More ‘politics’, less meaning: In mainstream media’s ivory towers, an incomplete budget story

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 25, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/07/25/more-politics-less-meaning-in-mainstream-medias-ivory-towers-an-incomplete-budget-story

Once again, Sansad TV, giving live feeds from the ongoing budget session of parliament, trumps other television channels in providing engaging coverage. 

Although reports of the debate over the union budget appear in the next day’s newspapers, they do not capture the diversity of interventions in the house, often by first time MPs. And this time, with an invigorated opposition, there is a robustness to the debate compared to the last decade.

Yet, as media, we must ask whether we have settled into a predictable groove in covering the budget, albeit with entertaining graphics and learned commentary from experts and others. Are we making enough of an effort to reach out to large sections of the population for whom the entire exercise probably has little relevance?

In the 1980s, when I worked with the Delhi edition of a national daily, and before the advent of multiple private TV channels and social media, the vox popconsisted of the reporter stepping out and speaking to the chaiwala outside the office and the workers at the local dhaba frequented by many journalists who worked in newspaper offices located on that street.  

Clearly, this was not representative of what poor people thought, but at least an effort was made to go beyond industry big-wigs and economists to assess what the man – and it was always a man – on the street thought.

At a time of unaddressed unemployment, of economic distress, of the struggle of so many poor people in our cities and countryside to keep their heads above water, surely there is a need to know whether they even know about the budget, whether they care, and if they do know, whether they believe it will make any material difference to their lives.

Also, in a time when we are becoming aware that legacy media, that is print media, and even the mainstream TV channels are not the primary sources of news for a growing number of people, especially the young, it would be useful to know whether they care about the budget, whether they even know what the exercise is about, and whether they think it makes any difference to their lives.  

In the absence of such reporting, entertaining as are the interventions in parliament in the budget debate – and I might add the rather predictable behaviour of Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla who continues to find fault with interventions by the opposition – the story remains incomplete. The union budget is a political exercise, but it also has real life impacts on ordinary people. As media consumers, we need to know and understand what these are.

While the budget session will continue to dominate the news for some time, the understandable media focus on it has overshadowed one of the most important stories reported in the last fortnight.

On July 18, Indian Express carried a front page story about a man called Rahim Ali from Assam.  Rahim Ali fought a 12-year battle to contest the ruling of a Foreigners’ Tribunal in Assam that declared he was not an Indian. The family appealed to the Gauhati High Court but got no relief. Finally, on July 11, the Supreme Court, where the case was pending, declared that Rahim Ali was, in fact, an Indian and the tribunal was at fault for determining his legitimate claim to citizenship by focussing on minor discrepancies in the documents he had presented.

The heart-stopping moment, as you read the story, was to be told that Rahim Ali was already dead. He had died more than two years before the judgement, a broken man unable to face the consequences of the tribunal’s ruling.

As Indian Express wrote in an editorial the next day:

“Ali’s story, at once tragic and absurd, is symbolic of the promises not kept in the fundamental social contract between citizen and state, enshrined in the Constitution’s letter and spirit. Ali’s wife, Hajera Bibi, on learning of the Court’s verdict, told this newspaper: ‘What is the point now? The fear that he lived under, of being taken away, died with him. If they still wanted to call him a foreigner, what would they have done? Picked him up from his grave?’ The question, steeped in sadness and anger, is a reproach. It is also a call for accountability from an opaque and labyrinthine process that casts the onus of proving their innocence on the vulnerable.”

The Express editorial also quotes the shocking official figures released by the Assam government in February of the number of people declared non-citizens by 100 tribunals – 1,59,353 – and the cases that are still pending, 94,149. And it rightly asks: “How many of the 1,59,353 have been unfairly stripped of their citizenship like Rahim Ali? For how long, and by what justification, will the nearly 1 lakh people whose cases are pending live under the Sword of Damocles?” 

That “opaque and labyrinthine process” that the editorial speaks of has been at work for many years in Assam. It drew some media attention in the early years, but as with many stories that are part of a process, and not an event, it slipped off the radar. 

There are surely many more like Rahim Ali, who continue to struggle against an arbitrary system that randomly picks up people and demands that they prove their citizenship. On a visit to Assam in 2019, I met some of these people. All of them carried plastic bags full of documents, their faces creased with anxiety as they did not know how to convince the tribunal that they were legitimate citizens of this country and not “illegal”.

The Rahim Ali story ought to prompt a renewed media focus on the process of weeding out so-called “illegal immigrants” in Assam, an issue that continues to be raked up by the current BJP government in the state. For years, civil society groups working on the ground have been crying themselves hoarse trying to attract media, and political attention, to the ongoing injustice being played out in the state. But the attention is sporadic, not sustained.

For those interested in learning more about this issue, do listen to this in-depth interview with Aman Wadud, a young lawyer who has been pursuing these cases, by LiveLaw. He explains the extent to which this process of determining citizenship is unfair and penalises the poor in Assam. He suggests that the Rahim Ali judgement should be read widely to understand how an Indian citizen can be declared a non-citizen.  

We cannot give up

I don't know about you, but I have not been able to watch that video of Tabriz Ansari of Jharkhand being beaten to death. 

I will not even give the link to it even as I write this. Because it marks the culmination of a month where the expected happened, the BJP won a thumping majority in Parliament, and the dreaded playing out of the consequences of this victory also happened.  (But it is worth reading Apoorvanand on this.)

Members of Parliament from the ruling party mocked members of the opposition, including Muslims, with chants of "Vande Mataram" and "Jai Sri Ram" as they took their oath, unprecedented in the 57 years that the Indian Parliament has met. (Read Jyoti Punwani's excellent piece on this.)  And echoes of those chants reverberated in different parts of India as individuals like Tabriz Ansari were targeted and ordered to chant "Jai Sri Ram".

The depravity and brutality of the mob that led to the death of Ansari is not an aberration. We, as Indians, are a violent people.  Given a chance, we will lash out, hit, attack, lynch and butcher those perceived as our enemies.  Compassion is not a highly regarded virtue in our society. Gandhi knew this even as he appealed for non-violence. Today's leaders know this too.  But the idea of non-violence and peaceful resistance is not part of their vocabulary. They support vindictiveness through their words and by way of their silences.

Surrounded as we are today with the war cry of "Jai Sri Ram" and the silences that denote acquiescence at one level and defeat at another, what is the future?

At a meeting in Mumbai organised by Indian Express as part of its Explained series, political scientist and commentator Suhas Palshikar predicted the future in a few quiet words. 

As he explained the concept of majoritarianism in the Indian context, where a majority community will always be dominant, and analysed the fallout of the BJP's election victory in the 2019 general elections, he said that in future, pogroms of the kind seen earlier would not be needed because the message that Muslims can live happily in this country if they live like Hindus, has already been conveyed. 

This is being conveyed each time a Muslim man is lynched. He does not have to be a cattle trader, or be accused of eating beef. He is a target because he is a Muslim, a hapless representative of a minority that has to be shown its place.

And now, inspired by our members of Parliament, we have a new test of loyalty to "the nation", the slogan "Jai Sri Ram". Another stick with which to bludgeon non-Hindus into conformity. Another vehicle to instill fear and squash any notion of rebellion.

Not to forget that this government has already issued orders that Foreigners' Tribunals, of the kind functioning in Assam that are already seen as hallmarks of arbitrariness and injustice, can be set up in any state. Combine this with the Citizenship Amendment Bill that the government is determined to push through, which effectively determines citizenship on the basis of religion and runs counter to the founding principles of independent India, and you have the makings of an upheaval reminiscent of the Partition, as Harsh Mander writes in Indian Express.

I write this on June 25, 2019, marking 44 years since the midnight hour when Indira Gandhi declared a State of Emergency and locked up the entire opposition. Press censorship was imposed, fundamental rights were suspended and a shroud of fear descended on the country.

Yet, that dark and what appeared endless night, did end.  The blanket of fear was thrown off.  The Indian electorate did vote out a person and a party considered irreplaceable because there was no alternative.

We have no option but to cling to the hope that things can change, that the trajectory of events today is not irreversible, to not give up.

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Power dressing

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, August 9, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

Power dressing





Meira Kumar: First woman Speaker

Does anyone care or comment on the colour of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s turban when he appears in public? Do the looks of a man or woman define their efficacy as leaders – of countries or businesses? The answers to both questions are fairly obvious and should not be a subject of debate. And yet, women in positions of power never seem to be able to escape public discussion about their looks and their appearance.

Recall the recent visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India. For a week she was on the front pages of our newspapers and on every television channel. She had official meetings and unofficial ones. She met businessmen and politicians but also self-employed women and students. Most of the media coverage centered on these meetings. Yet Hillary Clinton could not escape the inevitable personal comments about her looks, what she wore, how she did her hair etc. One newspaper ran a feature asking local fashion designers to comment on Ms Clinton’s dress sense.

Occupational hazard

On her very first day in India, Hillary Clinton held a breakfast meeting with top industrialists in Mumbai. The headline? “Clinton makes fashion statement with red business suit.” And the news item about the meeting began as follows: “Her short blonde hair neatly pinned back perfectly complemented her attire with the ensemble being completed with smart cream and black pumps that seemed more than adequate for the long day ahead.” Are such comments necessary? When the foreign minister of any other country comes visiting, do we observe the clothes these gentlemen (and most often they are men) wear?

Personal comments are an occupational hazard most women in public life have to face. Hillary Clinton has survived the most vicious attacks on her looks, personality, way of speaking etc not just in the years when she was the First Lady and her husband Bill Clinton was the President of the United States but more recently when she tried to win the nomination to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and lost to the present incumbent in the White House, Barrack Obama. She has probably developed a very thick skin after that kind of assault by the media.

In an entertaining book “Why women should rule the world”, Dee Dee Myers, who was Press Secretary in the Clinton White House, describes the constant focus on Hillary’s looks: “For more than a decade, her (Hillary’s) appearance has been the subject of an on-going and robust national conversation. She should wear pants. No, skirts. Her hair is too long. No, it is too short. Her gown is too conservative…”

Working their way

Media coverage in recent years continues on the same lines and the comments on the Internet, especially in the US, are full of personal invective against Hillary Clinton based on the superficial – usually how she looks or the way she says something. Only lately are some people acknowledging that she is actually doing a fairly good job as the Secretary of State

Ms Myers too faced this kind of attention in her first few weeks in office. “From the time I joined the Clinton campaign”, she writes, “virtually every story written about me included observations about my hair, my earrings, my makeup, my clothes, my coat.” When she became White House Press Secretary, a choice that was considered unusual at that time, the attention became even more pointed.

Women are supposed to laugh this off, take it on the chin and even be flattered by such attention. Yet, it is irritating and insulting. Women who make it to positions of prominence work their way up just as men do. Yet, when they get there, they are confronted by a barrage of speculation about how they made it followed by all-out attempts to trivialize their very presence in public life. If this happens once or twice, you can write it off as an aberration. But if it happens consistently, admittedly in some countries more than others, then you realise that it is a norm.

In India, partly due to our willingness to be utterly mindful of hierarchies, there is rarely an open comment about the looks or dress sense of the most powerful women in this country. No news item on Sonia Gandhi, for instance, makes a personal reference. Mayawati has been the butt of some jokes about her choice of clothes and handbags but the routine news item about the UP Chief Minister will not mention either. And even the top women in business escape this kind of personal attention. The reason is not that the media in India is particularly gender sensitive. It is because it is hierarchy conscious.

Effective voice

I suppose prominent women in this country should be grateful for such small mercies. When Meira Kumar was chosen Speaker of the 15th Lok Sabha, one wondered how the press would report on her performance. Thankfully there were no reports on what she wore on her first day as Speaker. But India’s first woman Speaker has surprised not just Members of Parliament from the treasury and opposition benches but also the media. A news item on August 3 in a national daily had the following headline: “House in order, thanks to Meira”. It described how effective Speaker Meira Kumar had been in controlling unruly Parliamentarians during the Budget session of the Lok Sabha. “Her small voice, almost languid demeanour and understated style have been deceptive”, writes the correspondent. Comparing her to the previous Speaker, the imposing Somnath Chatterjee, the correspondent writes, “Meira employs a tone of soft reasonableness and invariably get her way. In short, her softness and economy with words – which were initially viewed as handicaps – have actually turned into her strong points.” He goes on to ask why these attributes had not been recognised earlier either by MPs or by the media. “Would it be because of male bias?” he asks.

Good question. However, the attributes that this reporter describes, her “softness”, the tone of her voice or her “languid demeanour”, are not the ones that have worked for Ms Kumar. What has worked is her ability to negotiate, make peace, find the middle ground, persuade and calm tempers.

This does not come naturally to either men or women but I think women are better equipped because they have to use these skills more often in daily life. Hence, their ability to play the role of moderator – regardless of the pitch of their voices – or the clothes they wear.

(Click on the link above to read the original)

A law with flaws

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 14, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

Here we go again. Even those who feel most passionately on this subject must now feel weary at hearing the same set of arguments repeated for and against the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill. While across party lines women politicians are convinced that the Bill must go through — the notable exceptions being Jaya Prada of the Samajwadi Party and Uma Bharati of the Bharatiya Janashakti Party — the same set of male politicians who opposed it in the past continue to do so.

Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal (United), who will long be remembered for his remark that the Bill would bring into Parliament more women with short hair, has once again staked his claim to notoriety by threatening to drink poison rather than allow the Bill to pass. Although he has retracted this comment, his penchant for the dramatic remains unaltered over the years. Of the other Yadavs, Mulayam sets out the same arguments as Sharad, about a separate quota for Backward Castes, while Lalu, after initially maintaining a diplomatic silence, has now aligned himself with Mulayam and Sharad. And interestingly, while the BJP is whole-heartedly supporting the Bill, its allies, JD (U) and Shiv Sena are opposing it.

Real possibility

The major difference this time from the episodes in the past when the Bill was introduced and then pushed to committee in the face of opposition is that the government has enough support to get two-thirds of the votes in Parliament. Thus, regardless of the threats and noises made by those who oppose it, the Bill could be passed.

It will not happen overnight or even within the 100 days promised by the government because it is still in committee and that committee has to be reconstituted. Given the way these processes work, even setting up a new Committee on Law and Justice will take some time. So the earliest we could see the Bill emerge again would be in the winter session of Parliament. A great deal can happen before that eventuality.

In its anxiety to push through the Bill, the government could brush aside genuine reservations about the current draft of the law and place it before the House unchanged. If there is a constructive debate, something that is not at all guaranteed, then once again the Bill could go into committee to incorporate recommendations. If there is no debate but disruption, as in the past, the government might withdraw it and send it to committee. Or if there is some debate but little opposition, the Bill could go through in its current form.

The last outcome would be the most unsatisfactory. For, if the government fails to take on board some of the constructive suggestions that have been made on the draft, the Bill that is placed in Parliament and somehow pushed through might not serve the purpose for which it has been conceived. The main reason for advocating a quota for women in Parliament is because women do not have a level playing field in the world of politics. Even though political parties have promised to field more women candidates, in fact their numbers have not increased. More women were elected to the 15th Lok Sabha because women’s success rate is much higher than that of men. Given this, if political parties had ensured that at least a third of their candidates were women, it is possible that their number in Parliament would have seen a dramatic increase. That this has not happened illustrates the problem women face, particularly those without family connections, to find a place in the political arena.

A quota will automatically bring up the numbers. But will it make a difference? Who are the women who will get elected? The Yadavs believe that this will only empower the “elite class” of women. That can only be proven if tested.

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