Inside Indian polls: Modi’s lies, fake news and media that does not question

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 18, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/04/18/inside-indian-polls-modis-lies-fake-news-and-media-that-does-not-question

As the subcontinent heats up, literally, the attitude of the average voter towards the election process that has begun appears relatively cool. From the reports that have emerged so far, there seems to be a singular lack of excitement, even among first-time voters. There is no “hawa” yet of the kind Indian electors are familiar with, at least not so far.

Given the rising temperature across the country, only committed party supporters and those lured by a free meal or some other enticement are likely to brave the heat to attend election meetings. 

 

So how are voters, especially those not certain who they will support, getting information that will help them decide? Are the reports in mainstream media – mostly political speeches by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other prominent members of his cabinet and party, Rahul Gandhi and others in the opposition alliance, and the occasional ground report – enough to convince the undecided?  

As I mentioned in my last column, the media today is not just mainstream TV news channels and newspapers. We now live in a world where people get their information from multiple sources, including social media. Whether mainstream media takes the trouble to report diverse voices and opinions or not, these are out there on social media. 

We have many independent digital news platforms and channels, although if you are a person who principally gets news from mainstream media, when you listen and read what they report, you might think they are reporting from a parallel universe. 

The other alternate universe is of fake and misleading news, of hate speech, of the deliberate twisting of facts to push forward a particular narrative. 

 

An important new documentary on fake news in India is worth a watch. Titled “India’s war on fake news: How disinformation became India’s #1 threat”, the documentary asks: “Why has fake news transformed into an industry in India?” And to answer that question, it meets internet trolls, “to understand the financial and ideological motives that compel them into becoming agents of misinformation.” The documentary also features fact-checkers who are trying to counter this growing menace of fake news. 

While this surfeit of information and opinion is swirling around on social media, what are we seeing on mainstream media?

Mainstream media reports but does not question. For instance, why are we not asking the BJP, with its slogan “Abki baar 400 paar”, where the additional seats are coming from? Or, for that matter, question Rahul Gandhi, who claims the BJP will only get 150 seats. Between these two inflated claims lies the reality that the media ought to be prodding and probing to unearth and report.  

Instead, we are being treated to “exclusive” interviews with the prime minister, which are nothing more than a public relations exercise. I am referring here to the hour-long interview that the prime minister granted to Smita Prakash, editor-in-chief of ANI. Given that Modi has been notoriously reticent about speaking directly to the press in the 10 years that he has been the prime minister, why is he speaking now?

When you watch the interview, you know why. Prakash asks questions and waits patiently while the long answers from Modi are recorded. There are no interruptions, follow-ups, or counter-questions, even when Modi is straying far from the truth. Many people would have seen the interview, as it was relayed on all channels and reported in print.  

The most obvious question, that was screaming to be asked, was on electoral bonds. The prime minister claimed, as he has been doing recently, that the entire scheme was his idea, and was a success. That it brought transparency to election finance. And that unfortunately now, we would be back to the bad old days of black money.

The word “Supreme Court” did not emerge from either the lips of the interviewer or the interviewee. Extraordinary, given the apex court declared the entire scheme “unconstitutional”. And in a process akin to extracting teeth, had to compel the State Bank of India to reveal all the data on who purchased the bonds and which political party encashed them. Independent digital platforms like the Reporters’ Collective and the Electoral Bond Project, run jointly by The News Minute, Newslaundry, Scroll and independent journalists, were central to analysing the data and revealing the clear quid pro quo.

Instead of questioning Modi, this was brushed over. And the prime minister also got away with stating “facts” that can only be called fiction. He said 16 companies that bought electoral bonds were raided by the Enforcement Directorate, and 67 percent of their donations went to opposition parties. Which companies were these? Prakash should have asked. And what about the many more companies whose donations went to the BJP following raids on them?

Perhaps it is pointless to labour these points, as one could not have expected any such interview to be permitted if difficult follow-up questions were going to be asked. ANI provided Modi with a perfect election platform just days before the first round of voting. Everyone was happy. The agency got its “exclusive”, and Modi said what he wanted to say without interruption.

What is more puzzling, though, is how an apparently reputed international journal, Newsweek, could run an “exclusive” with Modi that reads like a series of press releases strung together. It is an “interview” without any questions. And it is the cover story that has Modi’s face and, in capital letters, the word “Unstoppable”.  

Here are just two examples from this “interview” that illustrate the point I am making:

     On religious minorities who complain of discrimination

     These are usual tropes of some people who don't bother to meet people           outside their bubbles. Even India's minorities don't buy this narrative anymore. Minorities from all religions, be it Muslim, Christians, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain or even a micro-minority like Parsis are living happily and thriving in India.

     On democracy and a free press

     We are a democracy, not only because our Constitution says so, but also  because it is in our genes.

      There are a few people in India and in the West who have lost [connection with] the people of India—their thought processes, feelings and aspirations. These people also tend to live in their own echo chamber of alternate realities. They conflate their own dissonance with the people with dubious claims of diminishing media freedom.

“Dubious claims of diminishing media freedom”? That demands a counter question. But then, there were no questions even though three people, including the CEO of Newsweek, met the prime minister. 

 

In the annals of international journalism, this interview will surely be remembered for some time.  

There is, however, a way around the insistence by the Prime Minister’s Office for questions in advance that are vetted before an interview is granted.

The Financial Times, headquartered in London, interviewed Modi before the general elections were announced and shortly after the state assembly elections, where the BJP did well. Written up as a report rather than in a question-and-answer format, it’s worth reading. Clearly, some tricky questions were asked, and Modi’s responses to them demonstrate his ability to deflect and detract from uncomfortable issues.

For instance, FT asked about the future of the Muslim minority in India, a question that any interviewer, Indian or foreign, would ask. I quote from the article:

      "When asked what future the Muslim minority has in India, Modi points instead to the economic success of India’s Parsees, who he describes as a 'religious micro-minority residing in India'.

      'Despite facing persecution elsewhere in the world, they have found a safe haven in India, living happily and prospering,' Modi says, in a response that makes no direct reference to the country’s roughly 200 mn Muslims. 'That shows that the Indian society itself has no feeling of discrimination towards any religious minority.'"

The most charitable response to such an answer is: Disingenuous and inventive.

Coming back to the ANI interview, the problem with this type of journalism, which fails to probe and provoke, is that it allows a politician to get away too easily. Furthermore, given the way people in India tend to believe anything said by a person in authority, what Modi says, when it is not countered, becomes the truth for most people. After all, the prime minister of India has said this, as an ordinary person would think. Surely, he will not lie.

But he does, as the inimitable The Deshbhakt Akash Banerjee calls out in this video.

Rhetoric of hate

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 27, 2014

This general election for the 16 Lok Sabha will be remembered for many reasons. It is being seen as a dramatic departure from past elections because of the presence, influence and use of the media; because of the focus on a handful of personalities rather than any issues and because polls are predicting a dire outcome for India’s oldest political party.

Apart from these factors, what this election stands out for is the sickening depths to which some of the election-speak has sunk — from attacking critics and minorities and virtually asking them to leave the country to suggesting that men who rape women should be forgiven because they have made a ‘mistake’.

Admittedly, many of these remarks have been amplified because of the omnipresence of the media that is waiting to pick up anything that can be spun out into a controversy and into endless debates on television channels. It is fascinating to watch politicians either deny what they have said although they know it has been recorded, or have their spokespersons attempt to explain their controversial comments.

Thus, for instance, the recent rabid anti-Muslim comments by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Pravin Togadia were dismissed by the Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons as having no relevance to the BJP’s stance because he was not a member of the party. That the VHP is a part of the larger Sangh Parivar is conveniently brushed aside. In another talk show, a journalist with known sympathies to the BJP, described the comments as “rather reckless” and suggested that they could not be linked to the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi because Togadia had a “visceral hatred of Modi” and was a “wild unguided missile”.

Despite such dismissive remarks or denials, it is evident that the electronic media, with its obsessive coverage of the election campaign, has put on record the regressive attitudes of many men in political life, attitudes that will have a bearing on how the future India shapes up.

Some argue that all this is just election talk, that after May 16, once results are out, life will revert to ‘normal’. But what will be ‘normal’ if such verbal violence and viciousness have marked the campaign leading up to the final result? Is it not inevitable that if you have political parties justifying such hateful rhetoric, then the politics of revenge and retribution will also be justified in the future?

Look at Mumbai, a city that until 1992 was known for a certain level of tolerance of difference — political and religious. Of course, there have always been concentrations of certain communities in different areas of the city. But by and large, much of the city had a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims and other religious groups as well as people from different regions. It was a given that everyone had a right to the city.

Since 1992 and the post-Babri Masjid communal riots, the city has gradually changed. One reason for this change in the city was the hate speech that was doled out virtually every day. The late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray minced no words. His editorials in his newspaper Saamna were vicious as they targeted the minorities. Although civic-minded individuals objected, and even took the paper to court, the language did not change. Overtime it infected the minds of a large section of those consuming the message every day.

As a result, when in addition to the hatred of Muslims, the Shiv Sena and its breakaway group the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) turned on “North Indians”, a euphemism for the people from Bihar and UP who migrated to Mumbai, there was little protest against such campaigns. Today, Mumbai is a city that is deeply divided and there is barely a whiff of its famed ‘cosmopolitanism’.

So if we hold that hate-filled political rhetoric and its dissemination through the media has an impact on people’s mindset, one only has to look at Mumbai over the last two decades and more.

Election-speak has also included several regressive remarks on issues concerning women. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh’s remark about rape — and that it was a ‘mistake’ by some young men — generated considerable heat. But what is worrying is the mindset it represents, one that too readily blames women for the violence they face, one that will not accept women as equal partners, one that believes that women should remain culturally bound to norms that deny them a voice.

This time women constitute 47.62 per cent of the electorate. Women voters have already established that they go out in larger numbers than men to vote. We will have to wait and see whether they judge their candidates and the parties they support on the basis of their attitude towards women’s rights.

As we wait for May 16, we need to consider whether there can be anything like ‘normal’ after such an election season where hatred, mockery and insensitivity have become virtually a norm.

(To read the original, click here.http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/mag-columns/rhetoric-of-hate/article5951237.ece)

Wooing women

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 16, 2014

The Hindu Photo: V. Raju

The election season is upon us. The weather wanes are already predicting which way the wind will blow two months from now. I am neither brave, nor foolhardy enough to hazard a guess.

It is also the season for promises and pronouncements. Some predictable, some surprising and many that strain credulity. So on March 8, International Women’s Day, I received an e-mail in my mailbox with the subject line: ‘Give India the Leadership She deserves: Happy Women’s Day’.

The e-mail urged me to contribute to the ‘cause of India’ and ‘for a better tomorrow’. It then went on to state that the Prime Ministerial aspirant of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi, believed that ‘women should not just be homemakers but national builders’. It averred that the ‘cause of India’ would be better served if women contributed to the ‘Modi for PM fund’ — an investment in what, I presume, ‘Team BJP’ that sent out this mail believes will be ‘a better tomorrow’.

The e-mail, which I was tempted to mark as spam and delete, is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is surprising that a party that must surely not lack for funds feels the need to send out unsolicited e-mails to women to get funds.

Secondly, the level of confusion in what appears to be a straightforward message aimed at potential women voters. What exactly does Modi mean when he says he does not want women to be ‘just homemakers’? Being a homemaker is neither ‘just’ nor easy. In any case, no woman is ‘just’ a homemaker. She is that because she has no choice. But in addition she is many other things — a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an aunt, a grandmother, a politician, a journalist, a pilot, a seamstress, a scientist, a lawyer, a businesswoman, a farmer, a construction labourer, a domestic help — the list is endless.

Furthermore, how do you become a ‘nation builder’? What are the qualifications for this job? Does a woman who is ‘just’ a homemaker need some additional skills to be a ‘nation builder’? Is it possible to be ‘just’ a homemaker and also a ‘nation builder’? And then how do you ‘build’ a nation? Clearly, the advisors to the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant need to inspect their formulations more closely.

As an aside, one might add, that a recent national time-use survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that Indian men spent the least time in doing unpaid housework. While men in Slovenia topped the list averaging 114 minutes a day, Indian men did a paltry 19 minutes a day of unpaid housework. Given this, do Indian women really have a choice when it comes to unpaid housework?

Then let us look at the other half of that statement. What do the BJP and Modi have in mind when they speak of ‘nation building’ in the same breath as women’s empowerment? Do they have any idea about the kind of nation women want to build? Will women want a nation divided along the lines of religion or caste? Or would they prefer one where you can live in peace with your neighbour, where you and your children feel secure, where you know you will not be excluded, attacked, persecuted on grounds of religion or political conviction?

What kind of ‘nation’ does a poor Muslim woman living in Ahmedabad’s Juhapura want? Or the women living in constant fear of actions by the Indian army or sundry militant groups in a state like Manipur? Or the women who live in slums in so many of our cities where they have to confront the daily reality of eviction and homelessness? Or the women living in forests who see the natural resources on which their lives depend being bartered away to big business? Is there anything in common between the kind of ‘nation’ these women want to build and the notion of ‘nation’ to which the senders of the above e-mail subscribe?

I suppose over the next months, we must resign ourselves to hearing more of such grand sweeping statements thrown at us by politicians or political parties who appear to be convinced that all women are simple and gullible.

Fortunately, elections in India have a way of coming up with unexpected twists and turns. The Indian voter has now become something of a veteran at the political game. She now knows the value of her vote. She knows she can either listen, or pretend to listen; she can volunteer an opinion or hold her silence; she can accept every free lunch offered to her, or reject all; and that in the end she is free to make a choice that is her own.

(To read the original, click here.)