By Ranjona Banerji
Most recent count: 300 farmers have died during the 113-day-long protests outside Delhi, against the Narendra Modi Government’s controversial farm laws. The protests are outside Delhi because the Narendra Modi government will not let the farmers in.
Did I mention that 300 farmers have died during the protests?
And yet, India’s large and brave mainstream media is unable to cover these protests fairly and objectively, unable to mention farmers without openly calling them terrorists or mocking them.
This tweet (screenshot attached) by Saahil Murli Menghaani, one of the independent journalists who has relentlessly covered the farmers’ protests, demonstrates the anger brewing within the industry against the current widespread bad journalism practices.
In Britain, there is a battle of sorts over the sort of journalism that their tabloids practise. In India, we urgently need a very serious discussion on the impact of television “news’ in spreading hatred and fake news and concentrating all effort only on government propaganda.
It remains unconscionable that while we in the media denigrate farmers for demanding their rights, we have no problems at all either in amplifying the hatred that emanates from the Modi government, the BJP or in pushing lies about the successes of the Modi government. Some media houses do this by hopping over the journalism versus PR line several times a day and via different outlets.
The link below is from the CNN News18 website, which is an article based on a report by the Pew Research Centre. The report says that the pandemic pushed 32 million people out of the middle classes in poverty. But of course, since you cannot survive in India without what is known as “maska” in local parlance, we must also butter up the criticism-averse government. Thus, the article also reassures us that the Modi government has “taken steps to support the economy”. That’s the butter because the article goes no further into these so-called steps, their effectiveness and what experts have to say about them.
That’s farmers and the economy, two of the enormous issues facing India. Either ignored by the media or covered more in the breach.
The third is the Covid-19 pandemic and our vaccination programme. I know, right? Going on and on about it. It’s so tiresome. Pandemic fatigue everywhere. It’s not going away though, is it? The media response is to concentrate on rising infection figures in two Indian states: Maharashtra and Kerala. The reason is obvious: both are non-BJP ruled states. But the reality is that infection rates are rising all over India and there are fears of another spike.
Allied to this is our painfully slow vaccination drive. With huge pride, our media celebrated 3 million people vaccinated in one day. India is a nation of 1.3 billion people. Even if you subtract the estimated 40 per cent under the age of 18 who do not have a vaccine tailored for them yet, 3 million a day is a drop in the ocean. I would expect day-long blanket coverage of vaccination centres, empty slots, the 6.5per cent national average of vaccine wastage, the fact that all health and frontline workers have not been vaccinated yet, that the comorbidity conditions are too stringent and too confusing… I could go and on.
I’m not going to get this vaccination coverage and nor will you. Because this is not a media priority.
The priority for the bulk of the mainstream media is the assembly elections and to ensure that the BJP wins in all five states.
As an aside at the end, the problem at Ashoka University underlines just how fear and sycophancy stall democracy. The resignation of former vice-chancellor Pratap Bhanu Mehta as a professor at the prestigious liberal arts private university because the founders told him his criticism of the dispensation was hurting them is damning. It is ironic because Mehta burst into our lives when he praised Modi as an alternative who was going to do great things. Mehta changed his mind and Ashoka changed its mind as well: from liberal and open to cowering jelly.
Mehta’s resignation triggered Arvind Subramanian’s resignation from the university. The former chief economic advisor to the Modi government said that it was “ominously disturbing” that a private university funded by private capital could not provide a space for “academic expression and freedom”. Subramanian had quit as CEA before his tenure ended.
It will be interesting to see whether the Indian Express continues with Mehta’s column which has upset Modi so and what traction Subramanian now gets within the Indian media.
All heil or inquilab?
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal