The Editor of the world’s most respected business newspaper, who met Narendra Modi twice in six years, says his economic leadership has “surprised me a little bit”, and wonders if the Indian prime minister has aides who are not afraid to tell him when he is wrong—and, equally, if Modi has it in him to listen when they do.

Lionel Barber, the Editor-in-Chief of Financial Times and FT.com from 2005-2020, met Modi in 2013 when he was Gujarat chief minister, and then again in 2019 when he had been PM for five years. He says he noticed a palpable reluctance among captains of Indian industry to speak about the BJP-led government and its policies.

On J-POD, the journalism podcast, Barber, 65, says he even told Modi about the climate of fear hanging over corporatedom.

“I did it mention it in our meeting that some of the business people were afraid of him and he was damaging confidence. There was a sort of chilling factor. I was really astonished when I went to Mumbai and saw a number of business people how they wouldn’t talk openly about the government and the government’s policies.”

Lionel Barber, whose new book The Powerful and the Damned has just been published by Penguin in India, says what might be happening in Vladimir Putin’s Russia may well happening in India, albeit to a smaller degree.

“All strong leaders should be asked, do they have people who will say you are making a mistake. And are they listening to them? Because if you have such an aura, and you are such a strong man, you don’t necessarily take the advice. Or, people are afraid of speaking up. That’s happened in Russia, and it might be happening to a degree, in India.

“The best leaders have strong people around them.”

Let the record show that in his long career as an FT foreign correspondent and editor, Lionel Barber has met and interviewed, among others, Barack Obama and Tony Blair; Angela Merkel and Shinzo Abe; Donald Trump and Wen Jiaobao.

The dramatic personae in Barber’s book lists 7 prime ministers and 4 presidents, 3 members of royalty, and 12 business heads.

He says the most impressive character in his book is former US secretary of state, James A. Baker. And the most damned is former British prime minister David Cameron, “for Brexit, which was a bad idea”.

After his second meeting with Narendra Modi in April last year (with FT’s South Asia bureau chief Amy Kazmin in tow), Lionel Barber records that there was “still an edge of menace about the man who, lest we forget, had his finger on a nuclear button”.

Modi’s second term, he says in the book, was marked by a “weaker economy and rising religious intolerance”.

Barber now says he wasn’t suggesting that Modi might do something maddening with the allusion to the nuclear button.

“I didn’t want to suggest in any way that he could fire off a nuclear weapon. I was just reminding my global readership that India does possess nuclear weapons. It is in a very special club, and that confers a certain responsibility. It is also next to another country, Pakistan, that also has nuclear weapons. So, this is a dangerous area of the world.”

But Lionel Barber does admit that the demonetisation of high-denomination currency notes in November 2016, hailed by the chartered accountant turned RBI board member S. Gurumurthy as “Financial Pokhran”, demonstrated “a certain capriciousness”. (Pokhran in Rajasthan is the site of India’s nuclear tests.)

“Demonetisation may have had a good idea as a goal, of getting the money that was hidden in the economy exposed, but the consequences were much more dramatic and much more negative than the Modi government realised.” 

Listen to the full J-POD with Lionel Barber

America is coming back

“But it’s not going to be the same. It is going to have to work with its allies, but it’s also got to realise that it is working with another superpower-in-waiting or a superpower which is almost there, which is China.”

Globalisation’s return?

“The election of Joe Biden as US President is not a restoration (of globalisation) but he is stopping the slump; he is stopping the retreat into nationalism that we have seen in the last five years."

China after COVID

“China’s snapback has been incredible compared to every other country. Questions will be asked of the origins of the Coronavirus, and maybe the One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI) is a bit of an overstretch too.”

Sino-Indian relations

“With India’s border tension with China, it’s never going to be a totally easy relationship between the two countries, particularly as China expands its power westwards.”

Globalisation has been good

“The free movement of goods, services and capital has been a tremendous boon if you think of the millions lifted out of poverty in China and in India. Immigration was a big cause of the backlash against globalisation, particularly in Europe.”

Photograph: courtesy The Guardian

Screenshot: courtesy The powerful and the damned/Penguin

Also read: When Lionel Barber met Narendra Modi

Listen to previous episodes of J-POD: Buzzsprout

Listen to Lionel Barber’s new podcast: What next?

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In 2020, with Modi’s novelty having worn off, with the 2016 demonetisation having ravaged lives of Bihar’s poor, with the COVID lockdown sparking a return of Bihar’s migrants, with chief minister Nitish Kumar facing massive anti-incumbency, it is difficult to see how pre-poll predictions of an NDA win in the three-phase election can come good, says a veteran Bihar hand.

Nobody is going to win

"Nitish Kumar will be a loser. BJP will be a loser. Probably the people of Bihar will be a loser. Pollsters will definitely be a loser.

“My gut feeling is we are in for a surprise. If the pollsters are anywhere near the truth, then we are probably heading for a hung house,” says Uttam Sengupta, the former resident editor of The Times of India in Bihar, who also covered the state for The Telegraph and India Today, on the journalism podcast J-POD.

Two pre-poll surveys in the past week have predicted a win for the BJP-led NDA in the 243 seat house.

CSDS-Lokniti gave 133-143 seats to the NDA against 88-98 to the grand alliance (Mahagatbandhan) of RJD, Congress and the Left.

CVoter gave 141-161 seats to NDA, 64-84 seats to Mahagathbandhan.

Unlikely, says Uttam Sengupta.

"Some in Bihar believe BJP will not mind if there is a hung house. They are so confident that they will have the resources to split any party—JDU or RJD or Congress—and cobble up the numbers,” says Sengupta, currently a consulting editor with the National Herald newspaper, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru.

Listen to the full podcast with Uttam Sengupta

Things changing fast in Bihar

"A month ago, the TINA (there is no alternative) factor was working in favour of Nitish Kumar. It looked like there was no other option. BJP was hung-ho. NDA was very confident: they were in power, they had the resources. RSS was working on the ground. Opposition was in disarray.

"Something has dramatically changed in the last 10 days. BJP leaders are so jittery they are saying if RJD wins, Bihar would be flooded by Kashmiri terrorists, Pakistan will start celebrating, Naxals will be back and so on. Nitish Kumar is losing his cool, he is being heckled, people are shouting slogans at his rallies in favour of Lalu.

"For the last five years, the media in Bihar or elsewhere could not see anything wrong in Bihar or Nitish Kumar. They took everything the BJP was saying as gospel truth. The fact that the same media can no longer ignore the crowds at Tejashwi Yadav’s meetings, and is reporting that Nitish Kumar is facing a hostile audience, tells you something. That despite their best efforts, they are no longer in a position to ignore it.”

Lockdown, the turning point

"The lockdown and the migration crisis, when Biharis were left to fend for themselves, was probably the turning point. That and the changing demographics. A higher proportion of the electorate—from 25% to 30%—is between 18 and 29. These are not willing to work in the fields or as masons.

"The anti-incumbency against Nitish Kumar has been reported. That nothing happens without a bribe. The allegations of corruption in the Srijan scam, the Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal. Prohibition was a huge plank and earned goodwill from women. But it has backfired. There is a parallel black market.

"Law and order has collapsed in Bihar in the last three years. It is as bad, as lawless as it was earlier. If it was “jungle raj” in the 1990s, it is not much better now, with gang rapes and loots and robberies and dacoities. It is back to square one.”

Nitish Kumar facing anti-incumbency

"The poorest of Biharis have immense faith in Narendra Modi. They believe the PM is working 24 hours a day for their welfare. If their lot is not improving, they think it is not because of Modi, it is because of Nitish Kumar. It is a pardox difficult to explain.

"Nitish Kumar spent thousands of crores on vanity projects. He spent Rs 400 crore for a park in front of Patna railway station. He spent Rs 300 crore for an international convention centre. He spent money on building a human chain to get into the Guinness Book of records.

"Nitish Kumar spent Rs 500 crore on advertising. People say you spent money on all this but you don’t have money to create jobs, pay salaries.”

The state where it all stops

"A journalist called Pushyamitra has written a book recently titled ‘Ruktapur’. It’s an allegory to Bihar, where everything stops. Development stops, investment stops, education stops. He says in Bihar there are 12,000 sanctioned posts for doctors in government hospitals, but the actual strength is 2,800. For a population of 13 crores.

"You are not getting affordable education or affordable healthcare. You are not able to live without having to pay a cut. You are not getting livelihood or job opportunities.

“All leaders address the moment. Nitish Kumar addressed the moment. In 2020 they are over the hill. They have done what they could and have reached their level of incompetence. They cannot improve it further. You need a new imagination, a new drive. Nitish Kumar has run out of ideas.”

Tejashwi Yadav is here to stay

"Whether RJD wins or not, Tejashwi Yadav is here to stay and is going to stick around for sometime. He has been able to speak and connect with the people in a manner unthinkable just six months ago. The energy at his rallies is in stark contrast to Nitish Kumar and Modi’s, where everybody is stiff, bored, listless and indifferent.

“In Tejashwi’s rallies, they are shouting, screaming, jumping, trying to touch him, take selfies with him, rushing after his car, trying to reach his helicopter. I have seen similar scenes in Lalu’s rallies but nothing like this. Nothing like the frenzy this time.

"Tejashwi Yadav had a great one-liner to the BJP’s promise of free vaccine for COVID. He said they could not give sanitisers or masks for free, now they are promising free vaccine. This is going to boomerang, it won’t be taken kindly by Biharis.”

In 2015, TV channels, anchors, analysts and pollsters got it so wrong even on the day of counting, even while votes were being counted, that it produced an unputdownable column by the historian Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph.

Read it here: Calling their bluff

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“Arnab Goswami has made a breakthrough with Republic Bharat and Aaj Tak cannot catch up with it,” says Aunindyo Chakravarty, the former managing editor of NDTV’s Hindi and business channels.

“Aaj Tak has been such a massive brand since 2000. Everywhere you go it is Aaj Tak. It has 50% reach which I think is an underestimate. When a channel like that gets defeated, it can’t make a comeback. It has been defeated by distribution fixing, and it has no answer.”

As a 36-year-old journalist in 2008, Chakravarty, who now hosts a weekly show on the online portal News Click, had flagged the errors in Television Audience Measurement (TAM) data, which resulted in NDTV going to court in New York.

Those allegations resulted in TAM being replaced by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), a body comprising advertisers, advertising agencies and broadcasters, but the allegations of fixing against Republic TV—which Chakravarty says “doesn’t pass the smell test”—show that the system is far from fool proof.

“Rigging has been happening all the time in the market. Everyone has done it out there. Republic TV has gone ahead of others, using the techniques that others have used in the past. Anyone can do what Arnab is doing. All they lack is a thick skin. 

“Republic doesn’t need to fix. If it is fixing at all, it is doing so to balance out what others are doing. If Arnab Goswami is rigging, he is counter-rigging because someone else is rigging.

“News channels know that they can’t beat Republic TV. It is politically protected. Its distribution is never going to be a problem. And its content is what viewers will watch even without knowing. 

“Republic Bharat has got most of its ratings from Zee News. It has taken Zee News, put it on steroids, and brought it out on the streets. Even if no one is rigging anything, the ratings reflects the public sphere and public culture of today.

“If Arnab is doing well, and if ratings can be fixed to show Arnab is doing well, everyone is under pressure to do the same thing. By rigging ratings, by blocking transmission, you can turn a media house into a ‘Godi’ media house.

“Even if all rigging is removed, even then Arnab will be No.1. It is his content that is oriented towards revenue, not his ratings. He doesn’t need ratings to get money.”

Listen to the full podcast with Aunindyo Chakravarty

How audiences are measured

“There are 40,000 meters covering about 170,000 people. A leading Hindi channel will be watched by 9,000-9,500 sample viewers. On the basis of that, we are projecting for 84 crore people in 20 crore households. The number of meters is not the issue. Government surveys depend on similar sample size.”

TV ratings ain’t for journalists

“People think TRPs are the real number of people watching a channel. Not true. Ratings are to be used by advertisers. If journalists start looking at ratings and think people are watching them, it reflects a basic problem in the system. Ratings should not be given to channels. It should only be given to advertisers.” 

Entertainment versus news

“Over a 13-week period, the leading general entertainment channel (GEC) will be watched by those in metered homes for about an hour a day. Hindi news is watched for about 15-16 minutes, even a lot of that would be entertainment.”

“Historically, proper news is watched no more than 4-5 minutes a day. Most people watch headlines and move on. There is no flipping between news channels, people watch their channel and move to entertainment channels.

“We say there is so much choice, but the truth there is no choice. You will see the same news in every channel presented in exactly the same manner. Ratings creates homogeneity of content.”

How ratings can be fixed

“If a Hindi general entertainment channel with a 20% market share rigs 50 homes out of 40,000 metered homes—approximately 200-210 people—its market share will go to 21.5%. For a Hindi news channel, then 20% will go up to 26%. 

“If an English news channel with 20% market share rigs 50 homes for 5 hours a day, its market share will go to 80%. If you just rig 10 homes for 5 hours per day, it will go up to 50%. If you rig 10 homes for 3 hours per day, it will go up to 35%.

“The bigger concern is if fixing is taking place at the level of distribution. When a channel is switched off or its audio goes off, viewers think that it is the channel’s transmission that has a problem. But someone is blocking it. You don’t have to do it all over India but in specific markets.” 

It’s the economy, stupid

“The economy has done so badly that news channels don’t make money. They barely cover their costs. The revenues of news channels has hardly gone up in last 10 years. How do you expect channels to operate? They have no option but to do this. If channels were doing well, they wouldn’t have to bother about ratings.”

Democracy’s last gasp

“If TV news is an institution, its subversion is very easy in an undemocratic environment, in a populist environment, and that is what is happening right now and Arnab is making the most of it. That atmosphere will only change if a section of India’s big business, feels that things need to change, democracy has to come back.”

Also read: Arnab Goswami will be No.1 even if all rigging is removed

Mr Justice Arnab Goswami gets a taste of his own medicine

‘Very easy to steal ratings’

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The revelations in the foreign media of Facebook’s pro-BJP bias in India have (so far) been confined to the oral interventions and internal notes of its chief lobbyist Ankhi Das, but the possibility of the social media giant having “tailored” or “altered” its algorithms to help the BJP is a matter for deeper journalistic and political scrutiny.

So says Kunal Purohit, an award-winning Mumbai-based journalist and researcher who has been examining the role of social media in the rise of Hindu nationalism and the spurt of Hindutva hate crimes.

“Facebook might have lent a better understanding [to the BJP] of how to beat or master the algorithm game,” says Purohit on J-POD, the journalism podcast.

“I am fairly certain BJP has been given a better understanding of how to maximise their presence and how to work their way around the algorithms. This is a matter of investigation for all journalists who are looking at this right now to see whether there was any ‘insider help’ to the BJP to try and tailor the alogrithms in favour of the BJP.

“If that has indeed happened, that is extremely serious and can be quite damaging to Facebook and its credibility.” (hear excerpt, above)

According to three reports in The Wall Street Journal (above) and Time magazine since August 15, Facebook’s public policy head Ankhi Das waved away hate speech by BJP supporters for “business prospects” and fearing a “political fallout”.

Following the revelations, Das has apologised to her Muslim colleagues; Facebook executives have appeared before a parliamentary committee on IT; and the BJP member has been “banned” from the platform for “hate speech”.

The BJP and Congress have also been involved in a war of words with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

But all this frenetic activity, says Kunal Purohit, only scratches the surface.

The real issues are: how deep are the ties between Facebook and BJP, and in effect the Narendra Modi government; the extent to which Facebook helped BJP in its social media campaign—and whether FB fiddled around with its algorithms to help BJP.

“Facebook has been open about the fact that it does assist its ‘partners’ in getting better in their presence on the platform. BJP would have certainly been helped in understanding the platform and to get better at it. I want to see the extent of what that assistance was and if that assistance was also provided to the Congress or the Aam Aadmi Party,” says Purohit.

“Some of BJP’s social media campaigns might put some of the best social media managers to shame, for the narrative they manage to stitch each and every time. Social media is where they turn the facts on the ground and create a parallel narrative which helps them immensely to beat back criticism. This is why Facebook is essential to the BJP and Modi.

“Not many of the mainstream media are willing to prick the BJP narrative actively, so social media allows BJP to set their own narrative in a bubble of sorts. Facebook allows BJP to exploit this bubble completely. It allows BJP to filter out the reality. It’s a clever way of ensuring that the news media does not set the agenda in the conversation between the party and its supporters. The party can in an unfiltered, unregulated, unchecked manner set the agenda very consistently and ensure its supporters remain in the bubble. It is this we need to unravel. How did Facebook allow BJP to gain such a presence?”

Listen to the full podcast with Kunal Purohit.

“Chimpanzees with nukes”

Facebook’s algorithms is the brain of its business model. It is a super-secretive operating system designed for “continuous, individualistic behaviour modification”, and not all of Facebook’s top executives have access to it.

Except Mark Zuckerberg (who interviewed Narendra Modi in 2015).

At least two top Facebook executives—former president Sean Parker and former vice-president of user growth Chamith Palihapitiya—have spoken about Facebook’s algorithms after leaving the Menlo Park-based company.

Chamith Palihapitiya (above): “We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and amongst themselves. You don’t realise how you are being programmed.”

Sean Parker: “Social media is exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. It literally changes your relationship with society and with each other. God knows what it is doing to our children’s brains.”

For investigators from Parliament’s IT standing committee to journalists in media organisations, the question going forward is whether Facebook has brought all or some of the elements to its algorithms in India.

Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, who has deposed before US Congress on a similar issue, has said “it is happening not by accident but by design.” He calls Silicon Valley engineers designing these algorithms “chimpanzees with nukes”.

However in the 20 days since the first WSJ story appeared, almost no Indian media outlet has been over-eager to dig into such a goldmine, except for one story in The Economic Times and another in The Indian Express.

Kunal Purohit, who deposed before the Delhi Assembly committee investigating Facebook’s role in fanning the flames of the February 2020 riots in the capital, says this is not surprising given the wheels and deals Facebook has running in Delhi.

Purohit who had flagged the concerns in The Wire and Article 14 says on J-POD:

Profits, not ideology, drives Facebook

“Facebook officials might be inclined towards the BJP, but I don’t necessarily think Facebook is an ideologically driven platform which is trying to promote one ideology. It is a corporation which will only look at profit and will look at very little apart from its interests and its own profits.”

Capitalism at its best, or worst

“Facebook has realised that the way to do business here, to expand its reach, is to be closely aligned to the BJP, the ruling dispensation, favour it in whatever way it can, while safeguarding its own interests. This is extremely shrewd business, decision-making, backing people who are powerful claimants to the seat of power.”

Milking political power

“Facebook can cull out commercial benefits even if it is helping the aggressor as in US, Brazil, Myanmar or India. At the same time, Facebook has grown to be a behemoth, and Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful individuals. It’s not a coincidence that the two things have happened simultaneously.”

Different strokes for different folks

“Officials like Ankhi Das and Shivnath Thukral are very clever choices by Facebook. They have chosen people who either have had previous experience of how to do deal with the BJP, or are ideologically linked with the BJP. If the Congress were in power, Facebook would do what it has to do in terms of cosying up.” 

What’s BJP’s relationship with FB?

“There is a direct financial benefit. BJP is the biggest spender on advertisements on Facebook. That apart, among the top 10 ad spenders, there are three other pages affiliated to the BJP. Together, these four make up 50-60% of Facebook’s ad revenue from the top 10 advertisers. When you are in such a cosy relationship are you going to be fair? Can we expect you to be fair? The answer is no.” 

What does Facebook get in return?

“Facebook is in tie-ups with the National Commission for Women, to the Ministry of Home Affairs. to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to the CBSE. It may not get monetary benefits from these partnerships, and maybe the government is not paying it for its services, but Facebook is getting access to the market.” 

What’s the unsolved mystery?

“Facebook owns WhatsApp which has been directly linked to lynchings, hate crimes, riots. Despite that, Facebook has been allowed to get away for so long. What is this compact bind that is holding Facebook and BJP together? Journalistically this is a pandora’s box that should be opened. There are many skeletons in the closet.”

Why media is silent

“The media, given the state it is in, doesn’t want to prod into issues which might be an embarrassment to the BJP or its members. Facebook has created partnerships with various media organisations. It has sponsored media events across newsrooms. It’s the classic advertiser-newsroom conundrum.”

Will Facebook get away?

“World over, governments and parliaments are wanting to hold Facebook to account. In India, the ruling government doesn’t seem very interested. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey tried to stall Facebook executives from being summoned before IT standing committee. IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has written to Mark Zuckerberg accusing some FB employees of bias.”

Will Ankhi Das survive?

“Is Ankhi Das so valuable to Facebook that it can take the damage, and the doubts over its credibility and integrity, and still retain her? What Facebook will do with her will tell us is how high the bar for propriety and how high the bar for integrity it has set for its own personnel.” 

Where does the buck stop?

“The buck should not end at Ankhi Das. Had she been in Mark Zuckerberg’s chair, I would say the buck ends with her. If she is one cog in the wheel of Facebook, then we would be missing the point by only looking at her. It is critical to look at the role of these social media platforms in normalising hate and profiting from it.”

Also read: Facebook, BJP and Narendra Modi: How Ankhi Das fuelled hate speech fearing a “political fallout”

Everything you wanted to know about the Facebook scandal in 32 tweets and 8 links

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“In Meghalaya, if you are a non-tribal, you will always be wrong. We have always stood up against the establishment, we have stood up against these extra-constitutional forces. This (COVID) gave them a good handle to beat us with,” says Patricia Mukhim, the Editor of The Shillong Times.

The broadsheet English newspaper is owned by a non-tribal.

Now in its 75th anniversary, the paper has not been published since August 23 due to an alleged violation of COVID protocols.

“A tribal elitist institution—Dorbar Shnong, as it is known—prevented the newspaper’s publisher from entering the premises even before the district health officer could conduct the tests in the most perfunctory way before issuing an adverse report. That’s how strident the extra-constitutional institutions are,” says Patricia Mukhim on J-POD, the podcast on journalists and journalism.

The newspaper was turned into a “containment area” on Saturday, August 22, after a worker at its press tested positive for Coronavirus, preventing the newspaper from coming out. Subsequently two others in the machine room and a driver were also found to be contaminated.

Patricia Mukhim, a former member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) who was awarded the Padma Sri in 2000, avers the paper is paying the price not just for COVID but for a combination of factors—not least for crossing swords with the tribal institutions.

(In July 2020, a police complaint was filed against Mukhim by a village council over a Facebook post, claiming that it might incite communal tension. In March 2019, Mukhim was at the centre of a contempt of court case.)

Listen to the full podcast with Patricia Mukhim

Not yet democratised

“We are living in a region that has not really been democratised. To expect the tribes who lived in isolation before independence and who were little little principalities, little hierarchies, to integrate into an independent India and to be following a Constitution implanted from the West is a bit too much.

Nation-building, work in progress

“We still are in the process of nation-building over here. We still feel we owe our allegiance to these traditional institutions because we think they are representative of our identities. We think, if we do not subscribe to these institutions then we will be losing our identities. Identity has become so linked to these institutions.”

A very ethno-centric society

“The tribal elitist institutions think everybody should take a stand on their behalf. And this is what the vernacular newspapers do. They sometimes can be accused of inciting people because they will always take the side of the majority. This is very disturbing for anybody in the newspaper profession.”

Law unto themselves

“Every locality has its own Dorbar Shnong almost like a khap panchayat. There is no single Constitution that binds them. Every dorbar has its own Constitution, its own rules, its own bylaws. In one place one ethnic institution will do something, in another place it will do something else.”

Attackers are never arrested

“On July 3, I spoke out against five non-tribal boys beaten up by a group of people in a basketball court. I asked the tribal institutions on social media: ‘What are you doing about this? This happened under your jurisdiction.’ These sorts of attacks, lynchings have happened since 1979 but the attackers are never ever arrested.”

Media under pressure

“If you are anti-establishment, the government stops ads. We rely largely on government ads because we don’t have industries or corporate houses. On two occasions, our advertising ran dry because, we were told, we write anti-government stories. The so-called national media does not pay attention. If people do not know about us it is because the media doesn’t care about this region at all.”

The Shillong Times at 75

“People don’t look at the age of the newspaper. They only look at the news. If the news doesn’t suit them, those who are not happy with the news we carry, who are not happy with our investigative journalism, they are the ones who prefer to see we don’t have a voice any more. Obviously it has to be those in power at the moment.”

Also read: In Meghalaya, an Editor’s posts on Facebook prove costly as she fights (and loses) a contempt of court notice against The Shillong Times in three months flat

“When you are up against a military that spends four times what you are spending, and a country whose economy is five times your economy, no one in government or the military can be under any illusion of the military challenge we face from China,” says Ananth Krishnan, the Beijing Correspondent of The Hindu newspaper.

“I will be surprised if the Chinese just cut and run suddenly after investing so much into these events [incursions] over the last few months.

“China will score on military funding and equipment. Where India would score is it has been tried and tested—even the Chinese acknowledge that. China hasn’t seen action since 1980 in Vietnam, which it didn’t go well for China.”

Krishnan, who has been based in Beijing for 11 years, speaks Mandarin, and has visited all but three of China’s 33 provinces and regions, has a new book out next month titled India’s China Challenge (Harper Collins), and it opens a rare window into India’s big neighbour through Indian eyes.

On J-POD, the journalism podcast, Ananth Krishnan says:

“The Chinese know they are sitting pretty in terms of their current position on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). As much as you want to talk and negotiate, possession is nine-tenths of the game, as they say, and if you are holding on to the land, things are in your favour. If you are going to give up what you are already occupying, you can extract something significant, and I am sure they will extract something significant, if they are going to walk away.”

Listen to the full podcast with Ananth Krishnan

No doubt of change in status quo

“At Pangong Lake, the Chinese are at least 8 km on India’s side of LAC. They have built permanent and semi-permanent fortifications that could very possibly mean loss of territory. In Depsang, it’s a bit hazy whether PLA (People’s Liberation Army) is within 18 km of the LAC. This is possibly the first time that in multiple areas India is being denied access to its LAC. So make no mistake, this is very, very significant.”

Orders came from high up

“The specific events on the night of June 14 that led to the loss of lives might have been something unexpected but the broader moves by PLA were coordinated. These weren’t actions taken by local-level commanders or somebody in the western theatre command of PLA. It would have come from a higher level only because it involved massive coordination from PLA to deploy in such huge numbers at multiple points on LAC in a way we haven’t seen since 1962.”

The worst-case scenario

“When the China-India clash happened in June, one of the theories doing the rounds was that rather than pick a fight with the United States, it would make more sense for China to do something right in its periphery, whether India or Taiwan. That is something that is possible and you could link that to China’s broader rivalry with the US, to expose its inability to intervene on the behalf of its allies or partners.”

Prof Graham Allison (above), the Harvard political scientist, who has found that in the last 500 years whenever a reigning power has felt threatened by a rising power, in 12 out of 16 cases there has been war.

‘Peaceful Rise of China’ is passe

“‘Peaceful Rise of China’ is a phrase Chinese have used less and less since Xi Jinping took over. They are not embarrassed at all to say at the highest level that this is their time; this is a period of strategic opportunity for China. They have openly spoken of moving away from Deng Xiaoping’s maxim of being cautious and biding their time. They feel it is their right to do what they want, and if there are consequences, they will deal with them.” 

China doesn’t see India as equal

“For quite a long time there has been resentment among Chinese intellectuals of being equated with India. Chinese thinkers find it puzzling, even insulting, that we look at them in the same breath. They see China as an equal of the US. Scholars situate India within this broader game they have going with the US, not on its own merit but more in terms of India riding on the coat tails of Donald Trump.”

Chinese model has lost its sheen

“The way people look at China has diminished, not just in India but in many countries. The political direction it has taken under Xi Jinping has come as a wake-up call. The elite imagination of China, that it is a post-ideological China, a China that is run by far-sighted men in suits, has come crashing down. For a lot of people in India, that was the model they wanted. This was a myth.”

The return of ideology

“One service Xi Jinping has done is remind all of us that behind everything you see in China and the skyscrapers and the bullet trains, is the Communist Party. It was staying out of the limelight, but is making no bones under Xi Jinping that everything begins and ends with the Communist Party. The return of ideology under Xi Jinping has made people in the West rethink in elevating this model.”

Can India hurt China economically?

“China doesn’t want an indefinitely prolonged situation where its businessmen can’t travel to India, its companies can’t invest in India, where there is no economic engagement. We shouldn’t be under any illusion that the dependency is one-way. China hasn’t taken any economic counter-measures yet. If it turns off the tap for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), or electrical machinery or auto components, it could bring India’s economy to a halt if it chose to. It would be wrong to think that we can continue taking measures without seeing them respond.

TikTok versus WhatsApp

One of the things that troubled me about the ban on Chinese apps was the justification that China doesn’t allow WhatsApp. If China becomes your standard of reference, you are really going down a slippery slope. Shouldn’t you believe at a fundamental level that your values in democratic society are strong enough to deal with disinformation or propaganda coming from a China or Russia? In the supposed clash of values you are internalising many of those values.” 

Ban on study of Mandarin is crazy

“Even if you have decided China is going to be Enemy No.1, it is insane to ban Mandarin. I don’t see what you will gain. It’s just posturing and may win you headlines, and this is what happens if you are governing in terms of getting next day’s headlines. It’s not going to get you very far if you are unbothered about outcomes and you are only obsessed with optics.”

India’s challenge is premature

“When will India get there?” We may never get there. We aren’t quite there yet [to pose a challenge]. India will go its own course. I don’t think we are going to replicate what they did for various reasons. I would hope we don’t replicate what they politically. And it would be a strange irony if we end up emulating them more politically than economically.”

Also read: How Steve Bannon used Indian TV channels to shape India’s anti-China rhetoric even before the incursions in Ladakh

Fatigue in Indian media

“Right from the outset, there has been a tendency in some sections of the media to downplay what was happening in Ladakh. There is a large section of the media that doesn’t want to dwell on stories that present the government in a bad light.”

Chinese journalism isn’t all propaganda

“Some of the journalism that was done from Wuhan was extraordinary. A lot of what we know today about the coverup is not because of The New York Times or The Washington Post, it is because of Chinese media that were allowed by Beijing, because it felt the local government wasn’t giving them the full picture.” 

Media freedom is being eroded

“Xi Jinping has reversed almost a decade-long trend of the opening up of domestic Chinese media. In the last 4-5 years you are going back to a pre-2000 kind of media environment where all the papers are saying similar things, where the party is controlling what people say and don’t say. The gains are being eroded.”

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If convicted he could spend the next 20 years in jail.

But less than a week ago, Steve Bannon, seen to be the unseen hand guiding right-wing demagogues across the world, was grandstanding on WION, the ‘World Is ONe” news channel launched by Subhash Chandra, the Zee founder who became a Rajya Sabha member with the help of the BJP (and invisible ink)—and whose autobiography Narendra Modi released at his home in 2016 (above).

(Listen to Shobhan Saxena in Sao Paulo on how Steve Bannon is at work in Brazil, above)

On August 15, India’s 74th Independence Day, WION’s editor-in-chief Sudhir Chaudhary, who himself spent quality time in jail in 2012 on charges of allegedly trying to extort former Congress MP Naveen Jindal of between Rs 50 crore to Rs 100 crore, tweeted the Steve Bannon exclusive. 

In his intro to the August 15 simulcast, Jack Maxey (above), anchor of The Pandemic Warroom, waxes eloquent on India, the “largest multi-cultural democracy in history”, “led by their great prime minister Narendra Modi, fantastic friend of Donald Trump“.

“Today, for a special day for us particularly and a special day for the world, we are going to be on WION channel, one of the greatest news channels that you can watch if you are trying to understand what is going on in the region. 

“Every night they have got a fantastic programme called Gravitas, I recommend everybody take a look at it. Americans are trying to catch this great TV station. They are on Dish 765.

“We are going to switch to Steve K. Bannon, the man of the hour”

Steve Bannon, indeed the man of the hour, who was once vice-president at the disgraced data firm Cambridge Analytica, acknowledges his gratitude to WION:

“I couldn’t be prouder or happier. I really want to thank WION for distributing this in India, one of the great stations, Gravitas is a great show, watch it all the time.

“In 2014, when I was at Breitbart, I had a radio show on Sirius XM. When Narendra Modi won in 2014, I said he was the Ronald Reagan of India. Now he has become Trump before Trump. He has shown the world what leadership is”

***

The Trump-Modi reference is presumably in relation to India’s stand on China after the loss of land and lives in Ladakh: the ban on Chinese apps, the cancellation of Chinese projects, etc.

Although he has fallen out of Trump’s orbit, at least publicly, Steve Bannon is seen to have been a prime player behind the US President’s anti-China rhetoric, and has been a major votary of calling Coronavirus a “Chinese virus”.

In late March, Palki Sharma Upadhyay, the host of Gravitas on WION, claimed she had been the subject of trolling for reporting China’s criminal negligence on the Coronavirus outbreak, “esp from blue-ticked activists.”

Let the record show, Twitter is not available in China since 2009.

The Gravitas programme on WION commands suspiciously abnormal viewership on YouTube. The headlines of some of its shows leave little to the imagination on its inclination and motivation:

* Is China debt trapping Bangladesh?

* Chinese avenues to invest in India are shrinking

* Is China running out of food?

* China’s state mouthpiece backs Biden presidency

* China’s biggest purge since Mao

* Chinese-made airport leaks in Islamabad

WION is not the only news outlet on which Steve Bannon has been showering his love in the second term of Narendra Modi.

On April 21, a month before the Chinese aggression in Ladakh became public, but three months after the Coronavirus outbreak, Bannon appeared on Times Now owned by The Times of India group, laying out the direction India needs to take vis-a-vis China. 

In an interview with Rahul Shivshankar, the channel’s editor, Steve Bannon said India had a big role to play in forming strategic alliances and stopping the Chinese from controlling the Eurasian landmass.

“To be brutally frank, the most important countries in this [alliance] are Japan, India, United States, United Kingdom, maybe Brazil. That’s the new coalition to confront the Chinese Communist Party. Obviously, there will be Germany, France and the rest of Europe.

“India is the key that picks the lock. India is the most important. India takes its rightful place as the central part of this strategy to stop the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing from controlling the Euroasian landmass. They are trying to use the One-Belt-One-Road, the Huawei 5G rollout, the predatory capitalism of the old British East Company. 

“India can see it every day. Modi can see it. This is why the free men and women in India become the bulwark of democracy to stand up to this.” 

In his “outro”, Rahul Shivshankar extends a warm hand to Steve Bannon: “Let us hope we can meet up and do more of these conversations.”

The BJP twitter joyfully handle retweeted the Steve Bannon’s certificate to Modi: “PM Modi is a hero, he has stood up to the predatory capitalism. He understands history and can’t be bought off! He is a symbol for the world.” 

The choice of media outlets of Steve Bannon in India, and the timing of his appearances, are a dead giveaway on the manner in which the global far-right is reshaping the “narrative” in India using embedded sections of mainstream media. 

Steve Bannon, in fact, had appeared on WION, on May 31, 2019, within a fortnight of Narendra Modi‘s election victory last year, offering his thoughts on “how US needs India to counter China’s hegemony”.

Sudhir Chaudhary was the esteemed host. 

Inter alia, Bannon bloviates on the significance of the Modi win.

“This is why this victory is so important. So important to other leaders in the world. What Modi did is what Reagan did. Reagan spoke to the common man and they connected. 

“The media tried to destroy Reagan, they tried to destroy Modi. The same exact media companies that attacked Modi attacked Reagan 30-40 years ago. Modi did not flinch, he did not back off, he did not apologise, in fact he doubled down and tripled down.”

Naturally, the Bannon-Chaudhary interview got wide play on the channel with the host of Gravitas, Palki Sharma Upadhyay, doing the honours.

In the May 2019 interview with WION, Steve Bannon appeared alongside Shalabh Kumar, an Indian-American industrialist who took a group of US legislators, including the far-right Newt Gingrich, to meet Narendra Modi in 2013 when he was Gujarat chief minister.

‘Shaili’ also worked to get Modi’s visa ban lifted by the United States.

A 2016 profile of Shalabh Kumar in The Telegraph, Calcutta, called him the “common bhakt” of both Modi and Trump. 

Indian officials were quoted in that story as saying Shalabh Kumar was also “responsible for bringing 50 US Congressmen and Congresswomen to Modi’s September 2014 address at New York’s Madison Square Garden”

In October 2016, NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain credited Shalabh Kumar with fetching him the first “interview” with Donald Trump.

In the Telegraph profile, Shalabh Kumar claimed the wall with Mexico would be an “electronic one”. 

With Steve Bannon arrested for embezzling funds for the wall in a “comically flagrant scam”, that claim takes on an added meaning. The wall with Mexico was perhaps an “electronically wired one”.

Listen to Shobhan Saxena in Sao Paulo on how Steve Bannon is at work in Brazil

Also read: The Steve Bannon playbook in Brazil

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“It is the end of a very troubled part of India’s journey which started on 6 December 1992 and the beginning of something new. I don’t see it as closure or as a settlement but I get the feeling of watching another milestone develop,” says Seema Chishti, the veteran broadcaster and journalist.

Chishti, formerly with the BBC and the Indian Express, was covering the kar seva in Ayodhya which ended up in the demolition for the now-defunct video magazine Eye Witness published by the Hindustan Times group and hosted by Karan Thapar.

Ayodhya was a watershed

“1992 is not so much about God alone, or a place of worship. It weds the idea of being a citizen with your faith. It marks a break in Nehruvian India, and marks the huge cracks which were to finally fell or threaten the foundations of the Republic. And a party or an ideology which is doing that, does not get defeated and pushed back at the hustings.”

1992 sowed seeds of Islamophobia

“The demand for a Hindu nation had been there since the 1920s. With his ability to modernise it, to render it kosher and welcome, L.K. Advani played a huge part in dealing a savage blow to the idea that India belongs to everybody. It was not a calm transition or a coolly happening event. The ghosts of Partition came alive.”

Also read: Khushwant Singh on L.K. Advani

Demolition distracted the nation

“It took away the energy of a young country. We should have been talking numbers, about education and public health, but it all got snowed under by large identity divisions because you had a whole lot of young people being deployed in the service of deepening this difference.”  

Rajiv Gandhi’s ploy didn’t work

“Rajiv Gandhi’s government added fuel to the fire of a Hindu grievance, of a wounded majority. He actually starts his election campaign by invoking Ram rajya, his deputy home minister sits in at the shilanyas. These overtures to the injured Hindu consciousness didn’t help the Congress. The party has never been able to get a majority on its own after its 1984 win.” 

Journalists were different then

“A whole lot of journalists had to be beaten up in order to stop them from telling the demolition story. Today, when there is so much technology, so many tools, there is so much of refusal to really shape your story. At least then it took sticks and stones and a lot of thwacking and thumping for us to be shut up.”

Muslims are bitter but hopeful

“They are not going anywhere, they are very clear that they are rooted in this land. There is certain amount of bewilderment, but it is surely giving way after the 2019 re-election of the BJP into a sort of sobriety and a realisation that they need to be careful and sort out their existential questions like survival, representation and the economy.”  

Listen to the Seema Chishti podcast

Also read: ‘English media will soon go the way of language media’

How brave journalists and photographers are defending their work

So says former Union minister and Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who has authored an acclaimed book on the much-reviled defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon.

The biggest difference between 1962, when the China invaded India, and 2020, when the Chinese have seized territory, strangled soldiers and redefined the Line of Actual Control (LAC), is that Indian democracy was in full bloom, with a government responsive to the Opposition, media and the people, says the Rajya Sabha member, who coined the portmanteau word “Chindia” in a 2004 book.

When the Chinese invasion happened after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India, independent India was a mere teenager, just 15 years old, unlike now when it is a full-blown adult, all of 73, yet India fared better back then.

On J-POD, the podcast on journalism, Jairam Ramesh says:

“The brightest moment for Indian democracy was in October-November 1962 when it faced an unprecedented external threat. The government did nothing to stifle political opposition, it called Parliament, it listened to the criticism and patiently responded to the criticism, and business went on. That’s how democracies function.

“There was no attempt to stifle the media. There was no browbeating the media. There was no one saying, ‘criticism of the government is anti-national’. Nobody’s nationalist credentials, nobody’s patriotism was being questioned.”

‘Democracy was in full bloom in 1962’

The COVID pandemic has been held out by the Narendra Modi government as an excuse, but calling Parliament, making an authoritative statement, issuing a white paper, and educating the people is the only way to go, says Jairam Ramesh.

“The Chinese invaded India in 1962 in two phases. First on October 20. After 8-9 days there was a pause, and then they resumed on November 16. Krishna Menon had meanwhile resigned as defence minister on November 7.

“In between, a couple of MPs led by N.G. Gore, the great socialist leader, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, asked Nehru to convene Parliament immediately. Parliament was supposed to be convened around November 18 or 19. Nehru agreed, and Parliament was convened a week in advance on November 11.

“As the Chinese invaded India a second time, Parliament was in session. The media was attacking. Cartoons were coming out in the press. PM Nehru and former defence minister Menon were being attacked and lampooned. The war was going on, we were getting a drubbing, but democracy was in full bloom.”

Instead, he says, Modi is trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by managing headlines and browbeating the media.

“PM doesn’t take Parliament seriously at all. India is becoming an illiberal democracy. We have all the external trappings of democracy—political parties, Parliament, elections—but the soul of democracy has vanished.

There here has been a determined effort to control the narrative, a single minded pursuit, of not the truth but managing the narrative, managing the headlines.

“Nehru went to China only once, in 1954, that’s when he met Mao. Chou En Lai and Nehru met 4-5 times. Nehru put all his correspondence with the Chinese in the public domain. What prevents this government from doing that, rather than briefing their favourite journalists and favourite TV channels.

“No two Indian and Chinese leaders have had the type of intensive and extensive contact as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping. No two heads of state have spent as much time across geographies—Ahmedabad, Delhi, Wuhan, Mahabalipuram.

“If you can accuse Nehru of being taken in by the Chinese, the accusation can be made against Modi hundred-fold. Nehru did not spend as much time with Chinese leaders as Modi has done. And yet this is what has happened.”

Kashmir was clearly a factor

India’s China watchers have been divided on why China chose to strike in COVID season but Jairam Ramesh believes the Narendra Modi government’s actions in Jammu & Kashmir last August—abrogating Article 370, downgrading J&K, and turning Ladakh into a Union Territory—marked a “paradigm shift”.

1962 was ‘Mao’s India War’

“Mao decided to invade India in October-November 1962 because of domestic political reasons that had little to do with the border. The Chinese have deep internal problems today. And it’s quite possible that this LAC misadventure has in large part been caused by diversionary tactics.”

‘Krishna Menon was in a minority’

“Nobody in India in 1962 wanted a negotiated settlement. Nehru’s cabinet was deeply divided. Parliament and the media were completely opposed to any form of settlement. The biggest critic of the negotiated settlement was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who as PM in 2003, signed an agreement to look for a negotiated settlement.”

Media was less subservient in 1962

“Media was merciless. It was not kowtowing to Nehru. The media lampooned Nehru and lampooned Krishna Menon. It was completely anti-Krishna Menon. Nehru did not avoid the media, he spoke to the media, he gave press conferences. Today if anybody were to lampoon our PM in that fashion, there would be sedition charges.”

‘Government, giant echo chamber’

Gen Hooda has raised questions, Gen Panag has raised questions, Gen Malik has raised questions. Serious people have raised questions. You cannot dismiss their concerns. It is the responsibility of the government to respond to these concerns. Who will respond? Gen V.K. Singh is a drumbeater. External affairs minister S. Jaishankar has become a drumbeater. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is a drumbeater.

‘Make in India’ began 58 years ago

The 2020 military establishment is a vastly different one, and paradoxically a lot of the credit must go to Krishna Menon, because it was he who set up DRDO, Bharat Electronics, Hindustan Aeronautics, the tank factory in Avadi. All the prize jewels of defence research and production were Krishna Menon’s contributions.

Military solution is not a solution

“What was true in the late 1950s is true in the early 21st century. India has to stand up, be prepared to defend its territory, be prepared for the worst, be in a state of constant alertness, but the solution to this border dispute has to be a negotiated settlement. That was recognised by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003, recognised by Modi himself.”

Listen to the full Jairam Ramesh podcast

Read a transcript of the podcast

churumuri.blog

indianjournalismreview.com

Also read: 18 things may might like to know about Jairam Ramesh

Photograph: courtesy Mint

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“Rather than think of this as something that demeans the Nepali nation-state, have Indian policy makers sat back and thought, ‘Does this also hurt our relationship with China because we are not only targeting the PM of Nepal but the formal plenipotentiary representative of Beijing in Kathmandu?’” asks Kanak Mani Dixit, the well-regarded founder of the magazine Himal Southasian.

As India squared off with China at the border, and squabbled with Nepal over a recent map, Hindi TV channels dished out salacious gossip of the 68-year-old Nepalese PM being “honey trapped” by the Chinese Ambassador, 50.

Zee Hindustan, owned by BJP MP Subhash Chandra, called the Urdu-speaking Ambassador, a vishakanya (venomous girl).

Such coverage resulted in a blockade of Indian channels by Nepalese cable TV operators last week.

In a full-length episode of J-POD, the journalism podcast, Kanak Mani Dixit, who has long championed the South Asian cause, says the tendentious coverage not just denigrates an elected PM of the Nepalese nation-state but also denigrates the Chinese.

“It was extremely demeaning and insulting. Just because you dislike K.P. Oli, you cannot go roughshod over him and over all the Nepali sensitivities that attach to the Nepali nation-state. This is the point about Indian exceptionalism that Indian TV anchors just don’t seem to get.

“What Indian TV wallahs, political analysts, social scientists and policy makers do not realise is that the Nepalese public is actually consuming what you are producing. When you produce something that is ultra-nationalistic for your audience, for your TRPs, for your government’s sense of self, it is creating an equal and opposite reaction in Nepal. This does not happen to the same extent in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.

“You are creating not a force-multiplier for India but a force-subtractor when all this excessively violent language comes up…. The market is being fed poison.”

Dixit says China is make the same mistake as India in Nepal—interventionism—and India is beginning to exhibit what he calls “Indian Exceptionalism”.

India under Modi: ‘civilisational distress’

Kanak Mani Dixit, 64, who did his graduation in India (his classmates were former Chief Justices, Deepak Misra and Ranjan Gogoi), says the lumpenisation of Indian politics that began during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi has gained pace under Narendra Modi.

“The way India is going right now is a matter of civilisational distress.”

“I was a student at Delhi University during the Emergency, during its implementation and release. From that point on we have seen a slow deceleration of Indian democracy, and an acceleration of that deceleration in the time of Narendra Modi. There is a lumpenisation of politics in India in a way that Indira Gandhi under Emergency could never have implemented because she didn’t have that network, and even if she wanted to, the Congress party cadre may not have followed her. But you have the RSS and the Hindutva brigade in every mohalla in most parts of India and that is where the top-down message is so so dangerous and divisive and negative that it goes right to the capillaries. It creates political power, it creates silencing.

“The way India is going right now is a matter of civilisational distress because of the individualised, collective, cumulative distress of so many individuals. Everything is seen from the perspective of an ultra-rightist Hindutva-laced ideology that is actually running the state right now. I would compare what Trump’s USA is going through a parallel crisis and Modi’s India. 

“A whole new reality is being created which then becomes the new reality, the horrific new normal. The accidents that lie ahead are seen in the accidents we have already seen, just pre-COVID, and which are probably set to resume after the pandemic trails away.”

Why India was surprised at Galwan

“The shock and surprise of the Indian masses at what happened in Galwan is partly because Indian media and policymakers have been overly focused on a weaker partner, Pakistan, forgetting that the real dragon, China, is out there and waiting.”

India-Nepal ties under Narendra Modi

“There has not been this bad a relationship, at the state-to-state level, and this much out in the open. I don’t know in the modern era if it has ever been this poor. Relations has never been this bad, but you could also say it could not get any worse.”

Why India and Nepal have drifted apart

“The blockade of the Indo-Nepal border at all points for five months, not the first but the most excruciating, was enough to create enormous illwill within Nepal towards India. That memory lingers. The Indian media should keep in mind that the acceleration towards China was triggered by the blockade.”

Nepal not an abject recipient of largesse

“Nepal sends more remittances to India, from Indian citizens working in Nepal, than vice-versa. Nepal is helping sustain some of the weakest parts of India which have been neglected by New Delhi. The poorest of the poor who come from Poorvanchal, Bihar, Odisha are sending back income to the very poorest communities in India.”

Narendra Modi doesn’t have time

“The Eminent Persons Group appointed by the respective PMs, comprising diplomats, scholars and political scientists, worked for two years to sort out issues. What has happened to the EPG study? It is gathering dust. For the last two years, Modi and his office have not found the time to simply receive the EPG report.”

Also read: ‘Indian TV is not a force-multiplier but a force-subtractor’

Listen to the full podcast with Kanak Mani Dixit:

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Life’s full of surprises. Narendra Modi’s “surprise” visit to Ladakh at dawn today was only as surprising as his “surprise” visit to Lahore at dusk to wish his Paksitani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday, in 2015.

In other words, a day without a carefully choreographed photo opportunity is the real surprise. And, as India counts the chips of China’s military and microbial incursions, the spectacle services to distract attention for another night.

The sudden trip without prior announcement, the curated pictures with the troops, the cries of Bharat Mata ki Jai, the co-ordinated tweeting by ministers, are all intended to induce shock and awe, and add to the iconography of the “strong man”.

Especially after the cringe-worthy claim that “no one has intruded”.

The only real surprise is in calling Nimu (or Nimmoo) a “forward area” as the government’s megaphones did: Doordarshan, ANI and assorted BJP folk.

Truth is:

Nimu is a large military base 34 km south of Leh on the road to Kargil/Srinagar.

Nimu is 249 km and seven hours from Galwan Valley, the theatre of action.

The nearest “forward position” from Nimu is Chushul, 231 km away.

Aamir Khan went closer to the border to shoot a film than Modi.

Indeed, Nimu is such a “forward position” that this is where white water rafting expeditions are flagged off, i.e. it is a tourist spot.

So, while you cannot quibble about a “surprise visit” that seeks to showcase leadership, you could just put down the categorisation of Nimu as a “forward position” to exaggeration: if anything it’s a “WhatsApp forward position”.

But as Lance Klusener said after a different defeat: “So what, no one died.

Jo hyper bole, so nihal.

2 by 9: Money can’t buy zoom

The COVID months have been a write-off for most humans. Not for Mukesh Ambani. In 11 deals over 58 days, he raised Rs 115,693 crore by selling bits Jio Platforms. He even decided to become one of the 10 richest people on Earth during the lockdown.

But for all his wealth and enterprise, can’t the Reliance chief find original engineers?

Superb digging by S.G. Shrinivas shows that Ambani’s Jio Meet is a carbon copy of Zoom. The landing page, meetings page, start a meeting page, join a meeting page, schedule meeting page, contacts page, my profile page, meeting settings page, its about page, are the same.

SG’s demolition in 10 tweets over 12 minutes is so thorough, it prompts a fine quip.

Either this imitation is flattery of a monumental scale, or Mukesh Ambani secretly owns Zoom without the world knowing.

“Zoom’s CEO needs to answer for this,” quips Rohin Dharmakumar, CEO of The Ken, tongue firmly in cheek.

Ashish K. Mishra, editor-in-chief of the Morning Context, provides perspective on why Indian companies have not been able to build social media apps: because they haven’t developed tech or machine learning; because there is hardly any innovation; and because despite a potential audience of 1.3 billion, there is very little scope of monetisation.

3 by 9: Tigers at home, tigers abroad

A couple of quick questions:

1) To which Indian ruler did Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, send a copy of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ before America’s independence in 1776?”

2) In honour of whom did Pennsylvania name a warship as “Hyder-Ally”?

Answer: Hyder Ali, the father of Tipu Sultan.

250 years ago, Tipu and his father were not just fighting the British in India, they were also inspiring America’s independence movement. Their exploits against the British East India Company encouraged the American Revolutionaries in their War of Independence (1776-83).

Tomorrow, July 4, the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture in California has arranged a podcast conference (9.30 pm IST; 12 noon EST) to highlight these and other unknown facets of the much-reviled “Tiger of Mysore”.

Read this 2016 piece by Blake Smith on Aeon: Revolutionary heroes

“If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck, George Washington might be known as the Haider Ali of North America”

Listen to a brief excerpt above

4 by 9: Note ban di

In 2020, ₹100 is worth ₹1.2 of 1958. So, if you earn ₹70,000 per month today, you are basically taking home as much as someone who earned ₹840 back then.

That’s ancient? OK.

As stock markets fluctuate, as bank interest rates dip, as rupee value goes down, India in Pixels shows what Rs 100 is worth today compared to 10 years ago.

Here’s Prof Kaushik Basu of Cornell University, the former chief economic advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh, on how 2020 has been for India.

“In January this year, IMF’s forecast for India’s GDP growth in 2020 was 5.8%. In April the forecast was 1.9%. In June it was -4.5%.

“In the Economist magazine’s weekly chart of 43 major economies in the world, for a long time, India was among the top-three fastest growing economies. It has now been demoted to 23rd rank for 2020.”

5 by 9: Take my trip.com

Are things looking up after 100 days of lockdown? Are people beginning to overcome their fears of COVID and venture out? Are they ready to fly and visit places and eat and drink with the rest?

An infographic in the Financial Times, London, shows a small uptick in online searches for flight bookings, but it is mostly restricted to European destinations.

China, India and Japan are very much a no-go, as of June 20.

6 by 9: Nation wants to ‘no’

Arnab Goswami’s monologue on India’s ban of #TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps has spawned a million memes—and impossibly “united” India and Pakistan.

Jose Covaco’s spoof on electricity bills is rocking. But radio jockey Fahad Hussain gives it a good shot, too—after recording it on TikTok for good measure.

Talking of a million memes, did you know that the first number with the letter ‘b’ in it is “billion’? Of course, you did.

7 by 9: Loss of gravity

Not suitable for working at home.

8 by 9: Salman, Sushmita and K-Pop

BTS, the seven-member South Korean boy band, groove to the voice of Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Anuradha Sriram from Biwi No.1 in a YouTube mashup.

Today I learned

Rajat Sharma, the founder of India TV and the former chairman of the Delhi & districts cricket association (DDCA), is a director on the board of Ruchi Soya, the edible oil company picked up by Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali.

Ruchi Soya’s stock has risen 8,400 per cent in 104 days, from Rs 16.9 to Rs 1,431.

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We are back on Monday.

Screenshots: courtesy @paritoshZero via Twitter; Financial Times

While India bans Chinese apps and cancels Chinese orders to show its outrage at the killing of soldiers and the seizure of territory, Rahul Jacob, the former FT bureau chief in Hong Kong, says the race with China was over even before COVID struck.

On J-POD, the journalism podcast, Jacob says India is doing a disservice by posturing as an economic rival to China. Its rivals, more realistically, are Vietnam (population 9.7 crore) and Bangladesh (population 17 crore).

“China is already five times the size of the Indian economy. You would have to have the Chinese economy collapse in two successive great depressions of the 1930s order, and India to race along at about 12% growth, to catch up.

“We have passed the point of the hare-and-tortoise fable which has been told far too times in the context of India and China—this particular tortoise is still sleeping in terms of making strides in exports worldwide.

“Vietnam is probably going to pass us in manufactured exports in a few years. That’s a country of 95 million people. Vietnam’s likely to be the biggest beneficiary of the COVID crisis if there are any beneficiaries.

“By posturing in economic terms that we are a rival to China, we are doing ourselves a great disservice. Our rivals, realistically, are really Vietnam and Bangladesh, in manufactured goods at any rate.

“The sooner we realise that and take serious steps to build this economy the better. If it’s going to be self-reliance, then what levels of de-regulation? If we are going to boost exports, can we go down the self-reliant route by raising tariffs as we have in four successive budgets? It doesn’t quite add up. This is where our somewhat inflated sense of our economic prospects are handicapped.

“The ‘Chindia’ idea—China + India—was fine if you were doing a World Economic Forum roundtable, but it is laughable when you look at the real numbers, given their share of world trade and our tiny share by comparison.”

Listen to the full Rahul Jacob podcast here.

Vietnam is clearly the flavour of the season, in fact has been for a while as evidenced by glitzy pictures accompanying news stories (above), but it has clearly been the big beneficiary of the US’s trade war with China.

Between April 2018 and August 2019, as the Donald Trump-induced trade dispute raged, 56 companies relocated their production out of China.

Only three came to India, found a study by the Japanese financial group, Nomura.

26 companies relocated to Vietnam

11 went to Taiwan

8 shifted to Thailand

2 went to Indonesia

Little wonder that a nation which was torn by war and violence, political and economic isolation, for 40 years after its independence from France in 1945, is catching up with India in export of manufactured goods.

Vietnam’s exports grew from $69.7 billion to $259.5 billion between 2008 and 2018. India’s exports grew from $176.4 billion to $304.1 billion in the same period, but there has been no appreciable growth since 2011, despite the rupee’s depreciation.

In a primer in the business newspaper Mint, the “Shah Rukh Khan of economics” Vivek Kaul shows how Vietnam’s export story mirrors China’s.

In 1992, China’s exports were $66.8 billion; in 2001, it had reached $272.1 billion.

In 2009, Vietnam’s exports were $66.4 billion; in 2018, it had reached 259.5 billion.

Between 2000 and 2018, China’s share of network products rose from 34% to 52%.

In the same period, Vietnam’s share of network products rose from 6% to 47%.

Certainly, it is a bit of a stretch to speak of India and Vietnam in the same breath. At least just now. After all, India is geographically 15 times larger than Vietnam; its population is 12 times bigger, its GDP is 13 times more, etcetera.

But Vietnam has fewer poor people than India, fewer unemployed. And its GDP per capita is already 7% more than India’s.

So, it’s difficult to avoid the comparisons—and the gung-ho headlines which are eerily reminiscent of the headlines that greeted India in its “Bangalored” days.

2017: Why Vietnam is booming

2018: The story behind Vietnam’s miracle growth

2019: Vietnam’s economy races ahead. But can it keep the wheels on?

2020: Vietnam’s economy is booming

Even its COVID performance (zero deaths) is drawing oohs and aahs.

And an edit page article in The Times of India (below) shows why it is suddenly the apple of everybody’s eye.

Meanwhile, after banning three apps for every soldier killed in Ladakh, India continues to get expert guidance on the way forward.

And, finally

Screenshots: courtesy IANS, Barron’s, Mint, Nation Master, The Times of India

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The quantum of support has varied but in most developed economies, citizens—workers, self-employed, freelancers—-have been front and centre, as they should be.

Japan gave $930 (Rs 70,000) to every one of its 12 crore citizens.

Germany paid $ 5,000 (Rs 300,000) in assistance to freelancers; American workers received a $1,200 (Rs 90,000) stimulus check.

France offered self-employed workers $1,600 (Rs 120,000) and Italy $650 (Rs 50,000); Ireland $220 (Rs 16,000) made weekly payments to self-employed people.

The Netherlands said it would pay 90% of workers’ salaries; UK 80% and Denmark 75-90%, Hong Kong said it would pay 50% for six months.

Australia gave $750 to around 60 lakh low-income earners. Malaysia subsidised wages for those earned $915 per month (Rs 70,000) for 3 months.

If only the same could be said of India.

The three “stimulus packages” announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in mid-May were revealed to be just a fraction of the rest of the world (see graphic, above), and labelled as a “confidence trick” played on the people of India.

Worse, the Rs 20 lakh crore package that was grandly projected as being equivalent to 10% of the GDP was first shown up to be half of that, and then not even that. Twelve bankers and ratings agencies agreed it was no more than 1% of the GDP.

The former Union minister Jairam Ramesh came up with a new sobriquet for Narendra Modi: “Jagadguru of Jhoot”.

Little wonder, Indian print media which rarely agrees on anything, agreed that the stimulus package was “not sufficient, falls short, underwhelming, grossly insufficient”.

With “jumla” now a part of every Indian’s lexicon thanks to Amit Shah, the jugglery of numbers will not surprise anybody, but what should surprise everybody is how little money has reached the millions who truly need it.

Despite the Made-for-WhatsApp announcements of the “stimulus packages”, nearly no one has received an SMS alert.

And despite calls by former finance minister P. Chidambaram to set aside Rs 500,000 crore and pay Rs 3,000 a month, for six months, directly to the 12 crore, bottom-half of all Indian households, there has been very little empathy—or action—from a nation striding towards a $5 trillion dollar economy.

Result: the 30 million people who trudged across the nation on foot, bicycle or any means available, and the 116 million who have lost their jobs, have been left to fend for themselves and self-practice atmanirbharatha.

But was it always this way during crises in the past?

Were the rulers always this blasé—and transactional?

In an article in The Hindu magazine, Mario de Penha, an historian doing his PhD at Rutgers, wrote of how Shah Jahan and Shivaji dealt with hunger, famine and the migrant crises of their time.

In 1630, the monsoon had failed for two years and the Deccan Famine erupted. It lasted two years. Shah Jahan, writes De Penha, organised food and cash transfers to urban residents of Gujarat and the Deccan, and to rural migrants.

Shah Jahan set up langars (food camps) to feed the poor and disbursed cash to them on Mondays so that they could buy grains. Why Mondays? Because that apparently was the day he had ascended the throne four years earlier.

In all, over 20 weeks, Shah Jahan spent Rs 150,000 in the currency of that time, says De Penha (listen to podcast). He also did let go of revenues from the two areas, which worked out to a sizeable 9% of the income.

Over a century later, Shivaji decreed similar revenue remission, when confronted by war and famine.

The Peshwa ruler ordered austerity measures for his military so that food did not run out for the peasants. He also exhorted his officials to not neglect the warehouses holding grain stocks.

To woo migrant workers back, Shivaji and his successors granted them “revenue privileges” to give them a sense of participation in state building, and issued abhaypatras explicitly promising security to the returning migrants.

To induce their return, Peshwa Balaji Bajirao’s abhaypatra promised to forego revenue collections the following year, increasing it to the full rate by the fourth year.

A similar example emerges from Mysore in 1897, when the plague broke out.

In an interview with the Kannada daily Andolana (above), Pramodadevi Wodeyar, the wife of the last scion, Srikantadatta Wodeyar, recounts the manner in which the kingdom dealt with the disease.

“A special legislation was enacted by the maharajas. Every single person entering the city by road or by rail was sent to medical camps set up in Veeranagere and Alanahalli. Like in quarantines, vegetarians and non-vegetarians were segregated.

“Both prevention and cure were incentivised. Anybody who caught and killed a rat was paid one anna (about 6 paise). Adults who underwent vaccination were paid four annas (25 paise) and children were paid one anna. Out-of-towners were paid to build bamboo huts to self-quarantine themselves.

“Workers were paid a year’s salary in advance and encouraged to build their own houses,” Pramodadevi Wodeyar is quoted as saying.

In the year of the lord, 2020, when nearly nobody—not your driver, not your house help, not your barber, not your vegetable vendor, nobody—claims to have received anything like what the WhatsApp propaganda claims, the Mughals, the Marathas and Mysore, offer a lesson in the role of the “State”.

To those who are willing to learn from political history (entire course) without having to slyly increase petrol and diesel prices every night while you were sleeping.

Screenshots: courtesy Hindustan Times, The Telegraph, The Hindu, Andolana

Listen to this podcast with P. Sainath on what happened in Mysore in 1911, during the grand darbar.

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An acclaimed Indian Express journalist, whose husband was jailed during the Emergency of 1975, says governments no longer need to take Indira Gandhi’s route of introducing censorship to control the media or the message that reaches the people.

“Parties have found enough ways to control the media without having to formally declare censorship. Governments have so much power, and financial control, that most owners would succumb [even without formal censorship],” says Coomi Kapoor, the author of The Emergency.

“People know what happens if they don’t toe the line. Owners are after all businessmen.”

45 years ago, Coomi, then a young Express reporter, experienced first-hand the reign of terror unleashed by Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi, and his coterie.

Her husband Virendra Kapoor, a journalist with the Financial Express, was imprisoned, and her brother-in-law Subramanian Swamy, was on the run to evade arrest.

In the journalism podcast J-POD, Coomi Kapoor says while Indian media outlets are stronger and more professional now than in 1975, their dependence on government permissions and largesse makes them susceptible to its pulls and pressures.

“No ruler would be foolish enough to openly declare censorship [today]. There are enough subtle ways to bring it in quietly.

“Today, journalists by and large are in a mood to fight, but whether their owners will support them is a different matter.

Coomi suggests that prime minister Narendra Modi has seamlessly imported the method of media control he employed as chief minister.

“Indira Gandhi was more concerned about her image as a liberal at least for her admirers abroad. Narendra Modi is more cynical. When he was Gujarat CM, journalists were not allowed into the secretariat unless they had appointments.

“They frowned on the free flow of information. They have always not liked politicians to meet with journalists, they have not allowed officials to meet with journalists. Everybody’s looking over the shoulders before they are willing to talk to the media. The same atmosphere seems to be prevailing today.”

The best-kept secret of Emergency

“Why did Indira Gandhi lift the Emergency and call for elections? Did she think everything was in her favour and she could legitimise her rule? Did she hate the press she was getting in the foreign press that Nehru’s daughter has derailed India’s demcoracy? I don’t think it was genuine love for democracy that made her do it.”

Media heroes during Emergency

Indian Express owner Ramnath Goenka; Kuldip Nayar, editor of Express News Service; S. Nihal Singh of The Statesman, A.D. Gorwala, an ex-bureaucrat who brought out a newsletter called Opinion.

Media in 2020 is stronger than in 1975

“Back then, publications were very status quoist. They did not take on government in any form. There was very little investigation of any sort. People did not have strong views, and publications were not generally anti-government.”

More difficult to muzzle media today

“Public has far more avenues from which they can get news. Those days it was word of mouth. Today social media is full of all kinds of views. Different matter whether they are credible. It’s much more difficult to muzzle media today.”

Listen to the full Coomi Kapoor conversation on J-POD

Also read: B.G. Verghese on the day Emergency was declared

Kuldeep Nayar: Hindu, HT were the worst offenders in 1975

H.Y. Sharada Prasad: Middle-class won’t understand Indira

Did a newspaper interview bring an end to Emergency?

In an interview with the writer and columnist Amit Varma for the podcast The Seen and The Unseen, Razdan recalls the June 2017 incident, when asked if there’s something wishes she hadn’t done or is not proud of, in her 21-year career.

“Sometimes I do have doubts about whether I should have thrown Sambit Patra out of my show, that day. The whole organisation stood by me for doing that. Prannoy Roy got raided by the CBI two-three days later, which was a coincidence. The BJP stopped coming on NDTV and that stands to this day.

“Most people tell me, ‘You did the right thing, somebody has to stand up and call these guys out,’ but to be honest, when I look back, I think maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have said my piece and let it go. That would have been more democratic of me rather than just tell him to leave. If I have to relive that, maybe I wouldn’t do it,” Razdan tells Amit Varma.

In the 80-minute podcast, Razdan, who announced 12 days ago she was changing direction and moving on to teach journalism at Harvard University, offers a nuanced explication of being a Kashmiri Pandit, whose heart bleeds for what Pakistan has done to her state, but yet can’t come to hate Muslims who are part of its warp and weft.

Along the way, Razdan, daughter of former Press Trust of India editor M.K. Razdan, also gives an up-close and personal view of why and how “TV journalism” has become an oxymoron in India today.

TV doesn’t let you breathe

“It’s constant. It’s exhausting. Your brain just doesn’t start working. Even the most anodyne news item which can pass off as a graphic or be put on the ticker, we need an OB (outdoor broadcast) and spend 10 minutes on it, and play it up, because the other channel is doing it. We are in that stage where everything is big. 

It was nicer without social media

“You have to report for TV, put up a web-first story, do a Facebook Live, do an OB (outdoor broadcast), identify clips that can go viral. Plus you have to get your story right. That’s what reporting is like for a lot of young journalists. It’s not easy. It was much more fun back when one had the space and time to think.

Some channels are damaging society

“Some of the news channels you cannot call news channels. I used to laugh at them that you had these 10 windows and the anchor. I don’t think it is funny any more. What they are doing is putting targets on people’s backs. They are demonising entire communities. They whip up hysteria. They are doing far far more damage, not just to journalism, but our social fabric. It is dangerous now.

Much of today’s TV is contrived

“You call the fringe. You decide that a guy in a long beard represents all Muslims in India. He does not. You decide that some guy wearing a saffron robe in India represents all Hindus in India. He does not. So you pit two religions against each other. That’s why it has been reduced to a farce.

TRP ratings make no sense

“Even during the Coronavirus pandemic, if your ratings are reflecting that Republic and Times Now are your leading news channels, then I begin to wonder about the choices people are making. Those channels were not giving information, they were still doing Tabhlighi Jamaat 24 hours a day.

There is no obligation to be “objective”

“The 9 o’clock bulletin can be the editorial page of your channel. It is perfectly OK to take a stand. There are some inalienable truths and some stories which do not have another side. Politicians doing rallies in defence of rape accused and murder accused like Kathua is indefensible. There is no other side to the story. When somebody is lynched and killed, there is no other side to the story. It is wrong.

Why NDTV calls RSS on the channel

“Whether you like it or not, they are ruling the country right now. They have been elected by the people. They represent what the government of India thinks at the moment. We are not legitimising them. The legitimisation has come from the last two general elections.

Race to the bottom is not just on TV

“It is in the media as a whole, including print media. When you look at a lot of the reporting even in newspapers, it is government spin. It has become dependent on government press releases and handouts. I am tired of reading pieces about why ‘X’ politician is sleeping only four hours a day. I am tired of reading op-eds by ministers and opposition leaders with no nuance at all. 

Audio clip: courtesy Amit Varma

Listen to the full episode: What happened to our journalism

Subscribe: The Seen and The Unseen with Amit Varma 

On J-POD, the podcast on journalists and journalism, Rukmini Shrinivasan, the Chennai-based data journalist and host of The Moving Curve podcast, on the key takeaways from India’s COVID numbers.

Rukmini was earlier the data editor of The Hindu and HuffPost India.

No.4 India might end up No.1

The pandemic is definitely slowing up in the United States of America. Very soon Brazil is not going to be the Latin American country that’s in the biggest crisis; Chile and Peru are in real trouble. Russian numbers are declining and growing extremely slowly. In total aggregate numbers, India will have the most cases.

Official numbers are an undercount

Because we have a restrictive testing strategy, because of the nature of this disease, and because of all the wellkown gaps in healthcare, the lower count seems the most normal, natural course. We highly underreport malaria and TB every year. There’s little doubt it is happening with COVID.

India’s 3 worst-affected cities

“The overall numbers are looking pretty big and pretty bad right now. The three worst-affected cities in India—Delhi, Bombay and Chennai—are among the world’s most affected cities right now. No real signs of plateauing in them. Delhi and Chennai are seeing high exponential growth, which means not small jumps or linear growth but in multiples. 

Three states that are looking bad

Telangana, not because it has the worst numbers but because it reports such little data. It has the worst record of reporting testing data of any state. Gujarat, which has a much higher mortality rate although the cases aren’t growing as fast as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi. It has not ramped up testing. And Delhi.

Infection rate galloping in Delhi

Delhi numbers have been among the worst in the world. In Delhi, the share of tests that turn out to be positive (test positivity rate) is growing so fast, on some recent days it is as high as 50%, that it suggest the infection rate is climbing very fast and testing has not been ramped up in proportion.

What we don’t know enough about

The biggest, high-density areas are the ones that are struggling the most now. We are not hearing much from the satellite areas of big cities, like say Thane, Palghar and Raigad near Mumbai which include urban areas but also significantly rural areas. Aggregate numbers on testing hides what is happening within states.

Only 6 contacts being traced

A study by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) between January 22 and April 30 shows that on average only six contacts per person were being traced, not even tested. For over half of them, there are no real details on who was tested and why. In South Korea, the share of people whose contact details are traced is over 80%.

What offers hope

Growth rate in cases until now is relatively not problematic. Mortality rate right now is a good sign. The share of persons reporting positive who have moderate symptoms and who don’t need critical care is also a good sign. There hasn’t yet been an explosion of cases in poor states.

Does Narendra Modi deserve credit?

The numbers don’t capture the reality of all that’s happened in the last four months. The announcement of the lockdown with four hours to spare, and the immense hardship we have seen, it is impossible to separate the two. It is frustrating to see a constant projection of victory as people suffer and die.

Did lockdown prevent cases, deaths?

If the Narendra Modi government is copping criticism for cases and deaths continuing after the lockdown was lifted it is because of this constant need to project victory, to make it seem as if the lockdown was the thing that was going to come between India and a swarm of cases.

Latin America has better data than us

We do not have reliable updated data on bed availability, oxygen availability, ICU availability, ventilator availability. This is in contrast to Latin American countries which have complete updated data. One of the big failings of India’s response is the publicly available official data which is woefully inadequate.

State of official data is a real scandal

It’s truly shocking to see the state of our nationally available official data. When I look at Latin American countries, where you get downloadable, usable, historical data for every region, I feel a deep sense of envy. India gives you no historical data, only today’s numbers and not broken down any further beyond states. It’s a real scandal.

What sources should people use

The sources that I and other journalists use every day is a crowd-sourced volunteer-driven database called covid19india.org, set up by a group of extremely hard-working committed young people who put together bulletins from districts and states. They use official data but put it together which the government doesn’t do.

See what Rukmini said three months ago here: Brut India

# Twitter emailed me that they had received a “legal removal demand” from the government, that my account violates the laws of India. I went to their help centre who said you are logged in and your a/c is neither blocked nor inaccessible. It’s a bit Kafkaesque because it is blocked only in a particular domain, not globally. 

# I don’t know on what basis it has been done or why. I presume it was a follow-up to a FIR that was filed in Bangalore on June 5. The police had taken offence to a retweet 2-3 days before, of a protest in the US where there were thousands of people on the ground for several minutes, saying ‘I can’t breathe’. I had added the comment this was the sort of protest we should see more of in our country, and especially from underprivileged and marginalised, and I named Dalits, Muslims, adivasis and the poor.

# The police had filed the FIR of their own volition. There was no complainant. It has been filed in my local police station and it carried the name of my father which very few people know.

# My speculation is that it upset a lot of people who support the Union government. The government in Karnataka is interested enough in such things. There was no reason for it to be narrowed down in the way it was, for it to be registered where i live and to have details only a few people in government might know because of my filings. I suspect that it is the BJP at the Centre.

# The antipathy that the state in India generally speaking and the BJP specifically have towards rights organisations runs very strong. They will squeeze you by way of the law, and if they can’t they will use brute force. Is what is happening on Twitter an extension of that, probably not. But then this is speculation.

# The government tends to concentrate its force on individuals and groups, who represent almost a enemy, whether in media, business, or civil society. If you are identified as being somebody who disapproves of and wants to resist the majoritarianism of the ruling party, then you are a target and marked. 

# Twitter may have threaded the needle, that the content of my handle was in fact not provocative and left it open outside. They thought it prudent to follow the law in India, I don’t know what law it is, and do something. The only other possibility is that they have been pressured into doing this, which would be quite wrong, I think.

# Twitter hasn’t followed due process, which they should have. I have been vilified, in the sense that for thousands of people who are on Twitter, the presumption is that I have done something wrong. I may have done something wrong but I should be told what it is.

# For several years, and it goes back before this government, we have been at the bottom of the media freedom index. One reason is the deliberate denial of access to the internet to citizens in large parts of the country. No other democratic nation has as many internet shutdowns and cuts in the mass sense as we do.

# The freedoms enshrined in the constitution should not be undermined so often and so egregiously. On Article 19 (1) (a) we seem to have inverted the principles. The fundamental right has become subject to so many qualifications that the right has become meaningless. 

# I found it strange that they chose this because it doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that will go anywhere. But that’s the way the BJP functions that they tend not to be focused on the quality of content; it’s punishment they will try to inflict in terms of the process and part of that is stripping you of your Twitter handle.

# This government is extremely selective, very nasty and goes after people it deems as its enemies and its opponents, but will not use the law on people when it is rightful to use the law on people who are its supporters. It will violate the law, it will violate the Constitution to protect who indulge in and instigate violent crime merely because they are on their side. This government that does that, all the time. 

On Sunday evening, a 48-year-old woman died in Meerut after being sent away by 9 hospitals in Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad.

On Sunday morning, a Delhi man, who was turned away by 5 hospitals in Delhi, took a train to Bhopal where he died.

On Monday, a well-known newscaster was booked in Chennai merely for alerting citizens about the shortage of beds.

Tughalaqbad chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s quixotic decision to allow only Delhi-ites to be admitted in the capital’s hospitals underlined the pitiable condition.

After all, just four months ago, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had won the Delhi elections on the so-called “development” agenda, gloating over the massive improvement in “health infrastructure” in its first term.

If it is so bad in the capital of a nation that aspires to be a $5 trillion economy by 2022, what must the situation be in smaller cities and towns and villages?

And, who are the beneficiaries of 30 years of “health reforms”: corporates or citizens?

Those who have followed the continuing disinterest of the “State” in public health since 1991, like the journalist P. Sainath, say expenditure on health is the second biggest killer (after farm debt) in the countryside.

The #GujaratModel was projected as the answer.

But a report (above) in the Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post yesterday reveals the dismal COVID situation in Gujarat: the second-highest number of deaths in the country (1,347); and a case-to-mortality ratio that is double the national average (6.22).

But what the SCMP report by Vasudevan Sridharan reveals is that the #GujaratModel Indians voted for in 2014 is actually worse than the problem they thought it would solve.

Gujarat has just 0.33 hospital beds for 1,000 people compared to the national average of 0.55, which is already considered a poor standard.

Gujarat spends less than one per cent of the state GDP on health, just 0.77 per cent, which is down from 4.4% from around the time Modi took over as CM.

Gujarat spends less than a one-third of its budget on the social sector, placing it 17th among the 18 big states.

In other words, if this is what 13 years of Narendra Modi’s chief ministership could achieve, what did you expect across the country as the pandemic danced around?

The headline for the SCMP report (a paper owned by Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group) says it all: “Could Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat Model’ be to blame for the state’s high coronavirus toll?”

“Gujarat has been spending less than one per cent on health, as a result of which the capacity of local health centres at the village and block levels/small towns/Mohalla clinics are very poorly equipped and poorly staffed. These are incapable of providing even minimum care to Covid-19 patients,” said Indira Hirway, director and professor of economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad.

Little wonder that the current refrain is that “we must learn to live with the virus”. But the weighty Financial Times, London, says in an editorial (above) yesterday that India is ill-equipped to do even that, i.e. live with the virus.

The situation, the paper concludes, “could get an awful lot worse”.

Although it took 33 days for Narendra Modi to react to India’s first COVID case, the FT editorial notes he took the outbreak seriously unlike his ideological fellow-travellers, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump, who said it was a “little flu”.

In a J-POD podcast in April, Chidanand Rajghatta, The Times of India correspondent in Washington DC, recalled writing about the virus when it was in the margins of the media and our consciousness.

“On January 28, I wrote an op-ed Apocalypse Chow. It was about eating habits in China, it referred to the wet markets and the creepy crawlies they eat. I mentioned the Coronavirus and also the Chinese penchant for edgy genetic research.

“As someone remarked, you have to be “batshit crazy” to think you can consume unnatural foods and not expect it have some effect.”

“On February 24-25 when Donald Trump was in India, I wrote an op-ed, and the opening line was why are they hugging in the time of Coronavirus. By then the buzz had already started. I waited till the last moment to book my ticket because I kept thinking Trump will cancel the trip.

“There was a surfeit of touchy-feely hugs and embraces between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi on the first day of the US president’s visit to India, belying the case for Namaste in the time of coronavirus.”

Listen to the full unabridged podcast with Chidanand Rajghatta here:

With Coronavirus already in the air, Trump went to Ahmedabad and walked into a stadium with thousands—and hugged Modi.

Just who is surprised that Divya Bhaskar, the Gujarati newspaper from the Dainik Bhaskar group, had to have this front page on May 31?

And just who is surprised by Gujarat’s high toll whose, “single-source” was presumably the Trump-Modi rally.

But then, as we saw with Jubilant Organics in Mysore, the media and its masters are somewhat reluctant these days to dig deep when it doesn’t check certain boxes.

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The juiciest story today, at least in Bangalore, is the news that the Karnataka Congress chief D.K. Shiva Kumar’s daughter is to marry the son of the founder of Cafe Coffee Day, the late V.G. Siddhartha, who killed himself by jumping into the river Netravati in Mangalore, in July last year.

At least two Bangalore newspapers confirm the rumour of the alliance: The Times of India and Kannada Prabha.

Shiva Kumar himself goes on record in TOI and says it is “all god’s wish”.

The girl is Aishwarya. She is 22 and looks after her father’s educational business, the Global Institute of Technology. The boy is Amartya Hegde. He is 26, and manages Coffee Day with his mother.

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On the face of it, this alliance is CCD’s slogan coming true: “A lot can happen over coffee”. It brings two political families of the Vokkaliga community together. And it makes the protege a member of his mentor’s family. 

Sidhartha was son-in-law of S.M. Krishna, the former chief minister of Karnataka. And Shiva Kumar was and is Krishna’s blue-eyed boy. But as everybody knows these days, nothing is what it seems in politics and business.

A source close to Shiva Kumar says the marriage had not been firmed up even as recently as a month ago. In fact, if this source is to be believed, he was not even looking for a rich or powerful alliance. Even a simple boy would do.

So, something seems to have changed in the last few days for the marriage to be so hurriedly announced.

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What makes the marriage alliance juicy is the backdrop.

When Siddhartha’s body was found, it was Shiva Kumar who accompanied S.M. Krishna to the funeral in a helicopter. This despite Krishna having left the Congress in March 2017 and joined the the BJP. 

At the time, this looked like just a small act of courtesy, but clearly the relationship was built on stronger footing.

Secondly, what makes the alliance interesting are all the rumours and whispers that have been heard since Siddhartha’s suicide.

Siddhartha’s suicide note was by itself an amazing piece of art: it was a computer printout taken on his letterhead, and it was so cleverly and carefully worded, covering all bases, that it looked almost looked it had been drafted by a lawyer.

In his suicide note, Siddhartha alleged a “lot of harassment by a former director general of the income-tax department”.

He also spoke mysteriously of “tremendous pressure from other lenders”.

Who were the “other lenders”? Were they based here or in foreign shores? And why was the pressure from them so unbearable?

An excellent Indian Express report (above) at the time said Siddhartha was under pressure from a distress debt fund to repay the money it had provided in 2018 to buy back shares held by the global private equity player KKR.

Was the burden of paying back so big that he should end his life?

After all, debt is normal in business.

Moreover, unlike Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi, no bank or lender was (publicly) after Siddhartha for recovery. His assets exceeded his outstandings. So, what was the “threat” he was facing from which he saw no way out? 

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Siddharatha’s car driver said his master looked distraught after receiving a phone call. Who called Siddhartha in those final few hours?

The tongues kept wagging in the initial few days.

In fact, in one video after the suicide note became public, D.K. Shiva Kumar claimed Siddhartha had spoken to him after sending out the note, and he would be back soon.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon who went public against harassment by income tax men, she said she received a phone call from Delhi not to make such statements.  

At first, to deflect attention from charges of tax terrorism, unnamed "top IT department sources" planted stories of Siddhartha’s "dubious hawala transactions" involving a Singapore citizen Rajnish Gopinath. This turned out to be a red herring. Gopinath was actually a director on a #CafeCoffeeDay.

Soon after, TV channels found a DK. Shiva Kumar angle.

The Times of India among other papers reported that some of Siddhartha’s troubles began because of his close ties to D.K. Shiva Kumar. The paper quoted IT sources as saying that Siddhartha and Shiva Kumar had had financial dealings.

It was these dealings that had landed Siddhartha under the tax scanner, the paper said.

Siddartha’s name had come up during a search of Shiva Kumar’s tax consultant in August 2017, went Shiva Kumar was safeguarding Congress MLAs from Gujarat at a resort owned by him. 

Five months earlier S.M. Krishna had left the Congress and joined the BJP.

In fact, it was suggested at the time that Krishna had made the jump in the late evening of his political life to the BJP, only to protect Siddhartha, who is married to Krishna’s daughter Malavika, from the tax man.

But to the credit of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, it did not allow Krishna’s defection to impede the investigation. 

Siddhartha and Cafe Coffee Day were eventually raided.

After the raids, the income-tax department attached Siddhartha’s shares in the IT company Mindtree, in which he owned over 20%. 

D.K. Shiva Kumar’s brother D.K. Suresh, a member of Parliament, said in The Times of India that this action of the IT department had caused a severe liquidity crunch for Siddhartha. It also delayed the sale of his stake to L&T.

The final report of the investigation launched by Cafe Coffee Day is still to be complete. But in March this year, a draft report leaked to Bloomberg and Hindu BusinessLine alleged $270 million missing from Coffee Day accounts.

What does that mean?

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Although #CafeCoffee Day became a nationally known brand like Infosys and Kingfisher Airlines, it exemplified the crony capitalism that flourished under S.M. Krishna regime.

Krishna’s Chief Secretary S.V. Ranganath joined the #CCD board after he retired. And when Siddhartha killed himself, Ranganath was brought back as  interim president. Poornima Jairaj, the wife of former additional Chief Secretary K. Jairaj was its public face.

It is all this that makes the news of the tie up between the Siddhartha and Shiva Kumar families such a juicy story. The intersection of politics, business, bureaucracy, high society, the whiff of a scandal, and a suicide.

Will it have a happy ending?

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