So many Kamalas

Column for Mathrubhumi

 

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

 

Many Indians celebrated the nomination of Kamala Harris as the vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party for the November presidential election in the US. They did so because her mother was an Indian from Chennai, who went to the US for higher studies, stayed on, and married a Jamaican academic.  Kamala is the older of her two daughters.

 

But for every Kamala who makes it, either here or in America, there are literally millions of potential Kamalas whose dreams never come true. Not because they lack the intelligence, but because they were never given the opportunity. It was denied to them not because they, or their parents did something wrong, but because they were born into poverty, and remained there.  And a key component that could have helped them rise above poverty, a good education, was out of their reach.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many more poor children behind in their desire to get an education as I mentioned in my last column. And often for no other reason than not having a gadget that will allow them to continue to learn.

 

You don't have to travel to a remote area of India to see this great "unlearning" taking place.  Take Mumbai, the richest city in India. Millions come to the city looking for work. They find it, even though they struggle to find a decent place to live. But by being in this large metropolis, they have a chance to provide their children with an education they might not have received in the villages from where they originally migrated to Mumbai.

 

The backbone of education for poor children are the schools run by the municipal corporation. They have many deficiencies, but they guarantee a minimum level of education to these poor children.

 

Today, because of the pandemic, all these schools are closed.  Children who go to expensive private schools continue with their classes online. For the children who go to municipal schools, there is simply no option but to sit out the entire term.

 

An organisation called Pratham, which has worked for years in the area of education, recently conducted a survey for the municipal corporation to assess how many children were affected.  Out of 2,46,626 children studying in municipal schools, 81,603 could not access online classes. This is a huge number for a city like Mumbai, virtually one out of every three.

 

Amongst these, 52 per cent were children of migrant workers who had left the city with their families because they had no work. It is unlikely that these children will be able to pursue education in their villages. The survey also revealed that 76 per cent of students did not access to smartphones.

 

Even in Dharavi, a place that is recognised worldwide and is often the focus of media attention, 60 per cent of the students at one school that was surveyed had no smart phones.  The common refrain of parents was that when they had no money for food, how could they afford a smart phone.

 

Fortunately, the municipal corporation has decided to set up learning centres so that these students can attend physical classes. But this might already be too little, too late.

 

For me, personally, Dharavi has a special resonance. One of the things that struck me in 1999, when I was researching for my book "Rediscovering Dharavi", was the large number of schools in what is called Asia's largest slum. There were Tamil, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi and English medium schools.  Every family I interviewed, whatever their religion or caste, was determined to get their children educated. They saw this as the only way forward. 

 

I wonder today how many potential Kamalas have lost their chance to move ahead in their lives.

 

In its coverage of Ayodhya bhoomi pujan, the Indian media hit a new level of sycophancy

Broken News

 

https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/08/13/in-its-coverage-of-ayodhya-bhoomi-pujan-the-indian-media-hit-a-new-level-of-sycophancy

 

Has some of India's mainstream media, especially electronic media, sunk so deep into the swamp of sycophancy that it will never be able to pull itself out?

 

August 5, 2020 may well be remembered for many reasons not just for the bhoomi pujan for the Ram temple in Ayodhya by the elected head of a "secular" state, but also for the most vivid exhibition of hero worship with not even a hint of balance or independence by much of the country's mainstream media. As always, there were exceptions but their numbers diminish by the day.

 

Newslaundry has already commented on the breathless and over-the-top coverage given to the event in Ayodhya on August 5.

 

Print media, by virtue of its very format, tends to be a little more restrained, particularly the English language newspapers.  But read the newspapers in the Indian languages, especially in Hindi, and the story is very different. They are uniformly a sea of saffron on August 6, the day after the laying of the foundation stone by Modi. The favourite image is of the prime minister, dressed in a gold silk kurta and saffron lungi prostrating himself before the idol.

 

IJR (Indian Journalism Review), an often caustic and insightful blog by senior journalist Krishna Prasad, has compiled the front pages of several Indian language papers that illustrate this. The temple is not the story, it is the man dedicating the temple who is. And that is clearly how it was meant to be.

 

The question we have to ask is how, we in the Indian media, reached this point? How much does it have to do with the way politics has played out since 2014 and how much with our willing surrender to the agendas set by the ruling party at the Centre?

 

One could argue that the media has no option but to report on an event such as the foundation ceremony in Ayodhya because the prime minister was central to it. But it was not an official event. And it represented a troubled and violent history.  Should none of that have found a mention in the headline, something that most people read and remember?

 

For instance, The Telegraph, which often has arresting front-page headlines and graphics did not disappoint this time with this headline:

 

"The book that begins with We, the people, is

 

THE GOD THAT WE FAILED

 

Raja and rishi are no longer separate in the Republic."

 

Others ranged from "Modi lays first brick for Ram Rajya" in Deccan Chronicle to "PM fulfills national aspiration" in Hitvada. The Times of India mentioned Modi equating the mandir campaign with the freedom movement and the Indian Express simply stated, "Modi marks the mandir".

 

Compare this to "Modi initiates temple at mosque site" in Financial Times or "Modi sets Hindu temple in stone at razed mosque site" in The Times, London. Several other international publications included mention of the mosque, referring to the Babri Masjid that was demolished by Hindutva foot soldiers on December 6, 1992.  By doing so, these headlines place the context of the event right at the top, rather than as an afterthought.

 

And that context, as well as this headline in The Washington Post,"In Modi's quest to transform India, a Hindu temple rises" is the real story of August 5. To be fair, in the reporting in several newspapers the history relating to the demolition of the Babri Masjid was included. But in these days of shrinking attention spans, it is the headline and the photographs that make an impression and not necessarily the text beneath.

 

The editorials, which signify the stand taken by different periodicals on this kind of event, are read even less.  But they are important nonetheless as they reflect some of the thinking during these times.  Historians in the future would read them to grasp how far the Indian media supported uncritically not just the construction of the temple on the ruins of the mosque but the heightened importance given to the process with the prime minister who represents all the people of India, not just the Hindu majority, choosing to lay its foundation stone.

 

Modi compared the movement to build the temple with the freedom movement. He spoke about a "new India" and spoke of freedom from "1200 years of slavery". Some questions were asked about this, but precious few. The iconography of an incumbent prime minister comparing a divisive and violent movement that led to it culmination on August 5 with the freedom movement is what will be remembered.

 

What is the shape of this new India that the prime minister promised? One of the most prescient articles on this appeared in Indian Express a day before the bhoomi pujan. Suhas Palshikar, the well-known political scientist analysed what he saw as the beginning of a new republic with the laying of the foundation stone in Ayodhya. 

 

He outlined the five pillars that will hold up this new republic. These are,

 according to Palshikar, transforming India into "a repository of repression"; the deligitimisation of "ideas of dissent and critique"; the "willingness of the judiciary to look the other way"; "the politics of avoidance displayed by most political parties"; and the foundation of this new republic "on a militant culture of majoritarianism".

 

How does all this apply to the media? What role has it played, and continues to play to build this "new India" of Modi's dreams or the new republic that Palshikar predicts?

 

A decade back, or even six years ago before 2014 and the ascendance of Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, would the media have been so pliant and unquestioning? Wouldn't more people have voiced their concern about this event being elevated to one of "national" significance despite its obvious sectarian nature? Would we not have reminded readers about the events of 1992 even as they observed the celebrations around this temple? Instead, as Mihir Sharma points out in this article in Bloomberg, "Now, Hindu nationalism’s capture of the soul of India is so complete that television anchors broke into devotional song and newspaper front pages looked more like religious calendars than broadsheets."

 

Does this mean that August 5 marks game, set and match to the victory of Hindu nationalism in all spheres, including the media?

 

It need not and it should not. The cornerstone of not falling into the trap of reinforcing this majoritarian narrative that assaults us each day, especially by way of the electronic media, is for the sections of the media that still hold that an independent media is essential to a democracy to inject the necessary context and scepticism into the manner in which events like the Ayodhya spectacle are reported. The editorial decision is reflected in the headline, the choice of photographs and the amount of space given to the event as well as the tone of the reporting and not just the editorial comment.

 

In conclusion, I should also point out that August 5 was also one year since the clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir with the reading down of Article 370.  People there, including the media, have struggled to keep their heads above water, cut-off as they are without internet and with so many in jail. A year later, it is shameful that the court and the government are still debating whether 4G internet connectivity should be restored. This deserved more than just a mention on August 5. Yet once again, barring the usual exceptions, mainstream media did what was expected of it by erasing from our consciousness the continuing sorrow and suffering of the people in that region.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girls and the 'digital divide'

Column in Mathrubhumi

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

In an earlier column, I described a family that lives on the pavement near my house in Mumbai.  The young girl, who became a mother at the age of 16, has a phone and is constantly watching something on it, or speaking to someone.  But it is unlikely that she is accessing any form of learning through that phone.  She is amongst millions of girls in India who have barely stepped into a school.

 

One of the long-term impact of this pandemic, for which there appears to be no end in sight, will be on literacy, particularly that of girls.

 

In recent years, there have been many centrally-sponsored programmes focussing on educating girls.  States like Kerala or Himachal Pradesh have invested generously in literacy programmes leading to positive results.

 

Yet, unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic is going to be a serious setback to all these efforts.

 

The sad reality is that despite investment and targetted programmes, millions of girls never enter a classroom.  Studies have shown that 30 per cent of girls from poor households have never attended school.

 

Although at the primary level, school enrolment has steadily increased, and on paper at least it is over 90 per cent, any disruption, such as the pandemic, can result in dropouts.  For poor families, the midday meal scheme was a very big attraction.  But now, with the closure of schools, midday meals have stopped thereby further diminishing chances of girls learning anything.

 

According to some recent studies, an estimated 20 per cent of girls will not be back in school as and when the lockdown lifts. The reasons for this could be many but mostly because families are impoverished, and also displaced from the places where they lived and worked, and where their children could go to a school.

 

Now that the national lockdown has been extended until August 31, and schools are not going to open until later, there is another factor that will impact girls, especially those from deprived backgrounds.

 

The "digital divide", where a large population cannot access the Internet or benefit from the spread of connectivity through mobiles, is also a gender divide.  Children all over India are expected to continue learning through online classes. But for that you need access.  And many poor families do not have smart phones or access to Internet.

 

Recognising this, some states have made special efforts to reach the children of the underprivileged by sending out teachers with smartphones or internet-ready devices, which can be used to teach groups of children.  But such a policy is not being followed uniformly across India.

 

As a result, girls will be the first to suffer as given the gender divide, families will make an effort to ensure that boys access online classes and will not necessarily make the same effort for girls.  A study in the last two years of children in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana found that 80 per cent of the girls surveyed had never accessed the Internet and 62 per cent had never used a computer.

 

If that is the reality even in two southern states, one can just imagine the situation in the northern states that are behind in most social development indicators. So the longer the pandemic continues, and with it the closure of schools, the larger will be the number of girls in India who will be missing out on education.

 

In the long-term, female literacy, and the education of girls is central to bringing about a real change in our society.  We cannot even speak of equality between men and women if one out of every two girls between the ages of 5 and 9 is illiterate in India today.

 

 

Dear ‘national’ media, stories on Assam floods must go beyond the ‘mighty Brahmaputra’ or the rhino

 

Broken News

It was the one-horned rhino that finally woke us up to the devastation caused by floods in Assam.

 

What began in early June finally reached "national" status, in that the so-called "national" media woke up to it, when the Kaziranga National Park was submerged almost entirely and the couple of thousand one-horned rhino housed there had to scramble to find higher ground. Some of them did not make it. Over 100 wild animals, including at least nine rhinos have died so far.

 

Many humans have also died. More than a hundred. The floods have affected an estimated 56 lakh people across 21 districts. Their homes have been submerged or washed away and thousands have had to seek refuge in relief camps.  Cropland, covering an estimated 128,000 hectares, has been destroyed. By all measures, this is a catastrophe on an enormous scale, worthy of attention.

 

Why then does it take weeks before the Indian media turns its gaze towards it? While it is true that floods are an annual occurrence in Assam and Bihar, is that enough reason to pay so little attention to the human and ecological tragedy unfolding? After all, almost every year, parts of Mumbai go under water during the monsoon. This year, so did parts of New Delhi.  But they made it to the national news.

 

The unjustifiable neglect of reporting on the Assam floods illustrates the continuing debate over what constitutes "national" news.  The Assamese have held a long and festering grievance against successive central governments and what they call "mainland" media for ignoring their plight during the flood season. The floods are also inextricably entwined with the politics of the region.

 

Just by virtue of the scale of the current disaster, which is a combination of natural and ecological factors as well as developmental interventions over decades, the flooding in Assam is a big story. And the people who face the fury of the "mighty" Brahmaputra, an adjective automatically used to describe the river, deserve as much attention as the one-horned rhino.  Yet, almost like clockwork, every year when the rhino faces imminent danger of drowning, the stories begin appearing in the national, and even international media.  In Britain, the royals were putting out anxious statements about the plight of the animal.

 

While the damage caused by the floods is extensive, since the 1980s, people in Assam have felt that the flooding has worsened. Apart from the nature of the river, and the terrain through which it flows, the disaster has been compounded by human interventions and policies, such as deforestation in the catchment areas. Furthermore, the river brings down an enormous load of silt that accumulates, thereby raising the height of the riverbed in some sections.  This is a direct consequence of the policy of building embankments to prevent flooding.  These structures restrict the river, but when the river is in spate, it breaks through the embankments, or flows over them. As a result, the force of the water is far stronger and causes much more damage.

 

According to the "Floods, flood plains and environmental myths" published by the Centre for Science and Environment in 1991, an expert committee set up after the 1986 Assam floods had recommended that no more embankments should be built. Yet the policy continues, with successive governments spending crores on building and strengthening embankments in the mistaken belief that this will alleviate flooding.

 

What is evident is that the story of floods is not just about what happens when the river floods, but also previous policies that have contributed to the damage caused by this annual event.  This context is often missing from most of the reporting on floods in general, and the floods in Assam in particular.

 

It is reported as an event, not the culmination of several processes.  As a result, we fail to understand why the extent of devastation appears to get worse every year.

 

There are exceptions as always.  Here Scroll.in has done a service by assembling a reading list of previous and current articles on the Assam floods that place them in a context. This article by Mitul Baruah is particularly useful in understanding why embankments have contributed to the problem, rather than being a solution. The other articles also look at another popular perception that dams control flooding when often they exacerbate it.

 

There's also a reason why the wildlife in Kaziranga is having such a tough time in recent years. That is because national highway 37 runs right through it.  Even when there are no floods, scores of animals are crushed under speeding vehicles when they cross over from one part of the sanctuary to the other.  The highway was built despite strong campaigns by environmentalists against it.  The current state government is now apparently planning to build a 36 km long flyover costing Rs 2625 crore so that there is a corridor beneath for the animals to cross.  Could there be a clearer illustration of environmentally blind developmental policy?

 

It is important for the media to bring out this background and context to what are seen as "natural" disasters so that people are informed about how myopic and short-sighted policies also play a part.

 

Equally important is the question of what constitutes "national" news. This is relevant at all times, but especially now.  People living in remote areas, or even not so remote, feel strongly about how the "nation" appears to be centered on the metropolitan cities, and the Hindi belt. Even news from the south takes time to register in the rest of the country.

 

Today, the Covid-19 pandemic is playing out locally, but is also national and international. Yet, it is evident that without the detailed reports from the ground, people would not be able to relate to media reports about the pandemic, as my last column had emphasised.

 

In the post-Covid media scenario, with decreasing revenue streams that have already led to retrenchments of journalists in all forms of media, this question could take on greater significance.

 

For some time now, television news has defined "national" by its ability, or inability, to get a camera crew to do a story.  Financial constraints have already replaced news bulletins with studio-based discussions.

 

Print, and digital news platforms, still manage to cover much more of the country.  But they will also face limits because of the economics of running media houses. As a result, they too might be compelled to limit the extent of reporting.

 

Meanwhile, local media outlets are also financially strapped and could face closure in the years ahead. One wonders how long a paper like Mylapore Times, featured in this interesting article in Newslaundry, or others like it in the rest of the country, will be able to keep their heads above water.

 

The trend of local papers downsizing or closing altogether has been visible in the US for some time.  Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post, writes about this and the decline of one such paper where she began her career. She argues that local reporting actually strengthens democracy. It also provides a source for credible news. In its absence, rumours flourish. 

 

And of course these days, with social media, the problem has grown exponentially.

 

Sullivan quotes a PEN America study of 2019 that has a resonance for us in India. “As local journalism declines, government officials conduct themselves with less integrity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and corporate malfeasance goes unchecked. With the loss of local news, citizens are: less likely to vote, less politically informed, and less likely to run for office.” 

 

In the current situation in India, when there is no end in sight to the pandemic, when economic hardships have already hit the most vulnerable and are staring the majority of citizens in the face, when the severe cracks in our health infrastructure have become evident, and when the bankrupt nature of our politics is on full display every day, democracy will be further weakened if sources of credible and reliable news disappear because there is no finance to back them.