By Ranjona Banerji
Last Sunday, I was part of a group of concerned citizens who wanted to draw attention to the destruction of a Sal forest on the outskirts of Dehradun. The forest with its old Shorea Robusta trees was being cut down to widen the road so that a few minutes of time could be shaved off an alternative route between Delhi and Dehradun.
You know, all for “development”. The forest at Asarodi is part of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve and is therefore a “reserved” forest. Or was.
The group was small. The road had some traffic but not a lot. Many of the trees had been cut down. The ground had been levelled, the undergrowth destroyed by both cutting and burning.
This is filmmaker and environmentalist Pradip Krishen on the Sal and its unique properties, in an interview to Down to Earth magazine, after approval of the destruction of the Rajaji and Shivalik Elephant Reserve was granted in 2021:
“Everything that grows in Sal forests has a pivotal relationship with these tall emergents – whether as understorey shrubs and trees, foraging photons from light filtering through the Sal’s canopy or even just sharing the soil and its minerals and microbes with this community of trees.”
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/forests/-we-will-only-wake-up-when-sal-trees-have-been-driven-to-the-brink-of-extinction–74950
I put all this here for context.
On Sunday morning, a reporter and videographer from a TV channel showed up to interview people at the protest. The TV channel is known for its pro-Modi government stance and it runs a nightly pro-Hindu Islamophobic programme hosted by a Pursed Mouth Poser. It is owned by a massive industrial house.
One young activist was angry. Angry at the needless destruction to the forest, angry at some officious official who had tried to end the protest in spite of all the required permissions having been taken. Most of all, he was angry at a media which had capitulated to the powers-that-be. “Why have you come now,” he asked, “after the trees are cut? Why weren’t you reporting on this before it happened? Why doesn’t the media ever criticise the government in power instead of questioning us?”
The poor reporter stood up for herself gently. She tried to explain herself, that she was just an employee, she did as she was told. And that, after all, she was here, wasn’t she?
That is true. She was one of the few who had actually come to cover the protest. And she stayed even after this outburst and interviewed any number of people. Some of us tried to calm the young activist down. I gave a small pointless bit of advice to the reporter and video-journalist about the importance of speaking “truth to power” but also, with other people, explained to the angry young man that fighting with the media at this juncture was counter-productive. He knew all that, but he was just fed up.
But look at it from the public’s point of view.
What is the “story” in this instance?
That people are protesting? Or that a reserved forest, protected for the resident tiger and elephant populations, amongst other flora and fauna, is being destroyed for a road? That the more forests we destroy, the more carbon we release into the atmosphere?
Is the media’s job only to parrot the government line and then present a few voices in opposition and pretend that it’s being “objective”?
Is there a story at all in the destruction of forests, given the climate catastrophe that faces us?
What is the “right stand” for the channel?
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Meanwhile, you can also do this kind of a story, on how the Reserve Bank of India has been systematically disempowered by the Modi government.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/4/india-sought-probe-into-ex-rbi-guv-rajan-for-helping-white-man
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/5/hold-india-helps-central-bank-to-circumvent-inflation-law
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal