In the scramble for ‘exclusives’, media must follow caution while reporting from Manipur

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 28, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/28/in-the-scramble-for-exclusives-media-must-follow-caution-while-reporting-from-manipur

This “breaking news” took more than two months to break. I am referring, of course, to the so-called “viral video”, a term that hides the real content of that video. For it ought to be remembered as “the sexual assault video” of Kuki women, disrobed and paraded naked by a mob of Meitei men in the ethnic strife-torn state of Manipur on May 4, 2023. One of them was later gang-raped.

Two weeks ago, when I wrote my last column, one could count the number of stories, especially in national media, on the ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur. Today, post the video going public, this north-eastern state has become the focus of politics and media in the “mainland”.

Much has been spoken and written since July 19 when the video was shared on social media platforms. It provoked shock, disgust, anger, sorrow but also frustration that this atrocity was not reported earlier.  It could and should have been as subsequent reports have revealed that an FIR had been registered on May 18, a fortnight after the assault, but that it took the Manipur police more than a month before it took some tentative steps. It finally moved and made arrests, as is now known, only when Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh was compelled to take note. 

A question that should be asked about the video is what the man who shot the video, who was obviously part of the mob, was thinking. 

Was he inspired by the ghastly videos we have seen with sickening regularity on social media in the last 10 years, of the lynching of Muslim men by mobs of self-appointed cow-protectors? These men loaded their videos on social media without any compunction for they knew there would be no consequences. It was also a way for them to demonstrate their masculinity and virility. 

In this case, it could have been all this as well as demonstrating the time-worn method of teaching the men of the “other” side a lesson, by assaulting and raping “their” women. We still do not yet know how the video travelled from the phone of the man who shot it to social media. Could he and his friends, much like the lynch mobs in “mainland” India, have done this to show off without realising what the consequences would be? 

Now there is a new twist with the Centre asking the CBI to investigate.  The man who allegedly shot the video has been apprehended, and his phone seized. In the end we might never know the true story.

Another question: although the volume of coverage on Manipur has exploded since July 19, has it helped viewers and readers to understand what has been happening there for almost three months? Or has it, as happens with most issues in this country, been reduced to a story about politicians and politics? 

Predictably, most television channels have reduced this to a debating point between political opponents. The usual whataboutery is being witnessed, exemplified par excellence by Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Smriti Irani’s dramatic statement in the Rajya Sabha on July 26 where, amongst other things, she claimed Rahul Gandhi put Manipur on fire. 

The signal for this strategy – of always blaming the opposition for anything that is uncomfortable for the government to address – came, of course, from the prime minister. He finally “broke his silence” a full 79 days after the troubles erupted in Manipur, 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 adding that women were unsafe in states like Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh (that happen to be opposition-ruled) and that all chief ministers should take steps to ensure women’s safety. He appears to have missed the main point – that the Manipur video was not about the safety of individual women, but about the assault on women during an ethnic conflict despite the presence of police and in a state governed by his party. 

We must also acknowledge that despite more coverage of Manipur in this last week, the media has been unable to push this government to act. Would things have been different if mainstream media had recognised earlier the gravity of the situation in Manipur and reported more extensively? 

What is obvious is that it was not anything reported by any established media, but a video amplified on social media that finally drove Modi to make a statement of sorts. Yet he continues to resist facing parliamentarians on the floor of the House.  

Also, although even government friendly television channels have been compelled now to mention the “M” word after ignoring it for two long months, what they are putting out is more noise than substance, adding nothing to the understanding of viewers about the nature of the conflict or the extent of its impact on thousands of ordinary people. It also puts absolutely no pressure on the government to act.

And as was evident even after Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Manipur on June 29, the discussions on these TV channels centre around politicians and political parties, and not the central issue of why things have deteriorated in Manipur to a point where we are witnessing something close to a civil war. Nor has anyone asked why Modi continues to use every chance to attack the opposition, lately mocking the acronym INDIA, at a time when all sides need to sit together to seek a solution on an issue like Manipur.

Unlike television, several national newspapers like Indian Express, The Hinduand others have been reporting extensively and providing explainers that provide useful background. And despite limited resources, digital media platforms like Scroll, Wire, Print, Quint and Newslaundry have maintained a steady focus on Manipur.

However, in the current media scramble for exclusive stories, even digital platforms can fall into the trap of overlooking basic journalistic norms before running with a story. 

For instance, in this troubling story in The Print about the disappearance of two young people, the reporter acknowledges that the video mentioned by the girl's family that makes them believe their daughter is dead is unverified.  Given the proliferation of fake videos, and the fact that one such video triggered the violence in early May, should not reporters be careful before running with such a story? Apart from checking with the police, there are now ways to verify the authenticity of videos that go “viral”.  Note that a gruesome video of a beheading of a girl from Myanmar was passed off as one from Manipur and there has been an FIR filed in this case.

The Print story also quotes an anonymous member of a Meitei group saying that the girl had been raped. Should such information be shared in a story when the police haven't even found the body? In any case, given the way rumours have already triggered sexual violence, shouldn't journalists be exceptionally careful before amplifying unverified information like this? Even in so-called "normal" times there are basic norms that have to be followed when reporting rape. This becomes even more crucial during conflict to ensure that the media does not exacerbate already inflamed emotions. 

As Manipur continues to simmer, the media, both mainstream and independent will be challenged to maintain their credibility even as they try to convey a truthful picture of what is happening in this divided state.

Meanwhile, how have people in Manipur, and the local media located mostly in Imphal, the state’s capital responded to the video? This report in Scroll is significant as it reveals the extent to which the ethnic divide has inserted itself into the media in Manipur. 

As for Modi’s statement, the comments were interesting. Imphal Times had a front-page collage showing Meitei deaths and inside, in an editorial it stated: 

“After 75 days of eerie silence, Mr Modi finally spoke, but to the dismay of many, he addressed only one incident – the purported video showing two women parading naked…Mr Modi’s selective response raises questions about his motives. Many see his statements as an attempt to play the gender card and manipulate emotions to divert attention from the core issue – the urgent need for peace and stability in Manipur.” 

Kuki women, speaking to independent journalist Greeshma Kuthar, who has been based in Manipur since June 4, have a different take, as we hear in this long podcast in Suno India. While they are glad that the media and the government have woken up to the situation in the state, they resent the obsession with incidents of sexual violence. One of them points out that speaking repeatedly to the survivors forces them to live through the trauma again. And they appeal to journalists from the “mainland” to try to understand the larger picture of what’s going on in the state and to report on it, rather than focussing just on one aspect because of the video.

They suggest, for instance, that there should be more reporting on how over 50,000 people living in an estimated 349 temporary relief camps are surviving. On his visit to Manipur on June 29, Rahul Gandhi went to both Kuki and Meitei camps and as a result we saw some visuals.  Since then, although there have been a few reports (read here , here and here) about conditions in these camps, we clearly need more. We do not know, for instance, whether there is any discrimination in the release of funds to the camps in the Kuki areas which appear to be largely run by civil society organisations.  

Manipur is a story that will not disappear. From all indications, its ripple effects are already being felt in other states in the region. 

It reminds us in the “mainland” media that we cannot continue to view what’s happening there as a “breaking” story needing a one-time investment to overcome the “tyranny of distance”, the phrase used to explain the late and minimal coverage. It ought to have been an integral part of our reporting. If it had, perhaps the May 4 sexual assault video would not have had the shock value that it did.  

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. 

The people of Manipur should be the news – not just visits by politicians

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 30, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/30/the-people-of-manipur-should-be-the-news-not-just-visits-by-politicians

For close to two months, a state of the Indian union has been burning – literally. It is caught in what is being described as a civil war. Yet, ask an average person living in what people in the northeast of India call the “mainland” whether they are aware of what’s been happening in Manipur, and you are likely to get a puzzled look.

Manipur is the biggest story that India’s mainstream media, especially television, failed to cover adequately. As always, there were exceptions. But by and large, the channels most viewed barely touched it. 

Print media was better. But you could count the newspapers that focussed attention on Manipur in their news coverage. While the comment pages did carry articles by experts and academics, largely missing was the granular reporting that’s only possible with feet on the ground. 

Although most national English language daily newspapers do have correspondents or even bureaus in Guwahati, few of these journalists have ventured to Manipur, just a short distance away, during these two months.  Surely reduced budgets for news gathering cannot be the only explanation. As a result, over 60 days, Manipur has drifted in and out of the news, mostly out.

As I had argued in an earlier column, Manipur is not an easy story to cover. It is a state with a complex and layered history. The current conflict cannot be reduced to a simple binary of Meitei versus Kuki. At a time when divisions, real and imagined, have been inflamed to the point where no one is prepared to listen to reason, journalists attempting to report in a responsible way face a tough challenge. 

Journalists covering any kind of conflict are often faced with difficult choices.  For instance, if the only safe way to travel to a conflict zone is with the security forces, do you agree to that?  If you do, then in places like Manipur, or Kashmir, or even Chhattisgarh, you risk alienating the local population whose relationship with these security forces is fraught. In any case, what kind of story can you get barring what your hosts are willing to let you see? 

Of course, all journalists don’t ask themselves these questions. But it is evident that the choices are not straightforward. 

For instance, last week in Manipur, five journalists who accompanied an army contingent to write about its operations had to face an irate local crowd. They were heckled and people demanded that they erase whatever they had recorded. They were left with no option but to leave with the army. 

Although the All Manipur Working Journalists’ Union issued a statement condemning what happened, this is something for which journalists ought to be prepared. Particularly in the kind of situation that prevails in Manipur, where people on both sides of the conflict have reason to resent the security forces. 

The incident is emblematic of the challenges of reporting at times of conflict. But it also points to the need for journalists, who really want people to speak to them without fear, to find ways where they are not seen as part of the very system that people find oppressive. 

Earlier, Guwahati-based Afrida Hussain, deputy editor of India Today, received threatening phone calls after a story she wrote.  A large crowd had gathered outside her hotel in Imphal. She wrote in a column, “Aren’t we supposed to bring out the truth? No one questioned me when I went to Manipur on May 5 and covered Kuki militants. But one thing against the majority community got me into trouble.”

The media plays an essential role in communicating the seriousness of a crisis or conflict when it occurs in what is considered an area that is literally on the periphery. States in the northeast of India have constantly complained that the rest of India, and mainstream media, fail in reporting on their problems.

Yet, the reality of the way mainstream media functions, and how it decides what news is important, or “national”, often precludes news from far-flung areas.  Almost automatically, places that can be easily accessed by media houses, most of whom are headquartered in the national capital, get detailed coverage. The costs for such coverage are not high, and media houses now openly cater to what they deem is their “market”.  

Such an approach has cut down reporting not just on parts of India like the northeast, but even on issues that require investment of time and money – such as the processes that are pushing people into poverty, or the continuing problems of the marginalised and those without a voice and social capital. These factors are also affecting coverage of the current crisis in Manipur. 

The conflict in Manipur is a national issue. If mainstream media had accepted this, even a month into the crisis, it is possible that there would have been more pressure on the centre to intervene. Instead, the Manipur crisis has been largely reduced to a political free-for-all.  Most of what we read in the media are statements made by politicians on opposite sides of the political divide. An occasional report gives you an insight of the suffering experienced by people in the state. But the dominant narrative is the political.

Manipur makes it to the front pages only when an important politician is involved.  Thus, home minister Amit Shah’s much belated visit to Manipur at the end of May made it to the top of the news. And on June 29, when Rahul Gandhi went to Manipur, although the reporting on his trip has mostly focussed on the police preventing him from travelling by road to Churachandpur and BJP spokespersons lambasting him for his “insensitivity” for the timing of the visit.  

Once again, what politicians say becomes the news and not the voices of the people of Manipur.

For that, you must turn to the independent digital platforms. For instance, Karan Thapar has focussed almost exclusively on Manipur in his interviews for the Wire. He has interviewed a wide range of people representing different perspectives, academics who have spoken of the history of Manipur, activists who have decried the lack of serious attention by the centre, and recently a former member of parliament, a Kuki, who had to leave her home and take shelter in a camp for the displaced. Together, these interviews provide an invaluable record of the many layers that together make up the Manipur story.

Scroll has also provided reports from on the ground including this reporter’s diary by Arunabh Saikia that illustrates the challenges journalists seeking to do independent reporting face. 

A recent long-form piece in Frontline magazine that is also worth reading for the insights it provides about Manipur is this one by Angshuman Chowdhury, where he gives the background about Kuki grievances. The writer complains that the media has “avoided an honest discussion on how the government dismissed serious Kuki grievances for years, allowing their discontent to reach boiling point. Instead, the media continues to obsess over guns and drugs, as if all of Manipur’s problems would disappear if one removes these two from the equation.”

Let me end by quoting from a powerful piece written by a respected senior journalist from the northeast, Patricia Mukhim, editor of Shillong Times. In this piece in Scroll, Mukhim spells out the troubled history of the northeast region and its relationship with the centre. What is happening today is grounded in this history. And she ends with these lines: “Delhi could not care about lives lost in the periphery which shares just 1% of its boundary with ‘India’.”

That is a devastating conclusion, one that ought to make all of us, journalists and concerned citizens, stop in our tracks and reflect on what these two months of neglect of a region under siege means for the future of this country. 

The Guillotine or slow bleed?

 I wrote this for the newly launched website of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL)

Link: https://pucl.org/manage-writings/the-guillotine-or-slow-bleed/

The guillotine or a slow bleed? A sane person would choose neither. More so if they lived in a country that they believed was a democracy. Yet, in democratic India, the very concept of press freedom has faced both – a dramatic cessation and a gradual, though deliberate, suffocation. 

As we approach the 48^th anniversary of “The Emergency”, the state of emergency invoked by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on the night of June 25, 1975, we should reflect on the past, but also ask whether the lessons from that past have informed this country’s future trajectory.

In June 1975, freedom of the press was suspended. It suddenly did not exist anymore. We were told that if you wrote critically about the government, you could personally face arrest, as well as the closure of the publication for which you wrote. In those days, the media consisted only of print. A nascent television (Doordarshan), and radio (All India Radio) were entirely controlled by the government.

Editors and journalists were arrested, even before they had a chance to write a word. Publications closed, either out of choice because they did not wish to be censored or were compelled to do so because they had violated censorship laws or were rendered financially unviable.

Smaller publications, often gutsier and more willing to speak up than the larger ones, were the most vulnerable. They depended on “goodwill” advertising, which is not determined by circulation figures. They also received advertisements from public sector companies and banks. The latter were ordered not to advertise in these publications and the former, mostly private companies, were told that if they continued, they did so at their own risk. Most chose not to take the risk.

All this was then. When press freedom was virtually guillotined.

Today, press freedom is intact, apparently. But it has slowly bled since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi, won the majority in Parliament.  What remains can only be revived with a huge infusion of fresh blood.

The most dramatic change has taken place in television, a medium that reaches the maximum audience compared to other media in India.  Pre-2014, privately owned television channels were highly critical of the government of the day, at that time the United Progressive Alliance led by Dr Manmohan Singh.  Every mistake, imagined or otherwise, was amplified and discussed in detail.

Print media undertook investigations into corruption, exposed the shortcomings of government programmes, poked holes in government propaganda and highlighted human rights violations.

Post-2014, most mainstream television channels appeared to do a complete turnaround. Initially it was awe and praise for the ruling party and its leader. When Modi announced demonetisation overnight in 2016, there was barely a critical voice heard on these channels. They gave Modi the benefit of the doubt and allowed airtime for him to put forward his point of view. But only that viewpoint was heard. There was practically nothing about how millions of ordinary people suffered the consequences of this decision.

Till then, print media continued to provide space for critical comment and reporting. But even then, you could see that these spaces were shrinking.

By 2019, when the BJP returned with a much larger majority in Parliament, the change in the media was almost universal.  Television became an extension of the government’s propaganda machine.  It fuelled narratives, especially the Hindutva agenda of demonising Muslims, that the government and the ruling party wanted amplified. And it literally drowned out the few token voices that were willing to say something to the contrary.

Some of this was the consequence of owners of these channels being convinced that the BJP and Modi were the answer for India. And some from the pressures of business and the fear that falling foul of a powerful government would not serve their best interests.  Whatever the reasons, or a combination thereof, by 2019 the capitulation of mainstream TV, barring one channel, was almost complete. This was finally completed in December 2022, when that last, lonely, critical voice was muffled by a business ally of Modi taking it over. 

Print media does not have the reach of television.  Some spaces remain for critical writing and opinion. But they are shrinking by the day as these media houses become increasingly dependent on government advertising. Private advertisers must also be watching their backs, much as they did during the Emergency, by not being seen to support critical media.

The equivalent of the small publications that stood up and spoke out during the Emergency, are the digital news platforms. At the moment, these are virtually the only spaces where legitimate criticism of government policy and programmes, and of human rights violations, can be reported.  Their financial future is precarious given the government’s ability to pressure anyone supporting any form of dissent.

Yet, although the reach of these platforms is nowhere close to that of television, the current government is determined to restrict their reach even further.  This has come in the form of a proposed amendment to the IT rules that allows the government to set up a “Fact Checking Unit”. This body can decide that anything reported on a government programme is “fake”, “false” or “misleading” and compel any intermediary or social media platform to take it down.  Currently, this amendment is being challenged in court. But if it were to go through, it would be a virtual death blow for independent digital platforms that depend on social media to distribute their content.

Indira Gandhi had proclaimed that she invoked the emergency to “save democracy”. The Modi government believes that every draconian step it takes is saving, what it chooses to call the “mother of democracy”.

The intent is the same; only the methods differ. By learning from the past, this government has realised that it has no need to guillotine press freedom. It merely needs to bleed it slowly till the concept itself becomes lifeless.

 

Go to Kashmir to understand what life is like under an Emergency

 On the eve of the 48th anniversary of the Emergency, here's something I wrote for the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) website.

Link: https://nwmindia.org/features/nwmi-writes/the-emergency-writing-back-to-the-future/

Forty-eight years after Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on the night of June 25, 1975, people still ask: What was it like?

If today, in the year 2023, you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Emergency, go and spend some time in what was once the state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Not as a tourist, or a pilgrim, but as a citizen who wants to understand what life is like for people in that region.

Since August 5, 2019, when the rights provided to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 were taken away overnight, and a full-fledged state was reduced to a union territory, there is a virtual state of emergency in the region, especially in Kashmir.

Think about it.  Even as the central government led by Narendra Modi took this step, all political leaders who opposed the move were arrested.

The media, that has never had an easy run because of the presence of security forces, virtually fell silent. Internet was suspended making it impossible for journalists to file stories. They were questioned, intimidated, and detained.

Over time, what little remained of an independent media was snuffed out, while journalists who dared to question were charged under public safety and terror laws.

Four Kashmiri journalists are still in jail, and dozens more have had to either leave Kashmir or tread carefully as the sword of arrest or interrogation hangs over them all the time. Even leaving the country is not an option as several have found themselves on a no-fly list without prior intimation.

Many prominent Kashmiri journalists now write for international publications as their stories are rarely picked up by mainstream Indian media barring some independent digital news platforms.

Newspapers in Kashmir survive only if they toe the line as they are now entirely dependent on government advertising. Kashmir Times, the oldest English language paper founded by the veteran journalist Ved Bhasin and now run by his daughter Anuradha Bhasin, was forced to shut its Srinagar office when the lease was cancelled without explanation.

The Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar, an important meeting place for journalists, was also arbitrarily closed.

 

Kashmir Press Club. Photo by Quratulain Rehbar

A media policy was put in place in 2020 that would penalise any publication or journalist who reported what the government considered “misleading” or “false”. In other words, nothing critical of government policies or programmes could be reported.

How is any of this different from what happened in the days following the declaration of emergency in June 1975?

Then too, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. Most of them remained in jail for the entire period of the emergency.

The press soon fell silent as press censorship was imposed. Any publication violating censorship “guidelines”, which were frequently revised and updated, faced closure. No one could question the logic of these guidelines. You just had to follow them.

Even if journalists working for prominent newspapers wanted to report what they saw on the ground, they could not as their stories would not have been carried by their own publications. Their only option was to somehow sneak out the information they had collected so that it could be published in the international media.

A pall of fear that fell on the country after the first weeks of the declaration of emergency ensured that no dissent or political activity could take place. Such activity was compelled to go underground. Opponents of the Emergency, who had managed to evade arrest, had to devise ways to communicate without being detected.

For the 20 months that the Emergency lasted, people in one part of the country were unaware of what was happening in other parts. We only knew the full extent of the atrocities that were committed during the period when censorship was lifted, elections were held, and the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government was thrown out.

It will soon be four years since the abrogation of article 370. Have things changed in Kashmir?

Although some political leaders have been released, they have no role in the running of their former state because there is no legislative assembly. Normal political activity, such as public meetings and rallies are impossible to hold.  Political parties are compelled to reach out to their constituents in ways that will not attract the attention of the authorities, people who take direct orders from New Delhi.

And what about the media? Before August 5, 2019, many highly regarded Kashmiri journalists reported for mainstream media houses. Their stories included reports on human rights violations and the views of ordinary people about the situation.  They featured opposition politicians even if their views were unpalatable to those in power in New Delhi.

Today, there is a trickle of news from the region. What we read or watch are stories based on handouts by the security forces, and upbeat write-ups about tourism. It’s as if all the human rights abuses we read about in the past have disappeared.

So, even if a formal state of emergency has not been declared in Jammu and Kashmir, what people in the region have lived through in the last four years is not that different from the Emergency period of 1975-77.

What is more worrying is the absence of outrage in the rest of India about citizens in one part of this country being deprived of their basic democratic rights.

Authoritarianism finds fertile ground when the citizenry is immunised against violations of democratic rights, when people are willing to delude themselves that what happens in one region really cannot happen elsewhere, and when they swallow the propaganda that India remains the “mother of democracy”.

We need to recognise that what has happened in Kashmir is an experiment by this government to see how far they can go to deny citizens their basic rights. Why declare a formal emergency when you can manage without it?

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Smriti Irani’s outburst, Modi’s lack of press conferences: Unpacking Indian govt’s hostility to the press

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 15, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/15/smriti-iranis-outburst-modis-lack-of-press-conferences-unpacking-indias-hostility-to-the-press

On June 9, on a visit to her parliamentary constituency of Amethi, BJP MP and Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Smriti Irani got really annoyed with a journalist. He never got around to asking a question. He merely requested her to say something. 

And she did. She charged him with insulting the people of her constituency and went further, saying, “I will call the owner of your paper and tell them no journalist has the right to insult the people.”

The journalist was a stringer for Dainik Bhaskar, although the paper later denied that he worked for them. But Irani did speak to the owners of Dainik Bhaskar. And they sacked the other stringer present, who was on their rolls.

Why should this incident be a reason for the media, and those concerned about press freedom, to worry? 

We need to be concerned because this is not just a passing incident.  It exemplifies the contempt with which the current government treats the media.  

If it had the slightest respect for what a free media is supposed to do in a democracy, would not the prime minister make himself available to answer questions directly to the media in these nine years that he has held office?

If ministers in the Modi government had even a modicum of understanding of what the media is supposed to do, would they heckle and harass reporters asking legitimate questions and threaten to speak to the owners of their media outlets?

Several media organisations, like the Editors Guild of India, Digipub and some press clubs have issued strong statements. The Editors Guild states: “This trigger-happy approach to browbeat and harass reporters and news camera persons undermines the freedom of the press.” The Digipub statement brings out an important aspect of journalism today in India – the role of stringers. They are sometimes not paid at all, or paid a pittance, and yet they serve an important role in news gathering in the face of the cutbacks on hiring full time reporters by much of mainstream media.

This attitude of the current government – where any kind of questioning is viewed as hostile, where journalists are singled out and threatened either directly or through social media platforms, and where journalists have been arrested while on assignment, as was Siddique Kappan – is a direct threat to freedom of the press. It is not possible for a vibrant, questioning, and free press to survive in such a hostile atmosphere.

This government knows that the media with the largest reach, namely television, has already prostrated itself at its feet. Until last year, just one channel had survived with a modicum of independence. Now that too is part of the laudatory lot, singing hosannas to the government and saving its criticism for the opposition. 

This government also understands the power of other forms of media, especially social media, to spread its narrative. And how to use this effectively. 

And it could have sensed that increasingly people are not interested in “news” the way we have come to understand it in the past. Cross-check, verify, report. That used to be the norm.

These restrictions don’t apply to some of the “news” circulating on social media platforms. And unfortunately, this is what an increasing number of people are consuming in India, and in many other parts of the world.

According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, there has been a noticeable decline in news consumption and trust in news worldwide. In India, the social media platform most preferred by those surveyed for news was YouTube (56 percent). WhatsApp and Facebook came next with 47 percent and 39 percent respectively. Some of this “news” could be from established media houses, but much of it would also be from unverified sources. 

Additionally, the survey recorded a decline in trust in what we call “news” although in India, the difference between last year and this year is marginal. 

We now have a situation where the government of the day does not care about the media, or media persons, and makes that more than apparent in its behaviour. And the consumers of news do not trust what is presented to them. Together, they represent a danger to press freedom, and to the very existence of established media. 

This is not the space to look at the economics of the media, but that too must be factored in. It is evident today that more of the larger media houses are dependent on government advertising than they were at any point in the recent past. This gives the government a handle to ensure that they fall in line when asked. They are asked, and they do fall in line.

Those that take no advertising at all, such as Newslaundry, or refuse government advertising, as some independent digital news platforms do, lead a precarious existence. In a country, where even support for voices of dissent is frowned upon, how long will these spaces of independent thought and expression survive? That too without adequate financial backing.

The state of the media in the United States holds out some lessons and a warning. Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times correspondent in India, has written an important piece in the paper about the American media and the dilemma it faces as fewer people want to pay for news. Without a constituency that appreciates the costs involved in disseminating credible news, a free media cannot survive even if there are laws protecting its freedom, as in the US. In India, with the whitling down of laws relating to press freedom, the very survival of a free media comes into question. 

So indeed, Smriti Irani’s outburst should worry us, not just those of us in the news business, but ordinary Indians who look to the media for verified, credible, information and news. 

Wrestlers' Protest: It's Time To Reflect

 An Opinion piece I wrote in Outlook Magazine on the protest by women wrestlers against sexual harassment.

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/sports/wrestlers-protest-it-s-time-to-reflect-magazine-293459

If mainstream media is to be believed, the protests by India’s award-winning wrestlers demanding action against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), have fizzled out. The reason being floated around is the late-night meeting on June 3 between the protesting wrestlers and Home Minister Amit Shah, India’s second most powerful man.

This is the kind of fake news perfected by some prominent television channels. Although the details of that meeting are still not known, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik did reiterate that their protest would not end until Singh—accused of sexual harassment—is arrested.

That said, after the June 7 meeting with Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, the public phase of the protest has been suspended till June 15. The protestors were either persuaded, or bullied, into returning to their day jobs.

This, of course, suits this government perfectly. Its time-worn strategy to deal with protests that cause discomfort is to ignore them or use brute force to break them up. This was done in 2019-20 against those opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act. It was repeated during the protest by thousands of farmers demanding the withdrawal of the three farm acts. And it has been done now in the case of protesting women wrestlers.

This temporary pause, however, is an opportunity to reflect on what this particular protest, demanding action on charges of sexual harassment, tells us about our country, the current government, and the reality of violence against women in India.

First, it is evident that most people still do not understand that sexual harassment is a form of violence that impacts women deeply. It humiliates and scars the women at the receiving end of it. It is violence encased in silence. When some women dare to break the silence, they are ignored, disbelieved, belittled, and vilified.

Importantly, sexual harassment is about power, as in this case, where the alleged perpetrator is a politically powerful man, linked to the party in power. And even though the women accusing him are not powerless, they are still not heard.

Second, why has this protest failed to trigger a nationwide response and outrage on the scale we saw in 2012 after the gang rape of Jyoti Singh? After that incident, the protests spread in Delhi and beyond, to other cities. The difference between 2012 and 2023 is not just that then there was a different, more responsive government, but also a media that was critical of it and unafraid to amplify protests.

And finally, the main reason for a muted res­ponse this time is that our society fails to understand the nature of violence against women.

Rape, murder, dowry deaths—especially when these occur in big cities within the reach of the media—generate some interest and concern. This is especially so if the victim/survivor belongs to a higher class/caste and the perpetrators to a lower class/caste. Then there is public anger and demands for justice and exemplary punishment.

It is the other way around when the victim/survivor is of lower social status and the perpetrators are powerful by way of their class/caste, or political connections. In such cases, we hear a splutter of protest that soon subsides and disappears. Think of the rape and subsequent death of the Dalit woman in Hathras in 2020 and innumerable other similar cases that often go unreported.

The acts of violence that come into public view, and particularly those in a public space, loom larger than life. But the bigger arena of daily violence against women draws hardly any attention. These include acts of violence within the so-called “safe” spaces—homes, schools, colleges, workplaces. These go practically unnoticed, and unaddressed. Domestic violence, sexual harassment and child sexual abuse represent the largest percentage of incidents of sexual violence against women.

Looking back at the last month and more of the wrestlers’ protest, irrespective of whether this government finally acts against Singh or not, we must thank Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and others for reminding us about this hidden violence. Despite immense personal cost, they have shown the courage to hold the powerful to account.