A News Channel In India Was Taken Off-Air Abruptly By Modi Government; 16 Journalists Charged Under Terror Laws, 7 Currently Behind Bars
India is known worldwide as the World's Largest Democracy. I'm not sure on whom the joke here really is or who exactly is having a laugh.
A 2017 survey of students at Kolkata’s National Medical College found that around a sixth of respondents believed that homosexuality is a disease, over a quarter considered LGBT individuals to be promiscuous and nearly a tenth felt that they pose a threat to children. Such stereotypes have consequences for straight people as well. Shobhit Rana, one of my friends in medical college, recalled being subjected to homophobic slurs for getting his HIV status checked. While gay men have historically been associated with the AIDS pandemic, most cases in India are transmitted through unprotected heterosexual intercourse. — Scrubbled Out
Many people who do not have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, know they are at risk. They can take pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a kind of drug that reduces their chance of contracting it by 99% or so. This comes as a daily pill, and is popular among gay men in rich countries.
However, there is a much larger group of people at high risk, for whom a daily pill is far from ideal: heterosexual women in poor places where HIV is still very common. If their boyfriends discover they are taking the pill, they may conclude that their girlfriend does not trust them, or that she is planning to cheat on them. And a depressing number of boyfriends who suspect such things react violently.
AIDS, which weakens the immune system, has killed about 40m people—more than covid-19.
— Is the end of AIDS in sight?
This newsletter has mentioned HIV/AIDS previously as well.
The Media One anchorman Vinesh Kunhiraman went on air as usual on March 6, ready to tell the station’s five million viewers in India’s Kerala State about the death anniversary of a beloved comedian and the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic.
Just a few minutes into the broadcast, he saw the managing editor rush to the studio floor, gesturing wildly. “I realized something was not right,” Mr. Kunhiraman recalled.
The station’s uplink suddenly went dead. Mr. Kunhiraman’s image dissolved into a blue screen. A bland message told viewers there was no signal. “We regret the inconvenience,” it said.
But this was no technical difficulty. The station had been cut off by an order from India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The government decided to block the channel for 48 hours because it had covered February’s biggest news story — the mob attacks on Muslims in New Delhi that flared into broader unrest — in a way that seemed “critical toward Delhi Police and R.S.S.,” the order said.
That is from New York Times. It further notes,
After a host at the Hindi news channel ABP questioned the results of one of the prime minister’s initiatives to help poor farmers, the satellite transmission of the show was interrupted every time it was broadcast, said several people who worked at the station. The channel’s owners pressured the host, Punya Prasun Bajpai, to resign, and as soon as he left, the transmission interruptions stopped, the former employees said.
And after another ABP anchor, Abhisar Sharma, criticized Mr. Modi on live television about public safety, he was pulled off the air the same day. He, too, said he was pressured to quit.
Mr. Sharma then took to YouTube to broadcast his commentary, but pro-Modi trolls followed him into cyberspace. Every time he uploaded a video — and some drew millions of views — YouTube would receive thousands of complaints that he had made inappropriate remarks, Mr. Sharma said. The site’s algorithm then blocked any advertising revenue he would have made.
“You can’t escape them,” he said.
Last August, Pawan Kumar Jaiswal, a part-time journalist who also ran a tiny mobile phone accessories shop, broke a story revealing how poor children in a school near Varanasi, Mr. Modi’s parliamentary constituency, were being fed only flatbread and salt for lunch — a clear violation of government nutrition rules.
After his short video went viral, a state education officer filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Jaiswal, accusing him of conspiracy, false evidence and cheating, a crime that can draw up to seven years in jail.
His source at the school was promptly arrested. Fearing he was next, Mr. Jaiswal fled to New Delhi, where he hid for several weeks.
“Sometimes I felt like committing suicide,’’ he said.
Even though an investigation eventually vindicated his reporting and the police dropped the charges against him, Mr. Jaiswal continues to be stalked by people connected to the school, he said.
He has reason to be afraid. Several Indian journalists have been killed in recent years, from a Kashmiri newspaper editor shot outside his office to a young journalist in Jharkhand who was abducted and found unconscious in a forest.
“This is the life of a local reporter,” Mr. Jaiswal said.
Remember, if there is no media, there will be no stories. And by definition, the job of the press is to question the government and those holding power. Because, they are the ones making decisions that affect everyone’s life and livelihood. Common people don’t read policy documents or fine print of law. For instance, the Narendra Modi government recently passed Jan Vishwas 2023 Bill in July with very little debate. This Bill fulfils a long-standing wish list of the pharma industry that if you suffer bodily harm from substandard medicine, no one will be held punitively accountable. Notice the name of the policy (Jan Vishwas or people’s trust) that Modi and his ministers repeated multiple times for people to listen and what this law does (in its fine print). Without a journalist reading and explaining the intricacy of such laws, people would not know what their government is doing in the shadows. And if we don’t know, we won’t react or protest. And in the absence of our disapproval, the decline of our lives or the decimation of the health of India’s democracy would continue.
Modi’s contempt for the media is not a recently acquired trait. In the 1990s, Keshubhai Patel of the BJP, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, started a daily bus service for Ahmedabad-based journalists to travel to Gandhinagar and back. It departed on weekday mornings from a fixed place at an appointed hour and returned each evening. It enabled scribes to go Ministry-hopping and meet contacts, attend briefings and conduct interviews. If time permitted, they filed reports from the media facility at Gandhinagar.
One of Modi’s first decisions after becoming Gujarat Chief Minister was to terminate this service. Later, in 2014, after becoming Prime Minister, he post-haste dispensed with the practice of taking media delegations as part of his entourage on foreign visits.
When Parliament convened for this year’s Budget Session, scribes who had reported on Parliament for decades discovered that the number of journalists permitted to cover the sessions was restricted to a bare minimum.
The Central Hall, which served for decades as a meeting place for senior scribes, members of Parliament and ex-MPs, is now out of bounds for them, the only consolation being that even former members are barred. Lok Sabha passes for accredited correspondents in the “Long and Distinguished Service” category have not been renewed and this is part of the pattern in the Modi era of denying access to journalists.
— Muzzling the media: How the Modi regime continues to undermine the news landscape
This bug has now spread to even state governments.
Despite several letters, meetings with the chief minister and even protests, the Kerala government is yet to ease restrictions on media access to the state secretariat, according to press unions in the state. These restrictions were imposed in the wake of Covid.
If that is the discourse at the top, the discourse at the bottom thanks to footsoldiers has been only worse.
In the first week of July, media and social media was flooded with reports on the Christian principal of a school in Pune being thrashed for purportedly forcing students to recite Christian prayers. Alexander Coates Reed, principal of DY Patil High School in Talegaon, was also accused of installing CCTVs in the girls’ toilet.
On July 4, Reed was assaulted by members of the Bajrang Dal, among others, and some parents. The crowd shouted “Har Har Mahadev” and tore his shirt. Soon after, a police complaint was filed against him by a parent at the Talegaon MIDC police station.
But days later, the Pimpri-Chinchwad police, which has jurisdiction over the area, said it had found no evidence of students being forced to “recite Christian prayers”. The police also said the CCTVs were not installed inside the toilets but in the common areas near the wash basins in both the girls’ and boys’ washrooms.
Now, the complainant in the matter – the parent of a Class 8 student – told Newslaundry the religious allegations are “rubbish”. Instead, she said she was upset about the CCTVs, her daughter once receiving a “punishment”, and the staff being “rude” to her when she complained about it.
Why then did she include these “religious” allegations in her complaint? She did not have a clear explanation.
Pune principal’s assault: No evidence of ‘forced’ Christian prayers, complainant backtracks too
Some Recommendations
Sharper is smart, slick and edge-of-seat. But if you plan on watching, please don’t read anything about it. Or watch this trailer. Just go watch the movie.
Foundation
Isaac Asimov is almost impossible to adapt. Despite writing and editing over 500 books, redefining the laws of robotics and inspiring countless other writers and thinkers, from author Douglas Adams to economist Paul Krugman, no-one has ever been able to successfully put his work onto the screen. The only two major attempts were I, Robot, which isn’t even based on the Asimov book series whose name it co-opts, and Bicentennial Man, the less said about which the better. Enter Apple TV+ and its big-budget adaptation of Asimov’s award-winning Foundation.
The series begins with maths professor Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) who creates a mathematical equation that predicts the oncoming end of the seemingly omnipotent galactic empire. Seldon and his followers are exiled by the empire to the distant planet Terminus, where they try to create an archive of human knowledge to kick start a future society. An Encyclopaedia Galactica that can keep humanity alive after the empire’s collapse.
Wired called Foundation a flawed masterpiece in their review. And it really is good. Oh! it also features wonderful performances from Lee Pace and beautiful images inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Oh and this song from Jagjit Singh - its lyrics and of course, Singh’s soothing voice. Too lovely.
Plus this Punjabi number from none other than Noor Jehan.
“Jadon hauli jihe laina mera naam,
main than mar janiyan”
When you slowly take my name,
it kills me.
In the wake of a global health crisis, it is worth taking a moment to appreciate the humble horseshoe crab. According to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, “if you have ever needed a vaccine … you most likely benefited from the use of horseshoe crab blood.” The SCDNR would know—it is facing a lawsuit on the subject.
Horseshoe crabs are a common sight in South Carolina, a rural state on the south-eastern coast of the United States covering roughly the same area as Jharkhand but with a population smaller than Himachal Pradesh. The state’s coastline is a picturesque labyrinth of interweaving barrier islands, saltwater marshes and sandy beaches. Every spring, Atlantic horseshoe crabs converge here by the tens of thousands to spawn, just as they have since time immemorial.
“Time immemorial” is no hyperbole. Horseshoe crabs are an ancient species. So much so that calling them Atlantic horseshoe crabs seems parochial—they existed long before there was such a thing as the Atlantic Ocean. The oldest known horseshoe crab species lived almost half a billion years ago, predating the first dinosaurs, the first flowers, and all modern oceans and continents.
— Bad Blood: A brewing lawsuit considers the fate of an ancient species
That’s all for this one. Do remember to look after yourself. Find reasons to love more and retrospect if you hate anyone or anything.