See nothing, say nothing: How India's 'well-behaved' media approaches protests and civil movements

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 30, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/09/30/see-nothing-say-nothing-how-indias-well-behaved-media-approaches-protests-and-civil-movements

Media has the power to kill civil society movements by simply ignoring them. It can distort what they stand for, and sections of the media do this all too frequently, but even this is better than blacking them out together.

A case in point is the farmers' agitation that has now crossed 300 days.

Last year, when farmers from Punjab, Haryana, UP and other states gathered on the borders of New Delhi and protested the passage through Parliament of three laws that affected their lives and livelihood, the Delhi-based so-called "national" media was compelled to take note. Even negative coverage made people in the rest of the country aware that something important was happening.

But since then, barring days when there were clashes with the police, as on Republic Day this year, a good section of mainstream media, particularly television, chose to side step this massive gathering even as world media took note.

And now, on September 27, when the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, a coalition of many different groups participating in the agitation, called for a Bharat Bandh, all we read or heard was news about traffic jams, inconvenience to urban commuters, and about "the public held to ransom".

Why did the farmers call for a bandh? Did people realise that the day marked a year since the government passed the three "black" laws, as the agitating farmers called them? Why was the government not listening to their demands? Public memory is notoriously short. People forget, unless reminded, why such a long-drawn out peaceful protest continues. This is what needed to be reported alongside the immediate developments through the day such as traffic slowdowns etc.

To sustain a protest involving such large numbers is no small achievement. The protesters have been determined, but also imaginative in their outreach, effectively using social media to document and spread their news. All the while knowing that the response of mainstream Indian media would be lukewarm at best and silent at worst.

Writing about the farmers' protest, social anthropologist AR Vasavi, points out in an op-ed in Indian Express, “Barring a few newspapers and television channels, the mainstream media has not only blocked out news and updates of the movement but has resorted to spreading disinformation and calumny against the movement. The media has largely succumbed to the dictates of the state and corporate interests and has failed in its democratic responsibilities. In deploying their own media to disseminate information and to represent themselves, the farmers have not only become media-savvy but have indicated that sharing information and open communication are key to democratic movements."

She is right.

The media on the whole has "succumbed to the dictates of the state and corporate interests and has failed in its democratic responsibilities." It has followed a predictable script to snuffle out a social movement, by ignoring it or demonising it. Thus it has ensured that the government too can continue to do so.

Yet, this same media picks and chooses the agitations it deems worthy of coverage. Think back to 2011 and the India Against Corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare. Or 2012 and the outrage that followed the gangrape of a young woman in a Delhi bus. All media, especially TV, gave the protests that followed blanket coverage. In 2012, media focus played an important part in putting pressure on the United Progressive Alliance government to pay heed to demands of changes in the rape law. A committee was set-up under the chairmanship of the late Justice JS Verma. A report was ready within a month. Some changes were made in the law. And the case itself was fast-tracked. In March 2020, four of the accused, who had been awarded the death penalty, were hanged.

By way of contrast, take what is happening in what came to be known as the "Hathras horror". On September 14, 2020, a 19-year-old Dalit woman was gangraped in fields near her house in Hathras, UP. She survived long enough to give a dying declaration and name the rapists, four upper caste men from her village. On September 29, she died in the hospital where she was being treated for her injuries.

In this case too, there was an initial spurt of media attention, especially following the hurried cremation of the girl by the police against the family's wishes. But since then, there has been virtual silence. There have been no demonstrations demanding justice for her. The state government has hardly said anything; nor has the central government. And even as the case drags on, the family of this girl – who have been provided protection by the state – live in dread of the vengeance the powerful and dominant upper castes in the village could take on them and other Dalits.

An integral part of effective journalism is follow-up. You don't report on something just once. You keep checking to see what is happening and continue reporting. This ensures that important issues do not slip under the radar; that both the public and governments are informed.

In the Hathras case, a handful in the media has remembered that September 29 marks one year since the death of the Dalit girl.

Nidhi Suresh from Newslaundry, who has followed the case closely over this year, paints a picture of the fear in the handful of Dalit families living in the village, and particularly what the friends of the victim experience every day. The report emphasises yet again the importance of follow up because the story is far from over with the arrest of the accused. Without media spotlight, who is to say what will happen in a place of such heightened inequality, where the power of the state can subvert the justice system, not just by constant delays but by fudging evidence, too, as was attempted in this case.

A story on the BBC website describes the threats and intimidation that Seema Kushwaha, the lawyer representing the family, faces in court. On most days, she says, the police have to escort her car to the state border for her own safety and her appeal to move the case out of the district has been rejected.

The Hindustan Times, in its report on Hathras, quotes Manjula Pradeep, director of the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network: “The initial focus on Hathras ensured that things moved but over the past year, the pace has slowed, the trial is sluggish and things are back to being difficult for the family. There is hardly any improvement in the condition of local Dalit women, and the power structure continues to be dominated by the upper castes.” More reason for the media to keep its eye on such cases. Yet, only a handful of media organisations persist in reporting on cases that are neither high profile or urban based.

How has our media descended to this level where issues that matter to ordinary people are routinely ignored? According to US president Joe Biden, the Indian media is "much better behaved" than the US media. He said this in an off-the-cuff remark during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington. But is that a compliment? The media's job is not to “behave well” but to make the powerful uncomfortable.

Aunindyo Chakravarty, in an article in Newslaundry, suggests that the Indian media has turned into a public relations machine for the government and corporations. And part of the reason, he writes, is the economics of running media houses, especially television.

In fact, it is cringe worthy that after the prime minister returned from his short visit to the US, leading newspapers like the Times of India and Hindustan Times felt not the slightest bit embarrassed in carrying agency reports that described in glowing terms how Modi is able to overcome jet lag by tuning his body clock to the country to which he travels!

However, the changes in media business models began in the 1990s. Until 2013, the media on the whole was far from a PR machine. In fact, the mainstream media was quite critical of the previous UPA government.

In the last seven years, since Modi and the BJP came to power, the change is noticeable. A large part of the Indian media has chosen to be cheerleaders for the ruling party, and in particular for the prime minister. The reasons may be partly economic, but many have also made a conscious choice to join the chorus line and “behave” themselves.

Dalit child’s ‘rape’ in Delhi shows all that’s wrong with our country

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 5, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/08/05/dalit-childs-rape-in-delhi-shows-all-thats-wrong-with-our-country

In his engagingly written August 3 frontpage story in the Indian Express, about the Indian Women's hockey team at the Olympics, Mihir Vasavda wrote, “Each player has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to reach this far: prejudice, poverty and patriarchy." Those three words encapsulate the story of Indian women, not just the remarkable lot wielding hockey sticks in Tokyo.

Prejudice, poverty, patriarchy. All three came together on August 1, when a 9-year-old Dalit girl, the only child of poor parents, went to a nearby crematorium to fill cold water from the cooler there. She never returned. She was dead by the time her mother saw her. Told that her only child had been electrocuted, the mother watched helplessly as the priest at the crematorium proceeded to cremate the child. “Don’t shout,” he allegedly told her.

This happened in India of 2021, in its national capital, in a week when the parliament was in session, when the most powerful politicians of this country were present in the same city where this little girl lived and died.

Can we then discuss the state of the nation or its politics, or even the state of India's media, without addressing what this horrific crime represents for India and what it reflects about our society?

There are many layers to the story of this alleged rape and murder in Old Nangli village in Delhi. One of the first, and so far the best, report on it was by Nidhi Suresh of Newslaundry who was on the spot, spoke to the parents, the police, and witnesses. Her reporting, including the video, is heart-wrenching and chilling, especially as it reveals that the priest, who allegedly forcibly cremated the little girl's body, is one of the four men charged with her murder and gangrape.

The report also brings out the sense of entitlement and impunity that men like this priest have that they could confidently instruct the family of the child to cremate her rather than go to the police.

This incident also brings back memories of January 2018, when an eight-year-old Bakerwal girl, the daughter of shepherds in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, was gangraped and killed. The crime took place in a religious place, and the priest was one of the men charged with rape and convicted.

The Kathua case led to nationwide protests. The court had to intervene to remind the media that neither the name nor the photograph of the child can be used when reporting crimes against minors under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. The media fell in line after the court's orders. By then, her name and face had already been splattered across publications.

This time, the media has followed the law, including ensuring that the faces of the girl's parents are obscured when they are interviewed on camera. In the past, even if the media did not name the victim, they gave away plenty of clues by naming the parents, identifying the exact locality where they lived and other such details. In other words, everything that would identify the victim barring her name.

As the girl was Dalit, inevitably comparisons are being drawn to the gangrape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in September 2020. In both cases, the body was cremated without the consent of the family; in Hathras by the police and in Delhi by the priest.

Apart from the similarities between this crime and other cases in the past, there are several aspects that are notable, especially where the media and politics are concerned.

The site of the atrocity, the national capital, inevitably draws far greater attention in terms of both the media gaze and politics. Although Dalit women are raped and killed in numbers every year, the few cases that come to light are those that the media can access, or chooses to do so.

While this unequal media gaze distorts the reality of the extent of crimes against women, in the past it has been helpful. Media attention pushes governments to act, at least in the short term. We have seen this repeatedly in rape cases, and most dramatically in 2012 after the gangrape in Delhi. That led to the appointment of the Justice Verma Committee and substantial changes in the law, including the introduction of the death penalty (which incidentally was not recommended by the committee). The media focus following the rape and murder of the eight-year-old in Kathua also resulted in the death penalty being introduced for rape of minors under the POCSO Act.

Yet, the experience of the parents of the 9-year-old in Delhi reminds us yet again that, despite the changes in the law, the systemic problems in the criminal justice system remain. Not only were the parents treated insensitively by the police when they went to register the complaint, the police booked the four men accused of their daughter’s rape and murder under fairly minor provisions of the law. Only once the case was publicised did they agree to add the stringent provisions under the POCSO Act and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act.

The incident also reminds us yet again that despite the introduction of the death penalty for rape, the incidents of rape have not declined. The latest National Crime Records Bureau figures (available only up to 2019) show 32,033 rapes in one year. This figure is likely a gross underestimation as it is now well established that the majority of rapes that take place inside homes, or are committed by men known to the survivor, are never reported.

We have to wait and watch whether this time the media will focus on the crime or, as in the Kathua and Hathras cases, politics will dominate, making what happened almost incidental. This is already evident in some of the television talk shows since August 1 where the debate centres on whether this or that politician ought to have gone to meet the child's family and also whether her being Dalit is the trigger for their concern.

What then is the role of the media? To document. To get all sides. To try and fill holes in the narrative. But more importantly, to follow-up and not let the story die once the political spotlight moves from it. Many of these stories are multi-layered. Each layer tells us about our society, about prejudice, about patriarchy, about the criminal justice system and its constant failures, and about poverty.

The media must avoid falling into the trap of whataboutery: what about other rapes all over the country, why only this one, etc? Every crime of this nature is precisely that, a crime that must be acknowledged and addressed. In an ideal world, every such crime ought to be noted and reported. But if we can report, investigate, follow up even one like the August 1 incident, without giving more pain to the family of the victim, without reinforcing stereotypes, without obfuscating about the real issues of caste and the reality of child sexual assaults, we will have done a lot.

I have deliberately chosen to focus on only this issue in this column for several reasons, principally because it brings out so much that we fail to acknowledge about this country.

It shows us how technology, economic growth, even education are not making a dent in either caste prejudice and hatred or patriarchy. That despite the uproar that followed the 2012 Delhi gangrape, the changes in the laws, the subsequent change in the POCSO Act following the Kathua rape, our criminal justice system repeatedly fails the poor and marginalised castes. That even as we celebrate the few medals our athletes have won in Tokyo, mostly by women, we must remember the real face of the country we inhabit is represented by the struggles of these women in sports, and the death of girls like the 9-year-old.

Why, despite SC’s Vinod Dua ruling, dissenting journalists won’t be safe

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 10, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/06/10/why-despite-scs-vinod-dua-ruling-dissenting-journalists-wont-be-safe

One cheer for the Supreme Court of India. Why only one? Because we still have some way to go before all arbitrary and unreasonable obstructions to freedom of expression are removed in this country.

The June 3 Supreme Court ruling in the Vinod Dua case came as much-needed good news in an otherwise grim year. In their 117-page judgement, Justices UU Lalit and Vineet Saran stated, "Every journalist will be entitled to protection in terms of Kedar Nath Singh, as every prosecution under Sections 124A and 505 of the IPC must be in strict conformity with the scope and ambit of said Sections as explained in, and completely in tune with the law laid down in Kedar Nath Singh."‬

Put simply, this means governments cannot slap sedition cases against journalists who question or criticise policy or report or expose gaps in government performance. That's great and is something about which we in the media ought to be happy and relieved.

Except that this was already established as far back as 1962, that is almost 60 years ago, in the case the judges mention, Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar. Yet, six decades later, neither governments nor the police at the thana level appear to understand what that judgement means given the ease with which Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code dealing with sedition continues to be used against journalists and others.

In fact, a database assembled by the news website Article-14 shows a rise in sedition cases since the BJP took power in 2014. It points out that there was an increase of 28 percent in sedition cases filed between 2014 and 2020.

The case against Dua follows a pattern. In March last year, a BJP politician filed a case against the veteran journalist in Kumarsain, Shimla. He held that on his Vinod Dua Show on YouTube, the journalist made "unfounded and bizarre allegations" against the prime minister and the government. This, he held, was punishable under Sections 124A, 268, 501 and 505 of the Indian Penal Code.

Dua is based in Delhi. The case was filed in Himachal Pradesh. By then, a national lockdown in view of the pandemic had been declared. Movement between states was restricted. Filing a case in a place other than where the journalist resides is the first common feature of such cases.

Dua was luckier than most. He could file a plea in the Supreme Court to quash the case against him. Most other journalists, particularly those based in smaller towns, do not have that ability. For them, just to deal with the first steps of countering such a case is punishment.

So regardless of the case going in Dua's favour in this instance, it is important to remember that the Supreme Court's directions from 60 years ago are regularly flouted and the only way to enforce them is for the aggrieved person to rush to court to appeal.

Secondly, independent journalists, reporting without the backing of large media houses and often from small towns, do not have the resources to fight cases slapped on them even at the first level, leave aside going up to the Supreme Court. If the case is filed in a place other than the one from which you operate, the very process of fighting it becomes expensive and arduous. You have to locate lawyers and spend your own money if the court requires your presence.

Additionally, 124A is only one of several draconian laws that are used against journalists and dissenters. For instance, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister is on record threatening journalists that the National Security Act will be used to arrest anyone reporting what the government considers "false claims", such as the very real shortage of oxygen that occurred in April at the height of the second wave of the pandemic.

Or take the case of the journalist Siddique Kappan, who went to report on the Hathras rape case, but instead was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police and remains imprisoned over 200 days later on sedition charges and under the anti-terror law UAPA.

In fact, according to this report about the challenges journalists face in UP, even Section 66A of the IT Act (sending "offensive" messages on the internet), which had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, continues to be used.

Hence, when governments have an arsenal of draconian laws that they can use against individuals who dissent, or who report and write critically, the protection provided by a ruling by the Supreme Court is simply not enough. The court cannot monitor every case that is filed in this country. And if cases are filed in small-town police stations on purpose to harass the individual or the journalist, there is nothing that can be done to stop it. By the time the individual fights to get the case heard, he or she has already been punished by the process.

That is why there is every reason to demand, as the Editors Guild of India and other organisations representing journalists have, that this antiquated colonial law should be consigned to the dustbin of history. If India wants to be considered a functioning democracy with an unfettered and free press, there is no place for such laws.

This is what the constitutional law expert Faizan Mustafa argues persuasively in a recent article in the Indian Express. He points out that according to data from the National Crimes Record Bureau, "between 2016 to 2019, there has been a whopping 160 per cent increase in the filing of sedition charges with a conviction rate of just 3.3 per cent. Of the 96 people charged in 2019, only two could be convicted”. These figures are more proof of how the provision is used for harassment even though the chances of conviction are slim.

Why is this happening when as far back as 1962, in the Kedar Nath Singh case, the limits of what constitutes sedition had already been laid out? Has this deterred the misuse of this section in the intervening years? Certainly not if we look at the database assembled by Article-14, referred to earlier.

In any case, the problem with the way this provision is used affects not only journalists but ordinary citizens who use the right granted to them under the Indian constitution to criticise and oppose government policies and programmes. In 2016, I personally saw the bewilderment on the faces of the feisty women from the fishing community of Idinthakarai in Tamil Nadu who were protesting peacefully against the Kudankulam nuclear plant when they were told they had been charged with sedition. Eventually, the Supreme Court granted them relief.

It is surprising, or perhaps not, that there has not been a stronger demand from the media for the sedition law to be declared unconstitutional. The Telegraph has made this demand in its editorial titled "Hurrah". But most editorial positions have been restrained, welcoming the court's ruling but not dissecting why an earlier ruling made no difference in curtailing the misuse of this provision.

The Supreme Court's ruling in the Vinod Dua case is significant, even historic. It might stay the hand of the state for a while in using the sedition law against journalists. But, as in the past, as long as it stays on the statute, its chances of being misused remain strong because at heart most governments want laws that can curb dissent and questioning.

Welcome to Broken India, where indignity and injustice for the marginalised is the norm

Broken News

Published Oct 8, 2020

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/10/08/welcome-to-broken-india-where-indignity-and-injustice-for-the-marginalised-is-the-norm

 

Perhaps I should rename this column "Broken India". For that is what we have experienced in these last three weeks.

The Hathras Horror, as it has come to be called, will live with us for a long time. The alleged gangrape by four upper caste Thakur men of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras on September 14, has all the elements that expose the sickness in Indian society.

First, the rape itself. It signifies that age-old dictum that when men wage war, it’s the women who are often the collateral. From what we have learned so far, the handful of Dalits in the victim’s village have long feared the dominant Thakurs and have been at the receiving end of threats and violence from them. To show the Dalits their place, rape their women – it is a ritual observed even in the India of 2020 with an average of 10 Dalit women raped every day across the country.

Second, we have witnessed how the criminal justice system continues to fail the most marginalised Indians. The family of the victim was forced to wait for several days, even though she was severely brutalised and close to death, before the police recorded her statement. How often have we heard this story? Not just in UP, this happens all over the country. And no change in law appears to make a whit of a difference. In fact, it appears as if all these laws are unknown to the police, or they selectively and deliberately choose to ignore them when the victim is poor or from a marginalised community.

Third, after the woman died in a Delhi hospital, the UP police transported her back to her village at night, didn’t allow her family to see their daughter one last time, and cremated her in the early hours of the morning without their consent. This surely will be remembered as one of the most horrific and patently illegal acts by a police force tasked to implement law, not break it.

And if all this was not enough, the police – who take their directions from the home minister, who happens to be the chief minister – barricaded the village, rushed hundreds of personnel to create a virtual fortress around this nondescript village, and stopped the media as well as opposition leaders from meeting the family.

When they lifted the siege, the story did not end. Top police officials claimed there was no evidence of rape as the forensic examination had not found any semen in the victim’s body. For the police, who ought to be cognizant of the law, including the changes in it, such a statement was extraordinary. A detailed report in Newslaundry explains the law and also what the family went through trying to get the police to act in accordance with it.

It is hard to believe that the police did not know that the victim's word that she was raped was enough in the eyes of the law. That they should speak of the absence of semen in the forensic report as casting doubt on rape was even more unbelievable. Any kind of penetration, even by an object, is defined as rape after the changes made in the law in 2013, in the wake of the 2012 gangrape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi. So the absence of semen, that too after the woman has been in a hospital for over a week, has no relevance as Supreme Court advocate Vrinda Grover explains in a useful video on the Wire.

The victim's statements have now been appended in an affidavit filed by the UP police in the Supreme Court, where the matter has come up, as also in the Allahabad High Court, which took suo motu cognisance of the case after reports in the media of the late night cremation.

Apart from the police, the UP government, and the family of the victim, the other player in this story is the media. How did it conduct itself after September 30 and the late night cremation by the police?

Much has been written about the hustling and aggressive tactics of Indian TV journalists, particularly in the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

In Hathras, the determination of the India Today reporter Tanushree Pandey has been acknowledged as important because she succeeded in filming the illegal cremation of the victim's body. Her report is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. But her persistence paid off as this evidence, apart from other reports, compelled the Allahabad High Court to take notice and demand an explanation from the UP police. Without it, the police might have succeeded in spinning its yarn that the cremation was done at the behest of the family.

Just as the victim's family struggled for days to get the UP police to proceed with the case, the media too was slow to wake up. The first reports appeared almost 10 days after the assault. It was only after her death on September 29, and the next day, when the UP police brought her back to her village late at night from the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, that the media became part of the story.

Once again, it is print and digital that have to be relied upon to place this kind of atrocity within context. Reports such as this and this in the Indian Express, for instance, give us a sense of the victim's family, the village, its caste make up and the history of trouble between the family of the men who are accused of raping her and her family.

This tragic quote from the mother in the first story speaks to the stark reality facing millions of Dalit families in this country: "She had to cross the highway just to get to the primary school. Trucks and buses moved at such speed…We pulled her out of school when she was in Class 5. We never let her go alone, we were afraid she might come under a car, or that someone might kidnap her…What we feared has come true. We couldn’t protect her.”

On that fateful day, the young woman had stepped out to help her mother collect fodder.

Much of the electronic media, unfortunately, went into its usual feeding frenzy once the barricades were lifted. As this video by Kavita, who is a reporter with the remarkable rural news portal Khabar Lahariya shows, reporters showed no sensitivity towards a grieving family as they thrust mics repeatedly in the faces of the mother, father and other relatives, trampled all over the house, sat wherever they could, did not even pause to consider that this family needed not just privacy but even just the space to conduct normal activities like cooking for the children.

One can’t only blame the reporters given they are all under immense pressure from their bosses to generate exclusives.

Yet, given that this behaviour has now become almost the norm for television reporters, is it time to retrain journalists on how to behave when approaching people who have suffered loss? Persistence might pay off in getting information, but surely insensitivity towards people who have already been beaten down cannot be justified.

The Hathras Horror is not just a crime against one woman. It is a reminder to us all, including in the media, of how little has changed for women in India. It’s also another reminder of the deep fault line of caste that persists in this country. And above all, it illustrates how the state and its law-enforcing arm, which is supposed to protect people, treat those without voice or political power. This is indeed a broken India.