In this column we will be featuring the writings by award winning women journalists in India found in the collection of the book ‘Making News Breaking News Her Way. It is a publication by Tranquebar Press in association with Media Foundation, New Delhi which instituted the annual Chameli Devi Jain Award for an Outstanding Women Mediaperson in 1980.
Banu Haralu
Lost in the big picture
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1989, after a decade spent in the ‘pursuit of higher learning’ in New Delhi, I found myself homeward bound to India’s north-eastern corner, armed with a Masters in Mass Communication and an additional Diploma in Television Journalism. My first job was that of a television reporter and I spent the next two decades reporting on the seven states in the region -the first six years with the national television network, Doordarshan (DO), and the next fourteen, until 2009, with the New Delhi Television (NDTV).It was an exciting and educative experience for me, for the 1990s were a turbulent political period in the region. In Assam, separatist groups such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) stepped up violence against the state, and the Bodo militant groups launched their demand for a separate Bodoland. In the neighbouring state of Nagaland, the long- unresolved Naga political issue resulted in Asia’s longest guerrilla war. Three distinct rebel groups -the NSCN (1M), NSCN (K) and the NNC -waged their own wars, while claiming to ‘fight’ for the same cause of secession from India. Tragically, they also engaged in fratricidal killings.
In Meghalaya, the Khasi Students Union was raising, with renewed passion, the issue of migrant labour. Mizoram was just emerging from the shadow of twenty years of insurgency, originally rooted in a famine that swept the land. Caused by the flowering of the bamboo plant and its subsequent increase in rat population that devoured all the grain, the famine resulted in the death of thousands. The Centre’s failure to respond to the crisis, led to a deep feeling of neglect, fuelling a movement for independence. A peace accord in 1985 eventually led to statehood in 1987.
In Tripura, rebel groups such as the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All Tripura Tiger Force, fought for the rights of the indigenous people, making their unique identity a central character in the conflict. In Manipur, several militant groups raised the slogan for secession from India and engaged in encounters with the security forces. Only the giant wooded landscape of Arunachal Pradesh appeared to be at peace momentarily, having just attained statehood in 1986; a full twenty-four years after the Chinese invasion of 1962.
It was a minefield of volatile human emotions out there. Truly the badlands. Many of the issues were genuine and deeply rooted in years of political neglect and indifference by the powers that be at the Centre. Untold stories were waiting to be told and to be heard. The stories echoed the cries of women who became widows overnight, of fatherless children and grieving parents caught in the quagmire of political indecision. As the security forces went in hot pursuit of the rebels and their hideouts, we in the media participated in the chase. It became almost routine to be on the road traveling to destinations we would otherwise never have set foot on. Other than the bloody insurgency-related incidents, there was little airtime for other subjects. Issues such as grave changes in the demographic pattern with unchecked illegal migration from Bangladesh, rising unemployment, the rapid destruction of the regions ecological wealth, Assam’s nightmare caused by the floodwaters of the Brahmaputra annually displacing lakhs of its population, evoked no interest.
The region was identified with images of ethnic clashes, mass graves and counter-insurgency operations by security forces. This stereotype created by the media was to stick.
In the initial years, before the era of satellite television, I worked with Doordarshan at its kendra in Guwahati. I quickly came to understand why the national news network, with its monopoly, was rapidly losing its relevance. The channel failed to use technology to enhance its news-gathering skills. It was oblivious to the sweeping changes taking place in the electronic world. More importantly, the fashion of touting, ad nauseum, the official stand, justifying the actions of the government would prove to be its undoing. News in the government- controlled medium was devoid of objectivity. It lacked professionals. The channel suffered from lack of credibility. But no one cared.
However, in time, this government apathy and xenophobic censorship that kept the country in a stagnant pool of information would be rudely jolted. The liberalisation of the broadcast industry in 1992, led to an explosion in the Indian cable television sector. It paved the way for the entry of many foreign players such as Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV Network. Throughout the 1990s, along with a multitude of Hindi language channels, several regional and English language channels flourished across India. The satellite boom induced sweeping changes in the Indian television news industry as well.
These developments changed the course of my reporting. In 1995, Doordarshan partially released its stranglehold over news’ by contracting a private television company to produce news programmes on its commercial channel, DD Metro. NDTV, with a proven record in the market as a professional television production house, was chosen to launch this landmark news show. It came calling on me to report for the news show ‘Tonight’ which later became ‘News Tonight’ on DD2.
It was a refreshing change to work in a corporate news house vis-a-vis the state-run channel, the big difference being the factor of accountability and credibility. What ‘News Tonight’ delivered was a superior version of the DO National News, with sleeker production values, smart graphics, clean edits, clever tongue-in-cheek scripting, clearer transmission and a wide representation of news items from across the country. Perhaps, because of my proximity to the editorial desk, it was easier to convince it to include news from the North-eastern states, including soft stories. For the first time since working in the electronic media, I experienced hope that there would be a fairer representation of the region in the electronic news.
The spontaneous agreement to the suggestion that NDTV should consider operating out of the North-east was an affirmation of this. Guwahati was the unanimous choice as the base for these operations. I was relocated to Guwahati.
The immediate task at hand was to hire a studio, equipment, a cameraman and a vehicle. Since ‘News Tonight’ continued to air on DD 2, an arrangement was worked out with Doordarshan for uplinking edited news capsules from the Doordarshan Kendra in Guwahati. It helped gready that I had worked previously in the organisation. I knew almost all the engineers and staff who happily assisted me in this operation. I had a window of fifteen minutes daily at a fixed hour to uplink my sixty-second news reports. There were occasional slip-ups. A delayed shoot, a power breakdown in the edit room or an interrupted return journey from the wilderness would result in us missing this window of time. Hell would break loose all around, particularly in the newsroom in faraway
Delhi, especially if the news was the story of the day! When that happened, a dash to the airport would be inevitable in the hope of finding a benevolent passenger to carry the tape to Delhi! Total strangers were most kind and, more often than not, agreed to carry our tapes. It is to them that we owe many thanks, for, without their help, who knows how many stories might not have seen the light of day. This system of course was not going to sustain itself, and when NDTV tied up with Star TV to produce Star News, the slot at DD
The birth of Star News resulted in a full-fledged, independent office for me in Guwahati, with updated equipment and editing facilities! The old tube cameras went out and the compact Sony Betacams came in. Even a cameraman was stationed there. But the most significant change was the provision of a twenty-four-hour uplinking facility. The facility allowed NDTV’s reporters to bring in a live element in the news from across the country. It added flavour to the news, especially when politicians in the North- east would comment on the region from the region. The incumbent Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, ex-Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta and present Urban Development
Minister Kamal Nath were amongst the first politicians to participate in these ‘live’ moments from the NDTV office in Guwahati.
However the excitement about the changes in technology was short-lived. What was going to prove difficult was to overcome perceptions in the newsroom of what constituted national news from the North-east. I like to believe that it was not prejudice towards the region, but perhaps the fact that the editorial desks were manned by individuals who had never lived in or visited the North-eastern states. Their approach of equating news from the region with only violence, probably, stemmed from being emotionally delinked with the place.
By 2003, when NDTV established two channels of its own, NDTV 24x7 and NDTV India, news came to be driven by market economy. The definition of a national channel’ became blurred as the major news houses catered to their more affluent audiences in Mumbai and Delhi. And as technology cut costs in the most important component of television, which is its ‘live’ element, the wedge between the North-east and Centre became deeper.
Today, television organisations have the technology to go anywhere and cover any incident at any time and, as far as possible, they do so. It has changed, forever, the way information is handled. The role of the journalist, some like to argue, has also been circumvented by the phenomenon of live coverage, which has compromised the media person’s analytical role. This could partly be the case. But the change cannot remain one-sided. As technology allows information to flow freely, it also calls upon the viewer to be more unbiased and responsible in processing the impact of this information. Whichever way you look at it, live coverage is here to stay. Where the North-east is concerned, it is when and what this frame will accommodate that will redefine the region.
It seems now that, from the start, the hope that television news would bring the affairs of the North-east states centre stage was mired in contradiction. In the current ‘breaking news’ syndrome, the primary question of whether the aspirations and experience of the people of that region totals the national whole, comes full circle. For now, the ‘national’ electronic media has failed to integrate the region in the Big Picture.
Bano Haralu, a pioneering television journalist in North East India, has experience of both the pre- and post-satellite era of the Indian television industry. In a career spanning two decades, she has worked with government-controlled Doordarshan and privately-owned NDTV. She returned to Nagaland in 2009, where she is currently managing a Bio-diversity and Wildlife Conservation Project. She is also a consultant to the Nagaland government on matters of tourism and hospitality. Bano Haralu won the Chameli Devi Jain Award in 2001.
