Amid G20 hype, exposé on Adani, Vedanta and Manipur crisis relegated to shadows

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 7, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/09/07/amid-g20-hype-expos-on-adani-vedanta-and-manipur-crisis-relegated-to-shadows

The G20 Summit has taken over the headlines and the news cycle. By the end of the week, the recent exposes on Adani, the opposition alliance’s Mumbai meet, or even the Manipur crisis would have faded from people’s memories.  

In the meantime, we also had the surprise announcement of a special session of Parliament from September 18-22 with no indication of the agenda, some kite-flying about whether the name of our country will be 'Bharat' instead of 'India, although it is both in the Constitution, and the proposal of One Nation, One Election.  Enough masala to cover up the real and more substantive issues on which the media should continue to keep its focus.

The expose by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project or OCCRP on the financial dealings of the Adani group, carried in detail in the leading daily Financial Times, and The Guardian, has provoked no more than a murmur in India’s mainstream media. Although, the day after the story broke, newspapers did report it on their front pages, there has been little to nothing by way of a follow up apart from a few editorial comments, such as in Hindustan Times and Indian Express.  

Admittedly, the Adani story is complex. It is not easy to understand for readers who are not informed about the way financial markets work. Yet, it is possible for the media to explain it,  like this report in Newslaundry.  

At times, the silence of the media tells a bigger story than its word. 

Sometimes, the silence of the media speaks louder than words about its status. And the ongoing Adani story, exposing cronyism and institutional failures under the current government, must surely qualify as one such instance of silence. 

Given its open and blatant biases, the Indian TV news media is not expected to touch the Adani story. Nor are we surprised that the only way it can deal with it is to spin out its usual conspiracy theory, about George Soros being behind the exposes. But mainstream Indian print media’s silence cannot be ignored, especially when independent media, such as the Reporters’ Collective and the stories by M Rajshekhar in Wire have reported on the expose.  

The Adani story eclipsed what I believe is as important a story, if not more, by OCCRP on the way the Vedanta group, led by UK-based business tycoon Anil Agarwal, has been the beneficiary of changes made in environmental laws for mining and other related activities.   

The investigation has these five key findings:

• “Mining and oil giant Vedanta ran a covert lobbying campaign to weaken key environmental regulations during the pandemic.”

• “India’s government approved the changes without public consultation and implemented them by using what experts say are illegal methods.”

• “In one case, Vedanta led a push to ensure mining companies could produce up to 50 percent more without new environmental approvals.”

• “Vedanta’s oil business, Cairn India, also successfully lobbied to have public hearing scrapped for exploratory drilling in oil blocks it won in government auctions.”

• “Since then, six of Cairn’s controversial oil projects in Rajasthan have been approved despite local opposition.” 

We need to let this sink in. After years of campaigning by environmental groups, laws and regulations were set in place to protect the environment.  An important feature was public consultation before any changes were made. This is only one of the rules that has been bypassed. And all this has happened without us noticing because these issues do not find purchase in mainstream media anymore. 

Of the other issues subdued by the spate of “breaking news” is, of course, Manipur.  Thanks to the fact-finding report by the Editors’ Guild of India, titled 'Media's Reportage on Ethnic Violence in Manipur', and the disproportionate response of Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh to it, what’s happening in that beleaguered state has not been entirely forgotten. 

The Manipur state government has filed an FIR against the EGI team accusing them of “promoting enmity between different groups”.  Not just that, but Biren Singh has gone on record to call the team members “anti-state, anti-national and anti-establishment”. 

Although the Supreme Court has intervened and stayed the arrests of the journalists, the action of the Manipur government is another reminder of how the ruling party in that state, and at the centre, looks at freedom of expression. To them, this fundamental right is purely transactional. One is free to report only information approved by them. Anything contrary is ‘anti-national’.  

This is the second such reaction of the state government to fact-finding missions. In July, it had filed an FIR against a three-member group of the National Federation of Indian Women for concluding that the violence was “state-sponsored”. Since then, there have been several such telling reports including one by a group of doctors. In this report in The Hindu, the displaced populations, especially in the Kuki areas, are facing a dire crisis due to a lack of essential supplies even for infants and medications for the ailing. So far, there has been no denial or action against this group of doctors by the state government. 

Coming back to the EGI report, it specifically looked at the role of the local media in inflaming the situation in Manipur. It even quoted some instances of this.  But it also revealed the structural inequality that is built into the location of media houses. 

In most states, media houses concentrate on the capital and some major cities. Many parts of a state, often the most marginalised and deprived, are left uncovered, or barely reported. It’s only when something drastic happens like a natural disaster, or drought and starvation, that these places feature. 

Manipur is much the same. The media is located mostly in Imphal and run by the Meiteis. Although the Nagas have a newspaper, Ukhrul Times, and other forms of media, the Kukis have never had an adequate media presence. When a crisis like the present one hits, where two sides are literally at war with each other, even the semblance of a media that reports from all regions disappears. 

It is not just the absence of the internet that has affected coverage in the local media, although the unjustified internet shutdown over an extended period is an important factor. More significant has been the way even journalists, who are supposed to set aside their personal identities and biases when they go out to report, have been affected by the passions dividing the state.  

This partly explains why the means of communication that were not cut off, such as mobile phones or landlines, were not used to verify news and get reports from parts rendered unreachable by local media during this conflict. After all, many of us have reported in the times when there was no internet, when phoning in your story and sending updates from a landline, or even post office, to the desk wherever it was located, was routine.   

Sadly, some Imphal-based journalists continue to resent what they call “parachute journalists” from the “mainland”. Yet had it not been for these journalists, we would not have heard both sides of the story on the Manipur violence. Perhaps, the best of the recent reports on Manipur is this one by Arunabh Saikia for Scroll, that tells us that the problem in the northeastern state is not going to disappear in a hurry. In fact, it is likely to escalate given that now both sides have the support of militant groups who were quiescent for some years. 

Whether it is Adani, Vedanta, or Manipur, these are issues that will inform the path India takes in the future. The coverage, or erasure of such issues from the media also informs us about the direction that the Indian media has chosen to take. 

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

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 24, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A hate-laden speech and murder: Why did Chetan Singh vanish from the news cycle?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 10, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/08/10/a-hate-laden-speech-and-murder-why-did-chetan-singh-vanish-from-the-news-cycle

July 31, 2023. That is a date we need to remember. What happened that day has already been relegated to the inside pages of most newspapers and has vanished altogether from our shouty TV channels. They are currently obsessing over the violence on the doorstep of India’s national capital, and the debate in Parliament over the no-confidence motion tabled by the opposition parties.

Yet, while the media must address the latest drama, there are several reasons why the event of July 31 needs to be followed up and analysed in much greater detail. 

On July 31, even as the Jaipur-Mumbai Superfast Express was speeding through Gujarat towards Mumbai, a Railway Protection Force jawan decided to make use of the loaded weapon he was carrying. Chetan Singh first shot his own senior after an altercation. He then walked through the train, picking out bearded men and shooting them at point blank range. He shot three such men. They were all Muslims. 

It is not just the act of shooting Muslim men, whose identity was evident from their beards and clothes (in one instance, he asked the name of the man to be sure). It’s Chetan Singh’s rant, recorded by several passengers on their phones, that is chilling. Here is what he said according to a report in The Wire:

“Pakistan se operate hue hain, tumhari media, yahi media coverage dikha rahi hai hai, pata chal raha hai unko, sab pata chal raha hai, inke aaqa hai wahan...Agar vote dena hai, agar Hindustan me rehna hai, toh mai kehta hoon, Modi aur Yogi, ye do hain, aur aapke Thackeray.”

Loosely translated: “They operate from Pakistan, this is what the media of the country is showing, they have found out, they know everything, their leaders are there...If you want to vote, if you want to live in India, then I say, Modi and Yogi, these are the two, and your Thackeray.”

Singh was apprehended before the train reached Mumbai. Most of the early reports in print media focused on his mental stability rather than his deliberate targeting of Muslim men.  

Television news coverage was a different story altogether. According to this episode of TV Newsance in Newslaundry, Times Now reported that the men were killed in “crossfire”. By this, one presumes they thought that Singh and his senior were firing at each other with loaded guns and three Muslims, sitting in different compartments just happened to come into the line of fire!

After this first, brief, and mostly inaccurate reporting of the train killings, television news moved on to the communal clashes in Nuh just outside Delhi. The follow-up was done mostly by Mumbai’s local newspapers. 

Mid-Day, for instance, reported that the investigators had concluded that the man knew what he was doing and admitted he hated Muslims. He also said, according to the paper, that he would have shot many more people had the train not stopped before reaching Mumbai. Singh has now been charged under sections relating to hate crimes.

Apart from follow-up reports, there was also little by way of comment that questioned why Singh had such a deep hatred of Muslims that he would go about shooting them without provocation. An exception was Ajaz Ashraf who writes a column in Mid-Day. 

Ashraf’s op-ed is worth reading because it questions the talk about mental illness and this kind of targeted killing. 

He concludes:

“We would be deceiving ourselves in case we think Chetan’s killing spree was merely because of his mental illness, which might also be a condition waiting to be diagnosed among a substantial segment of Indians, given the increasing frequency with which hate-driven violence is perpetrated. Certainly, the impulse not to hurt has weakened over the last nine years. There is a post called Chief Statistician of India. We desperately need to have a Chief Psychiatrist of India, who could measure India’s growing sickness.”

“India’s growing sickness”, as Ashraf terms it, is the visceral hate of Muslims that has been planted in our minds. Of course, political parties, specifically the BJP and its family members like the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, are primarily responsible.  But their hate-filled narrative would not have found purchase to this extent had not the media amplified it.  

Whether you watch Indian TV news channels or not, look at the episode of TV Newsance mentioned above to get a sense of the poison emanating from them every night. 

There have been instances in the past where the media has been held responsible for spreading hate.  For instance, after the 2002 Gujarat communal carnage, the Editors Guild of India had sent a team to look specifically at this aspect.  

Their report makes interesting reading today, more than two decades later.  Although TV news was not as ubiquitous as it is now, Gujarat 2002 is often referred to as the first “televised” riot because by then there were private television channels not beholden to the government. Journalists from these channels were stopped and even attacked by Hindutva groups, accusing them of only giving the Muslim point of view. This is unlikely to happen today.

Print media was still dominant and several leading Gujarati newspapers were questioned about the headlines on their front pages, and the news that they chose to emphasise. But the report also mentions pamphlets distributed by groups like the VHP that played a role in spreading misinformation. A parallel today would be social media that is all pervasive and much more dangerous.

Clearly, we need a detailed study on how and to what extent all media, television, print and social media, have amplified the narrative of hate, especially since 2014. 

How is this deliberate spread of hate to be checked? No one in the media will recommend government censorship. There are already rules and regulations in place that could, if they are used, offer some checks.

But ultimately, the responsibility lies in the hands of those who finance these media houses, the owners, as well as those who support them by way of advertising.

There is little doubt that the deterioration in media content has coincided with the corporatisation of the media from the early 1990s. Since then, media professionals running these organisations have to find ways to make their companies profitable. And what better way than to sensationalise and play up sentiments that echo what the majority believes? The combination of this is deadly, as we can see. 

This daily dose of poison has not just been seeded in the minds of millions of people but has begun to bear fruit. Chetan Singh’s hate-filled killing of Muslim men is a telling example of this.

Can our media introspect? Will it? I personally doubt it so long as people continue to buy and financially support the peddlers of hate. Even tighter regulations will not suffice if there is a “market” for these ideas, which there is, and so long as the dominant politics supports it, which it does.

July 31 and Chetan Singh’s targeted killing are a warning that we must heed, as media, but also as citizens of a country that seems to be hurtling down a precipice of hatred and violence. 

 

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.