From the oxygen crisis in Delhi to the half-buried corpses along the Ganga, no self-respecting media house could look the other way and ignore what was going on. As the editors of Dainik Bhaskar, one of the largest Indian newspapers, told Newslaundry, you had to report what you saw.

The paper's Gujarati edition, Divya Bhaskar, was one of the first to track the discrepancy between the official death toll and what its reporters saw on the ground. Since then, apart from Dainik Bhaskar, several mainstream English language papers such as the Hindu have been doing the data crunching to put forward the real number of deaths. Experts and biostatisticians had been predicting that the real numbers would be at least 10 lakh and not the 3.9 lakh officially acknowledged by the government. The persistent stories in different media have not just reiterated these projections, they suggest the total could be even higher.

Yet, there has been no acknowledgment so far from the different state governments, or the central government, that the death data needs drastic revision.

The Reuters Institute report focuses on misinformation with regard to the pandemic. But in the last month, we have seen other forms of misinformation such as about India's vaccination policy. We still have to estimate how much the union government's constantly changing vaccination policy has cost the country in terms of avoiding hospitalizations and deaths and also contributing to vaccine hesitancy.

We are constantly being told that this government has been exceptional in its vaccination policy and if there have been hurdles they have been placed by the obduracy and unreasonable demands of the opposition-ruled states.

We are also told by none other than the prime minister that this is the first time India is producing vaccines. On June 7, in his televised address to the nation, Narendra Modi said, “If you look at the history of vaccinations in India, whether it was a vaccine for smallpox, hepatitis B or polio, you will see that India would have to wait decades for procuring vaccines from abroad. When vaccination programmes ended in other countries, it wouldn't have even begun in our country.”

Is this true? As Jacob Koshy politely points out in the Hindu, this view of India's vaccination policy is "at odds with the facts”. He goes on to list the smallpox vaccine and the polio vaccine as examples of how India manufactured vaccines even before Independence.

That is not all. In his speech, Modi also said that since 2014, that is, since his party came to power and he became the prime minister, under the Indradhanush programme launched by his government, the percentage of children being vaccinated had increased from 60 percent to 90 percent. Yet, this too flies in the face of facts as according to the latest National Family Health Survey, none of the 17 states and five union territories surveyed had touched 90 percent in child vaccination. In fact, reports Koshy, only five states – Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Goa and Sikkim – exceeded 80 percent and only Himachal Pradesh touched 89 percent.

Why should this embroidering of history and facts matter? Because if they are not called out, this is what millions of Indians will believe, that only now is India "atmanirbhar", is producing vaccines indigenously and that the current government has given a boost to routine vaccinations too.

All this then flows seamlessly onto June 21, when India is supposed to have broken a "world record" in vaccinating over 86 lakh people in a day. Actually even this so-called "fact" is not true. But the reality of how this even happened is what makes the apparent achievement that the government boasted about more interesting.

For even as various ministers were busy crediting the prime minister and thanking him profusely for this achievement, the story of how it came about was already unravelling in the media. Supriya Sharma in Scroll exposed how the vaccination numbers were noticeably low in the states that hit a high mark on June 21 and that most of these states were ruled by the BJP. For instance, on June 20, Madhya Pradesh had vaccinated only 692 persons. Yet on June 21, it administered 16.9 lakh doses only to sink back to under 5,000 the very next day.

Although initially most mainstream newspapers ran uncritical frontpage stories on this “achievement”, in the days that followed many of them, including the Hindu and the Times of India, were more sceptical. They ran the data of the vaccine shots administered in the days before and after June 21. The figures spoke louder than words: the one-day miracle was only possible because stocks had been hoarded in previous weeks in some states.

The media also pointed out the huge discrepancy between the availability of vaccines, which will not exceed 40 lakh even if the Indian manufacturers operate at maximum capacity, and the requirement to maintain a daily target of 80 lakh or more. Where is the rest of the supply coming from? The government has yet to answer that question.

Then there is the myth of the "free vaccines". Unless constantly reminded, people forget that all vaccines have been free in India, from the smallpox one to BCG to polio. So providing Covid vaccines free to Indians is neither new nor an exceptional achievement of this government.

The reason such fact-checking is even noticed today is because it did not take place sufficiently in the past, and particularly over the last seven years. This has contributed to myth building, to the belief of one leader being not just invincible but also infallible. This myth has helped him and his party ride through multiple mistakes and bad policies that have placed such an enormous economic burden on Indians, especially the poor, apart from mismanaging the ongoing pandemic.

Calling out those who get free airtime merely because they are in power is the duty of a free press. It cannot be otherwise.

Why, despite SC’s Vinod Dua ruling, dissenting journalists won’t be safe

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 10, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/06/10/why-despite-scs-vinod-dua-ruling-dissenting-journalists-wont-be-safe

One cheer for the Supreme Court of India. Why only one? Because we still have some way to go before all arbitrary and unreasonable obstructions to freedom of expression are removed in this country.

The June 3 Supreme Court ruling in the Vinod Dua case came as much-needed good news in an otherwise grim year. In their 117-page judgement, Justices UU Lalit and Vineet Saran stated, "Every journalist will be entitled to protection in terms of Kedar Nath Singh, as every prosecution under Sections 124A and 505 of the IPC must be in strict conformity with the scope and ambit of said Sections as explained in, and completely in tune with the law laid down in Kedar Nath Singh."‬

Put simply, this means governments cannot slap sedition cases against journalists who question or criticise policy or report or expose gaps in government performance. That's great and is something about which we in the media ought to be happy and relieved.

Except that this was already established as far back as 1962, that is almost 60 years ago, in the case the judges mention, Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar. Yet, six decades later, neither governments nor the police at the thana level appear to understand what that judgement means given the ease with which Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code dealing with sedition continues to be used against journalists and others.

In fact, a database assembled by the news website Article-14 shows a rise in sedition cases since the BJP took power in 2014. It points out that there was an increase of 28 percent in sedition cases filed between 2014 and 2020.

The case against Dua follows a pattern. In March last year, a BJP politician filed a case against the veteran journalist in Kumarsain, Shimla. He held that on his Vinod Dua Show on YouTube, the journalist made "unfounded and bizarre allegations" against the prime minister and the government. This, he held, was punishable under Sections 124A, 268, 501 and 505 of the Indian Penal Code.

Dua is based in Delhi. The case was filed in Himachal Pradesh. By then, a national lockdown in view of the pandemic had been declared. Movement between states was restricted. Filing a case in a place other than where the journalist resides is the first common feature of such cases.

Dua was luckier than most. He could file a plea in the Supreme Court to quash the case against him. Most other journalists, particularly those based in smaller towns, do not have that ability. For them, just to deal with the first steps of countering such a case is punishment.

So regardless of the case going in Dua's favour in this instance, it is important to remember that the Supreme Court's directions from 60 years ago are regularly flouted and the only way to enforce them is for the aggrieved person to rush to court to appeal.

Secondly, independent journalists, reporting without the backing of large media houses and often from small towns, do not have the resources to fight cases slapped on them even at the first level, leave aside going up to the Supreme Court. If the case is filed in a place other than the one from which you operate, the very process of fighting it becomes expensive and arduous. You have to locate lawyers and spend your own money if the court requires your presence.

Additionally, 124A is only one of several draconian laws that are used against journalists and dissenters. For instance, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister is on record threatening journalists that the National Security Act will be used to arrest anyone reporting what the government considers "false claims", such as the very real shortage of oxygen that occurred in April at the height of the second wave of the pandemic.

Or take the case of the journalist Siddique Kappan, who went to report on the Hathras rape case, but instead was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police and remains imprisoned over 200 days later on sedition charges and under the anti-terror law UAPA.

In fact, according to this report about the challenges journalists face in UP, even Section 66A of the IT Act (sending "offensive" messages on the internet), which had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, continues to be used.

Hence, when governments have an arsenal of draconian laws that they can use against individuals who dissent, or who report and write critically, the protection provided by a ruling by the Supreme Court is simply not enough. The court cannot monitor every case that is filed in this country. And if cases are filed in small-town police stations on purpose to harass the individual or the journalist, there is nothing that can be done to stop it. By the time the individual fights to get the case heard, he or she has already been punished by the process.

That is why there is every reason to demand, as the Editors Guild of India and other organisations representing journalists have, that this antiquated colonial law should be consigned to the dustbin of history. If India wants to be considered a functioning democracy with an unfettered and free press, there is no place for such laws.

This is what the constitutional law expert Faizan Mustafa argues persuasively in a recent article in the Indian Express. He points out that according to data from the National Crimes Record Bureau, "between 2016 to 2019, there has been a whopping 160 per cent increase in the filing of sedition charges with a conviction rate of just 3.3 per cent. Of the 96 people charged in 2019, only two could be convicted”. These figures are more proof of how the provision is used for harassment even though the chances of conviction are slim.

Why is this happening when as far back as 1962, in the Kedar Nath Singh case, the limits of what constitutes sedition had already been laid out? Has this deterred the misuse of this section in the intervening years? Certainly not if we look at the database assembled by Article-14, referred to earlier.

In any case, the problem with the way this provision is used affects not only journalists but ordinary citizens who use the right granted to them under the Indian constitution to criticise and oppose government policies and programmes. In 2016, I personally saw the bewilderment on the faces of the feisty women from the fishing community of Idinthakarai in Tamil Nadu who were protesting peacefully against the Kudankulam nuclear plant when they were told they had been charged with sedition. Eventually, the Supreme Court granted them relief.

It is surprising, or perhaps not, that there has not been a stronger demand from the media for the sedition law to be declared unconstitutional. The Telegraph has made this demand in its editorial titled "Hurrah". But most editorial positions have been restrained, welcoming the court's ruling but not dissecting why an earlier ruling made no difference in curtailing the misuse of this provision.

The Supreme Court's ruling in the Vinod Dua case is significant, even historic. It might stay the hand of the state for a while in using the sedition law against journalists. But, as in the past, as long as it stays on the statute, its chances of being misused remain strong because at heart most governments want laws that can curb dissent and questioning.

Riverside graves of the Covid dead tell a story of the media’s failure

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 27, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/05/27/riverside-graves-of-the-covid-dead-tell-a-story-of-the-medias-failure

The defining image of this second wave of the pandemic in India has now become the hundreds of shallow graves along the Ganga and other rivers, replacing the searing images of burning pyres. These graves are a stark reminder not just of the discrepancy in death data between the official and the actual, but they also hint at a deeper distress in rural India that has been obscured from our view.

We have to be grateful that there are journalists who continue to doggedly pursue this sad and disturbing story of unaccounted deaths. From journalists going around in a car, filming these graves and recording what people have to say, such as Barkha Dutt, to mainstream regional media outlets like Divya Bhaskar and Sandesh in Gujarat refusing to obfuscate and telling the story as it is, to young women journalists like Shivangi Saxena and Akanksha Kumar from Newslaundry, such documentation will form an essential part of the history of these terrible years. Without this, there would have been a veil of disinformation pulled over the eyes of citizens. And false narratives, so beloved of this government, regularly amplified by the media groups beholden to it. And Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath, who continues to maintain that all is well in his state where these shallow graves abound, would not have been called out.

Try as it might, the government simply has no place to hide now as journalists, experts and the international media continue to focus on the discrepancies in the data on deaths and incidence of disease. The latest of these is a data presentation by the New York Times that asks, "Just How Big Could India’s True Covid Toll Be?" Its conservative estimate is that there have been six lakh deaths from Covid but says the more likely number is 16 lakh. The official figure on May 24 was three lakh deaths. That is the extent of the discrepancy.

Indian newspapers have also been writing about this, with Chinmay Tumbe, author of The Age of Pandemics, looking closely at Gujarat's data in the Indian Express and Rukmini S writing about Chennai in the Hindu. Tumbe concludes that "even the most conservative extrapolations from the available excess mortality data take the all-India death toll of the second wave to over a million”. In sum, all these articles are saying the same thing, that both the extent of the spread of the virus and the deaths resulting from it are far in excess of what is revealed by government data.

Even if we were to assume that this is not being done deliberately, in the face of growing evidence, one would have expected a word of acknowledgment from officials that something has gone wrong and needs to be corrected. Instead, there is silence. Or efforts to divert the conversation elsewhere, to "positivity", which in the current context is just another term for denial.

The fact remains that while some newspapers, digital platforms and a couple of TV news channels have focused on this data mismatch, much of mainstream Indian media is not highlighting these facts.

Perhaps Manoj Kumar Jha, the Rashtriya Janata Dal member of the Rajya Sabha, is wrong to brandish the entire Indian media in a scathing oped in the Indian Express when he writes that it has "asphyxiated democracy at a time when the breathless nation is struggling hard to save its loved ones”. Yet, it is difficult to argue against his reflection that "mainstream media houses shamefully defending the indefensible must remember that the annals of history shall be much more objective and ruthless in judging their role than the system to which they are plugged into for reasons known to everyone. They amplified the discourse of the failure of 'the system', giving much-needed leeway to those who have knowingly imperiled the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Instead of identifying, highlighting specific governance failures, and seeking accountability, the mainstream media is following the command of the faces behind the system as they enjoin people to 'talk positivity', 'spread positivity', etc."

Besides the story about inaccurate data on Covid deaths, the saffron shrouds on those shallow graves are obscuring another story that we in the media need to be reporting. That of immense economic distress and hunger that is leading families to abandon their loved ones in these shallow graves rather than conducting the ritual cremation. It is not difficult to imagine the extent of poverty and desperation if people cannot rustle up a few thousand rupees to buy wood and pay a priest to conduct the ritual.

A hint of this distress is coming through in some reports. But while economists will analyse the reasons for this continuing economic distress, it is for journalists to put a name and a face to it.

Last year, the migrant exodus gave us many faces to remember of the millions of people who subsist at the margins in this country. It was a story that was in your face; it could not be ignored.

This time around, there is no drama of that kind. Yet it is dramatic in its own way because it tells us that a year down the line, millions of families are broken, with no hope of finding a source of income, and little by way of government assistance to tide them over. Compounding this is their continuing invisibility in mainstream media reporting.

This story by Supriya Sharma in Scroll, for instance, paints a grim picture of what urban migrants are facing at this time in our big cities.

She writes, "If the lockdown last year came down as a hammer, this year, it feels like a thousand cuts. Obscured by the dramatic and distressing images of death in the second wave of the pandemic, a slow drip of distress is going unnoticed, not just by the government, but even by other citizens, leaving the urban poor to fend for themselves."

The migrants who left last year came back to the cities after their long trek home, only to be left high and dry once again. And this time, as Sharma records, civil society interventions appear more muted. I would argue that this has happened because their distress has been rendered invisible by the media. Without us digging out and amplifying this story, there is no hope for people living perennially on the margins to get either government aid or that from voluntary groups.

Sharma also reports on how even what the urban poor are entitled to, such as extra rations under different state and central programmes, is not available. To cover daily expenses, people are compelled to borrow money, probably at usurious rates, just to be able to buy provisions on the open market at much higher prices than they would have got if the ration shops had the supplies. The central government is failing not just on the vaccination front, it is also proving incompetent in executing the welfare programmes which have been in place for more than a year.

Anshu Gupta, founder of the organisation Goonj, also emphasises the crisis of hunger in this article in the Indian Express. He writes that last year the poor gained attention because the media reported on the exodus, but as soon as they reached their villages they were virtually forgotten. This time around, the crisis has focused on the medical emergency, on the need for oxygen and medicines. But the crisis of deepening hunger has been virtually overlooked by everyone, including the media.

Gupta writes, "It is important to understand that while the second wave is about health, it doesn’t mean that hunger is not an issue. The second wave is about ventilators and oxygen to keep people alive, but...for millions today, access to simple dal chawal is no lesser than access to oxygen.”

It is also more difficult to provide assistance this time around because with trains and buses still functioning, many migrants left voluntarily for their homes. We know now that part of the reason for the spread of the disease to rural areas was because the system of quarantining returning migrants last year was not implemented this time around. As a result, they brought back the infection. And given the dire economic crisis facing their families, there was no one around to help or record either infection or death.

This is the story those shallow graves are telling us, one that still needs to be reported.

For post-pandemic media, public health needs to be the biggest story

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 13, 2021

https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/05/13/for-post-pandemic-media-public-health-needs-to-be-the-biggest-story

From burning pyres and patients gasping for breath to bodies floating down the Ganga, India has been through another torrid fortnight. The whole world is now aware of the extent of the tragedy unfolding. Yet, our government continues to focus on fixing what it considers to be a "negative" narrative.

A fortnight back, when the focus of international and national media coverage was the desperate situation in New Delhi, where hospitals, private and public, were running out of oxygen and patients were dying not from the disease but from the absence of oxygen supply, we knew already that if we turned our gaze away from the cities, a much more tragic state-of-affairs was unfolding.

That is exactly what has happened. The second wave of the pandemic has inevitably, and predictably, spread to rural India and the devastation here is incalculable. This is so because there is little to no reporting, people are not being tested, not being treated when they finally reach a health facility, and dying not knowing that the "cough and fever" that afflicted them is the novel coronavirus that has already felled lakhs of other Indians.

The reports appearing in the media, mostly print and digital, remind us repeatedly that the Indian health system has not folded because of the pandemic; it was already broken. Although the sheer volume of cases has overwhelmed it even in better-served cities, in much of rural India and in small towns, the existing and abysmal health infrastructure that exists might as well not be there.

What journalists report gives us only a glimmer of the grim reality. Such as this report in the Indian Express by Amil Bhatnagar from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. What he describes is not the situation in a remote hamlet but at the district headquarters: "A folding cot that a family claims to have got itself, fans that don’t work, a roof that is leaking at several places, and a ward overpowered by the stench of a toilet. As Meerut district climbs to the top of Covid charts in Uttar Pradesh, with 1,368 new cases taking its total active number to 13,941, its largest government coronavirus facility, Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College, is struggling to keep up."

The situation in UP has become the focus of much of the media attention. Understandably so, as despite chief minister Adityanath's threat to jail those who criticise the work of the state government, the reality cannot be hidden any more. Even members of his party are now publicly complaining about the dismal reality on the ground.

In Varanasi district, one of the four high-burden districts in the state, Jyoti Yadav from the Print reports that people are dying from "cough and fever" without realising it could be Covid because there is no testing. Her reports from Lucknow and Jaunpur tell a similar story. Every day new reports are chronicling the absence of health infrastructure and the price ordinary people are paying.

Most heartbreaking amongst these are the reports of over 700 schoolteachers who died because they had to do poll duty during the recently concluded panchayat elections in the state. This one in PARI, which gives us the full list of 540 men and 173 women teachers who died, is probably the most moving. It illustrates the utter callousness of a government more concerned about elections than the lives of its people, men and women who are also frontline workers.

And then you have hospitals that are built and widely publicised but add up to nothing. A report by Ayush Tiwari and Basant Kumar in Newslaundry describes how only 50 of the 150 oxygenated beds in a facility inaugurated with great fanfare by Baba Ramdev in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, are operational. They add: "There’s a shortage of doctors, ward boys and housekeeping staff, limiting the facility’s capacity and forcing it to refer patients elsewhere. The facility does not have proper water supply and Covid wards don’t have roofs, risking widespread transmission."

Remember Haridwar only recently hosted a "superspreader" event, the Kumbh Mela.

The situation in neighbouring Bihar is not much better. Pratyush Tripathy, writing in Scroll, illustrates with a set of maps the crisis that is waiting to explode in the state where there are no vacant ICU beds in 18 out of 38 districts. This, in a state that has the lowest Human Development Index in the country and "one doctor for 43,788 persons".

Meanwhile, the government itself has finally acknowledged that the situation in rural India is worrying with 533 districts in the country out of over 700 reporting a test positivity rate of over 10 percent. Dr Balram Bhargava, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, is quoted as saying, “India is facing a massive upsurge in Covid-19 cases. The national positivity rate is around 20-21 per cent, and about 42 per cent districts in the country are reporting a positivity rate more than the national average."

Just as the second wave of the pandemic had been predicted, this too should not come as a surprise. Yet, the government and its supporters continue to find ways to divert attention away from this tragic unfolding saga in rural India.

Their latest ploy is the creation of digital spaces that mimic well-known international newspapers' names, but have been specifically tasked to put forth the narrative that the government wants the world to hear. Thus, we have something called The Daily Guardian telling us how hard prime minister Narendra Modi is working to handle the pandemic, and The Australia Today accusing "vulture journalists" of spreading "more panic and despair than the pandemic".

Fortunately, or unfortunately, for the Modi government, neither the Indian nor the international media is persuaded by these deflection tactics. The stories are streaming in, from villages and small towns, and the picture they paint is not pretty. Neither can it be hidden. How long can a government go on denying this reality? How much of spin can it give when there are visuals of bodies floating down the very river it has promised to cleanse?

In fact, the government's response to the disturbing visuals of scores of corpses found floating down the Ganga and washing up in UP and Bihar illustrates its priorities. According to an ANI report, union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat reiterated, "The Modi government is committed to the cleanliness (of) 'mother' Ganga", even as he did not deny the reports about the bodies. Is that all the government is worried about, the "cleanliness" of the Ganga, at a time when in desperation people are abandoning their loved ones in the river because they cannot afford to cremate them?

The reports we have read over this last fortnight are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more stories waiting to be told even as authorities fail to count, or even acknowledge, how many people are dying from the virus. Here, one has to once again commend the determination with which the Gujarati newspaper Sandesh has persisted in counting the dead in the state and reporting the mismatch between what it has found and the government's official figures.

This report in Newslaundry from Meerut district in UP also exposes the huge discrepancy between the bodies being cremated and the official figures. In fact, the questions about the death count simply refuse to go away and will continue to haunt state and central governments. Not just journalists, but even experts such as the mathematician Murad Banaji have raised repeated questions about the accuracy of the death count. Banaji suggests in this interview to Karan Thapar on the Wire that one million Indians have already died from the virus.

Apart from the pandemic, its spread to rural India ought to remind us that the story of the grossly inadequate health infrastructure is one that has always been there.

India's health system has not crumbled only because of the pandemic. It was barely adequate at the best of times, and in many parts of rural India virtually non-existent. Today, we are being compelled to notice this and acknowledge it because of the health emergency the country faces. But each year, these areas see many such emergencies in the form of other diseases such as dengue, malaria, and encephalitis as well as perennials such as tuberculosis. In states where there is chronic malnutrition and stunting amongst children, exacerbated by the absence of medical intervention, thousands of infants die every year from something that is easily treatable, diarrhoea.

When this crisis is over, although there is no sign of it at present, we must continue to focus on this failed health system in so many parts of India. The pandemic has shown us that gloating about being an "emerging" economy means nothing when people can die from the lack of oxygen during a pandemic, or the absence of clean water at other times.

If there is one lesson we in the media can learn from this terrible year it is that the focus on public health must remain a crucial and relevant part of coverage even in non-pandemic times. As epidemiologist Chandrakant Lahariya points out in the India Forum, India would be much better placed if the government fulfilled its promises of increasing health spending to 2.5 percent of the GDP and investing more in primary health care.

The media, I believe, can play an important role in creating pressure on this and future governments by refusing to take its eye off the state of our public health infrastructure.

Showing grisly visuals of Covid disaster is media’s job, projecting ‘positivity’ isn’t

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 29, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/29/showing-even-grisly-visuals-of-covid-disaster-is-medias-job-projecting-positivity-isnt

"I can't breathe". These words were immortalised by George Floyd, the African American who died after he was held down by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis, US in May 2020. Floyd's death after those nine minutes that Chauvin continued to press his knee on his neck is now history. It led to nationwide demonstrations and demands to end systemic racism in the US and change policing methods. On April 20, a court held Chauvin guilty of second and third degree murder.

In India, in this nightmarish fortnight since mid-April, hundreds of people have been saying these very words, "I can't breathe", as they lie outside hospitals, on stretchers, on the ground, in ambulances, in cars, and as their relatives desperately seek beds with oxygen. Others have died en route or at home, unable to reach a hospital or any medical help in time. Even in our worst nightmares, none of us could have imagined that a year after the Covid pandemic hit this country, we would be where we are today, a country that, as the Guardian put it, is "a living hell".

A great deal of credit goes to Indian journalists, especially those working for regional media outlets, for their persistence in recording the actual number of deaths due to Covid that are far in excess of those reported officially. Without that kind of incisive journalism, the government could have continued to delude Indians that things were really not that bad. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan continues to believe India is better off this year than last year. But the searing images of the cremation grounds and burial sites that we have seen these last days tell us the real story; they will continue to haunt us for many years to come.

Inevitably, because the epicentre of the current upsurge in Covid infections and fatalities is New Delhi, there has been more detailed coverage by the media of what is happening on the ground. It has also drawn the attention of the international media, much to the discomfort of the dispensation ruling this country that has wanted to project only the "positive" story from India.

Of course, supporters of the BJP and fawning followers of the prime minister continue to believe that all such reports, including those from outside India, are exaggerated, and are a ploy to undercut the image of India and its leader. They remain stubbornly blind to an essential part of a free, democratic country – a media that believes its right and its duty is to report the truth, however ugly it may be rather than amplify a "positive" or any other kind of narrative desired by the rulers.

Just as the exodus of migrant workers from India's cities last year could not be ignored by the media, including those who supported the government, this time too the evidence of death and disease is unavoidable. As a result, even the so-called "godi media" has now reluctantly begun to report some of the mayhem taking place around the country.

While the shortages of beds, oxygen, drugs and ambulances in our cities are being reported by mainstream media, there still remain huge gaps in coverage, particularly of rural India. The first few reports that are finally beginning to emerge, such as this one in Scroll and this in the BBC, suggest that India is sitting on a time bomb, that the problem of infections and deaths from Covid is far greater in this second wave than perhaps even the most dire predictions.

Reporting and images are the most significant aspects of the media at these times. Together they are able to convey realities that readers and viewers, currently locked up in their homes or localities, would not have been able to imagine.

But another side of the media is what is said editorially, the comment sections that analyse policy and performance of the government. These might not be the most read sections of newspapers, yet they perform an important function. For they are read by those who make policy and by readers looking for a context and an analysis of current events.

Here we see a stark difference between the comments carried by the international press and the Indian media. While there are critical voices in the Indian media by way of columnists who have long been known to be critics of prime minister Narendra Modi, the editorial stance of most newspapers remains nuanced and careful.

For instance, the Indian Express has been critical of this government's actions on a number of issues. Its editorial and opinion pages contain a mixture of pieces that oppose government policies and support them. But its unsigned edits are what reveal the stance of the paper. Here, even though there is criticism, it is interesting how the person who has concentrated power in his hands since 2014 and increasingly after re-election in 2019, namely Modi, is rarely named as responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves today.

On April 28, in a strong editorial, the Indian Express went as far as to state that "it took the case load to surge so completely out of control for the PM to pull himself away from the over-long election campaign”. But other than this reference, it blames the empowered committees set up by the government for their failure to meet and recommend action, the election commission for not limiting the campaigning for the state elections and the "Centre".

Other papers too have criticised the "government" or the "Centre" but almost never Modi or home minister Amit Shah by name. It is mystifying why that is so given that it has been apparent for several years now that nothing moves in the central government without the approval of these two men, that the prime minister's office has centralised power to such an extent that the different ministries cannot act on their own, and that the parliament also rubber stamps what is approved by this powerful duo.

Some columnists, however, have not hesitated, such as Ruchir Joshi in this trenchant piece in the Telegraph where he begins with these lines: "It’s best to state this simply: Narendra Modi needs to go. Amit Shah needs to go. Ajay Mohan Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath needs to go. The bunch of integrity-free incompetents Mr Modi has gathered around him as his ministers all need to go. In order for the country to launch the mammoth operation of recovery and repair needed for our survival, the departure of these people from positions of power needs to happen immediately — tomorrow is too late, yesterday would have been better."

The Telegraph has been, amongst English language newspapers, the strongest critic of the Modi regime. But regardless of the stance media houses might have taken in the past, surely it is more than evident that as compared to last year, when Modi personally took it upon himself to give out messages on the seriousness of the pandemic to the Indian public, this time around, not only has such messaging been meagre, ineffective and contradictory, but he has been absent during the most crucial period when the second wave was hitting its peak. Both he and Shah were campaigning for the Bengal election.

Given the way decisions are made in India, their absence at this time has proved costly, resulting in a crisis that has run away with itself. Hence not naming the people who should be held responsible contributes to the narrative that they are not really to blame, but that it is the "system". But these two are the system.

As for international coverage, the editorials have been scathing. Apart from this editorial in the Guardian, which clearly states that the buck stops with Modi, other international media platforms have also been critical. The Washington Post came down heavily on the Modi government over how it got Twitter to remove tweets that amplified the current crisis and wrote that "restricting the free flow of information doesn’t help public health; it only hurts”. An article in the Australian that held Modi responsible for what it called "a viral apocalypse" was countered by the Indian high commissioner there. And the New York Times has carried reports almost every day on the under-reporting of deaths and the chaos that prevails in Delhi and elsewhere.

Through this difficult time, it is easy to forget the brave journalists who have been out in the field, reporting, taking photographs that speak louder than many words, bringing out the pain, despair, kindness, heroism of ordinary people. As the Columbia Journalism Review notes, "Journalists in India aren’t just confronting a national health risk – the country’s Covid surge comes amid a period of deteriorating freedoms for the press, specifically."

Indian journalists have had to pay a price for reporting the truth, not just by way of threats from governments – with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath leading the charge against even routine reporting about shortages – but also by contracting the very disease they are writing about.

According to this crowdsourced list, at least 145 journalists have succumbed to Covid. Without their reporting, and the personal risks they took, we would not have known even half the horror story that is unfolding today.

Covid crisis: Why isn’t Big Media holding the government accountable?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 15, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/15/covid-crisis-why-isnt-big-media-holding-the-government-accountable

 

I am writing this on a day when daily new coronavirus infections in India have touched two lakh. Perhaps after a year of having various numbers thrown at us, Indians are failing to grasp the gravity of the situation. But surely the responsibility for that lies with those whose job it is to convey the seriousness.

Instead, on one hand we are witnessing the daily surreal drama of these increasing numbers, and on the other visuals suggesting there is no pandemic as lakhs gather in Haridwar for the Kumbh Mela and thousands crowd election rallies in Bengal to listen to India's two most powerful men, the prime minister and the home minister.

There are few masks to be seen in Haridwar or Bengal and the only physical distance in the election rallies is between the highly excitable, mostly male crowd, stuck together in true Indian style, and the dignitaries on the raised stage.

This is not imagery that conveys the crisis facing India. Yet, although some in the media, and many more on social media, are asking questions, there are few expressions of anger or frustration in the public or in mainstream media.

In the United States, former president Donald Trump's election rallies last year where he openly showed disdain for wearing masks, were recognised as super-spreader events and the media didn’t hesitate to criticise him. But in India it seems our leaders exist in the stratosphere, untouched by this willful indifference towards a virus that is causing widespread suffering and death.

Readers will forgive me for this rant, but as a journalist one feels helpless and defeated when those who have the power to convey a credible message on the pandemic choose instead to demonstrate by example that they care more about winning a state election than the lives of citizens.

If the politicians do not speak, except to exhort ordinary citizens about how they must behave, it falls on the media to find ways to tell the full story of what’s going on. It is not easy, hampered as many media organisations are today by limited staff, having laid off hundreds of journalists last year. Yet it can and must be done.

This time last year, we were still in a national lockdown. Today, there is a sense of deja vu that so little has changed, that instead of moving forward we are slipping backwards.

In April 2020, the nature of the disease and how it had spread was still to be fully grasped. Today we know more of the science. We also have vaccines that can provide some protection, although not complete. And all this ought to make us not just more knowledgeable, but also better prepared.

And here when I use "us" I mean not just ordinary people, but especially those who make decisions, the people in government.

Unfortunately, the actions of the central government in the last several weeks have blown away all hopes that lessons were learnt in the last year.

From denial to obfuscation to a total callous disregard for the seriousness of the crisis, we have seen it all. And on top of it, we have witnessed petty politics over the allocation of vaccines while the country is literally burning (a sad metaphor when one looks at the crisis facing crematoria in Gujarat in the last week or so).

For the media, the second or third wave of the pandemic poses many more challenges than we faced last year. How do you keep telling the same story over and over again? How do you strike a balance between reporting credible information and being alarmist? How do you hold the government to account when even accurate data is not always available?

Fortunately, despite the pathetic state of our television news channels, there are still journalists who are doing the job they are tasked to do.

Take developments in the last couple of weeks. In Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, the state governments seem to be in denial about the seriousness of the crisis facing their states even as the central government remains focused on Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, where there has been a steady rise in cases. The politics of this policy of side-stepping the former two states is rather obvious but we need not go there at present.

The relevant question for the media is how we can question and challenge official versions of the crisis such as the deaths due to Covid.

In Gujarat, the media must be commended for doing just this. According to a report by Aarefa Johari in Scroll, local newspapers and television channels have exposed the "staggering mismatch" between official figures and the reality. For instance, on April 12, in Ahmedabad the official figure of those dying from Covid was given as 20. Yet a leading Gujarati newspaper, Sandesh, said it had tracked 63 deaths by posting its journalists outside the morgue of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital from midnight to 5 am on April 12.

If this was not bad enough, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani put out patently wrong information about how Covid deaths are counted by claiming that Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines stipulated that only those whose primary cause of death was the virus were counted and not those with comorbidities where this would be the secondary cause. This is in fact the exact opposite of what the ICMR has stipulated. One wonders then how many other chief ministers in this country are misguided like Rupani and are, therefore, fudging Covid death data.

In Madhya Pradesh, the same story is being played out as exposed by NDTV. Journalists from the channel tracked the number of cremations and compared this with the official death data. On April 8, in Bhopal alone, 41 bodies were cremated following Covid protocols whereas the official figure was only 27 deaths for the entire state. A story in India Today reveals a similar picture. It is more than likely that this is the case in more than one state in India.

If this was not worrying enough, according to this article in Time magazine, for every one reported infection of Covid in India, there could be between 26 to 32 that have not been reported. This is based on a serological survey conducted between August and September 2020. And according to Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the US-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, who is quoted in the article, not only is there undercounting of those infected by a factor of 30, there is likely an undercounting of deaths as well. "For 80 percent of deaths, we have no medically identified cause of death at any given time,” he says.

Then take the question of mutations. Here again, there is science but also official obfuscation. The science is working at establishing the exact nature of the mutant strain or strains that are spreading. Instead of encouraging information on this to be made public, so that people are aware of the seriousness of the situation, the government has attempted to hide it or downplay it as this article in Scroll points out. One of the reasons attributed for the dramatic surge in Maharashtra is the "double mutant" that was first detected in the state. It has now been detected in 10 other states.

Today in India, we are facing not just a dramatic and troubling surge in infections and deaths due to Covid but a crisis of credibility as far as governments are concerned, both at the Centre and in the states. The principal reason for this is their inability to give out credible, science-based information to a public that’s drained and exhausted after more than a year of the pandemic.

Perhaps this tweet from Brahmar Mukherjee best sums up the current state of affairs:

For us in the media, possibly the most significant lesson from this last year is the importance of public health reporting. Let me emphasise “public”. Reporting on health had deteriorated in the corporate media to stories on lifestyle diseases, on new medical technologies and on high-profile medical personnel.

Public health reporting requires an understanding not just of health infrastructure and what is lacking therein, but also constant tracking of the less glamorous diseases, many of which are perennial such as tuberculosis. It is this kind of reporting that prepares journalists for health emergencies, such as the one we are facing today.

Unfortunately, given the financial cutbacks in the media over this last year, few major news organisations are willing to invest in this kind of journalism. Yet we know now that the Covid pandemic is not the last such crisis we will face.

This is as good a time as any to train a generation of journalists who will understand the science and the politics of health emergencies and provide the public with credible information.

 

 

It’s election season and Indian media has put on blinkers. As usual

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 1, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/04/01/its-election-season-and-indian-media-has-put-on-blinkers-as-usual

 

In the polarised times in which we live in India, every election has become, literally, a do or die battle. The “Battle of Nandigram” is only one of the many warlike headlines that accost us each day as the long-drawn out process of elections to four state assemblies and one union territory proceeds. But is that the only story in town?

The pandemic has crept back into the headlines with a spurt of fresh coronavirus infections, and the very real worry that India is now facing a second wave. This ought to be headline news. But the media should also be asking why this has happened, how much of it is a failure of policy and how much of the blame lies with the public.

For one, how is it that the government has permitted large gatherings of Hindu pilgrims and the recent Holi celebrations, yet, when asked, officials blame ordinary people for not observing Covid protocols.

And what about the gatherings during the ongoing elections? Visuals clearly indicate that masks aren’t being used as thousands crowd together at rallies and smaller meetings. Has any political party tried to emphasise to its followers the importance of observing these minimum precautions to prevent the spread of the disease? No official, or politician, is willing to admit that there has been a failure of leadership and absence of clear messaging. Instead, we keep hearing them talk about how ordinary people are undisciplined. And the media, unfortunately, is not asking the tough questions that need to be asked at this time.

Apart from elections and the pandemic, what are the stories that need to be told but are barely reported?

We need to tear our eyes away from TV screens and the endless election coverage to think of what is happening in Myanmar, a country with which India has historical ties. The people's resistance to the military regime that took over the country on February 1 has been one of the top stories in the international press. Yet, in India, although stories from international newspapers are routinely reproduced, the democratic struggle now underway in Myanmar – which has already taken many lives – hasn’t found much space in our media.

Myanmar shares a 1,643-km border with India that touches four Northeastern states – Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. This reality dawned once there were reports that people from Myanmar had crossed into Mizoram, seeking refuge from the daily confrontations between the protesting citizens and the military.

Mizoram’s chief minister, Zoramthanga, has urged the central government to allow the refugees to enter, emphasising the "humanitarian crisis" as well as the shared ancestry with people on the other side.

While Mizoram has taken a sympathetic stance towards the refugees, the Manipur government issued a circular that stated, “People trying to enter/seek refuge should be politely turned away.” Fortunately, the circular has now been withdrawn. Yet in both states, the future of these refugees remains uncertain given that India does not have a refugee policy.

The lack of reporting on this crisis on our borders is emblematic of the neglect of reporting on the Northeast in mainstream media, or "mainland" media, as people in the Northeast call it. The region has remained in the periphery of consciousness in most of India, only springing into the spotlight when there is a natural disaster, an act of insurgency, or an election. Even the latter is covered spottily unless a mainstream Indian political party is central to it. Thus, Assam gets much more coverage than the hill states of the Northeast.

The news that refugees from neighbouring Myanmar were walking across the porous international border into Mizoram would have surprised most readers who are unaware of the history and the geography of much of the Northeast. They would not have known that the border exists on paper but that, in fact, there has been free movement and interaction between people living on either side who are, often, from the same ethnic group.

On market day in the village of Longwa in Nagaland's Mon district, I observed this fluidity as people I spoke to said they had walked across from the other side to shop. The house of the village headman, the Angh, straddles the line that officially divides the two countries. There is a check post at the top of the hill but no one checks. This is a lived reality in just one of several such villages stretching across from Arunachal Pradesh to Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram.

The story about the welcome that the government of Mizoram and its people want to extend to the refugees from Myanmar gives us an essential insight into that state. The fact that even this story is being barely reported illustrates the continuing indifference of mainstream media and people in India towards this region. It is this absence of reporting that reinforces ignorance and prejudice, the price for which has been paid by the thousands of Northeasterners who study and work across India but are constantly asked to prove that they are Indian.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule: these stories by Krishn Kaushik who reported from Mizoram, for example. Not only do we learn about the trickle of people crossing over but also the reason Mizos believe they ought to be helped.

The other story is the absence of a gender perspective in reporting, something I pointed out in my last column with reference to the coverage of the migrant exodus of last year. Here I must commend the Indian Express as the only mainstream newspaper that not only did a two-part feature looking at the impact of the pandemic on women's jobs (read here and here), but also reiterated the points in these articles in an editorial. Furthermore, both stories were carried on the front page.

In the digital version of print media, the importance of this isn’t apparent. But traditionally, newspaper editors make a conscious choice each day when they choose the stories they want to place on the front page. These are carried "above the fold" as broadsheet newspapers are folded when they are sold and distributed. An important story is placed just below the masthead of the paper. Both these reports were given that position.

Also, when editors want to emphasise certain stories, they write editorials around them. Although not many people read editorials, they are an indicator of the importance a paper gives to an issue. Hence the significance of an editorial on the gender crisis in the Indian Express.

The gender issue remains relevant in the light of the latest global ranking by the World Economic Forum. India has slipped 28 places in the gender gap and now stands at 140 out of 156 countries surveyed, as this story points out. Its neighbours in South Asia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan are ranked higher.

There is, of course, a gender angle in election coverage too, and not just because India's only woman chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, is at the centre of the story of the Bengal election. She has had to face many crude remarks made by her opponents that essentialise her being a woman.

Misogyny surfaces constantly during election campaigns, and it has this time too. Some of it is called out; much of it goes by without comment. I leave you with this story by Kavitha Muralidharan about the rampant sexist rhetoric in Tamil Nadu before and during this election. A salutary outcome of sexism being called out is the Election Commission’s decision to bar A Raja of the DMK from campaigning for 48 hours.

 

 

A year on, Indian media is still to tell the full story of the lockdown

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 18, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/03/18/a-year-on-indian-media-is-still-to-tell-the-full-story-of-the-lockdown

 

As anniversaries go, we are on the cusp of one that the government is unlikely to mark but the ordinary people of India will remember for years to come. On March 24, 2020, at 8 pm, the prime minister appeared on national television and, without prior warning, announced a national lockdown that would come into effect in four hours.

Even the shock of his demonetisation announcement on November 8, 2016, also at 8 pm, did not compare to this. The common factor in both announcements, three and a half years apart, was that the poor were the ones who paid the price.

As we approach March 24, 2021, the poor in India are still paying the price for that fateful decision.

The lockdown was necessitated, we were told, to curb the spread of coronavirus. But despite the cruel and often heartless implementation of the lockdown, the virus continued to spread over the next six months. Today, the cases are lower than at the peak, but the crisis has not ended. In all, the virus has afflicted at least 1.14 crore Indians and killed more than one and half lakh.

What have we in the media learned from our coverage of the pandemic, including the impact of the lockdown?

Let us remember that two days before this announcement, Narendra Modi and some of his ministers had met with media owners and editors. According to this report by Sagar in Caravan magazine, "The prime minister’s website reported that the journalists committed to 'work on the suggestions of the prime minister to publish inspiring and positive stories' about COVID-19. After the interaction, some owners and editors who were present in the meeting took to Twitter to thank the prime minister for making them a part of the video conference and seeking their opinions, while others published reports on the meeting on the front page the next day, with photos of themselves and Modi on the television screen."

The tone of acceptable coverage was set. The government desired "positive" stories. But the fallout of the lockdown was anything but positive as lakhs of men and women, who had migrated to cities for work, fled on foot or with whatever they could find by way of transport to return to their homes thousands of kilometres away. That was the big story, one that no media house, however "positive" it wanted to be, could ignore.

It is the visuals of the great Indian exodus, perhaps one of the greatest that this country has seen since Partition, that will live on as the abiding memory of 2020, a year when the pandemic overwhelmed all else.

Yet, today, if we look at the media, we would be hard put to remember that this actually happened. We still do not have a clear picture of how many of those men and women returned; if they did whether they found work and shelter; if they did not whether they were able to eke out a living in their villages; and how many of them were afflicted by the disease that upended their precarious lives on March 24.

Many journalists did an exemplary job capturing the human tragedy unfolding across India. It was not an easy task. Even as they set out to report, their colleagues in the media were losing their jobs and media houses were unwilling to put the resources needed for such reporting. Despite this, we read stories that will be remembered.

An angle that was missed by most media platforms was that of gender. Migrants were mostly men, but there were also women. Some were part of families, but there were many women who had migrated to cities for work and were stranded without jobs or some place to live. Their stories were largely missing in the reportage.

This is one of the important findings of a study conducted by Population First and the Network of Women in Media, India on the gender perspective of the media coverage of the pandemic. Released last week, it is worth a closer look not just for the statistics but because it brings out a point that is relevant for the media at all times: that a gender perspective needs to be integrated into all reporting if we want to tell the full story. Without it, we miss out on literally half the population, particularly so during a crisis.

The study restricted its analysis to print media and looked at coverage from March to September 2020. It studied a sample of 12 mainstream newspapers in seven languages and found that only 4.8 per cent of the 6,110 news items analysed had "anything of significance with regard to women and/or gender issues".

That story, of how women and girls survived through this year of the pandemic, has still to be told in full. In fact, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has found that there has been an increase in cases of domestic violence and trafficking. According to the report, "The female migrant workers and their children were trafficked and had gone missing during lockdowns.” But we have read little of this in the media.

Also, apart from domestic workers, about whom there have been some reports, there are thousands of women in the service industry who have lost their jobs. Where are these women? What are they doing? How have they survived? We also know little of what women faced when their men returned to the village without a job.

The other challenge that the media continues to face is how to cover the pandemic. After a while, the data means little to readers. They look at the daily numbers, which must be reported, but often fail to make the connections.

The media has been constantly challenged, not just in India but around the world, to find ways to keep on telling this story, of a virus that continues to spread, of health services breaking down, of growing fear and anxiety and of the lives that have been devastated by suffering and loss.

Currently, we also face the dilemma of how to report on the safety of the vaccines being administered. Initially, there was the controversy about the home-grown Covaxin that was cleared for emergency use even though its phase three trials were not complete.

And now we have controversies surrounding the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been rolled out as Covishield in India. Several countries in Europe have suspended its use. Yet, the World Health Organisation reiterates it is safe.

How do we in the media report this when several lakh people in this country have already received the first dose? Most people only read headlines. How can we ensure that what is reported is science-based and balanced?

The jury is still out on this but the dilemma is a genuine one. You cannot ignore these reports, or the adverse reactions to the vaccine reported in India, even if they are a handful. At the same time, as several experts have emphasised, the percentage of adverse reactions is so low that they ought not to undermine confidence in the efficacy of the vaccine.

Objectivity and balance is often a fine line that the media has to tread. As Marty Baron, who recently retired as editor of the Washington Post put it in this interview with the New Yorker: "The idea of objectivity – I should make clear – it’s not neutrality, it’s not both-sides-ism, it’s not so-called balance. It’s never been that. That’s not the idea of objectivity. But once we do our reporting, once we do a rigorous job and we’re satisfied that we’ve done the job in an appropriate way, we’re supposed to tell people what we’ve actually found. Not pretend that we didn’t learn anything definitive. Not meet all sides equally if we know that they’re not equal. It’s none of that. It’s to tell people in an unflinching way what we have learned, what we have discovered."

Can the Indian media report in an "unflinching way" given the attitude of this government towards it?

If we had any doubts about that, they have been firmly dispelled by what is perhaps the most significant story of this year, as far as the media is concerned. A group of ministers met last year and discussed how to make the media fall in line and "neutralise" those who do not, as reported in Caravan and elsewhere. The ministers also consulted a number of journalists, one of whom reportedly suggested colour coding journalists into green for the undecided, black for opponent and white for supporter. There has been no official denial of this meeting.

If we read the details of the meetings, now available in the public domain, and also consider the pre-lockdown messages from the government to the media, its strategy for media control is crystal clear. The latest move that will affect the few spaces that still remain for critical and independent coverage of events could be the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules, 2021 that will regulate digital news platforms.

The message is literally staring us in the face in black and white.