Joshimath’s story dates back decades. That’s why media must dig deep

Broken News 

Published in Newslaundry on January 12, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/01/12/joshimaths-story-dates-back-decades-thats-why-media-must-dig-deep

A small town in Uttarakhand has made it to the front pages of newspapers, and as the top story in many television news shows. Joshimath, a town of a little under 17,000 people in Chamoli district, is already well-known to trekkers, those wanting to explore the Himalayas, and Hindu pilgrims. But today, its claim to fame is that it is sinking.

It is also in danger of becoming an adjective – a descriptor of what happens when we ignore concepts of sustainability as we pursue so-called “development”. 

Predictably, when the cracks in Joshimath’s buildings could no longer be ignored, the government moved on a “war footing”, as did the media. We watched videos and saw visuals of distressed residents pointing to huge cracks in their homes, read about a hotel tilting onto another, and listened to experts who said they knew this crisis was imminent.

Yet, the roots of the current crisis – of a town literally sinking – have probably not yet sunk in, either to the lay media-consuming public with an increasingly diminishing attention span, or to the people who pushed through plans to build power plants and blast the fragile mountains for roads, despite adequate warnings from experts. 

There is a message here for the media – a message it continues to ignore. Even if you report on a disaster, integrate the perspectives that explain the reasons for it. It’s not difficult to do this. And if it’s done, chances are that more people will understand why many of the projects being pursued in the ecologically fragile environment of the Himalayas spell disaster.

Of course, as always, there are exceptions. Newspapers and digital platforms have carried excellent explainers that an interested reader can plough through (see here and here). But useful as this is, it is not enough. The facts tracing this disaster to earlier policies are clear. They need to be repeated, they need to be integrated in the reporting. 

Few can explain more simply than Dehradun-based veteran environmentalist Ravi Chopra, who headed the high-powered committee looking at the environmental impact of the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. He resigned last February because their recommendations were ignored. Read his interview in Down to Earth and his op-ed in Hindustan Times that say all that needs to be said. 

Another article in Down to Earth also reminds us that what’s happening in Joshimath today could happen in a number of other towns in Uttarakhand, including the popular tourist resort of Nainital, before too long. The reasons are the same: unsustainable development that pays no heed to the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

The new year has begun with another environment-related story on the front pages, one that gives all of us a sinking feeling. In 2021, of the 50 most polluted cities in the world, 35 were in India. The situation today is likely to be no different, perhaps even worse. Not just Delhi, but in dozens of other small and big cities in this country, residents are choking from poisonous air. You don’t need a viral infection to get lung congestion these days. You only need to breathe the air.

According to the World Health Organisation, 90 percent of the world’s population breathes air that is worse than acceptable limits. But within that, it is people in low- and middle-income countries like India that suffer the most. In any case, India has diluted WHO standards for air quality although revising them is being discussed. At present, what is considered “good” air quality here in India is actually “moderate” or even “poor” air quality according to WHO standards.

Like the Joshimath story, the reports we read do not adequately explain the current air pollution crisis in India. Even as the air quality index climbs higher in city after city, there are some reports explaining the possible reasons: vehicular pollution, construction dust, industrial pollution, etc. 

The factors contributing to air pollution, such as vehicular pollution, have been known for decades. Most readers today would not be aware that in the 1990s, one man fought determinedly for a change in the fuel used in public transport in Delhi. That was Anil Agarwal, who set up the Centre for Science and Environment. The air pollution levels in Delhi at that time were nowhere as bad as they are today. Yet, Agarwal, who suffered from chronic asthma and later succumbed to cancer, campaigned through CSE for a change in fuel used in public transport in Delhi from petrol and diesel to CNG. Several other cities implemented this in later years. The 2010 CSE report, Slow Murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India, is worth revisiting even today.

But despite campaigns by CSE and other environmental groups about the polluted air in our cities, there is little to no outrage about the many projects being implemented that do nothing to address the problem. Instead, more roads are being built to accommodate a greater volume of vehicular traffic using fossil fuels, there is little to no compulsion on the building industry to implement dust alleviating strategies, and the system to keep a check on levels of pollutants emitted by industries and thermal power stations in the vicinity of cities remains impaired despite decades of debate about it.  

Every year during the winter months, we see photographs showing us what we can see when we look out of our windows. Yet those with the power to take hard decisions – such as suspending all construction activity during the worst days, or restricting vehicular movement – choose to ignore what stares them in the face and invades their nostrils as much as those of ordinary citizens. Could this be because there is no public outrage?

Unlike in Joshimath, where the buildings with cracks face demolition, and the anxious and angry owners of these structures are out on the streets protesting, India’s urban residents seem to have accepted a slow death from poisonous air with apparent equanimity. 

One reason for such a passive response can be attributed to the class factor. The people most affected by the poisonous air quality are the homeless and those who are compelled to do outdoor physical labour – basically the poorest in our cities whose voices are rarely heard. The better-off have windows they can close, with air-conditioning in their cars and homes that allows them to insulate themselves. Possibly, this is one reason why the problem of air pollution has rarely moved the powerful, nor led to drastic changes in the way we view urban development. For instance, as Shoaib Daniyal points out in this article, bus commuters who are the majority in any city rarely get their voices heard over private car owners. 

In this gloomy scenario, here’s a suggestion for the media. What if in all the 35 cities on the top of that list of polluted Indian cities, local newspapers, radio stations and TV channels ran a daily count of not just the poor air quality, but of the number of people hospitalised and dying from respiratory infections? In the last three years of the pandemic, many media outlets did this, tabulating daily the number of people afflicted, hospitalised, or dead due to Covid. Surely, such a proactive step by the media would play a significant part in building up public opinion that could then put pressure on decision-makers to act. 

That’s another item for my wish list for 2023.

Backward districts, health infra: What mainstream media reportage can help change in 2023

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 29, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/12/29/backward-districts-health-infra-what-mainstream-media-reportage-can-help-change-in-2023

The end of the year usually leads to reflections on the year gone by. But let me break with tradition and instead set out a wish list for the kind of coverage we can hope for in the coming year. This could be wishful thinking given that 2023 is an election year with nine states going to the polls. But there’s no harm in hoping.

Even as the media is as usual dominated either by politics or, as in the case of TV news, nonsensical controversies – such as the saffron bikini drama – manufactured out of thin air to get eyeballs, there are some stories that somehow break through. It’s possible that only those of us interested in these issues read them (here I refer to print and the online portals). Yet, the very fact that a few stories of the kind I am going to highlight make it into print, gives us some hope that all is not lost.

The Mumbai edition of Indian Express has started a series on health care in rural Maharashtra. With the possibility of Covid once again rearing its head in India, health infrastructure is a relevant subject as we know from our experience of the last three years. As the redoubtable Dr Gagandeep Kang, Professor, Christian Medical College, Vellore has repeatedly reiterated, healthcare systems that are already stressed perform badly during an emergency – such as the pandemic we have lived through.

For rural India, the absence of adequate health infrastructure has been a tragic reality even as India struts on the global stage claiming to be a power that the world should reckon with. We remain mostly unaware of the extent of the health crisis in much of rural India because, in recent years, mainstream media has turned its attention away from such issues. 

The series in Indian Express, by Rupsa Chakraborty, begins by focussing on one of the poorest districts in Maharashtra, Nandurbar. Some parts of this district touch the banks of the Narmada river, and many Adivasi-dominated villages in this district were submerged in the backwaters of the Narmada following the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat. The story of their struggle for adequate compensation and relocation is well-known. 

The villages that escaped submergence continue to suffer much of the developmental neglect that affected those that had to move. For instance, even today, as reported by the Indian Express, levels of malnutrition and the number of severely malnourished children are higher in Nandurbar than in other districts in Maharashtra. The situation was no different in 1984 when I, then working in the Mumbai edition of Indian Express, first heard about Nandurbar.

Chakraborty assesses the state of the 11 primary health centres set up in the district in the last two years at a cost of Rs 6 crore each. They were brand new two years ago. Today, she writes, their condition is “abject”.

The one she visited in Bilgaon, inaugurated just a year ago in 2021, lacks basic infrastructure like electricity. The medical officer treats his patients using a torch once it is dark. This PHC covers 11 villages with a population of 14,221. The nearest alternative, a better equipped facility at the sub-district headquarters, is 104 km away.

Not just electricity, there is often no water either. After it was inaugurated, the PHC received water from a tanker. But this stopped well before a water connection was installed as late as September this year. Apart from these basic infrastructure deficiencies, the PHC is also poorly staffed, a depressingly familiar story. 

Apart from these PHCs on land, several villages on the banks of the Narmada were supposed to be served by floating dispensaries and water ambulances. Their state is not much better, as described by the reporter. 

She writes, “Over a decade ago, the state government had launched two floating dispensaries to provide healthcare to nearly 20,000 tribals residing in 33 hamlets – inaccessible by road along the Narmada river. These tribals were displaced during the construction of the Sardar Sarovar project…More than a decade later, one of the floating dispensaries has broken down beyond repair and presently lies in a godown. The other, around 20-ft long, is in a rickety shape, with medical staff as well as patients afraid to board it scared that it may capsize any moment.”

The point about narrating these details is that even though the stories are about a particular part of India, they reflect the reality in many parts of this country. Even during the pandemic, although there was some reporting from rural areas, it was inadequate. Most of the focus was on urban India where the media is based. As a result, even today, we don’t have the full story on how people – such as those living in districts like Nandurbar – dealt with the pandemic.  

The last three years have clearly established the need for well-trained health reporters who can understand the science, but also the politics and the economy of health care. For instance, more probing questions need to be asked not just of the government but also of the pharmaceutical industry. And editors need to back reporting that requires going to areas away from the limelight, such as these backward districts, that tell us the real story of disease, health care and survival. 

There are, of course, many more areas that mainstream media should investigate. But to start with, it could look at the state of health care and health infrastructure in India’s most backward districts. Even if the authorities don’t instantly respond to such stories, media scrutiny and civil society pressure represent the only hope for things to change for people living in these areas. 

I cannot end this last column of 2022 without once again reminding readers about journalists who are still in jail. Siddique Kappan, who was arrested in 2020 on his way to cover the gangrape, and subsequent death, of a Dalit woman in Hathras, UP, has finally got bail. But as of writing he continues to languish in jail.

And in Kashmir, Fahad Shah, editor of Kashmir Walla, Sajad Gul from the same publication, as well as Aasif Sultan of Kashmir Narrator, are still in prison under the draconian Public Safety Act.  

A senior Kashmiri journalist told me that up to 50 Kashmiri journalists have had to leave Kashmir and go elsewhere looking for jobs because workinSg in the erstwhile state has become virtually impossible. A Kashmiri journalist told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the media in Kashmir “has reached a breaking point, where journalists are wondering whether it’s worth it to report from Kashmir”.

This then is the other reality that we must remember, and repeatedly highlight, as we go into 2023. We cannot speak of freedom of the press so long as journalists are behind bars just for fulfilling their professional commitments as reporters. Journalism is not a crime.