The post Former Editor Meets ‘Former Terrorist’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

So, I do have a June 4 story that began in 1989 when Rajiv Gandhi lost the election, which I covered as a cub reporter at 21. “Covered” is presumptuous. I was more or less zipping around Trivandrum on a two-wheeler gifted by a friend, reporting “untoward incidents” for Venad Pathrika, the afternoon newspaper I was working for then. Again, it was an election that would turn fateful for the country that sent me to Calcutta.

After the journalism course at the Times School in Daryaganj, I had been shortlisted for The Economic Times in Bangalore but I was reluctant, having contracted typhoid from the southern city during a two-month internship with The Times of India and generally unable to find anything of interest there. The only open slot then was Jaipur Times of India, an edition that faced the somewhat unique and unfortunate threat of “cannibalism”. The Times of India Delhi edition, probably the best newspaper in the country then with a powerhouse of talented journalists, would reach Jaipur by around 10am or before that, and many readers in Jaipur would prefer to wait rather than take the Jaipur edition, which meant the biggest competitor of The Times of India in Jaipur was The Times of India from New Delhi! But that was not a factor for me.

I had been schooled that journalists should pursue journalism, not what circulation managers do. I was willing to go to Jaipur (anything to escape Bangalore) when my classmate who was earmarked for Calcutta Economic Times landed a position in a US university. Calcutta badly wanted a trainee because of the elections of May 1991. Delhi asked for volunteers and my hand went up, possibly because I had never been to Calcutta and our classmate Mohuya’s mother used to tell us such endearing stories about the city while feeding us luchies when we deliberately landed up at her home at Vivek Vihar just before dinner. That’s how I reached Calcutta, lost my way and ended up in Harish Mukherjee Street, instead of the nearby Hazra Road, and found Maharashtra Bhavan instead of Maharashtra Niwas. Which suited me best because I could not have afforded the better Niwas.

One or two days later, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Needless to say, I was devastated and I was scared I would descend to depression with no one to talk to. I think only the collegiate atmosphere at the Calcutta Economic Times saved me. I was also asked if I was “LTTE” once or twice because the term had acquired currency after the assassination and I used to roam around central Calcutta in a lungi after work. The questions were good-natured, meant to impress me with the familiarity of geopolitical coinages. I took it in my stride as ribbing, which it was.

I sometimes wonder which was the toughest election I had been associated with in terms of newspapering. I think my friend and former colleague Harshita will choose the 2004 election when The Telegraph headlined it Power of Finger and illustrated the page with an oversized but real-life inked finger.

My choice will be the Bengal Assembly election of 2001. Both pages had a common link: the genius of Deepayan Chatterjee, our deputy editor. What new thing can you say when the Left Front keeps winning election after election? When I was at my wits’ end, I used to literally “look up” to the six-plus-foot Deepayan. He is almost always kind but when his brain was whirring and you intruded with your rabbit-caught-in-the-headline-look, he would glare at me. Then, always, always, without fail, he would lean forward, take a headline sheet, scrawl something carelessly as if it is the grocery list and pass it on to me. I was speechless, as I often was when Deepayan’s creative gears started shifting, especially when World Cup Soccer finals were over at some unholy hour on some far corner of the earth and we had only a few minutes to release the page.

In 2001, I was speechless because leaping at me from the headline sheet was what I consider the best election headline I had seen in my career. The headline: 1977, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1996, 2001…

The ellipsis was the coup de grace. A hint that the chain will continue, which was not very difficult to predict. Little did we know then that within a decade the Red Fort would crumble?

Personally, the hardest election for me was the 2021 Assembly election. Almost everyone, except our bureau chief Devadeep Purohit, predicted that Modi will make mincemeat of Mamata. I was especially proud of my colleagues because of the exceptional work they produced. We cut down on traditional reportage and focused on what Bengal stands to lose if the zealots came to power.

Our senior journalist Chandrima Bhattacharya wrote on short notice, again the story spotted and amplified by Devadeep, what turned out to be the best report of the election. Chandrima wrote on how Modi called Mamata “Didi O Didi” — an extremely difficult copy to write unless you are personally wounded and affected. The Telegraph gave maximum coverage to the blockbuster song, Nijeder Mawte Nijeder Gaan. I remember that the result day in 2021 was May 2. May 1 was a no-print day and we were working from home.

On April 30, while leaving the newsroom well past 2am, a colleague asked me: “Will we see you again here?” The unstated suggestion was that the BJP would not spare me if the party came to power in Bengal. The BJP did not come to power in 2021. As it turned out, September 29, 2023, was my last day in the newsroom or virtual newsroom as we were working from home. Not many in the desk got to ask me if that was my last day.

Since October 2023, I have travelled widely in Kerala and some parts of India and realised that I have friends I had never met before or even heard of before. I also realised that I am a bad speaker but some people, for some reason, like to inflict on themselves bad speakers like me. Especially students. I even campaigned for a candidate (who lost). But I had no idea what I would do on June 4, the result day. Around mid-May, my friend and Media One channel editor Pramod Raman asked me if I would like to be at their studio for three days till the result day. I reluctantly agreed.

When the exit polls were flashed, I wondered whether I should still go. I was in two minds. Until I received a message from a Muslim friend I had met during one of my travels in Malabar: “Are the exit polls true? I am very afraid.” The message gutted me. I did not know what to say. Eventually, I told him to keep the faith. Then I thought I should go to the studio. On June 3, I was welcomed to the studio with the warmth and the hospitality Malabar is known for. But I could sense the tension in the production rooms. So thick that you could cut it with a knife. The cliché is true. I felt it first-hand. No one told me they were tense and if so, why they were tense. They needn’t have told me. I was standing on Ground Zero of media oppression in India. Media One, run by a Muslim management but which has several journalists and other employees from other faiths too, had been abruptly banned by the Centre, triggering a long and expensive legal battle that the channel won emphatically.

The Supreme Court judgment in the Media One case should be part of the curriculum in all journalism schools. Also, the way Pramod and his team navigated the crisis. Unlike some of the “powerful” media houses, they did not cave in.)

On June 4, I reached the studio around 1.30pm. By then, there was a sea change. It was becoming increasingly clear that the BJP would not get a majority on its own. Ajims, Nishad and Pramod (the untiring journalists who were broadcasting from 5am) were on air. Someone asked me to wait in the editor’s office. Then someone from the production room saw me and waved me over. I think the desk knows where someone from the desk would like to be. I stood in one corner of the newsroom, reluctant to intrude.

I am glad I did not go to the editor’s room straightaway. The mood at the production room, packed mostly with young journalists, was infectious. Someone shouted: “Smriti trailing badly.” A cheer went up. So did a round of applause. Then they began feeding memes based on popular movie scenes. The great actress KPAC Lalitha’s meltdown in a scene was flashed when Smriti Irani’s plight was shown. “I need a headline,” another voice. PT Nasar, a veteran journalist I respect a lot, piped in: “Smritinaasam (The destruction of Smriti, and here a reference to the recollection of Smriti Irani’s tenure as minister and the Amethi conquest of 2019).” The response: “Yay.” I was in shock. It happens when you have an adrenaline rush after a long time. “Am I back in my newsroom?” I asked myself. “Tharoor has closed the gap. He is leading now.” Another cheer, another round of claps. Until a few minutes earlier, Shashi Tharoor was trailing. “Tharoor widening the gap. I need a headline.” “Turbo Tharoor.” Turbo is a full-on Mammootty action flick now running in Kerala movie halls. Unable to sleep, I had seen the movie less than 24 hours earlier on June 3 night. Another meme is on screen.

It is a scene from Bhramayugam, a Mammootty blockbuster in which the character played by the great actor keeps captive a man who seeks shelter in his manor. “You can’t go. I won’t allow you to go,” the most famous voice in Kerala is telling the captive. On the split screen, the image of a loser (I think it was Rajeev Chandrasekhar but I am not sure) appears. The suggestion: Mammootty’s character is telling the losing candidate that he cannot go to Parliament. Then Sabir asked me: “Would you like to come upstairs from where the figures are being updated?” I went up.

What a scene it was! It was one of the most breath-taking sights I have ever seen. The top deck — from where the figures are being fed to the on-screen charts — overlooks the studio floor from where the live telecast is going on. On the floor, the dashing Nishad is on fire. It is the principal duty of Nishad and Ajims to ensure that the coverage does not flag. Both were soft-spoken when I met them the day before.

But in front of the camera, they were tigers on the hunt. Behind me was the electric hubbub of the desk, unable to suppress the excitement as it became clear that Modi will fall short of majority. Ahead and down below on the brightly lit floor, Nishad, Ajims and Pramod were kicking their coverage into high gear and memes were flying thick and fast. That is the magnificent image that will stay with me forever. Later, Pramod and Nasar Sir took me to a nearby shop to have tea. On the way, an almost apologetic Pramod asked me: “Don’t take it otherwise. May I ask you what your headline would have been tomorrow had you run the newsroom? I wanted to ask you live on TV but I did not.”

I am glad Pramod, always reasonable and who insists on hearing the other side before passing judgement, did not ask me that question on air. Because I would not have had an answer. I told Pramod that I need a newsroom to think up a headline. I usually go blank and the reaction around me — even while working from home for months, I used to communicate constantly with as many colleagues as possible, especially Harshita — helped me to pick a headline.

When I told Harshita about this, she also asked me to think about what I would have done. I politely declined to answer. I don’t want to return to that space and place. But I am sure my headline would not have been on Modi (a headline on Modi would definitely have titillated social media but I would have kept it for an inside page). My headline most probably would have been on the people, especially the people of Uttar Pradesh. Just a simple “Thank U”, perhaps? Who knows? “U” opens up a lot of possibilities to work on as subsidiary visual ideas, besides Uttar Pradesh: Uttam Pradesh, U-tubers, Uniters, Unbreakables, U-turners….

Or, a tweak of Lincoln to say THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATION? Or, if I focused on Modi, would I have shrunk the entire Page 1 by 56 per cent in recognition of the deflation of the Big Chest? I don’t know. Now you know why I am too reckless for newsrooms.

That night, I messaged my friend in Malabar who was alarmed by the exit polls: “Sleep well tonight. We are safe.”

The dark clouds have only parted. They still hang heavy over us. Even now, anything can happen. Still, the night of June 4 was one of relief. We needed to breathe. We did. Late that night, I received a message from a friend in Uttar Pradesh. It read: “My kids asked me the reason for my happiness today. I told them that you will realise the value of this day many years later, then you will thank me and countless others who fought against tyranny.” I replied: “Well said, Saheb. And I will tell my grandchildren that I knew you.”

I don’t know if my account makes a story, especially against the backdrop of the sacrifices made by many, including Umar Khalid who is still in jail; the whiplash journalism pursued by Ravish Kumar and Ajit Anjum and several others; the selfless crusade of Teesta Setalvad, Harsh Mander, Roop Rekha Verma and many, many volunteers; the sharp political instincts of Yogendra Yadav and Parakala Prabhakar; and the hope kept alive by Dhruv Rathee. But I do hope my account answers my friends’ questions.

This is my June 4 story.

N.E. Sudheer, the foremost bibliophile I know and a no-nonsense commentator, writes in TrueCopyThink. (Of course, you may say little has changed with Modi and he retains his destructive powers but there is one priceless change. We are no longer afraid, especially no longer afraid to hope and to dream)

HOPE

A pluralistic Opposition, steered by a redoubtable civil society, will certainly preserve “India”. The democracy of Nehru will have sparkling evolutionary progressions

DREAM

All that I am visualising now is Modi falling prey to opportunistic politics and leaving Parliament one day after losing a confidence motion. The sengol must also accompany him. This is the dream of an ordinary citizen who takes pride in the idea of India. Had the popular verdict been otherwise, we would have been afraid even to dream.

(The author is a senior journalist; this is from his social media post)

Related:

The handover at Rae Bareli

The post My June 4 Story: The Day Results to the 2024 Elections came in appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The following is a list of stories I missed reading in the nine newspapers I buy and read online, and where I saw them. Others may have carried these stories but the point is I am reacting as a reader or audience as the suits classify us, not as a journalist.

In the latter half, I air my views as a desk hand.

1. The abandonment of Muslims (Saw it in multiple interviews by Karan Thapar and others for The Wire and read about in The New York Times. The photographs in The Times were outstanding, you cannot look at them without (tears) welling up.)
2. The electoral bonds. (The ready-to-report story that the mainstream media dropped like a hot potato. Most of the original stories I read in The News Minute-Newslaundy-Scroll. The Hindu and The Indian Express did carry some original stories but wasted them with the lukewarm display.)
3. The radical transformation of Rahul Gandhi (By Meena Kandasamy in The Wire; by Rahul Bhattacharya in The Economist)
4. The political and economic transformation of the Congress (articulated through its manifesto) (Yet to see a comprehensive copy. Perhaps, the pink press has carried but I don’t read business papers now as I cannot understand most of the jargon they write. I wonder if the reporters and subs also understand.)
5. The tempo-van meltdown. (I badly wanted to read a full-page collection of stories on this. About the van, about robber-barons, about how much cash fits in — with legal as well as demonetised notes. I am not joking. When Harshad Mehta claimed that he gave a crore to Narasimha Rao, a magazine tried to fit Rs 1 crore into a suitcase and found the brand which can. Oh, how green was our newsroom valley then, and now a cracked-earth desert!)
6. The breathtaking role played by civil society in the elections. (The New York Times)
7. The lies of Modi and the inability of most of the paper tigers to call him a liar. Some newspapers exhausted the thesaurus to steer clear of the word “lie”. (Ravish Kumar and Ajit Anjum all the way)
8. The rise of Uddhav Thackeray from an entitled member of a dreaded clan to a leader who has earned respect. (Multiple YouTube channels)
9. The valiant battles fought by Tejashwi Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav. (Social media)
10. The uncompromising ideological armour built by MK Stalin and Udhayanidhi. (Media One TV)

11. Dhruv Rathee, Ravish Kumar, Ajit Anjum, Karan Thapar and countless others who exposed how irrelevant the so-called mainstream media has become.
12. Umar Khalid, Siddique Kappan, Mohammed Zubair and several others who have paid a price for standing up to the regime. (Scroll, The Telegraph)
13. Kani Kusruti and her gesture at Cannes, the “Sudappi from India” post by Shane Nigam. (Malayalam media)
14. Above all, Shikha. Some of you may wonder who Shikha is, which probably means you are a newspaper-reading, English-speaking citizen. A homemaker in Rae Bareli, Shikha has voted for the BJP twice. Now, she is asking questions. Her questions need not reflect any sea change on the ground and Modi can still be re-elected. But the point is she has neither forgotten nor forgone her right to ask questions. (Mahol Kya Hai)

There must be several other stories that were untold. I leave it *to *you to decide what you missed.

Headlines

I will end with a small note on headlines. This may sound *like *nitpicking to laypersons. I request you to indulge me.

1. Which one is the best headline of the 2024 elections so far? My vote is for “The Audacity of Hate”. (The Guardian editorial on Indian elections)
2. Modi was not being “bitter”. We must choose our words with care and precision. Just as the golden hour in a heart attack and in a crime scene investigation, all you get in a headline is a few words. Choose wisely. Venom must be bitter but I don’t know. I have tasted it in only those I have helped. Call venom venom, poison poison, toxic toxic and hate hate. Divisive is not a synonym for raw, unvarnished hate.
3. I see a tendency among subs to abridge words like Opposition to Opp, governor to guv, president to prez. Nothing wrong with them. My son says econ for economics (econ is more apt also, I think, considering the con jobs that are pulled in the name of economics). Some newspapers have already graduated to Maha for Maharashtra and Raj for Rajasthan. I am waiting for Him for Himachal and Ben for Bengal and Shyam for Shyambazar.

As I said, nothing wrong with them if that is your house style. I am guilty of allowing Kejri for Kejriwal. So, I have forfeited my right to lecture.

Still, I will try to briefly explain why acerbic and arrowroot-biscuit-chewing (for ulcers) chief-subs used to dustbin subbed copies that wrote Opp or Oppn. Journalism is the most repetitive creative job in the world. Which makes it vulnerable to cliches, triteness and boredom. So, you need to play around with words to make it original each time you give a headline. The moment you say Opp, it means you are lazy to work on the headline and you go with a cliche. But challenged, you will think of new ways. Then you will think about the kernel of the story, its politics and its hidden nuances. Shortcuts kill the unique features of each story.

A drill you can follow after work so that your deadline is not affected:

1. Be convinced like a fanatic: every copy has a perfect headline. You just need to find it. Nothing can beat the high of a reasonably evocative headline falling into place.
2. Take a headline with Opposition or Guv or Prez.
3. Work on it till you can say the same thing with Opposition or without the word opposition.
4. Draft five headlines for the same copy: single column, double, three columns, 4 columns and eight columns. 5, 6 and 7 columns will fit if any of the five fit.
5. Always work on a sixth headline. Something wacky and wild. It will be your private collection that will make you proud one day.

(The author is a senior journalist; this is from his social media post)

Related:

The handover at Rae Bareli

The post Elections Stories I missed in the newspapers that I buy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Momentous occasions usually skim over me like the flat stone in a game of ducks and drakes.

Exhibit One: When I got married, I forgot to change into the shirt I had bought with my savings from the Debonair shop on the Grand Arcade in Calcutta and tied the knot (actually a crimson garland that is used to break fasts unto death) in what I was wearing overnight.

Exhibit 2: At the 75th anniversary of the Anandabazar Patrika in 1997, when Prime Minister I.K. Gujral signalled fresh general election, I was still marvelling at then editor, Aveek Sarkar’s suggestion that it was ABP that taught CPM how to spell Harkishen Singh Surjeet in Bangla. The thread was broken by the rushing feet of agency reporters scrambling to call in from landlines the news alert at a time mobile phones were a luxury. I was blissfully unaware that the Prime Minister had just then announced the biggest announcement of the day.

The old habit almost repeated itself in Rae Bareli on Friday — the penultimate day of campaigning here — when Sonia Gandhi said something that hardnosed political reporters would not pay much attention to because the generational change in the Congress had already taken place years ago.

I was at the rear of the audience on the ITI grounds in Rae Bareli, where the Jan Sabha attended by Akhilesh Yadav, Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi was winding down with Rahul’s blistering speech.

Then Sonia took the podium and started speaking. I had already worked my way forward, threading through the multitude so that I could catch a closer glimpse of the dais. Then I paused.

“I entrust Rahul to Rae Bareli,” Sonia told the audience, most of them made up of those who suffer in silence as 21 Indians hold as much wealth as the 70 crores.

I am not sure whether the Hindi word “saump” translates better as “entrust”, “cede”, “hand over” or “dedicate”.  

The handover marked a milestone in an extraordinary journey in public life in the world. Having represented Rae Bareli — an unrivalled name for a century as far as political recall is concerned (my mother gasped when I told her this evening where I was when she made the weekly call to check on me) — for decades, Sonia was saying farewell in the briefest manner possible but with unmatched elegance.

This note is not for any news columns. My quota for the month is over and I came to Rae Bareli on my own and not as a journalist, careful not to tread on any oversensitive toes.

Now comes the occasion — personally momentous but not so under any other yardstick— that sailed past me. Harshita Kalyan, among the journalists I now respect the most and my former colleague, called me and asked me if I recall a coincidence. I did not.

Harshita reminded me that I had covered the very first campaign rally of Sonia in Calcutta in 1998 on the great Brigade Grounds, where Indira Gandhi and Bangabandhu Mujib Ur Rahman held a gigantic rally after the birth of Bangladesh when India took on Nixon and did not blink when he sent the Seventh Fleet.

I think it was Sonia’s third or fourth meeting after the campaign debut in Sriperumbudur where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. I was assigned by deputy editor Deepayan Chatterjee to cover Sonia’s speech. I don’t think I did a memorable job, focusing more on how the previous speakers tortured the audience until Sonia arrived. I remember vaguely Harshita, who would speak her mind then as now, asking me why I wasted precious space on the others while the focus should have been on Sonia.

In hindsight, I think I was influenced — if not blinded — by the anti-Congressism sweeping Indian newsrooms, especially English, and a Khan Market variety of wordplay that couched the unkindest and most condescending labels and sobriquets in words that I found difficult to decipher without a dictionary. “Dowager” was a particularly patronising term where as “So near, yet so far” was done to death whenever photographs of Sonia appeared in newspapers. It was as if newsrooms could not wait for Sonia to enter politics — so that they can criticise her for doing so.

I suppose that is the done thing in a democracy: no quarters asked and none given. But I did not find the same sniggers and the same scrutiny being applied to Narendra Modi.

In fact, few public figures in India have faced relentless and unfair attacks as Sonia has — starting with her place of birth, the partner she chose, her accent, her skin colour, her part-time job, her clothes, her children…. Does any person indulging in such regressive behaviour have a place in a modern society? In India, they have a perch in high places.

Then in 2004, she showed how out of touch most of the editors were with what was happening in the country. “India Shining” was everywhere — when the Indian cricket team beat Pakistan in Pakistan in a one-day match it was “India Shining”. Perhaps, that was symptomatic: a bunch of highest paid players owned by a private club were being toasted as the symbols of India’s prosperity! Was it any different from the pride of India being equated with the gains of Ambani and Adani (till the tempo van hit the road)? But Sonia literally led the Congress by foot and put together an implausible coalition — a testimony to her political sagacity and accommodative nature.

The greatest — and hard to contrive — gift of Sonia was her ability to bring out the best in others. I remember a story (I don’t know if it is true but it is such that I want it to be true) in which a communist veteran tells a profusely perspiring Sonia at his modest flat in Delhi summer that the only AC there was in his bedroom. You are like my daughter. Will you mind if I invite you there so that you can be more comfortable while we talk, the veteran asked Sonia. Sonia apparently laughed and readily moved to the bedroom. Only those who respect each other can make such an offer and accept it.

I am sure you did not miss the point here that the greatness of the gesture lies more with the communist veteran than with Sonia. I never tire of telling this story, perhaps because somewhere deep down I give the credit to Sonia also for making him respect and trust her judgement.

Sonia again stunned the know-it-all pundits by declining to be Prime Minister. All these are well-known. I mentioned it here only because the best-ever edition of The Telegraph was brought out by Deepayan Chatterjee when Sonia gave up the post. That edition remains by all-time favourite although I suspect Harshita will choose the 2004 verdict edition with the Power of Finger headline that showed our former colleague Nupur’s inked finger. These are now a days worth losing your job for.

Sonia presided over a political system that undoubtedly was the most just and invested heavily in equity and empowerment. I do not know of any dispensation that piloted so many projects in such a short time (of course with the prodding of the Left) that empowered so many people.

By then, the India Shining armchair specialists were back, sniping and griping that the national wealth was being frittered away on the wretched and the damned. What about “development”, they groaned, unwittingly or otherwise making it the most treacherous word in Indian politics that helped Modi legitimise his run for national power.

At Rae Bareli this afternoon, as I was pushing to maintain my balance amid the heaving crowd, I heard Sonia say “Fear not”. She also underscored the need to respect others, protect the helpless and fight whoever it may be for the rights of the people — isn’t this what journalism also claims to aspire to, however hollow and laughable it may sound in many a newsroom?

It also struck me that countless mothers have little option but to entrust their children to God. In an extraordinary and reciprocal play, Sonia has the fortune of entrusting her son with Janata Janardan, a phrase that has lost is meaning over the years and the butt of ridicule in cynical newsrooms. 

Equally, Rae Bareli could not have asked for a better choice to call as its own and protect as its own. (Those making a face about dynasty and fief and other phrases but have a problem with inheritance tax, please remember: Sonia did not bequeath Rae Bareli to Rahul. It is not Sonia’s to do so. She has done it the other way round. Rahul will have to earn Rae Bareli as his guardian.)

I have no access to a newsroom now but I could not resist the temptation to wonder what would have been the headline had I led a team in producing a paper. Without hesitation, it would have been: GRACE.

(The author is a senior journalist; this is from his social media post)

The post The handover at Rae Bareli appeared first on SabrangIndia.

1. SC Garg, the Economic Affairs Secretary when the Electoral Bonds were rolled out and later the finance secretary, has said on record that the “we” were not aware that the SBI was “clandestinely” recording the unique numbers of the bonds at the deposit and encashment stages. This admission/disclosure is nothing short of an earthquake that throws up several other questions. Yet, how many of you read it in how many newspapers? 

2. Is Garg saying that the largest bank in the country went rogue behind the government’s back? Can the finance ministry just wash its hands of?

3. Or does his disclosure mean that the finance ministry was kept in the dark and some other government department with overriding powers and asked SBI to record the numbers? If so, would this mean the breakdown of the Cabinet System and the clearest indication yet of the operation of a deep state? Besides, if a section of the government told SBI to record the details, how does it make the business hotshots who swear by Modi look? Have the barons been taken for a royal ride and information was being collected on the suckers for future and perpetual blackmail?

4. Only the SBI’s standard operating procedure (SOP) can shed light on whether someone empowered it to record these details without telling the finance ministry. But SBI has apparently cited third-party interest to keep the SOP under wraps. This is nonsense because we already know about the donors and recipients. Who is this third party? How can third-party confidentiality be cited for information already known? All that is being asked is the process through which the information was recorded.

5. If someone or some group in SBI acted on its own and recorded the details on its own, the issue enters uncharted territory. Garg calls it unlawful, and the question does arise if the government had given this kind of autonomy to the SBI. We also cannot escape the question whether this individual or group is the biggest whistle-blower in the world after Snowden. Should the person/group be rewarded or punished?

6. Garg makes some questionable claims. That the Bond Scheme actually did such a meticulous job that we should be thankful! He also says Jaitley should be congratulated. Garg conveniently glosses over the fact that these details would have remained unknown had not the Supreme Court come down hard. The role of the Teflon-coated bureaucrats who can justify and rationalise anything has not been examined. Garg sounds like a character out of “Yes, Prime Minister”. Smooth-talking, self-effacing and keen to blame SBI and defend his political bosses.

7. This brings us to the role of Jaitley. Newspapers are strangely silent on this. He is no more but that does not mean that the role he played in the Bonds should not be put under the microscope. Two of his pet themes (which he would have wanted to be his legacy) now stand discredited: his crusade against pre-retirement decisions vulnerable to post-retirement inducements and the electoral bonds.

Besides, if he really did not know that SBI was secretly recording the details, isn’t this another instance of him being allegedly kept in the dark after demonetisation? What does it speak of his role in the Modi dispensation? What does it speak of journalists and editors who ate out of the hands of some ministers who projected themselves as those who knew it all?

A story is crying to be done. We can only wait and pray when newspapers will bless us with such a story.

8. The SBI: Hero or Villain? No story yet on how the bank collated data in three days after seeking time till after the elections. No story on the drama behind the scenes, who took the decisions.

Imagine if such a thing had happened if a non-BJP government was in power. We know Gujral was sleeping when he was named PM, we know how many times Shivraj Patil changed clothes daily, we know what was served at UPA meetings but we don’t know about the biggest U-turn in India since independence by a behemoth bank!

(The author is a senior journalist; this is from his social media post)

The post PSST! Shall we inform the reader or let sleeping bonds lie? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

We see when you are awake,

We know if you’re with or against us,

So be quiet for goodness sake.”

— a parody modelled on the popular song Jingle Bells sent by a former IAS officer to the author

 “Surveillance and Freedom of Press”.

In mid-December 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission concluded that the employees of Rite Aid, a pharmacy chain, acted on false alerts from its facial recognition systems, followed customers around stores, searched them and ordered some to leave. If the customers refused, the store called the police to confront or remove them, at times in front of friends and family. Rite Aid used facial recognition technology to falsely identify people of colour and women as likely shoplifters. Rite Aid’s actions disproportionately affected people of colour, especially Black people, Asians and Latinos, all in the name of keeping “persons of interest” out of hundreds of Rite Aid stores in cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Sacramento, the commission said.

This is just one example of how surveillance technologies are intruding into our everyday life, including in fields as essential and indispensable as medicine purchases.

In journalism, surveillance kicked in long before technology achieved the cutting edge status that it has today.

One example is the practice of government offices maintaining registers and making it mandatory for journalists to make an entry identifying the officials they are meeting on a particular day. This was not the case earlier: journalists with accreditation, which is granted after careful and strict scrutiny by government-appointed bodies, could enter government offices and speak to officials, usually in the afternoon when the workload sometimes eases. The register system is primitive but very effective.

If an article that is unpalatable to the government is published on a particular day, all that the government needs to do to identify the source is to check the register and see which officials met the journalist concerned. This strikes at the very root of source confidentiality. Source confidentiality has no legal backing in India, but is considered vital for the functioning of the Press. If sources can be identified by vindictive administrations eager to invoke the Official Secrets Act at the drop of a hat, journalism and accountability – and democracy, by extension – will be the ultimate sufferers.

I mentioned this to point out that sophisticated technologies are not needed if a government decides to undermine the pillars on which a democracy is built. But as the case of the Rite pharmacy showed, more advanced the technology, more vulnerable it is to misuse.

Often, civil society – journalists and lawyers included – fail to spot the symptoms of a surveillance raj or regime.

I request you to recall how we looked the other way after some initial murmurs when almost our entire urban stretches were brought under closed circuit TV and other surveillance cameras. Along with law enforcement agencies, private entities, including households, jumped into the surveillance cauldron and installed camera after camera in every nook and corner.

Along with this came, the craze for pointing smartphones at anything and everyone and snapping pictures without showing the basic courtesy of asking permission. In the process and without realizing it, we became the most surveilled society in history, bigger than what even the Orwellian Big Brother could do.

Fighting crime and monitoring traffic violations were cited as excuses for condoning the invasion of the surveillance cameras. So much so that, modern law-enforcement agencies have almost forgotten the pre-CCTV skills of deduction, detection and collection of evidence.

When we hear of a crime now, the first question we involuntarily ask is: “what about CCTV footage” or “where is the CCTV footage?” As if, before CCTVs became fashionable, no crime could be solved. The question – “where is the CCTV footage?” – is also an admission that we have practically given up our precious right to privacy and that we now consider it unusual if we are NOT under surveillance.

It is often said that some police stations in some parts of the country have corners beyond the reach of CCTV cameras, where bribes are exchanged and third-degree methods are deployed -– away from the prying eyes of the cameras that can incriminate public servants.

I am tempted to recount a story I had heard when I was a trainee journalist in the early 1990s when cell phones had not made their presence felt in India. I am not sure if the story is true but my objective is to merely illustrate how intrusive technology has become in a matter of decades.

A very important person in New Delhi used to “disappear”, every once in a while, to conduct an extramarital affair. Some of his rivals within his own party decided to settle scores with him. One day when the VIP was spending time with his lover in a guesthouse, someone called a police station and reported that the minister is missing. With no cell phones to track him and his staff tight-lipped, the police launched a man-missing search. Eventually, a very exasperated — and angry — VIP was found in the guesthouse.

Now, in the age of cell phones, the VIP would have been spared the embarrassment and the police could have saved the resources used for the manhunt. Three decades later, earlier this week on Christmas Eve, a retired IAS officer sent me a parody modelled on the popular song Jingle Bells.

One stanza went like this: “We see when you are sleeping, we see when you are awake, we know if you’re with or against us, so be quiet for goodness sake.”

From the crude register, we have now come to the age of Pegasus, a spyware that can only be bought by government agencies.

Now it is possible not just to snoop on what reports a journalist is working on, it is also possible to plant evidence against the journalist to implicate the journalist in trumped-up cases. I hope the enormity of the crisis is clear for you.

This ability of State-sponsored actors to embed themselves in the deeply private corners of watchdogs has grave implications for not just journalism but also the judiciary, the Opposition and the other checks and balances the republic has put in place after much thought and deliberation.

As if all these are not enough, we now have to cope with Artificial Intelligence also. Technology usually has three phases: enormous advantages, frightening potential for misuse and reassuring antidotes.

I hope we reach the third stage fast enough.

However, I must digress here and speak about at least one instance of how technology has helped. The media is no saint or angel. It has its share of devils.

Recently, in Kerala, a minister’s aide was accused of taking a bribe from a job aspirant. A channel went to town with the news. The young aide would probably have been hanged in a media trial. But, fortunately for him, a video surfaced, showing him at a wedding venue in another district at the time when the accuser claimed that money was handed over outside the secretariat. Even without the video, in the good old days, accounts by eyewitnesses at the wedding would have been sufficient to establish his innocence. But of late, our media trials and television channels make me wonder if we have forgotten a principle that forms the cornerstone of jurisprudence: presumed innocent until found guilty.

I blame the media as well as a section of lawyers who are willing to appear on TV and comment on cases that are sub judice. Both the media and the legal fraternity need to exercise restraint on this front. I did not elaborate on the Pegasus scandal because all of us know enough – or too little – about the scandal.

The sheer sweep of the Pegasus scandal that broke in July 2021 was astounding: the spyware was allegedly used on Opposition leaders, judges, journalists, investigators and statutory officials.

Fewer than 30 months later, on October 30, this year, Apple sent alerts to Opposition politicians and journalists that State actors may have tried to break into their iPhones. Among the politicians were some of the senior-most public figures and well-known journalists in the country, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and The Wire news portal co-founder Siddharth Varadarajan.

Let us pause for a moment and dial back to the latter half of the 20th century. The offices of the Democratic Party were sought to be bugged in an election year in the US during the Nixon presidency.

The Washington Post newspaper focused on the Watergate scandal for 788 days – until President Nixon was forced to resign. The Pegasus scandal in India was far bigger than the Watergate scandal in its sweep and reach. If one party was targeted in the US, a wide cross-section of society, including several pillars of our republic, were suspected to have been targeted. Yet, the political and ethical outrage in India was limited in its intensity.

I quote from a column I wrote for The Telegraph newspaper this month. An American judge played a decisive role in the Watergate case. Judge John J. Sirica “kept badgering defendants and witnesses on matters not covered in the indictment —namely, the financial and institutional involvement of the White House”. The judge took the “contentious step of passing exceptionally long provisional sentences on the defendants” (which allowed the accused to ponder the punishment for a few months). Sirica indicated that if the defendants spoke frankly at the hearings, the sentences would be reduced. Sirica ordered Nixon to surrender his recordings of the White House conversations to federal prosecutors. “Almost single-handedly, with great courage and risk to his reputation, Sirica had broken the case wide open.”

In India, the Pegasus controversy reached the Supreme Court. A court-appointed committee concluded last year that malware was found in five out of 29 phones submitted to it, but the use of Pegasus could not be confirmed. The committee said the Centre “has not cooperated” with the investigations. Parts of the reports were made public but the full files remain in sealed covers. In May this year, the apex court said an early date would be set for examining the status of various recommendations made by the committee.

Just days ago – that is December 28, 2023 – months after the Supreme Court looked into the allegations, Amnesty International issued the following statement. This is what convinced me that I must speak here today. Please keep in mind the names may sound familiar but these are NEW, I repeat, NEW revelations.

I quote from the Amnesty statement. “Amnesty International, in partnership with The Washington Post, has unearthed shocking new details about the continued use of the highly invasive spyware Pegasus to target prominent journalists in India, including one who had previously been a victim of an attack using the same spyware.

Forensic investigations by Amnesty International’s Security Lab confirmed that Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia Editor at The Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP), were among the journalists recently targeted with Pegasus spyware on their iPhones, with the latest identified case occurring in October 2023.”

“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” the head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab said. “Despite repeated revelations, there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”

The Security Lab recovered evidence from Anand’s device of a zero-click exploit which was sent to his phone over iMessage on 23 August 2023, and designed to covertly install the Pegasus spyware. A zero-click exploit refers to malicious software that enables spyware to be installed on a device without requiring any user action from the target, such as clicking on a link. The attempted targeting of Anand’s phone happened at a time when he was working on a story about an alleged stock manipulation by a large multinational conglomerate in India, the Amnesty statement added.

The Union home minister is fond of speaking about “chronology”. The latest Pegasus chronology is telling: On August 23, OCCRP seeks the company’s comment. Within 24 hours, the Pegasus spyware was sought to be planted in Anand’s phone. How is it that a spyware only a State agency can buy gets activated when a private company is asked a question? I am scared to name the company here because I do not know whether in the one hour I took to travel from Calcutta to Howrah, if the company has obtained a legal order barring a public debate on the issue.

The NSO Group, which owns the Pegasus software, told The Washington Post that it sells its products only to government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and that its technologies are licensed for the sole purpose of fighting terror and major crime. Indian authorities have until today provided no clarity or transparency on whether they have procured or used the Pegasus spyware in India, Amnesty said.

Please note the point that someone in our country is repeatedly and with impunity targeting the working tools of journalists again and again. The operative phrase here is “again and again”.

The Amnesty revelations suggest spyware abuse is continuing in India unabated EVEN AFTER the highest court of the land looked into the issue. If this does not terrify you, what will? I am compelled to ask this question: have our institutions, have our pillars, have our civil society, and have our collective voice lost the will and ability to stop shadowy players who declare with defiance “We don’t give a damn”?

How long will we allow these thugs with technology to violate our freedoms and our very lives? Can we name any other democracy whether such things are exposed but no one -– absolutely no one -– is held accountable?

Against that backdrop, I am constrained to ask: has large sections of Indians entered a post-morality, post-probity phase, much like the era of post-truth? I hope I am wrong and your answer is a resounding “no”. But if you also think that we have been sucked into a post-morality phase, democracy as we know it is in deep peril.

Our democracy will check all the boxes: the world’s largest elections, quick results, a clear majority and a government that swears by the Constitution. But beneath the surface – if journalists are unable to fulfil their responsibilities because of fear of surveillance, if judges are constrained to speak out after retirement and large sections of the minorities and the marginalized live in fear – it would mean that our democracy has been hollowed out in front of our eyes which are blinded by the dazzle of its outer shell.

As I conclude, I come to the most important point of this conversation. Have we realized how surveillance of journalists and others has turned on its head one of the fundamental principles of democracy?

The GOVERNED are supposed to keep a watch over the GOVERNORS.

Unfortunately, in our time, it is the governors who are keeping the governed under surveillance.

With great sadness, I recall the immortal words of US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in 1971 in the Pentagon Papers case: “The founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in a democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” I spoke of my grief because of the current deplorable cosiness between large sections of the media and the governors. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

So, what must civil society, which includes lawyers, do? I have no answers but I humbly place the following questions before you.

• It was the legal fraternity that took the lead in the freedom struggle. Will history forgive you if you remain silent now when divisive forces are threatening to rip apart our country that was built painstakingly with invaluable contributions from your predecessors, too?
• Unlike laypersons, you know the law. Have you exhausted all legal means possible to protect journalists from the curse of surveillance and infiltration?
• Like Judge Sirica of the US, are you badgering all stakeholders again and again to intervene?
• Have you filed petition after petition to the government to launch an independent inquiry into all cases of surveillance that do not include national security?
• Have you asked the government to disclose whether it had any contracts with foreign surveillance companies?
• As citizens, do you not want to know about the entire report of the Supreme Court’s technical committee in the Pegasus case? Have you discussed what you can do to ensure that the report is made public?
• Have you held enough street-corner meetings, press conferences and other discussions so that retired judges get more opportunity to speak out?

Please do not remain silent. Speak up and continue to speak. You know how to do that without breaking the law. Somewhere, someone will hear you.

Quietly and behind the scenes, Pope Francis this month took a significant — not adequate but significant nevertheless – step towards recognizing LGBTQ rights. The new rule allows Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples as long as the blessing is not connected to the ceremony of a same-sex union. This was considered impossible in March 2021. But the Pope worked behind the scenes to reach a consensus. In his traditional Christmas greetings to members of the Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the Vatican, Pope Francis said: “Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”

Perhaps we have an answer there. Perhaps we can negotiate and work around the rigid positions on all sides so that the governed can always hold the governors accountable. No one can scale up such a conversation and lead these negotiations better than lawyers. You owe it to this country.

Thank you. 

(Delivered on December 29, 2023 at the 14th All India Conference of The All India Lawyers Union in Howrah, West Bengal by the author, Editor, The Telegraph)

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