In rare reports on the Adani empire, a reminder of independent media’s significance

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 15, 2022

Few would have heard the name of TV journalist Govind Wakade. He works for TV18 and is based in Pune. 

Wakade went to cover a function at Pimpri Chinchwad on December 10 where a Maharashtra government minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party, Chandrakant Patil, was speaking. During the meeting, someone in the audience was incensed enough at a remark made by Patil to hurl an inkpot at him. The moment was captured by Wakade on his camera. The clip was shared widely on social media.

The next day, on December 11, Patil claimed that the attack was planned and demanded an investigation. As reported here, he went further by asking: “How did that journalist get the exact angle when the ink was being thrown at me? Who is that journalist? If by tomorrow morning, this journalist is not traced, I will sit on a fast at Pimpri police station.”

The police responded promptly by finding Wakade and summoning him to the police station for questioning. They did not, however, arrest him.

This incident, and the minister’s comment, exemplifies the attitude of those in power towards the media. It also illustrates the reality of press freedom in India, tenuous at the best of times. Today, journalists are at risk even if they are simply doing their jobs, of recording events and reporting them.  

How did we descend to such depths? The annual report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on the media landscape in India is scathing.  The government, of course, will ignore it, as it has in previous years. Why should it care that India is ranked 150 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index? All that matters now, it seems, is that India is heading the G20!

The RSF report, however, is worth more than a passing glance. It calls India “one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media” with “an average of three or four journalists killed in connection with their work every year.” 

Apart from flagging the violence that journalists face, and the very real possibility of arrest, the report also mentions the concentration of ownership in mainstream media. This is often overlooked in discussions about media freedom, but as we are seeing, when media owners and those holding political power come together, the idea of a free press becomes something of a mockery.

To quote from the report again:

“The Indian press is a colossus with feet of clay. Despite often huge stock market valuations, media outlets largely depend on advertising contracts with local and regional governments. In the absence of an airtight border between business and editorial policy, media executives often see the latter as just a variable to be adjusted according to business needs.”

“An airtight border” between the business side and editorial began crumbling a while back. I can remember from my time in the Mumbai edition of a national daily newspaper several instances where instructions came directly from the owners to the editors. For instance, reporters on the health beat were told that nothing critical should be reported about a particular hospital because the owners of the publication also served on the hospital’s board. Similarly, a news story quoting from an independent investigation into violation of workers’ rights by a leading multinational in Mumbai was dropped at the last minute because the company representative spoke directly to the owner who then instructed the editor. The newspaper received generous advertising from this company. This was in the 1980s. 

Today, not only are media houses treading on eggshells when it comes to the government, but they are also selective about writing critically about powerful business houses, especially those in complete sync with the current government. You see this every day in the choice of stories mainstream media chooses to highlight, and those it ignores.

On December 12, the Washington Post ran a frontpage story with the headline: “In Modi’s India, an empire built on coal”. It is highly unlikely that any of India’s leading national dailies would have run this story on their front pages, or even inside. The story caused something of a buzz on social media. Yet, those outside the social media realm, and who don’t read international publications, would not know of this investigative report because it was not reflected either by way of a comment, or a report in mainstream Indian media.

The story’s focus is a coal-fired power plant in Godda, in Jharkhand, that is part of the expanding empire of Gautam Adani. It reveals how rules were changed to accommodate the setting up of the plant which is scheduled to supply power to neighbouring Bangladesh courtesy of an agreement between our two countries. 

For an audience outside India, the story shows how India continues to use coal for power generation even as the world is moving away from fossil fuels due to the ugly reality of climate change. In India, the story illustrates how when people holding political power and private business work together, there is no obstacle too great that cannot be overcome. 

In this case, the private business happens to be owned by Gautam Adani, who is, as the Post reminds us, not only “the largest private developer of coal power plants and coal mines in the world”, but also “the second-richest person on the planet, behind Elon Musk” whose earnings have doubled just in the last three years. 

For those who follow some of these issues closely, much of what appears in the Post story has been reported before. The advantage the Post had was that it could cover the Bangladesh angle which an Indian publication would find difficult.  

In 2019, Scroll carried a detailed three-part investigation into the same power plant in Jharkhand. But these reports did not receive the kind of attention that has been accorded to the Washington Post story. 

The reports in Scroll in 2019 by Aruna Chandrasekhar are meticulous in their detail. They are well worth reading because they illustrate the kind of journalism that we need today but is sadly missing because media houses will not invest in the in-depth reporting that brings to light facts otherwise obscured. 

Her reports highlighted how the Jharkhand government, then ruled by the BJP, amended its energy policy in such a way that Adani got a higher price for the power generated. She spoke to the villagers who lost their land to the project, and also reported how converting the project into a special economic zonefacilitated saving of taxes and additional profits to the company. 

Holding the powerful to account does not relate only to the government. It also means the economically powerful, whose interests often coincide with those holding political power, as in the present case. That is why these stories on the Adani empire are so significant. They are also a reminder, yet again, of the importance of independent media, because even the most powerful will not be able to erase the facts recorded in such reports. 

Journalism can be so much more than stenography. Ravish Kumar taught us that

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 1, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/12/01/journalism-can-be-so-much-more-than-stenography-ravish-kumar-taught-us-that

This column cannot begin without mentioning the importance to Indian journalism of Ravish Kumar, who resigned from NDTV yesterday after almost 27 years there. His video statement after resigning is not just moving but also an exemplary lesson for us on what journalism is meant to be – but increasingly isn’t in India.

Much will be written in the days to come about Ravish and his outstanding daily show, Prime Time, on NDTV’s Hindi channel. The standards he set challenged the divisive, frivolous, loud and irrelevant ranting that constitutes “news” on other mainstream television channels. He demonstrated that it was possible to go beyond “breaking news”, to bring out the voices of the people so often ignored by the mainstream, and to speak the uncomfortable truth straight to the camera without blinking and without a trace of fear. That much-used phrase, “speaking truth to power”, was indeed the foundation on which Ravish’s programme was based.

In his book, The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation (Speaking Tiger, 2018), Ravish admitted that at times, he was afraid – for instance, when he did a programme on the alleged murder of Judge Loya after a Caravan story on the matter. 

He wrote: “I had found release from the fear that had held me in its suffocating grip for two days. Through the duration of the show, I’d felt that every single word was holding me back, as if to warn me: ‘Enough, don’t go any further. You cannot put yours and yourself in danger just to overcome your fear. Fear does not end after you’ve spoken out. Even after you’ve spoken, fear lies in wait for you with its nets and snares.’ But I had spoken, and I was free.”

There is little doubt that Ravish’s “free voice” will be heard again in another avatar, on his YouTube channel and perhaps elsewhere. But his exit from mainstream media extinguishes the one spark of intelligent, resourceful and courageous journalism that somehow survived the last eight years, when the pressures on independent journalism escalated. 

Ravish was an exception. There is no doubt about that. The norm today is fear of the consequences if you don’t toe the line. And, every day, we see examples of this. 

On December 1, Indian Express, Times of India and Hindustan Times ran identical op-eds. The author was Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and the subject was India chairing the G-20. The Hindu also ran the piece, but on its news pages, because it was not an exclusive. Articles on the edit and op-ed pages must be exclusive. This is a well-established norm that newspapers generally follow. Clearly, a statement from the prime minister, for that is what it was and could have been dealt with in a news item, was considered an exception. Why? Has the fear of consequences distorted even established editorial norms? 

Then take the way some recent statements made on the campaign trail in Gujarat by the prime minister and home minister Amit Shah were handled by the print media. 

As a rule, most newspapers report verbatim what important politicians like the prime minister say at public events. Such statements are often displayed on the front page, irrespective of their relevance. However, during an election campaign, the meetings addressed by the prime minister are not official events. They are organised by his party and he is campaigning as the leader of his party. Yet, these meetings and his statements continue to be given the same treatment as his official engagements. 

But what if, during these election campaigns, he or someone else in high office says something that’s not entirely true, or is exaggerated, or is provocative? Should the press, even as it reports this, also call them out?

Take, for instance, the prime minister’s repeated references to activist Medha Patkar during his campaigning in Gujarat. He terms people like her “urban naxals”, he claimed she and her campaign against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river are responsible for the lack of water in Kutch, and he has often charged her with being anti-Gujarat and “anti-development”.

His ire grew when Patkar joined Rahul Gandhi for the Bharat Jodo Yatra. This added fuel to his already charged rhetoric as he alleged a conspiracy between the Congress and Patkar to undo the Gujarat model of development.

While all this was reported without question, there was hardly any space given to Patkar or other members of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Barring a few newspapers, like this short report in Indian Express, the prime minister’s accusations against Patkar went unchallenged. Given that Gujarat now has a generation that has only known BJP governments, knows practically nothing about what happened during the 2002 communal carnage, and will certainly have no knowledge of the history of the struggle for the rehabilitation of the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar dam, it is inexcusable that even this kind of routine effort was not made to give the other side of the story.

That perspective is essential for many reasons. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the questions raised by the NBA about the dams on the Narmada river, including the Sardar Sarovar, played an important part in establishing the importance of incorporating environmental and social norms in any large developmental project. Indeed, the concept that development itself could be destructive evolved around that time.  

Since then, India has adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals that are based on these concepts. Yet, the concept of “sustainable development” has clearly not been fully understood or accepted given the prime minister’s hostility towards people like Patkar who continue to be labelled as “anti-development”. 

It is a matter of record that the Narmada dam oustees, including those in Gujarat, had to fight every step of the way for compensation, resettlement, and rehabilitation. None of it happened automatically. And some of the issues remain unresolved.

Indeed, as this insightful report by Manisha Pande of Newslaundry shows us, the people ousted from their land to build the gigantic Sardar Patel Statue at Kevadia on the banks of the Narmada are still angry and unhappy.  You hear little, if any, of this on mainstream media. 

Elections give journalists an opportunity to go behind the obvious and report.  And during the run-up to the Gujarat elections, there have been many insightful reports in the print media, and on digital platforms. Apart from several excellent reports in Newslaundry, I would like to mention this India Fix column in Scroll, where Shoaib Daniyal illustrates the gaping holes in the much lauded “Gujarat model” of development. The state has high rates of stunting of children, has high levels of infant mortality, and is a low 17th in the all-India ranking on education. The series of reports by Arunabh Saikia in Scroll are also worth reading for the perspectives they provide, such as this one on the Mundra port operated by the Adani group. 

Coincidentally, even as our newspapers were reporting verbatim everything Modi said during the election campaign, in the US, former president Donald Trump did not get off so lightly. This story in the New York Times is an example of what can be done. The paper fact-checked a speech made by Trump when he announced that he would run again for president in 2024. Would any Indian newspaper, or TV channel, ever do this in India? I realise that this is a rhetorical question for which there is only one answer.

Another example of how the media fails to question statements made by politicians is the many thinly veiled threatening statements made by Amit Shah during his Gujarat campaign. At a rally in Mahudha in Kheda district, as reported by Indian Express, Shah said: “In 2002, communal riots took place because the Congress people let it become a habit. But such a lesson was taught in 2002 that it was not repeated from 2002 to 2022.”

The statement was widely reported, even on the front pages of some newspapers, but there was no comment following it. On the other hand, the Guardian in the UK published a strong editorial comment in which it pinned Shah’s statement. It said, “On the campaign trail last Friday, India’s home minister claimed troublemakers had been ‘taught a lesson’ in 2002. This sounded like a signal to Hindu mobs that they could do as they pleased.”

Shouldn’t such an obvious statement from none other than India’s home minister, responsible for law and order, have drawn a comment from the Indian media? Tragically, the answer to this question is also obvious.

 

A question of judgement: Lessons for independent media from the Meta-Wire affair

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 4, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/11/04/a-question-of-judgement-lessons-for-independent-media-from-the-meta-wire-affair

The Meta-Wire affair, as it has come to be called, has thrown up many questions that touch on editorial processes, the survival of independent media, and the response of the state to criticism.

The Wire, an independent digital news portal, has publicly admitted that it erred in running a series of stories that implicated tech giant Meta, which runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The stories made the false claim that Meta gave Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’s IT cell, the right to directly take down posts on Instagram that he finds offensive. 

In its apology on October 27, the Wire acknowledged that the “internal editorial processes which preceded publication of these stories did not meet the standards that the Wire sets for itself and its readers expect from it.” However, it did not issue an apology to Malviya or Meta. Two days later, Malviya filed a case against the Wire for cheating, forgery, criminal defamation and criminal conspiracy. The Delhi police followed this up with raids on the homes of the Wire’s editors and its office.

In the meantime, the Wire has also filed a case against its researcher Devesh Kumar for “forgery and fabrication”.

The most obvious questions that arise are about the Wire’s editorial processes. The platform is run by three experienced editors: Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and Sidharth Bhatia. How could they have allowed these stories to run in the first place? Why were they not put through the kind of rigorous editorial scrutiny expected of investigative stories that name a specific individual and an institution? Given that Devesh Kumar, who investigated these stories and lined up the so-called “evidence”, was not a journalist but on contract to the website for tech input, why did the editors buy his story without double-checking every detail?

The Wire’s editors have still to provide adequate answers to these questions. In their statement, they also admit that an obvious learning from this incident is that the “editing process for any investigative story should involve multiple layers of editors. We are instantly putting in place appropriate protocols to ensure this happens.”  

But such an editing process for investigative stories is a standard practice in any respectable publication. Why did the Wire not have this in place earlier? 

Any editor ought to know that a story that implicates an individual – in this case a person who belongs to a powerful political party – must be handled with even greater rigour because of the possibility of a criminal defamation case. This does not mean that you cannot, or should not, take on the powerful. In fact, the phrase “speaking truth to power” means precisely that the media must be prepared to take on the risks involved in exposing the wrongdoings of the powerful. But such reporting comes with a cost.

If there is even the slightest doubt, the axiom “when in doubt, leave out”, that we are taught as journalists, is the best one to follow. This is even more pertinent today as technology has allowed the proliferation of fake news to such an extent that even people who are not particularly tech-savvy are able to manipulate information and visuals and put out false narratives. Today, the gatekeepers in the media need to be even more sceptical and cautious when offered “scoops” that expose the powerful. Given that the Wire does not have the funds to fight protracted legal cases, it is unclear why such precaution was not taken. Besides, this is the least a journalistic organisation must do to retain credibility if it positions itself as an independent news organisation.

Apart from questions around the Wire’s journalistic processes, there is more that needs explaining. Although Malviya filing a case against the Wire after its first story was almost a given, the Delhi police’s response to conducting “raids” on the Wire office and the homes of its founding editors, as well as deputy editor Jahnavi Sen and head of business Mithun Kidambi, came across as excessive. As several lawyers have pointed out in this report, the police could have summoned them and asked them to surrender their electronic devices. 

Devesh Kumar, in an interview to Times Now, says he too has surrendered his electronic devices to the Delhi police, but will not say anything more than what has already been stated publicly by the Wire’s editors. He confirmed he is not on the staff of the Wire and accepts the mistakes he made. He also said he handed over the documents on which the stories were based to the Wire’s editors.

The news portal has been criticised for passing off all blame onto one individual, even though it is obvious that a series of this kind was a collaborative effort. In fact, the first story had Jahnavi Sen’s byline and the second had hers and Siddharth Varadarajan. Kumar’s name was mentioned only in the third story. Although people at the Wire say this was done to protect Kumar’s source, this explanation does not pass muster because Kumar defended the story online and eventually did share a byline.

The Wire also failed in following an established journalistic norm of seeking a response from persons or organisations named in its stories. Even if Malviya or Meta did not respond to their queries, the portal would have been on more solid ground.

Therefore, the Wire has no defence on why it failed on so many counts editorially. 

At the same time, we must acknowledge that by retracting the stories and admitting its mistake, the Wire has at least begun to acknowledge the scale of its mistakes – something we rarely see in a large section of mainstream media. Mainstream media also makes mistakes. Yet we seldom see an apology. The reason the Wire is facing so much flak, even from people who support it, is because it has set higher standards for itself.

That said, we must  also recognise that we live in a country where media freedom is constantly under attack, and we are governed by a dispensation that has no time for critics, however small their reach might be. The Wire has been consistently critical of the current regime. This has been evident in its reports and its opinion pieces. That the portal is a source of irritation for a government that prefers the media to sing its praises is more than evident. And that ideally, it would like such irritants to disappear altogether is also obvious.

Unfortunately, the Wire-Meta affair has given this government the opportunity to cripple it, and it is unlikely to stop until it succeeds. 

What lessons should independent digital platforms draw from this incident? Their presence in India’s media ecosystem is crucial because they provide the space for incisive reporting and critical comment that is largely absent in much of mainstream media. 

But given the power of the government to move against critics, it is incumbent that these platforms double down on rigorous journalistic processes so that the chances of a repetition of the fiasco by the Wire are minimised.  

In a strong editorial, the Deccan Herald mentions the recent remarks of prime minister Modi at a meeting of state home ministers, where he said that it was time to destroy “urban naxals” and Maoists holding pens. The warning for critical and independent media is clear.  

3,500 km but who’s watching? How Big Media dropped the ball in its coverage of Bharat Jodo Yatra

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 13, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/10/13/3500-km-but-whos-watching-how-big-media-dropped-the-ball-in-its-coverage-of-bharat-jodo-yatra

As journalists, we can support or oppose a political party, like or dislike a politician. But that is an individual choice. In our capacity as journalists who report on events, we are compelled to put aside our personal prejudices when we report. At least, that is the ideal and that is what we are trained to do as journalists.

We know, of course, that such an ideal scenario barely survives today. With a nation so deeply divided along political and religious lines, especially in the last eight years since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the centre and in several states, we have seen these divisions reflected in media coverage.

An ongoing example of this is the Bharat Jodo Yatra, or what is being called Rahul’s Yatra. Rahul Gandhi has set off with a group of Congress supporters and others not in the party to walk roughly 3,500 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Just the concept of a group of people undertaking such a journey, irrespective of who they are, should pique the media’s interest. Even more so when the central figure is a leading opposition politician, one who has been the focus of much derision from the governing party.

Yet, if you want to know what’s happening with this yatra, you must look hard to find reports. There are reports, but they are skeletal at best, simply stating the route the yatris are taking and quoting either Gandhi after his daily press conference or some other Congress leaders.

You can also watch the yatra on YouTube on the official feed of the Congress party. Unfortunately, this consists of endless footage of people walking with flags. The camera is always focused on Gandhi who leads from the front. There is no commentary. Every now and then, you see him hug children or the elderly or someone who has been in the news, like the mother and sister of murdered journalist Gauri Lankesh.

But that’s it. You don’t get a sense from these reports of the places the yatra has touched, or of the people watching from the sidelines. Who are they? What are they thinking? Is this just a tamasha they feel they cannot miss? Do they even understand the concept of Bharat Jodo? These are some of the obvious questions that come to mind, especially if you are a journalist reporting on such an event.

But in the mainstream media, much of this remains unanswered.

Instead, the media features the usual discussions on whether the yatra will yield political dividends, whether it will work as a public relations exercise to refurbish Gandhi’s image as he has been frequently accused of not being a serious politician, or why the yatra is spending so many days in one state and not in another. While such speculation is unavoidable given the rapidly declining political stature of the Congress party – and the fact that even if Congress spokespersons insist this is not “Rahul’s yatra”, he is the most obvious focus of it – there is one more reason why the reporting must go beyond this.

For instance, when reporters are sent out to cover elections, they report what politicians say and speculate on the hold of one party or another. But going out into the field also gives them an opportunity to get the pulse of the public, to speak to ordinary people, to understand the issues that concern them, and to convey this to readers. Such reporting has been on the decline in recent years as media houses cut back on investing in news gathering. But there is still enough of it to provide a granular feel of the issues that concern people during an election.

Covering an event like the Bharat Jodo Yatra ought to be seen as a similar opportunity. How many photographs can you keep seeing of Gandhi beaming at some young girl or boy who has rushed up to him (carefully curated, of course), or of his bending down to tie his mother’s or some other yatri’s shoelaces? There is surely more to this yatra than that. 

To find such reporting, you must look hard and literally search the net. It is possible, of course, that regional language papers have been giving it more detailed coverage as the yatra traverses these states. And it is more than likely that the Delhi-based “national” media will wake up to it when it hovers closer to the national capital. But so far as mainstream English language newspapers are concerned, the reports with the kind of details one is looking for are so few as to be missed entirely.

As always, the independent digital platforms fill the gap in reporting. For instance, Shoaib Daniyal of Scroll wrote about the people walking with Gandhi. The profiles give you a hint of the variety of individuals who must be part of the exercise. He writes: “One of the biggest benefits of reporting on the big political palooza that is the Congress’s cross-country Bharat Jodo Yatra is seeing the diversity of the people who participate in India’s political system.”

Another report, also in Scroll, has greater depth, perhaps because it is written by a non-journalist. Ramani Atkuri is a public health professional based in Bengaluru. She joined the yatra with a group of friends. She explains, “For me, joining the Yatra was a personal protest against the state of the nation today, and a chance to show solidarity with someone standing up against it, especially the hate and divisiveness. It was also a protest against the shrinking of our freedoms. I guess there comes a time we must each stand up and be counted.”

In Karnataka, Dhanya Rajendran of the News Minute has been tracking the yatra. Her reports provide both the political and the larger atmospherics of the yatra, as in this video. Even though it is essentially an interview with Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh, we also hear other voices, both sceptical and supportive.

Occasionally you come across a story that tells you about the places the yatra is passing through. For those not familiar with the southern states, many of these places are just names. Yet each point on the route has a history, sometimes of conflict between religious groups, sometimes between castes. Has there been a negative reaction from the dominant groups here? If so, was there any display of hostility? It would have been interesting to know. But largely, that aspect has remained uncovered by the media.

Yogendra Yadav of Swaraj India is a supporter and participant in the yatra. But he is not a Congress worker. And his perspective remains interesting because it explains, perhaps, why so many from civil society, such as Ramani Atkuri quoted above, have set aside their reservations about the Congress party and decided to join the yatra at various stages. 

Yadav spells out why he believes the yatra should be viewed as more than a political tamasha. Even if one does not agree with all he writes, his opinion is worth more than a glance. An important point he makes, for instance, is that this is an actual padyatra, where participants, including the leading lights, are physically walking every day up to 26 km. This is unusual as the routine “road shows” by politicians consist of them driving to a spot where the media is present, talking to “ordinary” folk for photo ops, and then driving on. Their feet don’t touch the ground for very long.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra still has a lot of ground to cover. And as I said earlier, it is entirely possible that the so-called “national” media will wake up to it when it enters their territory in the north. But till then, we can read and watch some of the better reporting on the Bharat Jodo Yatra so that it also becomes the Bharat Samjho Yatra.

Two families, and the ‘chor gadi’

 

October 12, 2022. A day like any other day in post-monsoon Mumbai. Muggy, cloudy, a brilliant evening sky.

 

But also, a day when hearts, hearths and homes were cruelly broken.

 

Let me backtrack.  I live in a mixed neighbourhood in Mumbai.  It has buildings with government officials, private buildings with a mix of rich and middle-income families, a large enclave exclusively for Parsis, and an even larger, in terms of population, urban poor settlement where a mini-India jostles for a limited space.

 

There are some private gardens, such as those exclusively for the government officials, and a short distance away public gardens for the rest of us.

 

There are also shops, a police chowki, a Hindu temple, a mosque and a Buddhist shrine. The road leading up to our neighbourhood is narrow, but on one side, it has something resembling a pavement.

 

For at least two decades, I have observed a family that consisted only of women and children living on the side of this road opposite the pavement.  They are waste pickers, originally from Tamil Nadu.  I sometimes saw a man, but mostly the women – an older woman and her daughter.  In the course of time, the daughter gave birth to a little girl, and thereafter to two boys.

 

The girl, Uma, grew up before my eyes.  She was toddler, then a little girl with neat plaits who would wind her way up the road to a municipal school. I bumped into her on most mornings when I went for a walk.  She would beam up at me, her eyes luminous. Over time I saw her grow into a statuesque young woman, clearly conscious of her beauty.

 

Then the entire family moved across the road, to a spot in front of the closed gate of the government officers’ colony.  They spread themselves out.  The older woman told me they had the contract to collect the dry waste from the government colony.  They seemed confident that they would not be asked to move.

 

I noticed at one point that the younger woman, Uma’s mother, looked ill.  She seemed to be literally wasting away.  They said that she might have TB but were not sure.  One day, I saw that she was not there anymore.  She had died. Of what, I asked Uma’s grandmother. Not sure, I was told. 

 

So now there was the grandmother, her grand-daughter, and a couple of boys.

 

Then another family arrived on the same spot.  The man had been around.  I had seen him as he collected the dry waste from our building.  But the woman and her daughter were new. They were also from Tamil Nadu.  The daughter’s name was Pooja.

 

The two families were uneasy allies – united in their homelessness and yet competing for contracts from the buildings and colonies in the neighbourhood.  The man managed to hustle Uma’s grandmother out of the contract with the government colony.  She found something else.

 

They fought often, but also shared a basic level of camaraderie.  Pooja was friends with Uma who was considerably older than her.  When her mother was out collecting waste, Pooja hung out with Uma and her brothers.

 

Then one day, I saw Uma with a tiny infant in her arms.  Whose? I asked. Mine, she said, her eyes gleaming.  And then by way of an explanation, the father did not want to marry me.  Uma was 16 years old then (although later she insisted that she was 18).  

 

Another child of the street, Uma’s little girl, is now almost four years old.  They call her Karooramma.  She is cheerful, waves out to the people she knows, keeps herself busy playing with whatever is lying around.  She imitates her mother and great-grandmother by pretending to wash clothes or the dishes.  She sometimes goes off on her own to the tea stall at the top of the road where she’s given a cup of tea, more like a thimbleful, and a biscuit.   

 

Over the years, both families followed a pattern.  During the rains, they would stretch out a tarpaulin over their belongings and sleep under it.  And once the rains were gone, so was the temporary cover and they continued to sleep in the open.

 

On October 10 this year, the municipal corporation descended on this little settlement of two families and demolished their shelter.  It was still raining.

 

For two days, they somehow continued to occupy the spot, which had now been ‘beautified’ with large potted plants.  They kept their belonging behind these pots and slept on carboard spread out on the pavement. The little girl slept under an umbrella.

 

I asked them what they would do now, as living this way was clearly untenable.  Could they not find a room in one of the many urban poor settlements scattered in the area, including the one nearest to us?

 

How is that possible, asked Pooja’s mother.  The rents start at Rs 7000 and more for a small room.  And then there is a deposit.  Of at least Rs 50,000.  Where will we get that?

 

And then on October 12, the municipal van came again – the ‘chor gadi’ as it is called.  And took away most of their belongings – pots, pans, mattresses, almost everything.  To get them back, they would have to go to the ward office and pay a fine, I was told.

 

When the clean-up operation was being conducted by the maintenance department of the municipality, I asked the man in-charge why they had to confiscate their belongings when they had already destroyed their temporary structures? We have had complaints, he told me. In any case, it was evident he was not going to stop.  He had his orders. And he was following them.

 

I want to record this moment because it illustrates the heartlessness of a big city like Mumbai where there is no place for the poor.  These families are poor, but they earn their living by providing an essential service.  Yet, the city can make no place for them.

 

For the people living in the area, the majority would only see them as the dirty poor ‘spoiling’ their neighbourhood. I can bet that even the woman who complained about them has never spoken to them and has no idea what they do for a living.

 

This moment also tells me how the entire system is stacked against the poor. Little Karooramma, for instance, cannot get an Aadhar card because she has no birth certificate.  She was born, literally, on the street.  Hence, even the municipal school will not admit her.  For the State, she is invisible, as is her mother, and her great grandmother. They are not even a statistic. 

 

I sleep tonight with a heavy heart as I think of Karooramma, who smiled at me when I passed her on the pavement, even as the BMC men were confiscating their belongings.  “BMC aya”, she told me solemnly.  “Sab le gaya”.  And then she waved and said her usual “bye”.

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A longer version of this post was published in Scroll.in.  Here's the link:

https://scroll.in/article/1034969/what-the-story-of-two-families-says-about-the-unchanging-reality-of-living-on-the-streets-of-mumbai

 

 

 

 

 

Hate speech by media: Will regulation really work?

 Broken News 

Published in Newslaundry on September 30, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/30/hate-speech-by-media-will-regulation-really-work

In the flurry of political developments around the election of the Congress party’s president, perhaps the significance of the Supreme Court’s recent observations on the media and hate speech has been overlooked.

On September 21, while hearing a clutch of 11 writ petitions seeking the court’s intervention to regulate hate speech, Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy made some observations that are worth considering and debating.

As reported in the Indian Express, the judges singled out the debates conducted on the electronic media which they held were “the chief medium of hate speech”. This has been pointed out innumerable times, especially this episode of  TV Newsance on this platform, but to hear it said from the podium of the highest court in the country carries with it added gravitas.

Speaking about talk shows in television, Justice Joseph said, as reported in Live Law:

“The role of the anchor is very important. Hate speech either...takes place in the mainstream television or it takes place in the social media. Social media is largely unregulated… As far as mainstream television channel is concerned, we still hold sway, there the role of anchor is very critical because the moment you see somebody going into hate speech, it’s the duty of the anchor to immediately see that he doesn’t allow that person to say anything further.”

Furthermore, although the question of whether and how the media should be regulated on hate speech was the primary focus of the discussion in court, Justice Joseph reiterated the importance of press freedom: “Political parties will come and go. But the nation will endure. The press is a very important institution. Without an independent and totally free press, no nation can go forward. It’s absolutely important that we have true freedom. The government should actually come forward, not to take an adversarial stand but to assist.”

Of course, in a democracy, only a free and independent media can take an “adversarial” stand against governments. But taking such a stand at present in India has serious adverse consequences, as is evident from the intimidation of independent media, or what remains of it, and of journalists who dare to be critical. 

The case is still being heard. But it has already thrown up several important issues relevant not just to the media but to consumers of media. It asks us to consider, even if we agree that a free and independent media is essential for democracy, whether specific laws are needed to check the role played by the media in spreading hate speech. Balancing freedom with government regulation has always been a tricky issue. 

An additional factor was highlighted in this comment by Justice Roy: “Hate drives TRPs, drives profit.” For it is not just the “how” of feeding hate but the “why” of it. Media houses today think of themselves as “profit centres”. Thus, anything that feeds the bottom line is acceptable, including allowing people spewing hate to speak unchecked on television. 

Of course, the fundamental problem in dealing with the spread of hate through media is that there is no legal definition of hate speech. There are laws that exist that can be used but these are not specific. In 2017, the Law Commissionsubmitted a 53-page report specifically on this issue and pointed out, “The apprehension that laying down a definite standard might lead to curtailment of free speech has prevented the judiciary from defining hate speech in India and elsewhere.” It recommended changes in the criminal law. 

To date, no action has been taken on it. 

We must also keep in mind that hate speech is not a new phenomenon. Those of us who covered the communal riots in Mumbai following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 cannot forget the role that the media, and one particular newspaper, played in ratcheting up communal feelings. Those were the days when print media was still important. 

As Sujata Anandan reminds us in this report, there were several cases filed against Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray for hate speech and also against the editor of the Sena’s mouthpiece Saamna. But as journalist and author of Riots and After in Mumbai: Truth and Reconciliation Meena Menon found, many of these cases were either dismissed or not pursued. 

Amongst the cases against Thackeray was one filed by a former municipal commissioner of Mumbai JB D’Souza and journalist Dilip Thakore. One of the editorials from Saamna, which they quoted to make their case on hate speech, said: “Streams of treason and poison have been flowing through the cities and Mohallas of this country. These Mohallas are inhabited by fanatical Muslims. They are loyal to Pakistan. Riots occur only in those cities and Mohallas with a growing Muslim population. It is clear from this fact that the root cause of riots lies in the Muslim community and its attitude.” 

This case too was dismissed both by the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court. 

Many years later, the ruling in a 1987 case on hate speech against Thackeray was upheld by the Supreme Court. He was debarred from standing for election, which in any case he never did, for a period of six years – later reduced to two. These experiences underline the difficulties of using the law to convict people and, by extension, the media for hate speech.

Justices Joseph and Roy have asked the government to come back with proposals of what can be done to regulate the media on hate speech and suggested that perhaps something along the lines of the Vishaka guidelines, issued by the Supreme Court in 1997 before the law on sexual harassment was enacted in 2013, could be considered. 

This suggestion raises many questions.

As an editorial in Indian Express rightly points out, “At the heart of the problem is the political economy of TV news which thrives on hate speech today more than ever. There is little cost to pay for hate speech, there are few incentives for TV at prime time to be fair and accurate. Indeed, most anchors are paid employees of their channels and they know they can get away with peddling hate because someone in the boardroom has taken a call in its favour.” 

Corporate ownership of media houses has fed this monster of hate speech because it attracts eyeballs. It is further exacerbated by the silence of those in power, who benefit from it. 

At the same time, any kind of regulation will be difficult to enact for numerous reasons, including provisions on freedom of expression in the constitution that the Supreme Court has upheld in the past in other cases and which the Law Commission also bookmarked in its report. 

To quote again from the Indian Express editorial: “And when politics fuels, legitimises that hate, judicial interventions are unlikely to work. A new law on hate speech, as the court has suggested, runs the risk of being challenged – and violated – every second given the ceaseless cycle of news and social media.” And concludes: “Nothing is a stronger deterrent against hate speech than those in power speaking up against it, calling it out every time, without fail.” 

That last sentiment is clearly wishful thinking given the predilections of the current dispensation. Perhaps a better suggestion is to urge consumers of the media to reject and speak out against the channels that spread hate, thereby shaming these sellers of hate that masquerade as “news” channels.

Lakhimpur Kheri: When religious identity of suspects is more important than the crime

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 16, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/16/lakhimpur-kheri-when-religious-identity-of-suspects-is-more-important-than-the-crime

The death of two Dalit girls, aged 14 and 17, in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri on September 14 is ghastly enough to invite widespread condemnation. The two girls, who were sisters, were allegedly raped and murdered, and then hanged from a tree. But what is also revolting is the way this crime has been converted into a political football being kicked between the BJP, which governs UP, and those opposed to it. 

Much of the mainstream television news, in a style that has now become the norm, has added fuel to this fire by focusing, not just on the crime, but on the religious identity of most of the accused. 

On September 14, when the first reports appeared of the girls found hanging from a tree near a village in Lakhimpur Kheri, there was little interest. Crimes against Dalits, including women, are such a regular occurrence that we are virtually inured to them. They appear as little snippets in the print media and are rarely considered noteworthy for primetime news. 

In fact, these early stories reported the local police saying there were no other marks on the bodies of these two girls except the strangulation marks on their necks, and that their clothes were intact. 

While the mother of the girls told the media that her daughters were taken away forcibly by three men on motorbikes, and that she could not stop them despite running after them, the police stated the girls had gone with these men willingly. 

Mainstream TV media’s interest in the story piqued as soon as the police announced the names of the six men arrested in this case – Chotu, Junaid, Suhail, Hafizul Rehman, Karimuddin and Arif. Most of the men are Muslim. And predictably, the story played out as “love jihad” on some mainstream Hindi news channels. The aim of such shows is not to focus on crimes against women, but to use such ghastly events to pillory minorities and somehow turn them into a Hindu-Muslim issue even when the police has not spoken of any communal angle to the crime yet.

As for the shouting matches that pass for a discussion on television, we saw much whataboutery as BJP representatives said “what about Rajasthan” in response to the Congress and Samajwadi Party spokespersons talking about the lawlessness that prevails in UP. The main issues – the crime, why it happened, the views of the family, the status of Dalits in the village, the police’s response, and why crimes against women in India are escalating – were barely touched upon. If someone raised the wider context, they were drowned out by the usual screaming match between opposing sides and the anchor lamely wrapping up with “I’ve completely run out of time”.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: Why, even in the slightly better TV channels, has this ridiculous format continued? It does no justice to any subject under discussion, leave alone one like this that has so many aspects that ought to be considered. It leaves the viewer frustrated and uninformed. And it completely detracts from these serious social issues that reflect the state of our society, by allowing uninformed and insensitive political representatives to use the platform to hold forth and attack each other, regardless of the subject under discussion.

Have we forgotten that only a couple of weeks ago, the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau revealed that crimes against women in India have increased by 15.3 percent in the last year? The BBC India bureau did some number-crunching of the data from the last six years and came up with a set of charts that reveal a 26.35 percent rise in crimes against women in this period. UP topped the list. 

As for Dalit women, the recorded data (and we should remember many crimes are not reported at all, or the police refuse to take cognisance of them) reveals a 45 percent increase in rapes of Dalit women between 2015 and 2020. This is the context the media needs to address even as it looks at specific crimes like the one in Lakhimpur Kheri. 

In fact, this latest incident triggered memories of 2014 when two minor Dalit girls from Katra Sadatganj in UP’s Badaun district were found hanging from a mango tree. They had gone out in the evening to “relieve” themselves – a most inappropriate term that conceals the shocking lack of sanitation in most of rural India that compels women to defecate in the open after dark. 

The two girls never returned. When their families went to the police to report that they were missing, they were ignored. Only when the bodies were found was some action taken and three men were eventually arrested. The trial drags on and the men are out on bail.

More recently, we have the horror story of the rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, UP, two years ago. Few will forget the images of the grieving family and the forcible cremation of her body in the night by the UP police. Yet here too, there has been no real closure as the family lives in fear in a village dominated by higher castes. Although the government has paid them compensation, it is dragging its feet on the other promises made, such as a house and government job. 

The Indian media’s coverage of crimes against women has revealed a predictable pattern. If a rape occurs in a metro, of a woman or women who represent the consumers of the media, it is investigated and pursued in detail. Think of the Delhi gangrape of 2012, the Shakti Mills rape in Mumbai in 2013, and the Park Street rape in Kolkata in 2012.

Compare that coverage with how the media reported, for instance, the brutal rape and murder of two Dalit women, Priyanka and her mother Surekha, in Maharashtra’s Khairlanji in 2006. It was barely reported. The media only woke up to it much later when Dalit groups investigated the case, agitated, and went to court. Without that intervention, and the fact-finding report by Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde, who is in jail charged in the Bhima Koregaon case, we would not have known about this atrocity. 

An additional factor today that determines how the media picks and chooses what atrocity it will pursue is the communal angle that has infected not just the media but society at large. A crime like rape is abhorrent, irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator. It is even worse when the victims are minors. And when they belonged to a marginalised group, that is an additional factor. 

Yet, for some in the mainstream media, these are not the aspects that count in deciding which crime is worth reporting in depth. It is the identity of the alleged criminals. By doing this, the media, especially the most-watched TV channels, is responsible for actively perpetrating the stereotype that has already been constructed through fraudulent concepts like “love jihad” to target young Muslim men. And of spreading a poison that has infected our society to such an extent that we fail to recognise why outrage for unconscionable crimes, like rape, is so selective.