By Ranjona Banerji​
Is Indian news just too depressing? And is it my imagination or is it just too depressing all too often? The past week, we have read and heard some gut-wrenching accounts of a child being kidnapped, incarcerated, sedated, gang-raped and murdered, we have heard about a devastated father of another rape victim being beaten to death in police custody. We have seen cases against rape accused being withdrawn by the politically powerful accused. We have ruling party politicians and supporters taking out rallies to protect the rape accused from police investigations. And after a short time of silence, ruling party’s spokespersons have come out with the most remarkable defensive strategies to protect themselves and their associates, by pointing fingers at others.
Has it worked? I hear from reliable sources that even Shri Arnab Goswami ji at RepublicTV has been horrified by these rapes and the stories around them. He has not approved but to be fair to him, his best television is when he speaks with impassioned fervour about women’s issues. However, this is hearsay evidence as I have not wandered towards that part of the TV remote for some time now.
Even so, most other news channels also came down strong and hard on those who tried to support the supporters of the rape accused. Public pressure forced even the usually-silent-on-non-election-campaign-issues Prime Minister to make some anodyne comment about not sparing the culprits. This has not stopped “whataboutery†from his Cabinet and party colleagues nor stopped his spokesperson Vaibhav Agrawal from walking out of Sreenivasan Jain’s programme on Hate Speech on NDTV. Clearly, they can dish it out but can’t take it. Courage of the Bhakt sort, I assume.
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The other matter taken up by most news outlets is a return to the horrific times of late 2016 to half of 2017, when the prime minister announced his demonetisation idea and sent India’s economy into a downward spiral. No money in ATMs. I noticed it about two weeks ago, and got instant responses from Twitter, from all other the country. It took about 10 days for journalists to pick up the story and another two days for the authorities to respond.
The explanations (festivals, there is no cash crunch even if it seems like it, we are making arrangements) were all absurd and most were called out. And no matter how scared journalists and news outlets are about taking on the government, that fear has gone from Twitter at least. Ordinary citizens are speaking out. Some in the media are shooting from their shoulders even.
https://scroll.in/article/876020/current-cash-crunch-shines-a-light-on-narendra-modi-governments-fundamental-incompetence
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Senior journalist Lakshmi Subramanian has taken serious issue with Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit patting her on the cheek, instead of answering her question. Patronising patriarchy, what other way is there to look at it? This is a unacceptable way to diminish a person who is doing a job, and cannot be condoned.
This is Lakshmi’s account, from The Week:
https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2018/04/17/when-tn-governor-crossed-all-boundaries-of-decorum-to-pat-a-journalist.html
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Congratulations to Danish Siddiqui of Reuters for being the first Indian photojournalist to win a Pulitzer, the coveted American award for journalism. The prize was won for photographs of the Rohingya migration from Myanmar to Bangladesh.
https://scroll.in/article/876020/current-cash-crunch-shines-a-light-on-narendra-modi-governments-fundamental-incompetence
​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​