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 Chamei Devi Jain Award for an Outstanding Women Mediaperson in 1980.
Changimg Times, Changing Media
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Editor of a reputed English daily was in Mumbai trying to sound out prospective recruits for the paper he represented. They were planning to launch a local edition of the same. During a meeting, he let it be known that his management was thinking of obtaining an undertaking from their women employees, stipulating that they remain with the paper for a minimum of three years. The paper made an effort to train women, he said, only to find them using the organization as a ‘waiting room for marriage’ and leaving when they did so.This must have been sometime in the mid-1970’s. In 1982, the proprietor of the same paper, CR Irani, when interviewing me for a job, said they were ‘more interested’ in employing women because they found them ‘more hardworking and conscientious.’
The 1980s marked a sea change in the attitude towards women. Women were topping school-leaving examinations and making their mark in every profession. But it was only in the 1990s, that they arrived in large numbers in mainline journalistic organizations.
At the Indian Express, where I spent ten years as political Editor (1993-2003), half the staff comprised women. At point, the resident editor, the chief reporter, the magazine editor and the political editor (though not the chief editor), were all women!
The 1970s and the 1980s were a period when journalists still harboured the hope that they could make a difference to society and polity through their pen. Social issues were given primacy in newspapers and media investigations could still rein in a corrupt politician and bring down a chief minister.
This was a very productive and satisfying time. As the civil rights correspondent of the, The Statesman from 1982-87 (the first and only one to date),it was possible for me to take up issues of bonded labour, child labour, the plight of undertrials languishing in the country’s jails for decades, and atrocities committed against women. This was when the system of public interest litigation (PIL) had gained credence with the lead being given by Justice P N Bhagwati. These were mostly cases related to social wrongs. Later, the instrument of PIL degenerated as many a suit came to be associated as a front for doing down a political opponent. Of late again, PILs are being used as a weapon to expose large-scale and systematic wrongdoings.
The tip-off for these stories used to come either from voluntary organizations working among the deprived sections, or from items appearing in regional papers. Women bureaucrats too, working in social-sector ministries, proved to be good sources of information. They would often give tidbits about government decisions on the anvil and provide useful background briefings.
The Statesman had a liberal policy in those days and allowed me to travel to different parts of India and see for myself what was happening at the grassroots level. For instance, I once followed up on a case involving bonded labourers who had worked under terrible conditions in the Faridabad stone quarries near Delhi, and who now had been freed at the instance of the court. I tracked down some of these men and women in Madhya Pradesh where they had returned to once released, and discovered that several had relapsed into bondage, either because of the government’s tardiness in rehabilitating them, or because they simply did not know how to handle the compensation or assets they had received.
At this point I decided to be adventurous and filed a PIL against the state of Madhya Pradesh for addressing this practice in the state. The Supreme Court judgment turned out to be a landmark one, as justices P N Bhagwati and A N Sen not only directed the government to rehabilitate these workers ‘within a month’, but also held that those who were not paid wages or given nominal remuneration would be considered ‘bonded’, unless proven otherwise.
In my career, there is one story that has stayed with me for a long time-that of Rudal Sah. I first read about him in a four-line item tucked away in a corner of an inside page of a regional paper, and decided to go to Bihar where he was incarcerated in Muzaffarpur Jail. Rudal Sah had been acquitted of a charge of murder but, instead of being released had been kept in detention for fourteen years on grounds of insanity. It later turned out that he was neither insane nor had he been convicted.
Following the publication of my story, a habeas corpus petition was filed on his behalf, but by the time it came up for hearing, the government of Bihar had already released him.
Apparently, after being released, Rudal Sah had sat outside the jail for a couple of days asking to be let back into the prison that had been ‘home’ to him for years. Eventually, some relatives had come and taken him home. We finally tracked him down in his village after a day- long journey from Muzzafarpur, in Bihar’s hinterland, crossing nullahs in spate. It was eight pm on a rainy day. I still remember the sight of an aged, tired Rudal Sah sitting in the darkness of his hut, head bowed. His family was not very happy to have him back.
This, however, changed when he was awarded compensation by the Supreme Court in another groundbreaking case, which acknowledged the principle of compensation to a victim of crime. The then Chief Justice of India Y V Chandrachud, ruled in august 1983, that Sah be given a compensation of 35,000.Suddenly Sah became very popular among the host of relatives who had earlier shunned him.
Such was the state of under-trails in Bihar at the time that there were several cases wherein people were held in detention for up to thirty-three years without a trail.
Those were the days when cooperation between the media, NGOs, bureaucrats, and the judiciary was spontaneous, with the common goal of trying to bring succor to those on the margins .It was an exciting time to be a journalist.
When pressures came from the top, such as on a story about venereal disease among juvenile prisoners in Tihar, or about human rights violations in Punjab after Operation Bluestar, The Statesman editor, the late S Sahay, would tell the complainant, ‘Please give all the information you have to my reporter’. To me, he would say, ‘don’t worry, just carry on with your work. Only make sure that you are factually correct’.
Sometimes, while writing about victims of atrocity or injustice, mediapersons were often oblivious of how publicity, even as it highlighted a larger issue, could affect the concerned individuals.
This is best exemplified in the case of Maya Tyagi who was dragged and disrobed (and later allegedly raped) by policemen on a street in Baghpat in western Uttar Pradesh, in full view of hundreds of people. The incident drew media attention in a big way. There were protests by agitated women’s organizations, and the issue rocked the Uttar Pradesh Assembly and Parliament.
I visited Maya Tyagi’s village a year later to find out what had happened to her. By then, the media had dropped the issue though the case was still being heard. I learnt that Maya Tyagi had not stepped out of the house for a whole year because of the ignominy that media coverage had brought her. I returned some months later. But, by then, she had gone to live with relatives with the media that they lunged at us and broke the photographer’s camera.
There is, however, a positive site to media coverage. Television reporting and investigation has helped victims and their families get justice when everything else had seemed hopeless. For example, in the case of Jessica Lal who was killed for not serving a drink to a politician’s son, or the Anna Hazare campaign, which, but for the support of the electronic and online media, would not have had the kind of impact and middle-class mobilization it did.
I cut my teeth in political reporting, covering those turbulent days in the 1980s when V P Singh broke ranks with prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on the issue of Bofors and went on to replace him as Mr clean.
This was a difficult period to report, as politics became highly polarized. If one wrote that V P Singh was drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds at meetings during 1987-90, which was true, one was labeled a ‘partisan’. If one reported on the endemic factional wars within the Janata Dal, one was seen by its leaders as anti-them and not given much information.
However, despite the sharp political divide that existed at the time, reporters still had some say on the publication of their stories. One evening, I came to office excitedly, armed with a story about how the yet-to-be-published Kuldip Singh Commission Report had indicted Ramakrishna Hedge for irregularities in the allotment of land when he was the chief minister of Karnataka in the mid-1980s. I listed it for use, insisting that it could not wait another day, for someone else would get hold of it by then. I informed the bureau chief that I would file the story and it was up to him to use it or to withhold it. Even before I had finished writing my piece, Arun Shourie chief editor The Indian Express where I worked as a special correspondent, walked into the office with the news that Hegde had resigned as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. He had Hegde’s resignation letter in his hand.
Though Hegde had supported V P Singh in 1988, and helped him to form the Janata Dal, he was made Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission only when V P Singh became prime minister in 1989, because Singh saw him as a potential threat.
Both the stories-of Hegde’s indictment and his resignation were carried on paper’s front page the next day. This event though Hegde, at the time, was the darling of the media and of The Indian Express.
The 1990s brought a paradigm shift in Indian politics as India embraced economic liberalization and structural reforms. The collapse of the Soviet Union had meanwhile increased the importance of the US in a unipolar world.
The1990s also saw caste- (mandal) and community (kamandal) – based political mobilization, which polarized the media along these lines. In many ways, the onset of the coalition era made information more accessible to the media. ‘Leaks ’were the order of the day.
The 1990s also saw the opening up of the airwaves. Then followed the online media revolution. There was phenomenal growth of television channels from the days of the solitary government-controlled Doordarshan. This made it that much more difficult to control the media, but it also led to the emergence of new stakeholders, all of it also led to the emergence of new stakeholders, all of it impacting the Indian media scene and leading increasingly to its corporatization. The ‘page three’ syndrome and the downgrading of social issues, like farmer suicides, were illustrative of the trend.
At an editorial meeting, one of the editors hauled up the chief sub for doing an across-the-page flyer on a jhuggi fire in Delhi which had gutted huts and killed many people. He was told, ‘Our readers do not want to read about jhuggi dwellers dying.’
These changes brought in their wake a different set of challenges. The challenge posed by the market forces was more subtle and in some difficult to counter than the one posed by censorship during the emergency.
Being a woman journalist has had its pulses and minuses. It was a plus when doing civil rights reporting, for ordinary people were very helpful in providing information and officials found it difficult to throw out a woman!
Covering politics- highly competitive and pressured-entailed a lot of legwork, particularly in the 1990s, when governments were being made and unmade with rapid-fire frequency.
It took years to win the trust of people who gave you information. And hours to check simple facts, like, say, the background of a person, which now happens in a few minutes, thanks to the internet. Mobiles have also facilitated immediate access to political players, wherever they are. And twitter has made it possible for politicians to address their constituencies within minutes.
It goes without saying that for a woman, combining a highly competitive profession with her other roles, requires a high degree of organization and support of the family- though the situation is changing.
Chronicling political events for over twenty-five years writing about six prime ministers in action, and covering virtually every political party, I learnt some basic lessons which have stood me in good stead.
One, to listen carefully to what people say and report it accurately and in the spirit in which it is said. It is often the first step towards winning their trust. Trust is critical, particularly for a print journalist. While television is essentially an ‘on the record’ medium, print represents an ‘off the record’ journalism, where the journalist has to go beyond what is said on record and probe the how and why events.
Two, never to reveal the identity of the ‘source’, not even in conversations in small groups or at parties in Delhi’s social circuit! It only creates trouble for the person who has given the information.
And three, to be fair in reporting, no matter what one’s personal view or inclination is, ideological or otherwise.
People generally give you information selectively, however reliable they may be. It is important therefore to corroborate it and to get the ‘other side’ of the picture.
There was a time when anything that appeared in a newspaper was treated by people as gospel truth. ‘But, this has appeared in the newspaper,’ people would insist trustingly, so it had to be true. Today this is no longer the case. The media is increasingly coming under scrutiny and questions are being raised about its credibility. The phenomenon of ‘paid news’ is only one aspect of it.
At the end of the day, credibility, I feel, is still the most prized asset of any mediaperson.
Neerja Chowdhury, a veteran political columnist and commentator on television, was the civil rights correspondent for The Statesman from 1982 to 1987, when she wrote extensively on issues facing the marginalized and underprivileged sections of society. Later, she began writing on Indian politics and was political editor of the Economic Times, The Indian Express and The New Indian Express from 1993 to 2010. She was awarded the Prem Bhatia award for journalism and the people’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) journalism for Human Rights Award. She won the Chameli Devi Jain Award in 1981.
Courtesy Tranquebar and Media Foundation
