We have seen the video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who made tall promises prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, promising he would announce complete loan waiver and help the farmers.
December 23 is celebrated as Kisan Diwas (Farmers’ Day) in India. Farmers are loved by all political parties at the time of elections, yes, like the vote banks the latter nurture. We have seen the video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who made tall promises prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, promising he would announce complete loan waiver and help the farmers. Today, barring a few online portals, and once in a while a mainstream newspaper, we do not see the media recalling these promises made to the farmers, pinpointing the lacunae in the various reforms and Bills. Instead of fulfilling its role by telling the truth, journalism today is more of rhetoric that is disseminating a false narrative.
Farmers unite against SEZ
Now compare the farmers’ protests to the times the Congress-led alliance was in power. We, the media, then ensured the government went on the backfoot when they tried various reforms and bizarre schemes like the SEZ fancy that was being pushed down the throats of the farmers. In the name of development, the argument used by the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra was that it would boost the economy.
It was in Raigad that this SEZ project was to be enforced, for one private company -Reliance. There was forced land acquisition in the name of development and imagine, there were 21 SEZs planned across the state. In the name of economic reforms, the government had even agreed to forgo many tax benefits and was giving special powers to the private companies. The media attacked this very idea and the entire policy, chronicling every instance of forced eviction from fertile land. There was a strong sanghatana of farmers who stood together against this forced land acquisition and privatisation. They held morchas, resisted the lure of money and went to court. And when I say resisted money, basically they could NOT be bribed and they did not fall for the pittance offered. Finally, a referendum was allowed and 82% farmers voted against the proposed SEZ. Farmers have time and again united against strong forces and won. There was more to this. In 2011, this entire Maha Mumbai Special Economic Zone project was scrapped by the Maharashtra government. By 2012, four SEZs were scrapped by the Maharashtra government and soon this experiment lost its steam.
What have we seen after that? Since 2014, we have seen that the BJP government imposed the land acquisition Bill and now, the Farm Bills. When it was a political party in the opposition, it had joined hands with the farmers. However, when it comes to agrarian issues and survival problems, we are fed a new narrative. The agriculture sector has no income, its contribution to GDP has fallen from 54% to 16% and other sectors are obviously doing better, hence the privatisation and allowing monopoly. Then why is there such a high level of unemployment? Instead of addressing this anomaly by pumping in resources, there are efforts to try and bring in laws to move India away from her traditional agrarian-based economy.
Today, the protesting farmers are celebrating their day to commemorate the birthday of one of our ex-Prime Ministers, Charan Singh. He came from an agrarian family and took many initiatives that helped the farmers. The reason for putting these issues in perspective is to show what the media has to do. We have seen its role change in the last six years, specifically. Survival is key, one understands, but not at the cost of our basic ethics and our very foundation, which is the unbiased dissemination of news. Slowly, the perspective of bias is changing, but when the media becomes a mouthpiece is where the problem begins, compounded by the problem of fake news.
Interestingly, fake news seems to be the forte of the BJP IT cell. We saw this at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. When the PM and his government were serenading the outgoing US President Donald Trump on his visit to India, the first case was reported. Instead of this being reported, what we were told as readers was that a Tablighi Jamaat was held in Nizamuddin, New Delhi, and was falsely reported as the ‘source’ of this virus and its spread, as the Jamaatis dispersed. Every media platform and worse still, social media platform ensured the bias against a Muslim community was spread. Sadly, this divide can never be healed, even though it was eventually proved that the entire narrative had been led by the home department.
Court rejects false narrative
Last Tuesday, a Delhi Magistrate’s court gave a clean chit to the 950 foreigners who belonged to the Tablighi Jamaat. The acquittals show the partisan and devious handling by the government. This court did not find any prima facie evidence. “None of them were present at the markaz on the relevant period and they had been picked up from different places so as to maliciously prosecute them upon from the ministry of Home Affairs.” This congregation took place from March 13-15 and we know how the entire narrative was twisted, blaming the jamaat for spreading coronavirus in India. Actually, in August, the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court said, “It is now time to repent this action and take positive steps to repair the damage” and criticised the scapegoating of the community. The way the propaganda has been working, one would think the BJP was on a rollercoaster ride.
Intriguingly, some Marathi newspapers during this time published police sourced news. I stumbled upon a piece dated March 27, that praised the Ahmednagar officer who unearthed a ‘sinister link’ to the Tablighi Jamaat event. The way the news was written was in the manner of James Bond on a secret mission. The Ahmednagar police were the first to receive information on the Tablighis from their ‘gupt khabris’ who had gone for the markaz event. The Nagar police filed a report to the Director General, who did his own investigations and confirmed the same. He escalated the matter to Intelligence Bureau and the Tablighis were explicitly blamed by the authorities for spreading the virus in India. Initially, there was huge uproar in Nagar, but a Central Reserve team was sent and the police isolated the members and began tracing the other members. In this entire false narrative it is sinister to note the role of the Maharashtra police, home department and Union Home Affairs. So, this entire keep-the-BJP-away-from-Maharashtra being played out since the time the MVA government was sworn in, was no less an opportunistic political drama. Be it the activists and scholars arrested in Bhima Koregaon or the Tablighis, the perceived common enemy seems to unite the otherwise warring political parties.
Farmers counter propaganda war
To come back to the farmers, throughout their protests, we have seen the way false narratives about them was spread through fake news. The fact is the BJP and its bhakts dominate the social media platforms. This time around, however, they underestimated the wide network of the farmers from across every sector and country. The Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) has set up its own IT cell to counter this false propaganda. They have launched their own Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat handles. They also are imparting training to their leaders to speak in English to reach out to a wider audience so that they can counter the ‘propaganda war’ against the three Bills. On December 20, they launched their Facebook page with live streaming and within a few hours, they got 94 lakh views. Something the IT cell and the BJP leaders may not have imagined. What happened next? Predictably, Facebook removed the page. That news spread like wildfire and there was outrage on social media and Facebook had to restore the page.
In this entire period, we have been inundated with fake news on farmers being circulated widely and deliberately — some BJP leaders circulating cropped images, others circulating photos showing anti-CAA posters and a placard demanding Khalistan from another protest. Today, the Sikh farmers are doing the job of mainstream media, showing everyone how to counter false propaganda with truth.
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