Digging out hidden truth to save democracy

The annual RedInk National Media Awards organised by Mumbai Press Club has been an occasion to celebrate the great performance by journalists amid heavy odds to uphold the right to freedom of expression and safeguard democracy. Stalwarts walk up to the dais, receive awards and speak up. This is not a ritual, but a great occasion for not just journalists but media professionals all across and even corporates to come together and feel the air of the great moment – the RedInk award, which has now become an institution in its own right. What is even more interesting is the fact that the participation in the awards is literally from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Northeast. I would like to congratulate Mumbai Press Club Chairman Gurbir Singh and his Team RedInk for their excellent job.

Coming to this year's RedInk Awards, held last Friday, the event was to celebrate the perseverance and passion of journalists who go beyond the facts presented, in search of truth. Many of us remember the uncovering of the hundreds of buried bodies on the banks of the Ganga during the pandemic and the official denials. Popular Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar showed guts to go beyond the facts presented and unearth the truth. The first story that they broke read something like this "as the stormy winds blew away the sand, the bodies started appearing." Officially the story was dismissed as sensationalism.

But an unrelented Bhaskar editorial team led by its national editor Om Gaur covered the deaths relentlessly and exposed the lies behind the damn lies, the statistics. About 30 reporters were on the job in 27 districts. The funeral pyres and the incidents of floating bodies in the Ganga shocked the nation, but the administration remained in a denial mode. The New York Times headline - The Ganges is returning the dead. It does not lie – said it all. Bhaskar also reported about the corona deaths due to shortage of oxygen in Madhya Pradesh at a time when the Centre claimed not a single person died for want of O2.

I myself filed an application with the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry under the RTI Act for information on ventilator related deaths during the pandemic since it was believed that not many survived after being put on the artificial breathing system. I wanted to know the details from two perspectives – one to know the preparedness of the health services machinery in the wake of the continuous Covid fury and second to know the effectiveness of the ventilator treatment in various States and UTs. The Union Ministry did not have any centralized information, but I was informed later that the AIIMS Bhopal reported a ventilator survival rate of 25 per cent during April-December 2020 and 28 per cent during January-April 2021. The AIIMS Bhubaneshwar record higher by a few notches: 42 per cent ventilator survival during the first wave and 61 per cent during the 2nd.

It is not just about playing up the figures for headlines or trying to create panic, it is about bringing forth the hidden truth and ensuring preparedness on part of the authorities and precaution by the people at large.

The Bhaskar Group was "rewarded" by the government with I-T raids. And as former Supreme Court judge Justice B N Srikrishna rightly said at this year's RedInk awards, investigative agencies are being misused in the current times. "People spoke of threats like that from ED, CBI surveillance, cutting off revenue to see that businesses collapse," he said. "In such a situation, honesty is the best policy, and journalistic conscience," he observed. Gurbir Singh pointed out that India had sunk eight notches to 150th position this year from 142 last year in the Freedom of Press Index prepared by Reporters Without Borders. India is also seen as a very dangerous place for journalism with 3-4 journos being killed every year, according to the report, he said.

The state of the media can be gauged by the way the majority of the so-called national electronic media covers (or doesn't) the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. Luckily for our democracy, a large part of the print medium remains independent and thus guards our democracy. At the risk of repetition, let me point out that even in not-so-democratic Pakistan, the media is by and large independent amid heavy odds. For that matter, a business magazine from Karachi repeatedly exposes the Pak Army's misdeeds. Even the Army does not enter the Karachi Press Club. That's the power of the media there. The courts and the media have come a long way from the days of dictatorships of Yahya Khan.

Cut to RedInk awards. Justice Srikrishna told us: "There are two professions – the judge and the journalist who have to side by the truth. If they falter, democracy will collapse."

Let me point out to the powers that be that the independent media's fight to safeguard democracy is for the benefit of the society as a whole and, at the end of the day, to ensure good governance personified by transparency and truth. To cover up a lie, you have to utter a 100 lies whereas truth does not require any cover up.

To give a glaring example, please consider the massive frauds in the food rationing network or what the government calls, the public distribution. Glaring because it is happening in front of our eyes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself disclosed a whopping Rs two lakh crores have been saved by plugging loopholes in the public distribution system (PDS) with the help of technology. Technology helped in deleting fake beneficiaries of PDS by adopting Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Modi said addressing the Vigilance Awareness Week event organised by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on November 3. The Prime Minister did not give much details such as the period of this fraud and in which parts of the country.

To quote a news channel rhetoric, the nation wants to know the details of this fraud and other leaks in the system and more than that what the government is doing about it.

I have filed an RTI petition to get the facts. I hope I am not asking for the moon.

(The author is a Mumbai-based media veteran, known for his thought-provoking messaging)