From health emergency to parliament, little changes for the media under new govt

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 27, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/06/27/from-health-emergency-to-parliament-little-changes-for-the-media-under-new-govt

The death of a poor person is rarely front-page news, especially in this post-election season when the daily drama of the 18th Lok Sabha is understandably drawing attention. But even as we watch this session of the Lok Sabha and note the changes and the repetitions from the past, it is important to remember that in the last month, hundreds of Indians have been killed, not due to the spread of a disease but because of extreme heat.

But first, coverage of the Lok Sabha session. Thanks to Sansad TV, the live telecast is available for anyone interested in knowing who says what on the floor of the House. This also facilitates the sharing of video clips on social media. So, even if television channels and newspapers pick and choose what they report, much more is circulating by way of social media. 

Take, for instance, the statement by first-time MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi from Kashmir.  When he got up to speak, he reminded the newly elected Speaker, Om Birla, of what had occurred when he occupied the same chair in the previous Lok Sabha. He mentioned how a Muslim MP had been called a terrorist, and also spoke about how little time had been allotted to debate the reading down of Article 370. 

Reminiscent of his actions in the previous Lok Sabha, Birla interrupted the MP and asked him to stop and sit down. The next day, this exchange did not make it to any of the prominent English language national newspapers. It had, however, already been circulated on social media platforms.

Then take the invocation of the Emergency by both the Speaker and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Solemn sentiments were expressed about democracy and the dangers of dictatorship. The reason for this, one assumes, was that the session was held on the anniversary of the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi in 1975. However, the motive behind bringing this up was obvious. The government, and the Speaker, who is supposed to be non-partisan, used the occasion to hit at the largest party in the opposition, the Congress.

The next day, only one paper, The Hindu, called out the blatant hypocrisy. The Congress Party was in power when Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency. And it was a dark period, as anyone – including this writer – who lived through it will confirm. For journalists, it was particularly dire, with direct censorship and the threat of imprisonment hanging over your head if you dared to publish the truth.

Yet today, 49 years later (not 50 as Modi and others insist it is), where do we stand regarding freedom and fundamental rights? Has there been any indication so far that the coalition government headed by Narendra Modi will backtrack on some of the laws and regulations that are on the anvil to curb freedom of expression and restrict the media? That it will reverse its actions that are reminiscent of the Emergency? 

As The Hindu points out in its editorial:

“If the government of the day is truly committed to undo the damages of the Emergency and not repeat its grave errors, it would have not taken recourse to the same measures in the recent past, seen in the attack on the free press, the use of enforcement and investigative agencies to selectively target Opposition representatives, and draconian preventive detention laws to keep political prisoners, activists and journalists in jail without trial, including by the foisting of charges against them.” 

By attacking the Congress on its record on fundamental rights, the government is clearly trying to deflect any attempt by the united opposition to raise questions around fundamental rights and freedom.  We will have to wait to see if any of the parties in the opposition decide to call out the government on this issue. 

Even as we wait for that, we will probably have to wait even longer for our elected representatives on either side of the political divide to wake up to the ugly reality of climate change and its devastating impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable in this country.

The whole of northern India, and in fact the subcontinent, has been reeling under high temperatures accompanied by high humidity. The combination is a killer. And those dying, literally collapsing on the streets, are poor people who have no choice but to continue doing back-breaking manual labour in this heat.  An estimated 300 million of India’s adult workforce is engaged in this kind of manual labour.

Yet, it is difficult to come across any reporting on this health emergency in our major newspapers. Fortunately, independent news platforms are reporting on this unfolding tragedy that has been invisibilised by an indifferent media.

Take this excellent story by Anumeha Yadav in the Migration Story. She visited one hospital in Delhi to track the impact of the heat wave. In Delhi in May, temperatures exceeded 45 degrees Celsius for 16 days. She describes the condition of a migrant worker, identified simply as Rohit, who lay unconscious with a body temperature of 40.5 degrees Celsius.

Rohit is typical of the men who work as manual labourers, pushing handcarts, working as construction workers, or as cooks in hot kitchens with little ventilation, or as delivery workers. They get no respite even when they return to their rooms in poor settlements where there is practically no ventilation, and the tin roofs make them like ovens. No human, even a perfectly healthy person, can survive in these conditions.

The heat crisis might not be like a pandemic, but it is a silent killer of the poorest and the most vulnerable. The minority, people who earn enough to afford coolers and air-conditioners and who need not step out in the heat, are also affected but have ways to survive. Not the poor. And it is their story that we in the media must tell because ultimately the crisis the world faces with a rapidly warming planet will affect everyone. 

Will mainstream media, obsessed as it is with the rich and the powerful, turn its gaze towards such a story? Again, like this government’s past record on human rights, it is unlikely that the media will suddenly change. 

In the meantime, we must appreciate that some determined journalists are stepping out and reporting. This video by the team at Newslaundry is another example of such reporting as is this article in Migration Story on the specific impact of the excessive heat on women workers.

An added complication is the fact that medically, it is challenging to certify a death as that caused by heat, as this story in Scroll explains. Furthermore, we do not get accurate mortality figures because there is no clear system of certification. The only way, as several experts have emphasised is to look at normal mortality figures and check if these are noticeably higher. Such an exercise was done during the Covid pandemic to give us a more accurate count of deaths due to the virus at a time when the government was attempting to downplay the real mortality numbers.

Dealing with the impact of climate change in a poor country like India calls for policy interventions by the government. The people most affected, the poor, cannot push for this. The responsibility lies with the media to put pressure on policy makers by reporting on the current heat crisis that is daily killing hundreds of Indians. 

Stories Big Media missed: Sexual assault in Manipur and, as always, climate reporting

This column in Newslaundry was published a week before the ghastly video went viral of Kuki women being stripped, paraded naked, groped and attacked by a mob of Meitei men. One of them, a 21-year-old, was gang raped.  In the column I mentioned the first stories that had appeared about the sexual violence in Manipur over the last almost three months that the state has been literally burning, in a state of civil war while the state government sat on its hands and did virtually nothing. The central government made some noises but did not move with the kind of alacrity it would have had the government in Manipur belonged to an opposition party. 

Now that the evidence is out there for all to see, the Prime Minister, who travelled the world in these months but uttered nothing, finally "broke his silence" only to churn out meaningless platitudes.  What is worse, he used even his brief statement, made outside Parliament rather than on the floor of the House, to dilute the gravity of what's happening in Manipur by mentioning how women were unsafe in a couple of opposition ruled states. 

I will write more on this in my next column later this week. But in the meantime, here's what I wrote earlier.

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 13, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/13/stories-big-media-missed-sexual-assault-in-manipur-and-as-always-climate-reporting

News of the floods and devastation caused by the incessant rain in north India has predictably pushed Manipur onto the backburner – but it should not remain there. It is incumbent for the media to focus on the violence in the state, as I have argued in an earlier column.

After more than two months, we are finally seeing more in-depth reporting on this conflict-torn northeastern state, mostly on independent digital media platforms and some in the international media. 

Greeshma from Suno India has been doing almost daily podcasts from Manipur. They’re remarkable for the detail in them, and lets you hear the voices of the affected people. This report by Suno India focuses on the experiences of two women and illustrates what thousands like them must have gone through. 

The most recent reports by international news platforms on the conflict include one by Aakash Hassan for The Guardian, in which a Kuki farmer tells him, “People are building bunkers on both sides, they are positioning guns…New Delhi should understand that this is preparation for war.” Or this one by Soutik Biswas of the BBC that captures the latest situation in Manipur. Both reports essentially remind us that there is no “normalcy” in the state as the government continues to claim.

Despite the uptick in reporting, however, there is a crucial aspect of conflict, one that often remains shrouded in silence for a long time, and gets overlooked: sexual assault and rape of women.

Sexual violence and rape occur in most conflicts, from those between religious or ethnic groups to the ones between the local people and the police or the army. For decades now, rape has been employed as a weapon of war. Back in 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

It is known that because of the stigma attached to rape in conservative societies, these assaults are often not reported to the police. Women will not speak about them. Their families too are part of the silence that surrounds sexual assault. This happens even in so-called “normal” times, but more so when people are caught in violent conflict.

This week, the first reports of sexual assaults in Manipur have appeared. This report by Sonal Matharu in The Print is one of the first. The disturbing testimonies recorded by the reporter illustrate the hesitancy of rape survivors to report the crime of rape and sexual assault. 

That these stories are only now emerging, a good two months after the horrific violence began in Manipur, is not surprising. From past experience, we know that this is what happened in Gujarat in 2002, following the communal violence. The story of Bilkis Bano is now known because of her determination to fight for justice. But for every Bilkis, there would be many others who kept quiet. 

We saw this repeated in the communal violence that gripped Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in UP in 2013. The stories of rape emerged only after the fact-finding efforts of women’s groups and journalists like Neha Dixit who doggedly followed up on these stories. Although a handful of the survivors did turn to the criminal justice system, their journey to get justice has been almost endless, as this story in Scroll tells us about a rape survivor from Muzaffarnagar. 

Thus, it is no surprise that Manipuri women, both Kuki and Meitei, have hesitated to speak on the record about what they went through. Yet, it is a story that must be recorded, and told, so that we understand the true costs of such a conflict. 

Unlike the silent survivors of rape, women in Manipur, especially Meitei women who are part of a group called Meira Paibi, have been in the news for a very different reason.  While the army has projected them as being obstructionist, the Kuki see them as partisan. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. But, at a time of such heightened polarisation, it is easy to jump to conclusions. What is important is to understand who these women are, the reasons for their militancy which was principally against the security forces, and why they are reacting as they are in the current conflict. 

For people willing to invest their time into reading and understanding their cause, several newspapers such as Indian Express, have laid out useful information about the group. But as news has been reduced to headlines and a few paragraphs, or sensationalism and opinion, especially on the television, the history and the processes that lead to conflagrations, like the one in Manipur, are usually overlooked. 

This understanding of history and process is also essential when reporting the devastation caused by the deluge in north India. We see images of the destruction, but apart from the incessant and heavy rain, what are the other factors that have caused it?

Again, if people have the patience to read, there have been articles in several newspapers by experts and by journalists that spotlight this. They tell you about how infrastructure projects, such as roads, are being built without due consideration to the fragility of the Himalayas. They inform us that despite rules that concrete structures cannot be built close to riverbanks, this is being done in all the tourist hotspots, including those hit badly by the floods last week. And they also speak of the routine and uncontrolled dumping of construction debris into smaller streams that ultimately lead to the images we saw of rivers – of mud and logs – raging through the streets of small towns in Himachal Pradesh. 

All these are human interventions that have contributed to the extent of the damage caused in these last weeks.

Unfortunately, such information appears in the media after the devastation, not before. It is more than possible that local journalists have been reporting about such violations of environmental rules. But the rest of the country only knows once the devastation has taken place.

It is also clear that extreme climate-related events, such as the deluge last week, are now a frequent occurrence across the world thanks to global warming. The New York Times published an article on July 10 headlined: “Climate disasters daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal’.” It reported on the extreme heat, storms, and floods that the United States has experienced in the recent weeks, and the possible reasons for it.

To fully understand the connections between climate change and a local flood, journalists need to constantly keep up with the science behind global warming. Not so long ago, major newspapers in the country had full-time environment reporters. 

You could argue that any well-trained reporter should be able to understand and report on these subjects. Unfortunately, given the workload of most reporters, this is not entirely possible, and there is a need for specialisation in subjects such as the environment, health, or rural and urban development. If the media had continued specialised beats like the environment, it is possible that some early warnings of the disaster building up, especially in the hill states, would have been sounded or amplified. 

Bengaluru, Pak floods coverage exposes gaps in media’s understanding of climate, development issues

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 8, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/08/bengaluru-pak-floods-coverage-exposes-gaps-in-medias-understanding-of-climate-development-issues

In this season of floods, some floods matter more than others. You can see this in the amount of time and space the media accords to some floods, while virtually ignoring others.

Then we have the entrenched politics of water and land, as well as factors that transcend state and national boundaries such as climate change. We in the media should be addressing these politics and the reality of climate change, while covering the current spate of floods in the region which cannot be categorised simply as “natural disasters”.

The floods that matter, and which we report in detail, are those in the big cities. This entails minimum costs for media houses as the crisis is literally on their doorsteps. Those affected are also part of the “market” of these media houses. Floods further afield, in the northeast for instance, do not engage mainstream media in India to this extent.

The coverage of the recent flooding of large parts of Bengaluru, which undoubtedly was big news given the city’s global connections, exposed another aspect of the coverage of floods. While the visuals of upscale villas in gated communities and floating high-end automobiles might make for dramatic footage, we saw little of the devastation caused to the urban poor parked just outside the gates of these colonies.

Also, you had to look hard to find reportage explaining the backstory of why Bengaluru is in such a mess. In fact, such a disaster has been predicted for long by environmentalists and urban planners. They have exposed and campaigned against the destruction of natural lakes around the city, the construction on lake beds and misplaced urban development plans that cater to the demands of private developers. This, and an inadequate drainage system, has had a direct impact on Bengaluru’s ability to cope with excessive rainfall.

The Bengaluru flooding story has been seen in practically every major metro in India, and even in smaller cities and towns. This is decidedly not a “natural” disaster. It is the consequence of how the politics of land, inextricably linked to city and state politics, plays out. Urban development plans are made, only to be ignored. And environmental concerns go unheeded despite the campaigning of determined civil society groups. Practically no political party makes these concerns a part of its agenda. Profits, not prudence, is the mantra all of them follow.

For the media, these recent floods in Bengaluru underline not only the abysmal lack of planning and development in that city, but the gap in the media’s understanding of the larger issues behind this disaster.

For one, understanding the consequences of land use, and the politics behind it, as well as how natural resources such as water are used, or abused, needs to be the foundation for city reporting. Journalists given this beat must understand this politics to be able to report incisively not just on events, like floods, but also on why they occur.

Second, reporters need to understand that the worse-affected in these “unnatural” disasters are those with the least clout in how decisions are made in city development. So, in Bengaluru too, several urban poor communities lost everything they possessed in the floods. Once the waters recede, and there is talk of compensation, the well-heeled will recover from insurance claims. The poor will be left with nothing, especially as in many instances they either do not possess, or have lost, the documentation to establish that they are “legal”.

As urban planner and civil engineer Vishwanath S explains in this interview to Scroll:

“There are a lot of informal areas around the Information Technology hub that have been affected. These areas are not being documented or being shown. They may or may not be legal slums, which is more concerning as that means there is a good chance they would not even have the inadequate drainage systems in place. Then there is the periphery of the state which is being affected, which is not being documented and shown either. The focus has been on the apartments worth Rs 9 crore or Rs 13 crore or the villas which have been flooded.”

Equally important, journalists reporting on cities must comprehend how climate change is affecting our cities in a very direct way, not just by way of extreme weather events. It will help reporters dig deeper to understand the backstory, so that readers or viewers develop a better understanding of why such disasters are occurring so frequently.

Moving on from Bengaluru, the much bigger crisis is what has occurred in what we love to refer to as our “neighbouring country”, that is Pakistan. The scale of the devastation is hard to imagine. The visuals seen on international TV channels, and on social media, are frightening. Just visualising one third of a country under water is tough. Yet that is the reality in Pakistan today.

Although there has been some coverage of the devastation next door in the Indian media, it is not enough. The reason it needs to be much more detailed is obvious. India has not just a shared history with Pakistan, but also a shared geography. As the current director of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, Farah Zia points out in this perceptive article in Indian Express: “We’re in it together. ‘We’, as in India and Pakistan. Our weather systems like our history are joined at the hip.”

What is also interesting is how, as in India, in Pakistan too, the media ignored the early warning signs of the floods, because they occurred as early as July in Balochistan which, as Farah Zia writes,“… is not on the media’s radar anyway. It only got attention when an army helicopter on a flood relief and rescue mission, with high-profile personnel on board, crashed on August 2. The province also got the media’s attention once the death toll crossed 100.”

Historian Ammar Ali makes a similar point when he writes in this article in Jacobin that Islamabad-based political commentators were preoccupied writing about politics even as the first information about the devastation was coming through on social media. “Soon, floods began overwhelming areas in Sindh and south Punjab. The first time floods became the main headline on a Pakistani channel was August 23. By this time, more than twenty million people had already been affected, making it the worst natural disaster in the country’s recent history,” he writes.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former journalist who was also a top diplomat, reiterates that while politicians were more concerned about their political agendas, it is Pakistani civil society that stepped in to help. “The exemplary role of the public should be matched by a display of solidarity among political leaders and parties. But this continues to be in short supply”, she writes in this article that first appeared in Dawn.

Ali makes another observation that I think is relevant for us in the media in India.

“The media’s delayed response to the climate catastrophe is partly explained by the fact that the narrative around ‘natural disasters’ does not easily offer a neat categorization of heroes and villains. This turns them into a tragedy that can invoke global pity but is unable to generate political contestation. Yet, politics really is at the heart of the tragedy today unfolding in Pakistan. It is thus imperative to nominate the villains responsible for the needless suffering of millions of people.”

If you noticed, the political blame game has already begun in Bengaluru. It happens all the time when such disasters take place. Yet the real “villains”, which would include all political parties and those who benefit from political power, and the way both flout long-term plans for short-term gains, are rarely identified. That is the role that only an independent media can play, an increasingly endangered species in both India and Pakistan.

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. 

 

From Tripura to climate change, mainstream media needs feet on the ground to report on what’s happening

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 11, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/11/11/from-tripura-to-climate-change-mainstream-media-needs-feet-on-the-ground-to-report-on-whats-happening

All of us should be very worried about what’s happening in Tripura. If people are unaware of recent events that have taken place there, the mainstream media in India is to blame.

Bits and pieces of news have trickled out, initially only on social media, since October 26 when mobs led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad reportedly attacked several mosques and Muslim-owned businesses in the state. This was ostensibly in retaliation for the recent violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.

Why would people in Tripura respond so violently to events in the neighbouring country? Most people are ignorant about the northeastern states in general and, in this instance, about Tripura. We do not know its past or its close links with Bangladesh with which it shares a 856-km border. Despite its history, the state has not seen Hindu-Muslim clashes. The main arena of conflict has been between the tribals and non-tribals. You have to look hard for such information in mainstream media. Yet, as with all such communal conflagrations, there is a specific history as explained in this informative article by Samrat X in Newslaundry.

While the violence itself was worrying, as reported in some detail by Al Jazeera, what has followed is even more troubling. It represents yet another instance of a government, this time the state government in Tripura, weaponising laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act to curb any questioning or dissent. In what was an extraordinary and totally unjustified move, the state government slapped UAPA charges against 102 individuals including lawyers, journalists and ordinary people posting on social media that the state was literally “burning”. For stating this, the government came down with a sledgehammer.

According to a statement issued by the Editors’ Guild of India, “One of the journalists, Shyam Meera Singh, has alleged that he has been booked under UAPA for merely tweeting ‘Tripura is burning’. This is an extremely disturbing trend where such a harsh law, wherein the processes of investigation and bail applications are extremely rigorous and overbearing, is being used for merely reporting on and protesting against communal violence.”

As Indian Express pointed out in its editorial, “this appears to be a part of the playbook of heavy-handedness that has been perfected by governments. This involves the twisting of stringent laws such as the UAPA or the sedition law to quell dissent or intimidate anyone who contests or might contest the state’s version.”

As far as the media is concerned, what we are seeing in Tripura is not new. It is a pattern that is unfolding in many states, particularly those governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Enough has been written about this and yet it does not seem to discourage more governments from following this trend.

An article in the US-based Nation magazine goes as far as to state that India has “become a very dangerous place to be a journalist.” Not all journalists; only those that do their job of questioning the state.

The article quotes the findings from a recent survey of the media in India by the Polis Project called “Watch the State”. It reveals that between May 2019 and August 2021, “256 journalists were attacked for doing their job. The police appear to be the main perpetrators in BJP-ruled states, in Jammu and Kashmir, and in Delhi, where they directly report to the ministry of home affairs. The BJP-ruled states are in general significantly more dangerous for journalists than others.”

Even if some people might conclude that this an overstatement, consider this, from the same article: Unesco has ranked India as the “sixth-most dangerous country for journalism in the world, after Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.”

So, yes, Tripura is another warning to the media and all critics of the current dispensation, both at the centre and in several states.

Apart from the dangers journalists face just doing their jobs, Tripura illustrates another malaise in the media: the virtual absence of reporting on many regions, and on many subjects, until disaster strikes. I have argued in earlier columns that media houses are just not investing in news gathering. Stories like the developments in Tripura cannot be written by referring to news agency reports and adding a little bit to them. You need feet on the ground to describe, to report, to verify the developments, and to background them.

Such reporting is missing on a whole range of issues, including environmental reporting. This is more than evident in the background of the COP26, the international gathering discussing climate change in Glasgow. While some news organisations have sent reporters to cover the conference, most newspapers have limited their coverage to reports about what either the Indian prime minister or other heads of state said during the two-day summit. The real substance of the negotiations have taken place after the politicians left. There is little original reporting on that.

Politicians make promises on the international stage. They are lauded or criticised. But in this instance, the real test is how these pronouncements will play out in the context of a particular country.

In India, while the volume of reporting about climate change has increased in recent months, according to the Media and Climate Change Observatory, the quality is what really matters. The reports that appear, apart from quoting politicians, are based on studies and reports by international bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But you have to work hard to find stories that tell us how people are affected, who is at the receiving end of the many impacts of global warming, and whether the steps the government has been taking are adequate.

One website that is focused entirely on environmental issues is The Third Pole. In this article, Omair Ahmed sums up the issue precisely when he writes: “Climate change has a real, powerful impact on billions of people, most of whom do not know or do not use that particular term. It is the story of thirst, poverty, hunger, deprivation and conflict caused by changes to the environment on which they depend for their lives and livelihoods. And like most things political, it is about money, how we make it, and how we distribute it.”

There you have it. Climate change is a developing story that covers all aspects of life on earth. And in India, the impacts are already being felt with 100 districts identified as being particularly vulnerable. From changes in the monsoon patterns to flash floods causing widespread destruction, almost every day there is a story to be reported of communities who survive, and those who don’t.

This is what we in the media need to be doing.

There was a time in the 1990s when several newspapers had designated environmental correspondents. Reporting on environmental issues requires specialised knowledge. Only then can a reporter covering what appears to be a natural disaster make the connections. For the ordinary reader to understand what we really mean by climate change, these linkages have to be conveyed.

This is not always easy as there are many complexities. The problems arising from global warming cannot be presented as binaries, something the media, particularly television, loves to do by pitting opposite viewpoints to create a “big fight”. And the solutions are equally complex.

There is nothing left to debate about climate change. It is here. Governments are being compelled to take it seriously. So must the media. Our job remains to inform, alert, and question.

India faces an environmental crisis, but this season’s election coverage is set to ignore it

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 4, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/03/04/india-faces-an-environmental-crisis-but-this-seasons-election-coverage-is-set-to-ignore-it

Once again, election season is upon us. In fact, in India, it never seems to end. And for some political parties, it's perennial.

From now until the results are declared for the Assembly elections in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, and Puducherry on May 2, we can expect little else in media coverage apart from the political circus.

For the news media, the electoral battlefield provides endless possibilities and a chance to increase readership and viewership. Elections are guaranteed to be entertaining with every politician extracting the maximum advantage from media attention. Yet, increasingly, elections have been reduced to a few personalities; the issues that matter to the majority of voters slip into the background.

No doubt, despite the election frenzy, the coronavirus pandemic and the effort to vaccinate a large section of India's population will continue to be a part of the news cycle for some time to come as this crisis shows few signs of abating at present.

Yet, the political tamasha unleashed with the announcement of elections should not let us forget the perennials, the stories that are either told in passing, or only when there is a tragedy of such overwhelming proportions that they cannot be ignored.

Issues like hunger, poverty, unemployment, caste discrimination, inequality, atrocities against women, human rights, and persecution of minorities – the list is long. We remember, and the media addresses these, when there are atrocities, like the disturbing number of incidents involving Dalit girls being killed in Uttar Pradesh, or reports that remind us that almost a third of Indian children continue to be stunted and malnourished.

When a natural disaster occurs, such as in Uttarakhand on February 7, we are reminded that global warming and climate change are not academic issues but a living reality for people in fragile ecological zones as this interview with Ravi Chopra of the People's Science Institute in Dehradun spells out.

We remember then that these very areas have suffered in the past, that we in the media investigated and reported about those disasters and that the government appointed committees to investigate and recommend policies that kept in mind ecological factors. And that after all that, the developmental plans put in place, such as building hydroelectric projects in this fragile ecosystem, continued as if nothing had happened. Until it did again.

Even if governments have short memories and choose to forget lessons from previous disasters, the job of the media to continue to focus on some of these issues cannot be overemphasised. These issues slip from popular consciousness if our focus shifts, or disappears altogether, making it virtually impossible for the people living in such perennial disaster zones to be heard by those who make policy.

The same argument can be applied to industrial pollution and neglect of safety measures by industries using hazardous materials.

On May 7, 2020, poisonous styrene gas leaked out of the LG Polymer chemical plant at R R Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Eleven people died and hundreds were affected by the gas in the villages around the plant. The reason was malfunction in the cooling system in two chemical tanks that had been left unattended.

In the wake of the accident, the media woke up. Stories were written. We were also reminded that this accident was smaller in scale but similar in several ways to what is still called the world's worst industrial disaster: the Bhopal gas tragedy where 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate escaped from a Union Carbide plant in December 1984. Thousands of people were killed that night and many more in subsequent months and years. The health of those who survived was permanently impaired. And till today these victims of the Bhopal tragedy feel they never got justice.

But the point about remembering Bhopal was that it brought up the issue of location of industries using hazardous chemicals. The people most affected that night in Bhopal were those living in a dense settlement literally outside the gates of Union Carbide. Thirty six years later, those who suffered in Visakhapatnam were those living in close proximity to the LG Polymers plant. What has changed?

This unchanging scenario of industrial location is replicated in the way industries continue to pollute air, water and land despite environmental laws, and the existence of institutions that are tasked to ensure their implementation. This is one of the more distressing facts to emerge from the latest State of India's Environment 2021 report released by the Centre for Science and Environment, or CSE.

The Central Pollution Control Board set up a Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index, or CEPI, in 2009 with a view to monitor industrial clusters and the pollution levels around them.

Between 2009 and 2018, reports the CSE, rather than an improvement in these levels, there has been a sharp deterioration. Of the 88 industrial clusters that were monitored in this period, air quality had deteriorated in 33, water quality in 45, and land pollution had increased in 17. In other words, despite a system that kept track of whether the industries located in these places were following pollution control norms, the environmental parameters had become worse.

Surely, this is a statement not just about the inefficiency of pollution control boards, or rather their inability to enforce environmental regulation, but also the attitude of those owning industries that continue to pollute and stop only if caught and/or penalised. We also need to investigate how badly the health of people living near these polluted industrial clusters has been affected.

Going back to Uttarakhand, in 2010 the National Green Tribunal Act was passed. This was done expressly so that people affected by developmental projects, such as thermal power plants, or mining, could have a say before these projects were cleared under provisions of the Environment Protection Act 1986.

However, often poor communities do not hear about a project, or that it has been cleared, until the process is almost complete. By the time they can get organised and summon up the resources to file an appeal against such a project before the National Green Tribunal, it is often too late because a time limit has been set.

This story by Jay Mazoomdaar in the Indian Express points out how the NGT continues to dismiss appeals on minor technical grounds rather than being sympathetic to the people who turn to it. It had replaced the earlier National Environmental Appellate Authority precisely because an independent and fair system was needed to hear the complaints of project-affected communities that are often also the most marginalised. In this instance too, there is a story still waiting to be told about the groups that turned to the NGT, who they are, and how they see the future.

Environmental journalism is at the cross-section of politics, policies and people. It is challenging precisely for that reason as it asks of journalists an understanding of all this as well as technical aspects. Gone are the days when newspapers had environmental correspondents tasked to investigate and write such stories. Now it is left to dedicated organisations like CSE and its journal, Down to Earth, Mongabay India, a portal specialising in environmental and conservation related stories, or the Third Pole.

The deterioration in our natural environment, and the continuing and willful pollution of our water, air and land, takes the heaviest toll on the poor, but ultimately affects everyone. Despite this, environmental concerns have hardly ever featured in election talk or on the agenda of political parties. It is highly doubtful that the election season we have entered will see a change in this.

And meanwhile, there is climate change

In a week when one of the main talking points in India has been the #MeToo campaign and the outing by a dozen women journalists of the sexually predatory behaviour of M. J. Akbar, with whom they worked at the various publications that he edited before entering politics, there is something even more urgent that we need to address.

Last Monday, October 8, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out with a Special Report on what would be needed to keep the earth's temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.  It contains much that we in India need to address, and urgently, apart from the steps that must be taken by the older industrialised countries, the USA in particular, that have brought us to this stage of crisis in the first place.

But sadly, there is little attention being paid to this report in India.  It occupied a few column inches the day after it was released, and since then has virtually disappeared.

Climate change is a mantra our leaders repeat every now and then, usually to assuage the concerns of international bodies, without really acting with determination on policies that we need to put in place here.

This article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, with whom I worked for a short period in 1998, shows us that the situation could become even more alarming than what the IPCC has predicted:

https://thebulletin.org/2018/10/climate-report-understates-threat/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=October12

As the authors of this thought-provoking piece point out:

"Climate change should not be a divisive political issue. It is an issue of fundamental, data-driven science, an issue of human tragedy, and an issue of planetary ecosystems in peril. But above all, it is an issue we can still do something about."

Message for Copenhagen

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, November 15, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

The environment ultimately is about people and this must drive the negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark next month.

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It is the most vulnerable, the poorest, who will be hit the hardest if the earth continues to grow warmer.

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Photo: Debatosh Sengupta

Local solutions: Lessons from the women of Ladakh...

Prime Ministers, Presidents, Environment Ministers, scientists, journalists and bureaucrats the world over are counting the days to December 7, when they will gather in impressive numbers at Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to discuss what can and should be done about global warming. They will quibble over how to fix responsibility, they will fight over words in long documents, they will challenge evidence presented as proof of the crisis, and they will negotiate percentages and deadlines for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Regardless of how the responsibility for the current mess is apportioned, one factor that everyone agrees on is that it is the most vulnerable, the poorest, those who depend on the environment, who will be hit the hardest if the earth continues to grow warmer. Yet, the most vulnerable are also, often, the most sensitive and the most sensible when it comes to making environmental choices.

Fragile ecology

To understand this, travel up to the rooftop of India, the high Himalayas where in a veritable desert sits Ladakh, a land of history and spectacular geography. Here you see no trees but the presence of those silent snow-capped peaks more than makes up for this. Here streams are so clear you can see every pebble over which their waters flow. Here men and women are strong and sturdy as they battle the harsh climatic conditions every day. Yet the extremes in climate have not affected the Ladakhi approach towards life and people. Hill people are generally known to be friendly. But Ladakhis must qualify as some of the friendliest and kindest people I have ever encountered.

Especially impressive are the women of Ladakh. Kundes Dolma is the Vice President of the Women's Alliance, an organisation set up more than two decades back by a remarkable Norwegian woman who made Ladakh her home, Helena Norberg-Hodge. Ms. Dolma, her weathered face wearing a perpetual smile, recounts the work of her organisation. She tells us how they have managed to stop the use of polythene bags in Leh for the past 10 years. “We saw the problems polythene bags caused for our cattle, which swallowed them and also how they blocked the natural streams that flowed into Leh,” she says. So the women campaigned for an end to plastic bags and today no shopkeeper in the town will sell you goods in a plastic bag.

With the growing number of tourists visiting the town, this is not easy to sustain. But the women continue to campaign and monitor. But what do they do about the impact on resources, such as water, in the face of growing tourism? A decade ago, people in Leh had enough water from the snow-fed streams. Today there are only a few of such streams and the quantity of water in them is notably less. “I worry about the coming generation because of the water scarcity”, says Ms. Dolma.

Some scientists hold that what Leh experiences today is the consequences of decades of accumulation of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. This has resulted in a rise in temperature affecting the glaciers in high mountain ranges like the Himalayas. The evidence of this is still being gathered. Glaciers are notoriously inaccessible and tests and surveys have to be conducted over a span of time to convincingly establish that there is a change in the amount of ice accumulating in them each year. It may take many more years before such scientific proof is available.

But the observations of women like Kundes Dolma suggest that some significant changes have begun to take place and that these cannot be ignored.

Women also tell us that part of the problem is the manner in which Leh is developing. Instead of traditional forms of building that consisted of using mud and rocks, materials that are locally available and suitable for the dry climate of Leh, people are now using cement and concrete to build hotels and guesthouses. Instead of the traditional dry toilets, where no water is used and that produce a mountain of manure for the fields after a few months, people are now using flush toilets that use up precious water. Instead of depending on water from the mountain streams and shallow wells, hoteliers are now sinking tube wells that draw out water from deep in the ground.

Familiar yet strange

The result is water shortage, and no recharge of natural underground aquifers. With less snow in the winter, the quantity of water in the streams has decreased. You now see boys pushing carts full of canisters of water on the streets of Leh, a sight that was unfamiliar in previous years.

In a harsh climate, you need fuel to keep warm. In Leh, people can get gas, although at a higher price. But in the scattered settlements, perched on the steep mountains — where access to a road means walking for three or four days — the only source of fuel is what can be foraged in terms of fuel wood. Dry shrubs and bushes provide a tenuous source of fuel for heating and cooking. It is this dependence on nature for something as basic as fuel that joins the women of Ladakh with millions of women in the rest of India.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)