Dumb and Dumber

 

While reading late journalist/editor Vinod Mehta’s memoir Editor Unplugged, published in 2014 and a sequel to his earlier memoir Lucknow Boy,  one is astonished to see the cockiness of TV news channels in the pre-Modi days. Mehta, whose entire four-decade-old career spanned through the print medium starting from the ancient linotype era, had a love-hate relationship with the TV news channels. 

He used to be a reluctant guest at some of the panel discussions on TV, but savoured the ‘face recognition’ it offered among the general public. He, however, claims that he will never trade his position as a print publication editor for that of a TV anchor.

Mehta chides Indian TV news anchors for lacking nuance while dealing with the complexities of politics, unlike their British and American counterparts, but grudgingly acknowledges that TV new channels have changed the citizen-politician relationship and made the latter more accessible to the aam aadmi. He also lauds TV channels for throwing light on the day-to-day hassles and cruelty experienced by the unempowered class.

A case in point was the brutal gangrape of a Delhi woman in 2012, now known as the Nirbhaya case. The saturation coverage by TV news channels ensured that the issue never got relegated to a statistic and the perpetrators got punished. The victim’s family hailed from a lower middle-class background. Various TV news channels, especially the vernacular ones, have also highlighted the woes faced by the urban poor in metro cities and the pathetic conditions of slums.

TV news reporters back then were very aggressive and never hesitated from shoving the mic in front of those in power and posing tough questions. During the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai and the numerous corruption allegations that the then UPA government faced, the TV journalists raised pertinent questions that had put the Manmohan Singh government on the mat and it had to pay a heavy price during the 2014 general elections.

But after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 2014, the mindset of TV news reporters and media houses has undergone a sea change. There has been a total meltdown of the combativeness among the TV anchors with most of them toeing the government line. 

They can be now broadly classified into two categories – lap dogs and guard dogs. The former see no wrong in the government and sing praises day in and day out, and totally blank out any criticism or dissent. They willingly and unabashedly work as the propaganda arm of the government.

The second types also carry out the above functions, but in addition, they strain every nerve to discredit and nip in the bud whatever little dissent is left in the country. Former NDTV India anchor Ravish Kumar, one of those honourable exceptions who chose not to join the lap-dog-guard-dog herd, had coined the term Godi Media (media sitting in the lap of establishment) and it soon gained wide credence.

The conduct of mainstream leading television stations during the recent farmers’ agitation and earlier unrests will surely make Mehta turn in his grave. They were busy looking for a sliver of opportunity to discredit the protestors, look for a foreign conspiracy angle, and dub the protesters as anti-national. They never dared shove the mic in front of any ruling party neta to ask some hard questions.

This slavish docility is not confined to TV news channels. Many newspaper columnists have become circumspect and resort to wishy-washy stands on various issues. The same guys had no fear of taking on the Prime Minister and the government during Manmohan Singh’s tenure and before. 

Self-censorship is now a byword for most publications and it is there at all levels - right from the reporter to editor to proprietor. Hence spinning the narrative in the favour of the ruling party is the new credo. Otherwise, government ads stop coming or, even worse, they enter the bad books of state-run investigative agencies. 

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Plane Tales From India

 

As air travellers, Indians’ reputation has been zilch class and their eccentricities have provided enough fodder for stand-up comedians. The most notable ones include stuffing up the overhead cabin baggage holder with their unwieldy bags and air hostesses struggling to shut the holders before a takeoff, and the mad scramble to the door as soon as the aircraft comes to halt after landing. 

But of late they have, quite literally, touched a new low with the leaky bladders of male passengers on international flights, where free liquor is served. India’s flagship carrier Air India, which was recently taken over by the Tata Group, has been rocked by two ‘peegate’ scandals on their international flights. 

Interestingly both flights were bound for New Delhi. The first incident happened on board a New York-Delhi flight on November 26 and the second one happened on a Paris-Delhi flight on December 6. The media got the stinky whiff of the first incident only a little before the second one came to light. 

In the first incident, a 34-year-old Shankar Mishra, working with an American bank Wells Fargo, and travelling business class had got drunk and urinated on a 70-plus woman co-passenger.

While the passenger’s conduct was unpardonable, the airline crew’s reaction too fell woefully short. The air hostesses cleaned the victim’s seat and offered her pyjamas to change over, but the crew decided against offering her a fresh seat.

She was told to make do with the same damp and smelly seat with some extra blankets thrown in. When she refused, they permitted her to sit in the “jump” seat normally occupied by flight attendants during take-offs and landings.

Mishra realised his mistake and offered an apology, and the crew readily considered the matter closed. Upon landing, he was not handed over to security and was allowed to walk off after being served a 30-day flight ban.

In the second incident on the Paris-Delhi flight, a man urinated on the blanket of a female passenger while she was away from her seat. In this case, the crew’s conduct was a shade better. They identified and isolated the offender and reported the incident to authorities. The erring passenger was taken into custody by CISF personnel at the Delhi airport.

However, a police complaint was not filed, as both the accused and the victim had reached an understanding. CISF allowed the accused to leave after he tendered a written apology in deference to the victim’s wishes, the airline later said.

After the stink started spreading in the media, Wells Fargo promptly dismissed Mishra. Now the heat was on the Tata Group and its chief N Chandrasekaran issued a statement that the airline crew ‘fell short’ of its duties and derostered the pilot and the crew of that particular flight.

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) too had ticked off Air India and reminded the airline that it should have reported the incident within 12 hours, and referred the matter to an internal committee to decide on a flight ban.

Meanwhile, Shankar Mishra went incommunicado and Delhi Police appeared clueless and many began wondering whether it is going to be a Komal Sharma redux. For the uninitiated, Komal Sharma has been elusive ever since carrying out an attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students in October 2020. 

However, in this case, the Delhi Police nabbed Mishra from Bengaluru on January 6 from a guest house. Interestingly, his name was not even registered in the guest house logbook.

Amid all this din, everybody seems to have forgotten about the second culprit who had peed during the Paris-Delhi flight. His name and whereabouts continue to remain a mystery.

Mishra’s bail plea was rejected and he was in 14 days of judicial custody. After that, the trial began at a Delhi court, and Mishra is now singing a different tune. He now claims the woman had urinated upon herself due to her medical condition and pleaded not guilty! This was in contradiction to what he earlier said during the bail plea hearing. 

Air India’s lackadaisical handling of the incident is expected to make it all the more difficult to bring Mishra to book. 

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Joshimath Sinking

 

The term ‘land subsidence’ was hitherto known mainly to geology students and geologists, but thanks to the environmental disaster at Joshimath in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand state, it now has a wider currency. 

While the country had barely ushered in the New Year, panic gripped the residents of Joshimath after cracks began to appear in many roads, houses, commercial establishments and temples. Some structures are even tilting, thereby endangering the nearby buildings. All this means that Joshimath, which has a population of around 20,000, is slowly sinking due to land subsidence.

The Uttarakhand authorities have recently declared Joshimath as a landslide and subsidence-hit zone. Many families are now being moved to safer areas after their houses developed cracks and became unsafe. 

The US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has defined subsidence as the “sinking of the ground because of underground material movement”. The reasons can be man-made such as mining or large-scale extraction of water or natural causes like earthquakes and soil erosion.

Joshimath is considered sacred for Hindus as it is the winter seat of Badrinath. Every winter the idol of Lord Vishnu from Badrinath temple is moved to the Joshimath Vasudeva temple after Badrinath becomes snowbound. The town is also a gateway to Hemkund Sahib, a pilgrim centre for the Sikhs. Joshimath also has a significant army presence and has been a transit spot for trekkers bound for the Himalayas. 

Located at a height of 1,875 metres above sea level on the Himalayan foothills, Joshimath is part of an ecologically sensitive zone. However, the increasing influx of tourists for pilgrimage and trekking trips to the Himalayas has led to the proliferation of hotels, and lodges, and an increase in road construction activity. 

Environmentalists have been raising alarm about the strain the region was facing due to increased construction and road-building activity, often with total disregard for the ecology of the region. But commercial gains through tourism and overall prosperity in the region have made the policymakers and the local residents overlook them.

This has been the case with most Indian tourists and pilgrim centres. The way Madhav Gadgil’s report on the Western Ghats has been ignored by various state governments in the peninsular region, irrespective of party affiliations, is a case in point.

However, Joshimath’s ecology is proving to be far more fragile and things have reached a tipping point. Experts point out that Joshimath town rests on a deposit of sand and stone, and not rock. Hence it doesn’t have a high load-bearing capacity to hold the foundations of the buildings. In fact, way back in 1976, the MC Mishra Committee had warned against heavy construction activity in Joshimath. 

But unmindful of these warnings, a number of hydel power plants have been sanctioned around the town. In 2021, the Tapovan-Vishnugad project on the Dhauliganga river witnessed flash floods caused by a glacial burst killing over 200 people. 

The town has also been witnessing heavy road construction activity and rail tunnelling as part of the Char Dham project, which will link Rishikesh with four pilgrim destinations - Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunothri and Gangothri.

In short, Joshimath has become an infrastructure-stressed zone and it is too early to pinpoint what exactly has triggered the current ecological crisis. There are also reports of cracks in houses in Karnaprayag, located nearly 82 kilometres away from Joshimath, and Srinagar Garhwal located 140 kilometres away. This shows that the current malaise is far more widespread than earlier thought and is unfolding.

Uttarakhand state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, as it was felt that Lucknow was mismanaging the resources of its northern hill districts. Interestingly, the movement for statehood was an offshoot of two earlier environment protection mass movements — Chipko Andolan and the Anti-Tehri Dam Agitation. However, after the formation of Uttarakhand the corporate-contractor lobby has gained an upper hand over environmentalists, and they have little regard for ecology.

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