In Chandrayaan-3 success, lessons for the media, and for developmental policy

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 24, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/08/24/in-chandrayaan-3-success-lessons-for-the-media-and-for-developmental-policy

On August 23, India was literally “over the Moon” when Chandrayaan-3 successfully made a soft landing on a part of the Moon where no one had succeeded thus far. The achievement was not that of one person, but of a team of literally hundreds of scientists affiliated to the Indian Space Research Organisation. 

When the media turned the spotlight on them, all of them highlighted the team effort. Not even one, including the man who heads ISRO, Dr S Somanath, spoke of it as the work of one, or even a small handful of people. Television news tried hard to do that, with one anchor calling Dr Somanath “the man of the match”. The latter firmly denied this and again emphasised the team.

There is something to be learned from the Chandrayaan-3 success story, for us as a country but also for those of us in the media.

First, the success should underline the importance of science, of the scientific process, of rational thinking and of people working together for a larger goal. This piece by writer and journalist Gita Aravamudan, whose husband was a part of the early space projects, brings out the latter aspect well.

A scientific approach is especially significant in these times when we are bombarded with pseudo-science, when scientific facts are erased from our textbooks and when political leaders have no qualms endorsing non-scientific solutions to disease, for instance.

Second, the scientists interviewed by the media after the successful landing spoke of the importance of learning from failure. Chandrayaan-2 had failed to make a soft landing four years ago. Instead of turning on the people who worked on that project, ISRO gave the very same people the responsibility to analyse what went wrong and work towards solutions.  This interview with two scientists by The NewsMinute illustrates the absence of hype in the responses of the scientists.

And third, the importance of high-quality and affordable institutions teaching science and technology. The foundations for this were laid post-Independence when the government invested in such educational institutions. The individual profiles of some of the scientists involved in the Chandrayaan-3 project reveal that most of them were educated in India. 

Unfortunately, these rather obvious lessons will be drowned out in the nationalistic hype surrounding the success as the front-page headline in Indian Express illustrates. 

As for science and what it ought to teach us about development policies, we only have to look at the devastation we are witnessing in Himachal Pradesh.

One of the lessons from the Moon mission that policy makers ought to heed is the importance of learning from past mistakes. It is evident today, that much of the scale of the destruction in Himachal Pradesh could have been minimised had this been done. On the contrary, every principle that evolved from past experience and reinforced in multiple expert reports, has been violated by governments and private builders. The price for this is being paid by ordinary people in these states.

Thanks to social media, those concerned and interested in the tragedy of the Himalayan states have been able to see the distressing visuals of brick-and-mortar structures crumbling within seconds. 

As always, independent media houses have done much better in their coverage of the Himachal disaster than mainstream television. 

The ground reports by Hridayesh Joshi in Newslaundry have been exceptional. They show us not just the extent of the devastation, but also, through interviews with ordinary people and experts, they help us understand the reasons that go beyond heavy rains. 

The Newsclick interviewed seismologist C P Rajendran who speaks about the “flawed developmental model” adopted by states like Himachal Pradesh. 

Print media has also carried some useful articles that explain why we must view the Himachal Pradesh devastation not as a natural disaster but as one made by human intervention.  

For instance, since the 1980s, questions have been raised about building dams in the fragile ecosystem on the Himalayas. Can they sustain large storage dams that allow for generation of power when needed, or would they be better off with “run-of-the-river” dams that are smaller and do not store water? The latter were recommended. But most of the dams built in the last decades have been of the former kind. As this report in The Tribune explains, the release of water from these dams when the water levels rose due to the rainfall – without adequate warning to the habitations along the river – exacerbated the destruction. 

Similarly, there has been a strong push to widen roads to facilitate access for tourists and pilgrims. This is considered essential to boost the economy in  states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

But as several reports have shown, even the basic norm that you cannot cut fragile hillsides at angles of 90 degrees was ignored. As a result, we have seen new highways literally crumbling, one side covered by boulders that have rolled down and the other sinking. 

Also, in places like Shimla, if there were town planning norms about the height of structures, or where they can be built, it is evident that they have been ignored. As this story illustrates, brick and concrete structures were even built on riverbeds. This was a disaster just waiting to happen, and it has.

In contrast to Shimla, the hill-station of Mussoorie in Uttarakhand suffered less even though it also encountered heavy rain.  According to this writer, one reason for this was because corrective measures were taken several decades back to reforest areas devastated by limestone mining and restrictions on buildings and roads were put in place.

Ironically, the British who initiated the building of hill stations like Shimla and Mussoorie, had laid down norms that factored in the carrying capacity of these locations, a phrase that is in currency today when it is almost too late. They recommended, for instance, that structures ought not to be constructed on slopes exceeding 30 degrees. 

You could argue that the colonial concept of hill stations restricted access to only the elite, people who could afford second homes away from cities, and that so-called “development” has opened these places to people from other classes who needed cheaper accommodation and public transport. Yet, tragically, it is the classes that can now access these hill stations who have suffered the most. They are the ones who were trapped in buildings that crumbled, on highways that sank, on hillsides that collapsed.

The ongoing disaster in Himachal Pradesh ought to inform us in the media that there is always a back story to what is touted as a “natural disaster”. If we buy into it, and reinforce it in the way we report, we allow those responsible for the problem, usually the government, to get away with it. We also perpetuate the myth that development is essential and that questioning infrastructure projects, such as roads, or dams, is somehow anti-national, or anti-development. 

In the past, many civil society groups and environmentalists have been labelled thus. The Narmada Bachao Andolan that compelled rethinking on large dams like the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River in the early 1980s was called “anti-development”. The campaign, led by people like Medha Patkar, emphasised the importance of environmental sustainability, and the social costs of large-scale projects that resulted in the displacement of the poorest and most vulnerable communities. This was well before all these concepts were being mouthed by world leaders.

In the case of the Himalayas, again from the 1980s, there have been warnings, and studies to back them, on the direction development plans were taking there. Most of these were not heeded. At most a pretence was made to accept an “expert report” only for it to be relegated to a back shelf.

The consequences of this attitude by all governments, irrespective of their political affiliation, are before our eyes today.  

In the Second Citizens’ Report on the State of the Environment, published in the mid-1980s, the late environmentalist and journalist Anil Agarwal, who established the Centre for Science and Environment, wrote an essay titled “Politics of Environment” which seems almost prophetic today:

“The post-independence political debate in India has centred on two major issues: equity and growth. The environmental concern has added a third dimension: sustainability. India’s biggest challenge today is to identify and implement a development process that will lead to greater equity, growth, and sustainability.”   

“Development can take place at the cost of the environment only uptil a point. Beyond that point it will be like the foolish man who was trying to cut the very branch on which he was sitting”.

From all indications, in the four decades since this was written, India seems to have reached that point. 

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. 

Dear ‘national’ media, stories on Assam floods must go beyond the ‘mighty Brahmaputra’ or the rhino

 

Broken News

It was the one-horned rhino that finally woke us up to the devastation caused by floods in Assam.

 

What began in early June finally reached "national" status, in that the so-called "national" media woke up to it, when the Kaziranga National Park was submerged almost entirely and the couple of thousand one-horned rhino housed there had to scramble to find higher ground. Some of them did not make it. Over 100 wild animals, including at least nine rhinos have died so far.

 

Many humans have also died. More than a hundred. The floods have affected an estimated 56 lakh people across 21 districts. Their homes have been submerged or washed away and thousands have had to seek refuge in relief camps.  Cropland, covering an estimated 128,000 hectares, has been destroyed. By all measures, this is a catastrophe on an enormous scale, worthy of attention.

 

Why then does it take weeks before the Indian media turns its gaze towards it? While it is true that floods are an annual occurrence in Assam and Bihar, is that enough reason to pay so little attention to the human and ecological tragedy unfolding? After all, almost every year, parts of Mumbai go under water during the monsoon. This year, so did parts of New Delhi.  But they made it to the national news.

 

The unjustifiable neglect of reporting on the Assam floods illustrates the continuing debate over what constitutes "national" news.  The Assamese have held a long and festering grievance against successive central governments and what they call "mainland" media for ignoring their plight during the flood season. The floods are also inextricably entwined with the politics of the region.

 

Just by virtue of the scale of the current disaster, which is a combination of natural and ecological factors as well as developmental interventions over decades, the flooding in Assam is a big story. And the people who face the fury of the "mighty" Brahmaputra, an adjective automatically used to describe the river, deserve as much attention as the one-horned rhino.  Yet, almost like clockwork, every year when the rhino faces imminent danger of drowning, the stories begin appearing in the national, and even international media.  In Britain, the royals were putting out anxious statements about the plight of the animal.

 

While the damage caused by the floods is extensive, since the 1980s, people in Assam have felt that the flooding has worsened. Apart from the nature of the river, and the terrain through which it flows, the disaster has been compounded by human interventions and policies, such as deforestation in the catchment areas. Furthermore, the river brings down an enormous load of silt that accumulates, thereby raising the height of the riverbed in some sections.  This is a direct consequence of the policy of building embankments to prevent flooding.  These structures restrict the river, but when the river is in spate, it breaks through the embankments, or flows over them. As a result, the force of the water is far stronger and causes much more damage.

 

According to the "Floods, flood plains and environmental myths" published by the Centre for Science and Environment in 1991, an expert committee set up after the 1986 Assam floods had recommended that no more embankments should be built. Yet the policy continues, with successive governments spending crores on building and strengthening embankments in the mistaken belief that this will alleviate flooding.

 

What is evident is that the story of floods is not just about what happens when the river floods, but also previous policies that have contributed to the damage caused by this annual event.  This context is often missing from most of the reporting on floods in general, and the floods in Assam in particular.

 

It is reported as an event, not the culmination of several processes.  As a result, we fail to understand why the extent of devastation appears to get worse every year.

 

There are exceptions as always.  Here Scroll.in has done a service by assembling a reading list of previous and current articles on the Assam floods that place them in a context. This article by Mitul Baruah is particularly useful in understanding why embankments have contributed to the problem, rather than being a solution. The other articles also look at another popular perception that dams control flooding when often they exacerbate it.

 

There's also a reason why the wildlife in Kaziranga is having such a tough time in recent years. That is because national highway 37 runs right through it.  Even when there are no floods, scores of animals are crushed under speeding vehicles when they cross over from one part of the sanctuary to the other.  The highway was built despite strong campaigns by environmentalists against it.  The current state government is now apparently planning to build a 36 km long flyover costing Rs 2625 crore so that there is a corridor beneath for the animals to cross.  Could there be a clearer illustration of environmentally blind developmental policy?

 

It is important for the media to bring out this background and context to what are seen as "natural" disasters so that people are informed about how myopic and short-sighted policies also play a part.

 

Equally important is the question of what constitutes "national" news. This is relevant at all times, but especially now.  People living in remote areas, or even not so remote, feel strongly about how the "nation" appears to be centered on the metropolitan cities, and the Hindi belt. Even news from the south takes time to register in the rest of the country.

 

Today, the Covid-19 pandemic is playing out locally, but is also national and international. Yet, it is evident that without the detailed reports from the ground, people would not be able to relate to media reports about the pandemic, as my last column had emphasised.

 

In the post-Covid media scenario, with decreasing revenue streams that have already led to retrenchments of journalists in all forms of media, this question could take on greater significance.

 

For some time now, television news has defined "national" by its ability, or inability, to get a camera crew to do a story.  Financial constraints have already replaced news bulletins with studio-based discussions.

 

Print, and digital news platforms, still manage to cover much more of the country.  But they will also face limits because of the economics of running media houses. As a result, they too might be compelled to limit the extent of reporting.

 

Meanwhile, local media outlets are also financially strapped and could face closure in the years ahead. One wonders how long a paper like Mylapore Times, featured in this interesting article in Newslaundry, or others like it in the rest of the country, will be able to keep their heads above water.

 

The trend of local papers downsizing or closing altogether has been visible in the US for some time.  Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post, writes about this and the decline of one such paper where she began her career. She argues that local reporting actually strengthens democracy. It also provides a source for credible news. In its absence, rumours flourish. 

 

And of course these days, with social media, the problem has grown exponentially.

 

Sullivan quotes a PEN America study of 2019 that has a resonance for us in India. “As local journalism declines, government officials conduct themselves with less integrity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and corporate malfeasance goes unchecked. With the loss of local news, citizens are: less likely to vote, less politically informed, and less likely to run for office.” 

 

In the current situation in India, when there is no end in sight to the pandemic, when economic hardships have already hit the most vulnerable and are staring the majority of citizens in the face, when the severe cracks in our health infrastructure have become evident, and when the bankrupt nature of our politics is on full display every day, democracy will be further weakened if sources of credible and reliable news disappear because there is no finance to back them.

 

 

Out in the open

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 12, 2014

Absence of sanitation facilities for women during disasters enhances their vulnerability. Photo: AP

The absence of sanitation facilities for women during disasters enhances their vulnerability.

Last month, while our attention was diverted by what our politicians were doing on foreign shores and at home, tragedies on a massive scale were being played out in many parts of the country.

Besides the devastating floods in Kashmir last month, vast swathes of the rest of India have also been inundated by floodwaters. Odisha, Bihar, Assam and Meghalaya have seen some of the worst flooding in years. For these states, floods are an annual phenomenon. But this year they have been worse and in places where the waters never advanced with such force in earlier years.

So even as the usual tamashas and tirades occupy our news space, spare a thought for the women, men and children in these states who are still struggling. Even as I write this column, an estimated four lakh people in Assam and Meghalaya, spread over 4,446 villages in 23 districts are homeless or badly affected by the floods. Thousands of people remain in relief camps because they cannot go back to their villages.

In Odisha last month, rising river waters submerged thousands of villages in 23 of the 30 districts in the state. In Bihar, too, the flooding has been relentless, spreading destruction, destitution and disease.

While the reports in the media on these states are few and far in-between — you have to make a determined effort to mine out the news from mainstream Indian media — the few reports that have appeared make heart-rending reading.

One report that I found particularly touching appeared in The Hindu on August 27, 2014, under the headline, ‘Women fight shame in flood hit Bihar’ (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/women-fight-shame-in-flood-hit-bihar/article6356043.ece?homepage=true). It quoted women in Bihar’s Supaul district talking about the particular challenge that they face as women in the wake of floods.

A woman in her thirties was quoted saying, “Poor women like us face more problems to relieve ourselves when floods force us to flee our villages. It is our fate. No one can imagine this except those like us.”

Another older woman said, “We have no option but to relieve ourselves in the open by closing our eyes and minds to the hell-like situation.”

What they are talking about is the pathetic absence of any sanitation arrangement for women during such disasters. You might argue that in any case many of these women would not have toilets and are therefore used to open defecation. But can anyone imagine what this woman means when she says they close their “eyes and minds” when they go out to relieve themselves in a flooded landscape?

Why, people would legitimately ask, should we make such a fuss about women’s problems at such times when everyone — men, women and children, as well as the elderly — are affected? I do so because in many ways women’s vulnerabilities are enhanced at such times. If they confront a daily challenge of sanitation, this is compounded during floods and other disasters. Yet, when relief measures are put in place, the particular needs of women are often overlooked.

In a powerful article that Assam-based journalist Teresa Rehman wrote after the 2010 floods in her state (infochangeindia.org/environment/features/sanitation-in-the-time-of-floods.html), she quotes a woman called Salma Begum from Sonitpur district: “Sometimes we have to seek permission from the owners of a dry patch in order to defecate. Most often we have to do it discreetly, on other people’s land, as it becomes difficult to control oneself. Sometimes, during the floods, we starve ourselves so that we do not need to defecate.”

In this instance, women like Salma were beneficiaries of the government’s Total Sanitation Programme, in particular low-cost toilets. Yet, one flood, and everything including these toilets are washed away. Women like her are then left with no alternative but to revert to the age-old practice of open defecation, with the added complication of not finding a dry spot.

Floodwaters are indiscriminating. They sweep away everything and everyone that comes in their way. But for the survivors, the story varies greatly depending on class, caste and gender. And this is where the voices of women like Salma from Assam or the women from Bihar must be heeded. The process of relief and rehabilitation must necessarily be ‘gendered. The absence of toilets is a woman’s problem in a very specific way.

Sweeping our streets clean is all very well but surely cleanliness must mean that women do not need to live through ‘a hell-like situation’ on a daily basis.

(To read the original, click here.)

Is our neighbour's tragedy not our own?

So why did the Indian media choose to ignore a huge human tragedy which, by virtue of its proportions, has to be considered “breaking news” by any objective criteria, asks KALPANA SHARMA

Posted Wednesday, Aug 11 23:50:10, 2010

SECOND TAKE KALPANA SHARMA    On August 6, the BBC carried extensive reports on the terrible floods in Pakistan.  The estimated number of people affected stood at an incredible 12 million.  The number increases by the day and at last count stood at 14 million. That evening I checked the main news bulletins on three English news channels, Times Now, NDTV and CNN/IBN. There was not a word on any of these channels about the devastation in our neighbouring country. The next day, August 7, I checked five Mumbai editions of English language newspapers ' The Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, DNA and Mint—as well as The Hindu on the net.  Barring The Hindu, the only Indian newspaper with a correspondent in Pakistan, not a single paper even mentioned the floods although all carried news of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to the UK and his meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron. By August 8, some reports did appear but more often than not they emphasized the political angle, such as the criticism in Pakistan over Zardari's absence from the country, rather than the enormous humanitarian and ecological catastrophe.  For details on that, one had to read papers and websites outside India. So why did the Indian media choose to ignore a huge human tragedy which, by virtue of its proportions, has to be considered “breaking news” by any objective criteria? Going by a traditional understanding of events considered newsworthy, any natural disaster affecting such a large population anywhere in the world would fall into this category. Disasters closer home merit even greater interest. Hence Pakistan's proximity also makes the floods there eminently newsworthy. One could argue that floods are an annual phenomenon in vast swathes of the subcontinent and a media now obsessed with the exceptional or sensational is bound to treat such events as routine.  Indeed, two years ago the floods in Bihar that displaced 2.5 million people got more coverage outside India than in our media. Yet one cannot fail to notice that torrential rain and mudslides in China were reported within a day of their occurrence while Pakistan's worst floods in 80 years had to wait longer for the Indian media to take note. Even when reports appeared, they spoke of an angle that presumably would interest Indian readers, such as “terror” groups collecting funds for relief efforts much as they did for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. Does this, in fact, illustrate how the media on both sides of the border contributes to a narrow and limited picture that remains firmly fixated on the areas of dispute and conflict whereas our two countries, virtually joined at the hip, share much more in common than we care to admit?  The aam admi and aurat have similar problems. The natural environment is a mirror image in some parts, not to speak of overlaps in cultural heritage. Yet there is precious little of this other Pakistan in our media ' or of the other India in theirs. If we read reports about the devastation caused by these floods, the problems of getting across relief, the misappropriation of relief funds, the efforts of civil society groups and the disappointment and anger against politicians, we would realise that our experiences during such natural disasters is not that different from theirs. What is different is the trenchant and frank criticism of their leaders.  We tend to be far more polite. Read Café Pyala for a brutally frank take on current developments inPakistan and the role of the media. Here is a quote: “So Zardari was an insensitive ass. But is that such breaking news that the media focus shifts entirely to undermining him? Were he not the president, would the suffering of the affectees of the biggest floods in Pakistan's history be any less? Would the administration become super-efficient? Isn't the issue of the inherent lack of capacity of the Pakistani state to deal with such crises a bigger issue than Zardari and his jaunts? Criticise him by all means but is a man chucking a couple of shoes in his direction really a bigger story than the tens of millions displaced from their homes? Or have we become so blinded by our rage and the cult of personality that we are willing to jettison all sense of proportion?” Clearly, politics and entertainment and politics asentertainment have become far more important to media on both sides than the sudden and perennial tragedies that affect millions of ordinary people. I want to end this column with a quote from Basharat Peer's searing “Letter to an unknown Indian” in the Economic Times (August 9, 2010). It addresses a similar issue, what the media chooses to report, what it chooses to ignore: “When pain makes it difficult to articulate coherently, quiet remembrance helps. Like many other Kashmiris, I have been in silence, committing to memory, the deed, the date. The faces of the murdered boys, the colour of their shirts, their grieving fathers — these might disappear from the headlines, but they have already found their place in our collective memory. Kashmir remembers what is done in your name, in the name of your democracy, whether its full import ever reaches your drawing rooms and offices or not. Your soldiers of reason carrying their press cards might dissuade you from seeing it, comfort you with their cynical use of academic categories and interpretations of Kashmir, they might rerun the carefully chosen, convenient images on TV, but Kashmir sees the unedited Kashmir.” Unedited Kashmir, unedited Pakistan, unedited India. Given current media realities, is this ever possible?