By Ranjona Banerji
Priyadarshini Patel is head member of Ganga Ahvaan, a citizen’s forum working on conserving the ecology of the Himalayas and on the Ganga. She wrote this in the Times of India, Wednesday, November 22. For the last 11 days, 41 labourers have been trapped in a tunnel they were building into the mountains at Silkyara, in Uttarakhand. The tunnel was for the ongoing Char Dham Yatra (Char Dham Pariyojana or CDP) highway, a brainchild and pet dream of the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
“Despite assurances of mitigation on paper, CDP, Himachal and Sikkim make it amply clear that the damage to the Himalayas cannot be mitigated. It can, and will, collapse on our heads. The development model in this young, fragile mountain range gas been disastrous and needs course correction. Mega projects are not what the Himalayas are about, culturally or geographically. It is time to recognise that above all the Himalayas need protection from the approaching fury of climate change.”
This is a simple reality of the condition of the Himalayas which has been pointed out over and over again by every anti-national environmentalist and ecologist. And by several anti-national geologists as well, although most such reports are buried under landslides which sometimes occur within government offices, usually deliberately.
As media interest has sporadically shifted towards the tunnel rescue efforts, it has not and will not focus comprehensively on the Char Dham Yatra highway, on the reasons for the several disasters that have hit it, on the composition of the Supreme Court committee that is supposed to monitor it and on the resignations of experts from the committee, and the sudden shift in intent from a road for tourism to a road for defence, seemingly to get past a legal hurdle. These factors can all be found in media coverage, but disparately. When the reason for building the road against all odds and advice is the whims of those at the very top of the pyramid, the media falls short when it comes to informing its paying public exactly what is going on.
The several shortcomings in the Indian media as it operates today have now been matched by the total racist hypocrisy of the international media in its coverage of the Israel bombardment of Gaza, after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. The biggest and most respected names from western democracies – like The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation for instance – have been despicable in the way they have dehumanised Palestinians, reduced their deaths to statistics and openly sided with Israel war on civilians while ostensibly searching for a terrorist organisation its own government has collaborated with. Some Israeli journalists, by comparison, have shown more professionalism and gumption in coverage and comment on Israel’s heartless attacks on the civilians of Gaza.
It is somewhat reassuring that Al-Jazeera received this letter from a few BBC journalists upset with their employer’s stance on Israel: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias
As journalists have pointed out, the obsession of getting all people to answer the question: “But do you condemn Hamas”, has somehow reduced the significance of all human suffering to whatever answer is given. This is a fascist trick which the best of the best which lectures the world incessantly on bad behaviour, has fallen prey to, given in to, or is actively celebrating.
Media gaps in coverage are increasingly the biggest when it comes to the powerful and the wealthy. To come back to India, it is vital to read this brilliant, chilling account by Suparna Sharma in Al-Jazeera, on the deaths of two senior citizens in an upmarket senior facility. Arrogance and negligence and possibly official complicity stand out.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/longform/2023/11/24/a-fire-two-deaths-and-the-business-of-elder-care-in-india
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.