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.

Apart from Russia-Ukraine and assembly polls, here are other news stories we must not forget

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 3, 2022

Just as we were getting over the war against a virus, the world, or at least Europe, has been plunged into another war. And the repercussions are being felt everywhere.

But amidst the fog of war following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that understandably dominates the news everywhere, including in India, and even as the cacophony of the assembly elections in five states subsides, there are some other stories that must be noted, reported and not permitted to be overwhelmed by the immediate.

In January, I had written about what the sudden closure of the Kashmir Press Club meant to the already beleaguered journalists working out of Kashmir. At that point, only Sajad Gul, who was a trainee journalist with Kashmir Walla, had been arrested. The digital platform's editor, Fahad Shah, was still free. Today, both these journalists are in jail.

Both of them were first called in for what appeared to be routine questioning. When they went to the police station, they were arrested in one case. As soon as they got bail, they were immediately rearrested in another case.

The pattern was identical, the charges frivolous. But the laws under which they have been detained – the Public Safety Act in the case of Gul and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in Shah's case – are anything but frivolous. They ensure that the chances of their being released on bail are practically non-existent.

Since Shah's arrest on February 4, it has become evident that there is a clear method to this madness in Kashmir, as this story in Newslaundry outlines. It is to intimidate, threaten and control any and all journalists who want to do their jobs – which is to report as accurately and truthfully as they can about what is going on in their state. Their passport to safety is compliance. Stick to the government narrative and terminology and you will remain untouched. Stray from it and you risk not just the routine interrogation and surveillance but the virtual certainty of a jail term.

All this is happening despite the ruling by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in 2021, quashing the FIR against another journalist Asif Naik, which stated: “No fetters can be placed on the freedom of press by registering the FIR against a reporter who was performing his professional duty by publishing a news item on the basis of information obtained by him from an identifiable source.”

Gul and Shah were doing textbook journalism, reporting all sides of a story. For giving voice to people who questioned the official narrative, they have been charged with “glorifying” terrorism.

It is therefore not surprising that at least nine journalists, who write for media houses in India and abroad, have quietly left the state last month. One of them, senior journalist and author Gowhar Geelani, was summoned to a Shopian court on the charge of having tweeted a story that appeared in Kashmir Observer about an encounter between militants and the police in Shopian district. It's a short story, a few paragraphs long, that states that a policeman was injured in the clash. For not appearing in court in this case, Geelani has been declared an absconder and there is a warrant out for his arrest.

None of these journalists can risk returning to their state even though being there is essential to their existence as journalists. Given what has happened to two of their colleagues, they have little confidence that they will be spared.

Routine journalism is being criminalised in Kashmir, as this story in Article 14 documents. Note that the story has no byline. That too is a fallout of the oppressive reality in Kashmir where journalists reporting on human rights issues are being compelled to write anonymously for fear of retribution by the authorities.

What is happening currently in Kashmir is a direct attack on press freedom, on the right of journalists to do their jobs, to earn their livelihood, and to report without fear or favour. If you remove that right from them, you are killing journalism. You are strangling the free press. And if you can do that in Kashmir, and get away with it because the rest of the country is too absorbed in other issues, then the experiment will be repeated elsewhere in this country. Make no mistake about that.

One of the journalists who has been compelled to leave his home state asks these questions:

“What is our crime? That we report facts on the ground? That we refuse to become mouthpieces of the administration? That we do not act as their extension arm and stenographers? What is the fault of our family members? Why are they being harassed for our professional work? Most journalists have been silenced in Kashmir. This enforced silence is aimed at killing and distorting the Kashmir story and to manufacture a false ‘all is well’ narrative.”

So, even as we wring our hands over Ukraine, as we discuss what India should and should not do, and watch videos of helpless Indian students stuck there, spare a thought for the death of journalism in Kashmir.

There is another kind of journalism in India that needs an urgent injection of investment if it is to survive, and that is environmental journalism.

Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report. What it says about India is particularly alarming.

Sea-level rise and cyclones, a direct consequence of climate change, threaten not just major coastal cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Visakhapatnam but also smaller coastal towns in Goa and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Furthermore, unplanned urbanisation in the Himalayas is a cause for concern. People living in these towns will face more frequent landslides and flooding, given increasing rainfall and melting glaciers that are already leading to flash floods.

All these concerns need to be explored by the media with stories from these regions so that the challenges posed by global warming translate into what is already happening on the ground.

There is also an urgent need for stories that look at infrastructure projects, already in the pipeline in many of the cities identified in the report, that make little environmental sense in the light of the inevitability of climate change impacts.

The multi-crore coastal road being built in Mumbai, for instance, that will benefit a tiny percentage of car users in a city where the majority use public transport, is a case in point.

Another is the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. Despite the recommendations of the expert panel set up by the Supreme Court, and the recent resignation of its chair, Ravi Chopra, the government is hell-bent on going ahead with it.

However, except for sporadic reporting, usually triggered by protests by people adversely affected by such projects, such as the fishing community in the case of the coastal road, there is hardly any effective environmental reporting in mainstream media. One has to turn to specialist digital platforms like Mongabay, the Third Pole or the Centre for Science and Environment for such reports.

Environmental reporting cannot be done sitting in an office. Journalists need the time to investigate, to travel, to understand all aspects of the story so that they can report in a way that will have an impact on policy-making while at the same time informing the public. This is an investment the mainstream media in India, barring some exceptions, appears unwilling to make.

POSTSCRIPT:  Since I wrote this, Fahad Shah, editor-in-chief of Kashmir Walla, was on the verge of being granted bail for the third time when the police charged him under the Public Safety Act (PSA). This draconian law allows the police to keep an individual in jail for upto two years without trial.