India’s media is under siege, but what will it take for the public to care?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 11, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/05/11/indias-media-is-under-siege-but-what-will-it-take-for-the-public-to-care

Do ordinary people really care about press freedom? Or is this just an elitist concern, although the elite in this country would not exert themselves to defend this particular freedom?

The question pops up periodically whenever there is a discussion on the state of the media in India.

According to the latest World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, one journalist has been killed and 13 are in prison in India since January 2022. Many more work under the stress of death threats, surveillance and fighting innumerable court cases filed against them. In any country that claims to be a democracy, this does not indicate that there is complete press freedom. In fact, quite to the contrary.

This is precisely what the RSF ranking has shown – a steady decline in India’s ranking out of 180 countries surveyed. From 133 in 2016 to 142 in 2021 and 150 now, India’s fall has been quite precipitous.

The government, of course, will not accept this. Predictably, it sees all such reports as a conspiracy to defame India and sully its reputation as a shining example of democratic and press freedoms.

But it only has to look in the mirror to realise that the situation is far from “shining”. On the contrary, it gets murkier every day. On one side journalists who question, report and unearth realities are hounded, charged and sometimes even killed. On the other, you have the majority of the Indian media choosing to be an echo chamber of this government, repeating and amplifying everything it is told to do, or even when it is not explicitly told to do so.

Despite 75 years as an elected democracy, it is striking how the idea of a free press, or the absence of one, does not stir too many in the electorate. It would appear that the media really does not make much of a difference to the lives of ordinary people. Or perhaps it indicates our changed times, where what circulates on social media has more currency than news that is reported in the media.

But despite this indifference of the voting public, it goes without saying that without a free press, much of what is happening in this country would go unreported.

Yet, take the instance of the reporting during the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic in India. Especially during the second wave, at least some media, particularly independent digital news platforms, did report the devastating tragedy of lakhs of people dying on the way to hospitals, gasping for air without oxygen supply, and then being buried in shallow graves or simply thrown in the Ganga. Despite this, people did not connect what had happened to mismanagement by the central and state governments. Why?

According to Shoaib Daniyal of Scroll, the main reason voters failed to connect the daily human tragedies that played out during the second wave of the pandemic last year to the government’s mismanagement of the crisis was because of a “lack of media critique”.

He rightly points out: “Throughout the pandemic, big media houses – especially Hindi and English-languages outlets based in the National Capital Region – chose to avoid blaming the government for both the economic losses as well as the healthcare collapse. Instead, Covid-19 was portrayed as a global act of god that had affected each and every country in much the same way. Very few news reports made it to the mainstream Hindi and English media showing government malfunction or the fact that India was one of the worst-hit countries.”

If mainstream media had reported truthfully about the way the pandemic played out in the lives of people, would voters have made different choices in the elections that followed?

Looking back, there was a time when this did happen. In 1975, when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, press freedom went into hibernation. It only came out of it in January 1977, when the emergency was lifted before the March general election.

The media used the window between the end of the emergency and the election to expose the gross violations of the rights of poor people, particularly through the mass and forcible sterilisation campaigns and the demolitions of urban poor settlements. Indira Gandhi’s image as someone who cared for the poor was seriously dented. “Garibi hatao” had turned into “Garib hatao”. And it was the poor who voted wholeheartedly against her and the Congress party, leading to political change.

Given the state of the Indian media today, it is highly unlikely that its reporting on issues – like the “bulldozer injustice” story, for instance – will trigger political change. This story is being covered because it is happening in the national capital where most media houses are headquartered. There would have been little to no coverage had this kind of violation of the rights of poor people occurred in a remoter location. In any case, every day there are similar and even starker violations that take place in the rest of the country that are never reported.

Also telling is the fact that when the RSF report was released on May 3, which is designated as World Press Freedom Day, hardly any of the major media houses, or even print newspapers, chose to comment on it apart from carrying reports on its contents. It would appear that even we in the media don’t really care how free we are.

Krishna Prasad, former editor of Outlook, posted on Twitter under his media critique handle @churumuri that not even one English language newspaper out of 16 surveyed, or 15 Indian language papers in 22 states, bothered to comment on India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index. Only independent digital news platforms like Scroll and the Wire brought home the real significance of this report, as this strong editorial in the Wire sets out clearly and forcefully.

It concludes with these words: “The time for mincing words has long passed: India’s democracy is dying in bright daylight. And yet, this death is not inevitable. The press is under siege but must find ways to stand its ground, chronicle what is unfolding and raise its voice in solidarity with every journalist and media house in the firing line.”

The media is under siege in India and many journalists are literally on the firing line. But they are being killed or incapacitated in different ways, not just by bullets or beatings.

Let me end with the story of a rural journalist in Uttar Pradesh – Pawan Jaiswal. In 2019, the UP government charged him with conspiracy to defame the government because he made a film showing children in a Mirzapur village eating salt with their rotis as their midday meal. The midday meal scheme was conceived to ensure that the poorest children get at least one nutritious meal a day.

Jaiswal was doing what journalists are supposed to do – record and report the reality, often ugly and distressing, that unfolds daily in many parts of this country. But in the eyes of the UP government, this was a crime for which he had to be punished.

Tragically, Jaiswal died last week of cancer, a disease for which he did not earn enough as a rural journalist to get adequate treatment.

No one killed Jaiswal. But a system that criminalises journalists who are doing their jobs, and pays them so little that they can barely survive, is responsible for his death.

Lawbreakers, not quite citizens: ‘Bulldozer’ reportage shows how little India cares for urban poor

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 28, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/04/28/lawbreakers-not-quite-citizens-bulldozer-reportage-shows-how-little-india-cares-for-urban-poor

Predictably, Jahangirpuri has slipped off the radar. The high drama of April 20, as excavators – or bulldozers, in popular parlance – razed homes, shops, walls, gates, food carts, awnings, and temporary and permanent structures has ended, at least for the moment, as we await the verdict of the Supreme Court of India.

But in the court of popular opinion, as determined by the tone and substance of the media coverage of Jahangirpuri, the verdict has already been delivered. And it reads: “The state has the right to use force to deal with ‘illegals’ and ‘encroachers’, and to punish those suspected of rioting, even if there is no proof.”

The other message, barely hidden, is that this is what awaits Muslims who so much as dare to raise their heads, even if a few Hindus also suffer as collateral damage.

Television news in this country has already fallen so low that it is hard to imagine it could go lower. But it has and it did, on April 20. There are no words to describe the craven, callous and gross coverage of the brutal actions by the municipal authorities in Delhi that not only rendered people homeless and crushed their sources of livelihood, but also sent out a frightening message to lakhs of others like them.

Instead of showing an iota of sensitivity, a section of TV journalists shouted, climbed onto bulldozers, and remained in perpetual exclamation mode as they recorded the mayhem. To get a glimpse of this, take time to watch this edition of TV Newsance by Newslaundry. It will illustrate better than any words what television news has been reduced to in this country. To term it farcical would be a gross understatement.

The behaviour of some TV reporters and anchors on April 20 has also underlined how far the media, and many journalists, have travelled from the concepts that undergird the role of the media in a democracy. Our job is not to kick people who are already crushed by poverty and unemployment; it is to hold to account the people with power. On April 20, we did just the opposite.

Apart from the basic message that the demolitions at Jahangirpuri, as well as in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone and in Gujarat, seek to send out, there is a backstory that also needs to be understood and addressed by the media.

Our job is not to kick people who are already crushed by poverty and unemployment; it is to hold to account the people with power. On April 20, we did just the opposite.

This is the egregious ways in which governments, and city authorities, constantly use and misuse laws against the urban poor.

I live in the city of Mumbai where an estimated 50 percent of the population lives in semi-permanent housing. In the eyes of the authorities, some of these settlements are “encroachments” on land marked for other purposes, even if that purpose has remained unfulfilled for decades.

As a result, the sword of demolition hangs over the heads of lakhs of poor people who continue to find work and survive in this so-called Maximum City.

The reality, of course, is that in Mumbai, even the very minimum by way of basic services is not provided to close to half the population.

A recent study prepared under the Mumbai Climate Action Plan noted that 41.7 percent of the city's population uses community toilets. A toilet in every home is still a distant dream. Many of these so-called community toilets are in such poor condition as to be unusable. Children often squat on the open land in front or behind the toilets. Old people are compelled to use the open drains running past their homes, as even in many of the settled, or "regularised" slums, there is no sewerage system. And increasingly, people are building toilets inside their tiny houses and the waste is being flushed out into open drains that run through these settlements.

This is the state of affairs in India's richest city.

If you are a reporter based in any Indian city, the urban poor are a reality who cannot be wished away. They are driven to cities because they have no means of livelihood in their villages. And many have lived decades in impermanent housing, even on pavements, or alongside railway lines, because even if they found work, they could not find a place to live.

These settlements of the urban poor have a history, linked to migration but also to demolition. Jahangirpuri, for instance, was designated to resettle people pushed out from the heart of Delhi in efforts by the Indira Gandhi government to “beautify” the national capital. That term has increasingly come to mean that you either hide the poor, or send them far away so that urban poverty is invisiblised.

The people who were settled in Jahangirpuri in the 1970s were given small plots on which they were expected to construct their shelters. These people had originally come to Delhi from UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal. Over time, as with most other similar settlements, tin and tarpaulin were replaced with brick and mortar, and pucca houses coexisted with temporary structures – all under the benign eye of the authorities.

Yet, this history of the place, and understanding of what it was and how and why it is what it is today, was largely missing from the reporting on Jahangirpuri. We read about events on the day of the demolition, the loss to so many families, and the desperation with which people tried to save their belongings. But for people living outside Delhi, it was hard to understand where this place is, how it was established, and who were the people who lived there.

For the majority of viewers of television, however, the story was complete on that day itself. The municipal authorities had acted, they had removed encroachments and illegality, and they had sent a powerful message to those who think they can get away with violating the law. Laughable as that is in this country, where respect for the law is the lowest amongst the powerful and the well-heeled, it is this distorted narrative that is being pushed by much of the media.

We have seen this happen in the past in many cities. In Mumbai, for instance, demolitions were almost a daily occurrence in some parts of the city, particularly after the 1970s. Newspapers would report these demolitions, but we also read about “slum dwellers and citizens”, as if these were two mutually exclusive categories. Such reporting perpetuated the belief that anyone living in a slum was an “illegal” and that the municipality was right in demolishing such slums.

In Mumbai, demolitions were almost a daily occurrence in some parts of the city, particularly after the 1970s. Newspapers would report these demolitions, but we also read about “slum dwellers and citizens”, as if these were two mutually exclusive categories.

In 1981, at the height of the Mumbai monsoon, the then chief minister of Maharashtra, AR Antulay, conducted a demolition drive against pavement dwellers and slum dwellers that is memorable for its callousness. In response, journalist Olga Tellis and others filed a case in the Supreme Court arguing that even the poor were guaranteed the right to life and livelihood like any other citizen of India and that their shelters could not be demolished without notice and without giving them an alternative. The judgement in the case, delivered in 1985 by a constitution bench, has much in it that is relevant even today.

The court held that pavement dwellers should not be treated as trespassers. “The encroachments committed by these persons are involuntary acts in the sense that those acts are compelled by inevitable circumstances and are not guided by choice.”

Today, this kind of understanding of the reality of the lives of the urban poor is missing, not only amongst the class that does not have to fear loss of shelter, but also in much of the media. As a result, you get reports depicting the poor not only as lawbreakers but also their settlements as eyesores that need to be cleared out to “beautify” our cities.

In the three decades and more since the Olga Tellis ruling, attitudes towards the urban poor have hardly changed. You realise this if you revisit the 1984 documentary Bombay, Our City by Anand Patwardhan. It could have been made in the India of today.

The reporting on Jahangirpuri reminds us yet again how the media “discovers” poor and marginalised people only when something dramatic happens, such as a demolition. They forget that for the urban poor, the very process of survival, as Patwardhan's film so graphically portrays, is a daily drama. These are the stories we ought to be recording and reporting, rather than waiting for their lives to be literally crushed under a bulldozer.