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

Broken News

Published Oct 8, 2020

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Is it time to redefine what journalism means?

Broken News

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/09/24/is-it-time-to-redefine-what-journalism-means

At a time when we have witnessed mockery of what we prided in calling ourselves – a parliamentary democracy –  when thousands of farmers are protesting the passing of bills that were rammed through the parliament, when the precious few rights that the Indian working class had have been snatched away by new laws, when Covid-19 continues its deadly dance of death and despair, when incessant rains are bringing even big cities to a standstill, not to speak of remoter areas, what is the big story on India's mainstream electronic media? No prizes for guessing that it continues to be Sushant-Rhea-Kangana-Payal-Anurag and now even Deepika. 

Enough has been said and written about this determined effort of India's mainstream electronic media to keep its gaze firmly on a non-story, defying even the most basic norms of what constitutes journalism.

 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is still hearing arguments in the Sudarshan News case on whether regulation of some kind is needed to rein in electronic media. The outcome will not necessarily solve the problem because the trajectory of the electronic news media in India has gone so far in one direction, based entirely on what sells, that it is difficult to imagine a time when some kind of equilibrium will be restored. 

 

The important question raised by this case, in my view, is whether what appears on channels such as Sudarshan News can even be called journalism. Do such media outlets even pretend to follow any of the ethics, values or principles that one is taught comprise the bedrock of journalism in a democracy? How then can what they broadcast be equated with what appears in media outlets that are still trying to do journalism as it was meant? Should such channels even be considered as journalistic enterprises? Or do we need another term to define them?

 

Also, by pegging our hopes on a ruling about one channel that is at an extreme end of the spectrum, are we missing the larger picture of where journalism stands in India today, and whether it can be set right merely by devising ways to regulate it?

 

I would still argue that a reasonably large section of the print media, the majority of the digital news platforms as well as a handful of TV news channels follow the rules of journalism as we have known them. That the attention-seeking hijinks of the popular TV news channels cannot make us throw up our hands in despair and give up on the project of providing the people of this country fair, objective, coherent, relevant and credible journalism.

 

The real danger to this kind of journalism in India, I would argue, lies not with these TV channels, but primarily with the attitude of this government and its different arms. Just as it has demonstrated its complete disregard for any notion of fairness or established procedure when it comes to the functioning of the parliament, we cannot and should not expect that it will push back in its desire to ensure that the media sings its tune.

 

You only have to witness what has been happening in Kashmir this last year to see how this can, and probably will, happen. Kashmiri journalists have to keep reminding us that journalism is not a crime. Yet, for doing their jobs as journalists, they are being surveilled, harassed, questioned, beaten up and imprisoned in Kashmir.

 

This article by Priya Ramani in Article 14 is a devastating recounting of the way in which the very process of doing their jobs as journalists has been rendered a hazardous occupation in Kashmir. Ramani spoke to a cross-section of journalists in the state, women and men. Journalists told her that they were asked why they didn't do "positive journalism" or when they questioned the actions of the state against journalists, they were told, "Instructions have come from the top”. Bashaarat Masood of the Indian Express said it had become "impossible to report from Kashmir". These are highly qualified, experienced journalists who have worked in the most stressful conditions for years. And this is what they are saying today.

 

Perhaps the most telling quotation is from Qazi Shibli, the founding editor of The Kashmiriyat, a news website. Shibli spent nine months in jail, charged under the Public Safety Act.  He was released in April. He tells Ramani, “They’ve polarised the public of the nation into nationalists and anti-nationals. They've divided us into good journalists who follow their line and bad journalists who don’t.”

 

That just about sums up the state of the media in India today. Those who question, expose, basically just do their jobs and necessarily do not follow "the line" of the government are "bad" journalists, liable to intimidation and even arrest. According to a report by the Rights and Risk Analysis Group released in June, 55 journalists were arrested, booked, summoned, assaulted and threatened during the lockdown that began on March 24. All this for reporting on what was really going on in the country during this pandemic. Of these, 11 were from Uttar Pradesh.

 

The short point is that in the process of defanging every institution that can act as a check on the power of the executive, this government has not spared the media. While the majority of media houses have fallen in line following the slightest nudge, or voluntarily because they are convinced that the current regime is the best thing that could have happened to India, the real price is being paid by individual journalists and the smaller, independent publications and websites that are doing what they are required to do in a democracy. 

 

What happened in the parliament last week is an ominous signal of what more will follow. Even the pretence of following procedures and democratic norms has now been set aside by the government. To hope then that a judgement or some idea of self-regulation will salvage the situation of the Indian media is probably unrealistic.

 

We are witnessing today in Kashmir what the state can do to make the media toe the line without imposing censorship. This is the pattern that will be replicated in the rest of the country, even as exhortations about respecting the freedom of the press will be pronounced from the pulpit.

The crime that had no name

 

Column for Mathrubhumi 

 

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

 

For a long time, it was a crime without a name.  Women suffered in silence. They never spoke of it. And they blamed themselves.

 

Now there is a name. I am referring to sexual harassment. And there is a law that deals with sexual harassment at the work place. Yet, despite this, there is generally a silence that continues to surround this crime.

 

The reason is usually because there is inequality in the power balance.  The harasser is powerful, and the one being harassed is powerless.  As a result, even though there is more open discussion today about sexual harassment, and greater awareness about the steps that can be taken by women subjected to it, the majority of cases are still never reported.

 

The reason is that the power balance has not changed. And by and large, society is unwilling to believe the woman who complains. She's always asked: Why now? Why did you not complain when it happened? Did anything really happen, in that were you sexually assaulted? Perhaps you misread the gestures of your superior, etc. In other words, the tables are always turned when the woman complains and she has to justify her actions rather than questions being asked about the motives and the actions of the harasser.

 

When a person with some power and importance gets named, then this dimension of powerlessness hits you in the face. For example, a few months ago, there were complaints about two of the famous Gundecha brothers from the world of Hindustani classical music. Students learning from them in their academy in Bhopal came out with these complaints.

 

As a result, and also due to the publicity that followed, a committee has been formed to look into these complaints.  That is an important step, even though questions have been raised about the composition of the committee.  Yet, it is a beginning because it respects the need for due process to address the problem. 

 

However, each time the names of individuals who also run institutions or head an institution, comes up, there are larger questions that often remain unaddressed.  This is the point that the well-known Carnatic singer T. M. Krishna raised in relation to the Gundecha brothers.  He emphasised that there had to be a change in the very system that allowed for blind obedience to a teacher, or master, to the point that you were afraid to raise questions about his actions even when they contravene the law.

 

The main challenge, I believe, is how we empower our girls, right from when they are in school, to understand their rights.  This is when we can help them grow up to believe that they do not have to accept sexual abuse or sexual harassment, that they are entitled to speak up and demand justice. But sometimes, as in these academies where young people learn the arts, and in our educational institutions, there is too much emphasis on blind obedience. Those who obey without questioning are considered "good" while those who question are seen as "trouble-makers". This attitude is the exact opposite of what is needed to make young people, and especially girls, feel they have the right to raise objections, ask questions and demand their rights.

 

If the law were properly implemented (and it is not), girls and women would feel more confident to speak up about sexual harassment. Unfortunately, that is not enough unless it is also accompanied by a change in societal attitudes and in the way we bring up our young people.  In the long-term, the only way to deal with such crimes is to work towards building a gender just society. It is difficult, I know, but surely not impossible.

Rot that’s destroying India’s TV news came from newspapers

 Broken News

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/amp/story/2020%2F09%2F10%2Frot-thats-destroying-indias-tv-news-came-from-newspapers?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

On September 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Patrika Gate in Jaipur built by the Patrika group of newspapers.  He said that the world was now listening to India with more attention. 

 

On that same day, the world was listening to India, by way of reports in the international media, including this report in Washington Post,  which noted that India had beaten Brazil in the number of Covid-19 positive cases. Only the United States remains ahead of India.

 

One would have expected the Indian media that Modi exhorted ought to have a "global reputation", would have front-paged this fact.  Yet although there was a mention in the print, it was mostly on inside pages if at all.

 

If you survey the front pages of most newspapers, you find that the pandemic has slipped off the radar of the media. This, at a time, when Dr V. K. Paul of the Niti Aayog has stated, "Our Covid-19 numbers are rising -- we haven't stablised yet. The pandemic is still on... a large population is still vulnerable."

 

Apart from absolute numbers, which must be viewed against the size of our population, what is worrying is the rate of the spread.  It is far higher than that of any other country.  In India, it took five months for Covid-19 positive cases to grow from 0 to 10 lakhs; 21 days to increase from 10-20 lakhs; 16 days to grow from 20-30 lakhs and only 13 days to exceed 40 lakhs. On any measure, this is a story that ought to have remained a prominent part of news.

 

What is also significant is that the growth is now seen not in the big metros but in the smaller towns. While big cities have reasonable health infrastructure, it is meagre in smaller towns.  One can well imagine the havoc the pandemic must be causing there. Yet, our metro-centered media is simply not reaching out to report.  Why has it taken its eye off the ball?

 

The consequences of pushing the pandemic story to the back are many.  For one, we do not fully know how people in these smaller towns are coping with the spread of the virus. Who will record their stories?

 

Second, the absence of a constant focus on the pandemic allows the authorities to pretend that things are under control when they are not.  In the early months of the pandemic, the media did stories that illustrated the shortcomings in the health care infrastructure.  This helped put pressure on governments and municipal authorities to invest in additional infrastructure such as isolation centres.  Despite this, reports about people not reaching medical centres in time appear from time to time suggesting that the last line connectivity, such as having adequate ambulances, is still a problem even in bigger cities. 

 

The questions about the death rate, whether the data is truly reflective of the reality, and also about the increase in testing still remain.  The Ken, which does in-depth stories on issues, carried this useful piece on testing, basically pointing out that the majority of tests being carried out are the antigen tests that really do not capture the extent of the spread of the infection.

 

And finally, by reducing the focus on the pandemic, the media has possibly contributed to the sense of complacency in the public. We are already witnessing this in cities like Mumbai where with the gradual opening up, many people believe that the crisis is now behind us. Overcrowding in markets and people walking around without masks are now every day occurrences. All those messages about prevention being the only real cure in the absence of a vaccine, and that physical distancing and face covering were essential appear to have been forgotten.

 

Apart from the pandemic, we now have the facts on the economy.  With GDP shrinking and growing unemployment -- a loss of 21 million salaried jobs according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) -- this is another big story waiting to be investigated and reported.  Yet where are these stories?  The New York Times sent a reporter to Surat and gave graphic details of what happens to people when the GDP shrinks.

 

None of this appears to have any relevance for the majority of TV news channels. They continue to focus obsessively on just one story, that of the death of Sushant Singh Rajput in June and the subsequent investigations around it. 

 

The way his former girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty has been hounded is now legend.  Here the Indian media has certainly built a "global reputation"; I doubt if there is any other media in a democratic country that can match this performance.

 

While people can choose not to watch television news, or at least the channels that are doing this kind of coverage, the impact of this trend in TV news has wider repercussions.  It is also the culmination of a process that began with print several decades back but has now found its true home in TV news.

 

And it is this process, of tabloidisation, of converting news into a commodity, of making media houses profit centres with no other concern than the bottom line, that is worrying.

 

Mainstream media is today interested primarily in catering to its "market"; the idea that it is the fourth estate, that it is there to speak truth to power has receded into some distant past.  Not all have succumbed to this entirely; as always there are honorable exceptions.  But the most popular channels, or the most read newspapers by and large defer to profit over relevant content.

 

The trend began in the 1990s, led by Times of India but swiftly followed by several others. Apart from calling the newspaper a "brand", a term that was necessarily foreign to many old-school journalists who still worked there, over time what counted as "news" was judged by its marketability.

 

Not just that, but sections were created that would enhance the sale of the newspaper. These had paid content about celebrities but displayed in a way that readers presumed they were being reported, as was other news.  Separate companies were set up to deal with these sections. 

 

Once you erase the line between journalism, and paid content, there is only one way you can go, and that is down. Or rather up, if you are interested in profits. 

 

As I see it, what began then is now manifesting in the crazy chase for ratings at any cost by television channels, started once again by a channel that belongs to the same group as Times of India, but which has now become the template for success imitated by all and finessed by the daily performances on Republic TV.

 

In fact, this recent editorial in Times of India is truly disingenuous in that it deplores "hysteric TV anchors" when the channel belonging to this group pioneered hysterical anchoring.

 

When journalism becomes entertainment and performance, you have truly entered a dystopian world.

 

Perhaps print media, and digital, can still bring back some sanity.  But with shrinking revenues, and the lead given by TV news, it is possible that news sense will be decided by the noise on the channels and not the reality on the ground.

 

Is there a way out?

 

I believe there is. Often the search for an alternative is felt more strongly when you reach an extreme, as the media surely has today. After the Emergency of 1975-77 for instance, the media was compelled to appreciate what freedom of the press really meant. The decade after that was probably one of the best so far as the Indian media is concerned in the quality of reporting and the range of reporting.  It was, of course, before the age of 24/7 private news channels.

 

This is an issue that should elicit much greater discussion not just amongst journalists, those that still believe that the media has a role to play as the fourth estate in a democracy, but also readers and viewers who look to the media not for entertainment, but for credible news and information.

 

 

 

 

 

Making sure that consent is informed

My column in Mathrubhumi, published on September 13

 

 

Every day we wake up and hope that there will be some end in sight to this global pandemic that has killed thousands in India and around the world in a few months, and infected many more.  But that hope lies shattered as we continue to hear about more infections, and more deaths.  Even in states, and regions within states, where there was some success in dealing with the pandemic, Covid-19 has reappeared.

 

On top this, we have the recent news that the Phase 3 trials for one of the most promising vaccine candidates, the one being developed by AstraZeneca, has been put on hold temporarily.  Although politicians who want the vaccine to be delivered quickly, so that they can claim credit for it, are disappointed, people should in fact be glad that the problem has been detected. And trust that science will fix it.  As the Chief Scientist of the World Health Organisation, Soumya Swaminathan has said, "I think this is good. Perhaps a wake-up call or lesson for everyone to recognise that there are ups and down in research, and that we have to be prepared for those."

 

Coincidentally, the participant in the trial who developed adverse symptoms is a woman. This reminded me of the importance of "informed consent" before anyone participates in these trials.

 

The Covid-19 vaccine trials are high profile.  The whole world is watching, and waiting.  Here no one can afford to take shortcuts.

 

Unfortunately, this is not true of other such drug trials that have been conducted in the past.  And especially when it comes to the issue of "informed consent". 

 

There are examples that come to mind from not so long ago when women took part in clinical trials for vaccines without really knowing what this was all about.

For example, in 2009, a clinical trial to test the efficacy of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine on young girls was conducted in Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh.

 

This vaccine held out the promise of preventing cervical cancer, something that afflicts and kills millions of women worldwide. So it was an important health intervention and its success would help women everywhere.

 

The problem was the choice of girls on whom this trial was conducted.  They were tribal girls, living in hostels away from their families. Neither they, nor their parents, understood what the trial was about. Yet, 14,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 were given three doses of the vaccine.

 

Things began to go wrong when four of the girls developed health problems after being given the vaccine and died.  It was not clear whether their death could be linked directly to the vaccine.  But what was clear was that these girls were not in the best of health and that they did not understand the possible complications of being injected with a live virus. The literature about the vaccine was in English, which neither they, nor their parents could read. In fact, even the health providers administering the vaccine could not read English.

 

Finally, due to the intervention of a women's group, the trials were suspended.  But they brought home forcefully the importance of respecting individuals, regardless of their social or economic status, if you put them through a human trial for a new vaccine.  One hopes that the fight to stop this trial is a lesson learned and that such a thing will not be repeated.

 

What we need to take home from such incidents is that the disempowered, including poor women and girls, often become the easiest choice for experimentation because they do not have the ability to object.

Feasting and hunger

 My column in Mathrubhumi, published on August 30

 

 

The season for feasting and festivities is upon us.  But this year, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be subdued.  This provides us with an opportunity to think about those who are literally going hungry every night because of the pandemic.

 

In some ways, there is nothing new in this. There are millions of poor people in India who can barely afford one decent meal. But recent studies are painting an alarming picture of the extent to which hunger is spreading since the pandemic, and how women and children in particular are being affected.

 

According to a recent report by Oxfam, an estimated 100 million people in India are facing what it calls "food distress".  In other words, these millions are literally without anything to eat. The situation is especially acute for women, and women-headed households.

 

These statistics are particularly distressing because since 2012, India had begun to make some progress in dealing with malnutrition, especially amongst children, and hunger.  Many programmes were launched and at least in the better-administered states, the results were visible amongst children and women.

 

The largest number of malnourished children in the world live in India and on the Global Hunger Index 2019, India's rank was 102 out of 117 countries. This is truly shameful, given how often our leaders keep talking about making this country into a global economic giant.  But in truth, while some Indians are being recognised around the world for the riches they have accumulated, millions of Indians, especially the most vulnerable, continue to remain hungry.

 

Apart from children, this hunger crisis has also hit women in ways that we need to recognise.

 

Recent data released by the government reveals that women's share in MNREGA by way of total number of person-days has declined. It is currently at an eight year low.  Women constitute 49 per cent of MNREGA workers.  Yet today, they are getting less work, and therefore earning less than they used to just four years ago.  These figures are an average for India.  In a state like Kerala, for instance, women's share is 91 per cent, the highest in the country.

 

This decline in women's share in work is partly explained by the return of male migrant workers to their villages.  With no other work available, many of them have enrolled in MNREGA. As a result, women would have been displaced.

 

But the consequences of this are far greater than just the wages that these women have lost.  When a woman works, and can bring in income to her family, she enjoys better status.  She is recognised as contributing to the welfare of the family, although sadly, the unpaid work that all women do to take care of members of their families is never counted. 

 

When she loses even these small amounts that she is able to earn, she becomes far more vulnerable, especially if she lives in an abusive relationship.  Apart from being trapped by tradition, that expects women to suffer and accept anything that comes their way in the marital home, including violence, she is unable to assert her rights as she has lost any semblance of economic independence.

 

When women lose paid work, there is also a direct impact on children.  Countless studies have established that women in paid work use their income to feed their families, especially their children.  In fact, women neglect their own health and nutrition in the belief that the children, and their husbands, must be looked after first.

 

The country today faces its most serious health challenge with the Covid-19 pandemic. But apart from health, we must not forget the long-term consequences of this crisis that include pushing millions more into poverty. 

 

 

 

 

 

How Big Media invisibilises the sufferings of India’s poor and marginalised

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry.com on August 27, 2020

Link:
https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/08/27/how-big-media-invisibilises-the-suffering-of-indias-poor-and-marginalised

 

Suddenly, beginning this week, there was so much excitement over politics that one could almost forget that India had crossed the 3 million mark in Covid-19 infections.

 

The Congress Party, dismissed by many as moribund, appeared to have stirred itself when 23 of its senior leaders suggested a serious re-think about its functioning. Mainstream political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, whose leaders have been detained and some like the former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti remain so, were able to get around severe restrictions and issue the first political statement on their state since it was locked down and splintered on August 5, 2019.

 

And, of course, in the midst of this, we were also treated to visuals of the prime minister feeding peacocks after his morning exercise routine. Evidently the turmoil and troubles facing ordinary people in this country do not penetrate the salubrious surroundings within which the man who leads this country resides.

 

But all this political and persona-building activity aside, the news cycle was barely dented by the ugly reality of India that pushed through every now and then with a story here, or a news item there.

 

As someone who has been a part of the media for five decades, and looks at mainstream media critically, I am always interested in the stories that are told only in passing, or not reported at all. I believe this is what illustrates best the preoccupations and compulsions that drive mainstream media and those who fund it and not just the news that dominates. 

 

On the night of August 7, a Boeing 737 operated by Air India Express crash-landed at Kozhikode airport in Kerala, killing 18 people including the pilot and co-pilot.  This was big news and dominated the news cycle for days.  Follow up stories on the survivors, on how local people helped, on theories about why it crashed, about the pilot, Deepak Sathe who had previously been with the Indian Air Force and other stories appeared in most newspapers.  This was to be expected.

 

On the previous night, August 6, over 250 km south of Kozhikode, in the verdant hills around Munnar in Kerala, a huge landslide occurred.  It buried a settlement of tea garden workers. Munnar is known for its tea estates that earn millions of rupees in profits from domestic and international sales.

 

The disaster occurred on a night of heavy rain over Pettimuddi, where workers, employed by the Kannan Deven Hill Plantation lived.

 

Eighteen people died in the Kozhikode crash.  Over 70 people were buried in the Pettimudi landslide.  The media told us stories and the names of the 18 who died in the air crash.  But it took many days before we even knew who were these men, women and children who lost their lives in Pettimudi.

 

While Kozhikode airport was accessible by virtue of its location, Pettimudi even in the best of times was remote. According to some reports, the nearest BSNL optical fibre link, providing Internet access, ends 30 km from the site of the disaster.  Although recently some mobile towers were erected to provide connectivity to the workers who lived there, most of the time there was no electricity and therefore no network.

 

None of this is surprising.  Yet what is heart-wrenching is that the dead in Pettimudi remained faceless and nameless for days.

 

The stories emerged much later, on a couple of digital news platforms like this story in HuffPost India, and this in the Lede. They inform us that these plantation workers are landless Dalits from one district in Tamil Nadu and that the conditions in which they lived had remained unchanged for decades. Till today, more than 16,000 plantation workers in Kerala live in rows of single rooms called "layam". Anyone who has visited such plantations, not just in Kerala but also across India, would tell you about the huge disparity in the living conditions of the workers and the managers.  The British ran these estates during colonial times.  Today, 73 years later, it is as if nothing has changed.

 

I give this as one example of how the reality of death, and life, in India is increasingly being tilted by media coverage to obscure one reality while giving precedence to another. What better illustration than the ongoing obsession in the media, and the shockingly misogynistic coverage of the death of an actor, Sushant Singh Rajput. The Pettimuddi disaster reminds us yet again that poor people in India are dying unnoticed, and sometimes even uncounted, while the gaze of "the nation" and its media rests elsewhere.

 

In fact on August 15, when the prime minister declared from the Red Fort that within 1000 days, all villages in the country would be connected by fibre optic cable, this heart-breaking story appeared in Indian Express.  It is a report from the village in Chhattisgarh from which 12-year-old Jamlo Madkami had gone to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to work on a farm growing chillies.  After the lockdown, and after waiting one month for wages that were never paid, she walked back a distance of 100 km with other women from the village only to die on the way from dehydration and malnutrition.

 

Her village has no electricity, no school and is 45 km from the nearest hospital. Once in every two months a mini truck negotiates the dirt road to bring items for sale like soap.  Under these circumstances, what meaning does a promise of Internet connectivity have for Jamlo's family or the survivors of the Pettimuddi landslide?

 

The other important story that ought to have been the subject of much more discussion is the ruling of the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court. It is relevant not just for the fact that it shows how the executive misuses laws for political purposes, but also how media in India plays a role in this.

 

In its judgment on August 21, in response to an appeal by 35 members of the Tablighi Jamaat, including 29 foreigners, who had been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Epidemic Diseases Act, the Foreigners Act and the Disaster Management Act, the court minced no words about the role the media had played in the "big propaganda" against this sect.

 

It’s a sobering judgment that ought to result in some introspection by mainstream media.  Yet predictably, although the judgment was reported in the print media and on digital news portals, there was little by way of comment or analysis of this important ruling. 

 

At a time when the media has played more than just a passive role in fuelling Islamophobia in this country, the manner in which the entire episode of the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Delhi in March and the subsequent charge that its members were responsible for the spread of Covid-19, remains an ugly reminder of the depths to which our media has fallen.

 

While some of the "propaganda", as the court terms it, was willfully promoted by pliant media houses, even those that consider themselves somewhat independent fell into the trap of furthering the narrative.  This happened by way of some of the graphics used, as well as the constant juxtaposing of the increase in Covid-19 cases and the travels of members of the Tablighi Jamaat.

 

The price for this was paid by lakhs of ordinary Muslims, men and women who were just going about living their lives under difficult circumstances but became targets of hate yet again. Who can forget the videos of Muslim vendors being chased away from middle class colonies for no other reason than their religious identity, not to speak of the lynchings that continue to occur with frightening frequency?

 

The judgment ought to be required reading for future journalists, for it illustrates how laws are twisted to meet political agendas, and then how the media furthers these agendas.

So many Kamalas

Column for Mathrubhumi

 

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

 

Many Indians celebrated the nomination of Kamala Harris as the vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party for the November presidential election in the US. They did so because her mother was an Indian from Chennai, who went to the US for higher studies, stayed on, and married a Jamaican academic.  Kamala is the older of her two daughters.

 

But for every Kamala who makes it, either here or in America, there are literally millions of potential Kamalas whose dreams never come true. Not because they lack the intelligence, but because they were never given the opportunity. It was denied to them not because they, or their parents did something wrong, but because they were born into poverty, and remained there.  And a key component that could have helped them rise above poverty, a good education, was out of their reach.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many more poor children behind in their desire to get an education as I mentioned in my last column. And often for no other reason than not having a gadget that will allow them to continue to learn.

 

You don't have to travel to a remote area of India to see this great "unlearning" taking place.  Take Mumbai, the richest city in India. Millions come to the city looking for work. They find it, even though they struggle to find a decent place to live. But by being in this large metropolis, they have a chance to provide their children with an education they might not have received in the villages from where they originally migrated to Mumbai.

 

The backbone of education for poor children are the schools run by the municipal corporation. They have many deficiencies, but they guarantee a minimum level of education to these poor children.

 

Today, because of the pandemic, all these schools are closed.  Children who go to expensive private schools continue with their classes online. For the children who go to municipal schools, there is simply no option but to sit out the entire term.

 

An organisation called Pratham, which has worked for years in the area of education, recently conducted a survey for the municipal corporation to assess how many children were affected.  Out of 2,46,626 children studying in municipal schools, 81,603 could not access online classes. This is a huge number for a city like Mumbai, virtually one out of every three.

 

Amongst these, 52 per cent were children of migrant workers who had left the city with their families because they had no work. It is unlikely that these children will be able to pursue education in their villages. The survey also revealed that 76 per cent of students did not access to smartphones.

 

Even in Dharavi, a place that is recognised worldwide and is often the focus of media attention, 60 per cent of the students at one school that was surveyed had no smart phones.  The common refrain of parents was that when they had no money for food, how could they afford a smart phone.

 

Fortunately, the municipal corporation has decided to set up learning centres so that these students can attend physical classes. But this might already be too little, too late.

 

For me, personally, Dharavi has a special resonance. One of the things that struck me in 1999, when I was researching for my book "Rediscovering Dharavi", was the large number of schools in what is called Asia's largest slum. There were Tamil, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi and English medium schools.  Every family I interviewed, whatever their religion or caste, was determined to get their children educated. They saw this as the only way forward. 

 

I wonder today how many potential Kamalas have lost their chance to move ahead in their lives.

 

In its coverage of Ayodhya bhoomi pujan, the Indian media hit a new level of sycophancy

Broken News

 

https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/08/13/in-its-coverage-of-ayodhya-bhoomi-pujan-the-indian-media-hit-a-new-level-of-sycophancy

 

Has some of India's mainstream media, especially electronic media, sunk so deep into the swamp of sycophancy that it will never be able to pull itself out?

 

August 5, 2020 may well be remembered for many reasons not just for the bhoomi pujan for the Ram temple in Ayodhya by the elected head of a "secular" state, but also for the most vivid exhibition of hero worship with not even a hint of balance or independence by much of the country's mainstream media. As always, there were exceptions but their numbers diminish by the day.

 

Newslaundry has already commented on the breathless and over-the-top coverage given to the event in Ayodhya on August 5.

 

Print media, by virtue of its very format, tends to be a little more restrained, particularly the English language newspapers.  But read the newspapers in the Indian languages, especially in Hindi, and the story is very different. They are uniformly a sea of saffron on August 6, the day after the laying of the foundation stone by Modi. The favourite image is of the prime minister, dressed in a gold silk kurta and saffron lungi prostrating himself before the idol.

 

IJR (Indian Journalism Review), an often caustic and insightful blog by senior journalist Krishna Prasad, has compiled the front pages of several Indian language papers that illustrate this. The temple is not the story, it is the man dedicating the temple who is. And that is clearly how it was meant to be.

 

The question we have to ask is how, we in the Indian media, reached this point? How much does it have to do with the way politics has played out since 2014 and how much with our willing surrender to the agendas set by the ruling party at the Centre?

 

One could argue that the media has no option but to report on an event such as the foundation ceremony in Ayodhya because the prime minister was central to it. But it was not an official event. And it represented a troubled and violent history.  Should none of that have found a mention in the headline, something that most people read and remember?

 

For instance, The Telegraph, which often has arresting front-page headlines and graphics did not disappoint this time with this headline:

 

"The book that begins with We, the people, is

 

THE GOD THAT WE FAILED

 

Raja and rishi are no longer separate in the Republic."

 

Others ranged from "Modi lays first brick for Ram Rajya" in Deccan Chronicle to "PM fulfills national aspiration" in Hitvada. The Times of India mentioned Modi equating the mandir campaign with the freedom movement and the Indian Express simply stated, "Modi marks the mandir".

 

Compare this to "Modi initiates temple at mosque site" in Financial Times or "Modi sets Hindu temple in stone at razed mosque site" in The Times, London. Several other international publications included mention of the mosque, referring to the Babri Masjid that was demolished by Hindutva foot soldiers on December 6, 1992.  By doing so, these headlines place the context of the event right at the top, rather than as an afterthought.

 

And that context, as well as this headline in The Washington Post,"In Modi's quest to transform India, a Hindu temple rises" is the real story of August 5. To be fair, in the reporting in several newspapers the history relating to the demolition of the Babri Masjid was included. But in these days of shrinking attention spans, it is the headline and the photographs that make an impression and not necessarily the text beneath.

 

The editorials, which signify the stand taken by different periodicals on this kind of event, are read even less.  But they are important nonetheless as they reflect some of the thinking during these times.  Historians in the future would read them to grasp how far the Indian media supported uncritically not just the construction of the temple on the ruins of the mosque but the heightened importance given to the process with the prime minister who represents all the people of India, not just the Hindu majority, choosing to lay its foundation stone.

 

Modi compared the movement to build the temple with the freedom movement. He spoke about a "new India" and spoke of freedom from "1200 years of slavery". Some questions were asked about this, but precious few. The iconography of an incumbent prime minister comparing a divisive and violent movement that led to it culmination on August 5 with the freedom movement is what will be remembered.

 

What is the shape of this new India that the prime minister promised? One of the most prescient articles on this appeared in Indian Express a day before the bhoomi pujan. Suhas Palshikar, the well-known political scientist analysed what he saw as the beginning of a new republic with the laying of the foundation stone in Ayodhya. 

 

He outlined the five pillars that will hold up this new republic. These are,

 according to Palshikar, transforming India into "a repository of repression"; the deligitimisation of "ideas of dissent and critique"; the "willingness of the judiciary to look the other way"; "the politics of avoidance displayed by most political parties"; and the foundation of this new republic "on a militant culture of majoritarianism".

 

How does all this apply to the media? What role has it played, and continues to play to build this "new India" of Modi's dreams or the new republic that Palshikar predicts?

 

A decade back, or even six years ago before 2014 and the ascendance of Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, would the media have been so pliant and unquestioning? Wouldn't more people have voiced their concern about this event being elevated to one of "national" significance despite its obvious sectarian nature? Would we not have reminded readers about the events of 1992 even as they observed the celebrations around this temple? Instead, as Mihir Sharma points out in this article in Bloomberg, "Now, Hindu nationalism’s capture of the soul of India is so complete that television anchors broke into devotional song and newspaper front pages looked more like religious calendars than broadsheets."

 

Does this mean that August 5 marks game, set and match to the victory of Hindu nationalism in all spheres, including the media?

 

It need not and it should not. The cornerstone of not falling into the trap of reinforcing this majoritarian narrative that assaults us each day, especially by way of the electronic media, is for the sections of the media that still hold that an independent media is essential to a democracy to inject the necessary context and scepticism into the manner in which events like the Ayodhya spectacle are reported. The editorial decision is reflected in the headline, the choice of photographs and the amount of space given to the event as well as the tone of the reporting and not just the editorial comment.

 

In conclusion, I should also point out that August 5 was also one year since the clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir with the reading down of Article 370.  People there, including the media, have struggled to keep their heads above water, cut-off as they are without internet and with so many in jail. A year later, it is shameful that the court and the government are still debating whether 4G internet connectivity should be restored. This deserved more than just a mention on August 5. Yet once again, barring the usual exceptions, mainstream media did what was expected of it by erasing from our consciousness the continuing sorrow and suffering of the people in that region.