Views On News 22 july 2016

VIEWSONNEWSJULY 22, 2016 `50
THE CRITICAL EYE
www.viewsonnewsonline.com
An Icon
Steps Down
By Sujit Bhar 16
Too Few Funds, Too Many Schemes
By Keerty Nakray 46
Governance
A Virtual Peek
into the Past
By Meha Mathur 18
Looking
the Crisis
in the Eye
By Shobha John 34
The Media
Monitor
54
ALSO
Putting
Nonsense
before
NewsDriven by the
unshakable belief
that it will result
in more TRPs, the
press today does
not think twice
before giving
publicity to any
and every
statement
made by a VIP
By Bikram Vohra12

4 VIEWS ON NEWS July 22, 2016
JOURNALISM IS ONE profession that has a moral com-
pass. If you lose it, your news sense becomes blunted
and so does your ability to identify and write stories. Yet,
the journalist today is under pressure from all quarters
to go with the flow. From managements which lay down
policy perspectives to a newsroom work ethic that more
and more refuses to look beyond copycat news presen-
tations and TRPs, the enemies of good journalism are
multitudinous and manifold.
In this issue, Bikram Vohra focuses on one of them—
the penchant among news organizations to throw mean-
ingless trivia at their audience, at the cost of hard news
and concerns crying for attention. A media insider, Vohra
analyzes the thought process that has gone into the pub-
licizing of defense minister Manohar Parrikar’s pathetic
approximation of US army general Patton’s rousing call
to arms during the Second World War and the recent un-
fortunate, if flippant, remark on rape made by actor
Salman Khan following a film shoot. To make it the piv-
otal story of the day and spend reams of space on it and
dissect it and weigh it is to make ourselves party to the
vapidity of the statement, he trenchantly observes. To
make matters worse, the publicity-
dependant wheels of the govern-
ment machinery also get caught
up in this nonsense; as has hap-
pened vis-à-vis the blow-by-blow
reporting of the tu-tu-main-main
between lieutenant governor Na-
jeeb Jung and the Arvind Kejriwal-
led Delhi government, Vohra
laments.
Saumit Sinh was a writer of
celebrity gossip, competent at his
craft and in love with his profes-
sion, enough to continue enjoying
his hunt for good stories even after
being dismissed from his job un-
fairly. Binoo John pays a moving
tribute to this man who committed
suicide in his east Delhi apartment
a short while ago, ruing the sad fact that his editors never
stood up for him. Of such journalists who tried to make
an honest living, will anything be remembered, John asks
and answers this question himself: “Nothing”.
Meanwhile, there is more sobering news. It is the end
of an era at Ananda Bazar Patrika Group with its editor-
in-chief Aveek Sarkar stepping down, close on the heels
of strong rumors of bad blood between the media mogul
and Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal chief minister.
Sujit Bhar, who has worked with the ABP Group’s flag-
ship paper, The Telegraph, writes from Kolkata to inform
us how many see a political subtext to the 71-year-old’s
exit. The ABP Group had read the signals wrong in the
recently-concluded assembly elections in the state which
ended in Banerjee’s triumphant return. For this grievous
trespass, Sarkar had to pay the ultimate price.
However, everything between the pages is not bleak
and foreboding. Hope lives in the story of the “Facebook
Girls” who landed in jail over an innocuous remark
posted on social media after Bal Thackeray’s death but
whose incarceration ultimately led to the apex court
quashing the oppressive Sec-66A of the IT Act. Of
course, spunky student Shreya Singhal and her lawyer
mom did their bit. They were the ones who filed the pe-
tition. Somini Sengupta chronicles their story in her book,
The End of Karma: Hope and Fury among India’s Young.
Turn the pages for an excerpt.
Shobha John’s review of Udta Punjab also offers the
reader enough reason to cheer. It gives us a sneak peek
into what is a gripping account of the narcotics problem
in Punjab. The four young protagonists are helpless in
its clutches and the dealer-police-politician web allows
them no escape. Until they find it in themselves to bust
the racket. Not without tragedy, of course. But as the
character played by Alia Bhatt—whose performance al-
most overshadows Shahid Kapoor’s—hints towards the
end of the movie—perhaps, what helps them ultimately
pull through is the power of love.
Journalism under SiegeEDITOR’SNOTE

C O NLEDE
FOCUS
Icon Exits
Editor
Rajshri Rai
Managing Editor
Ramesh Menon
Deputy Managing Editor
Shobha John
Executive Editor
Ajith Pillai
Bureau Chiefs
Neeta Kolhatkar, Mumbai
Naveen Nair, Chennai
Vipin Kumar Chaubey, Lucknow
B N Tamta, Dehradun
Principal Correspondent
Harendra Chowdhary, Mathura
Reporters
Alok Singh, Allahabad
Gaurav Sharma, Varanasi
Associate Editors
Meha Mathur, Sucheta Dasgupta
Deputy Editor
Prabir Biswas
Staff Writer
Usha Rani Das
Senior Sub-Editor
Shailaja Paramathma
Sub-Editor
Tithi Mukherjee
Art Director
Anthony Lawrence
Deputy Art Editor
Amitava Sen
Sr. Visualizer
Rajender Kumar
Graphic Designers
Ram Lagan,
Photographer
Anil Shakya
Photo Researcher/News Coordinator
Kh Manglembi Devi
Production
Pawan Kumar
Head Convergence Initiatives
Prasoon Parijat
Convergence Manager
Mohul Ghosh
Technical Executive (Social Media)
Sonu Kumar Sharma
Technical Executive
Anubhav Tyagi
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SUJIT BHAR
Trivia forTRPsThe press today accords publicity to every statement made
by a VIP, throwing caution to the winds and without exercising
judgment. BIKRAM VOHRA
16

T E N T S
R E G U L A R S
Edit..................................................04
Grapevine.......................................08
Quotes.............................................10
Media-Go-Round..........................11
As the World Turns........................3 7
Design Review.................................40
Breaking News............................. 42
Webcrawler......................................44
TMM.................................................54 Cover design: Anthony Lawrence
CULTURE EDITORS’ PICK
TV REVIEW
Well Done, DD!
24
32
34
18 38
In a candid interview that was poised and
dignified, Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani
came across as a man ready to lead the
beleaguered airline out of the woods.
SHOBHA JOHN
No Compromises
Boosted by strong performances, Udta
Punjab is a gripping film that refuses
to look away from the ugliness and
despair that characterizes the drug
scene in the state. SHOBHA JOHN
FILM REVIEW
What led to the quashing of Sec 66A?
Somini Sengupta recounts the events
in The End of Karma: Hope and Fury
among India’s Young
Quest for Freedom
BOOKS
Museums and organizations are using
innovative methods including the web to
get more and more people interested in
our heritage and the past.
MEHA MATHUR
Saumit Sinh hanged himself to
death in his east Delhi apartment.
A fellow journalist, Binoo John,
pays tribute in a Facebook post
and ponders on how survival has
become an issue for his brethren
Click to Revisit
History
Death of a
Journalist
Governance
46
50
It’s a case of too many schemes and
too little allocations. Unfortunately,
those at the receiving end are our
own future generations.
KEERTY NAKRAY
Whither
Education?
Despite India having 60 million
under-nourished children, the
government has cut funds for
Integrated Child Development
Services from `18,195 crore to
`8,335 crore.
PUNKHURI CHAWLA
Blowto
Anganwadis
VIEWS ON NEWS July 22, 2016 7

Grapevine
The beef ban ideology of the RSS might
soon have a brand ambassador. RSS
chief Mohan Bhagwat, scheduled to travel
to London July-end, plans to attend gala
events like the prime minister, and is set to
meet Hollywood legend Leonardo DiCaprio
to persuade him to become the ambassador
of the beef ban. DiCaprio is a vegetarian, an
environment activist and has produced a
documentary, Cowspiracy: The Sustainabil-
ity Secret , dealing with ecology, animals
and other green concerns. It seems this star
power will be harnessed to push for a
nationwide beef ban in India.
Leonardoforbeefban?
Pranab Mukherjee is
acquiring a reputa-
tion for being the most
unmerciful president.
He has rejected the
mercy pleas of 26 death
row convicts—which is
a big number consider-
ing that only 47 mercy
petitions have been re-
jected since 1992.
Mukherjee’s score
works out to
55 percent. There are
no prizes for guessing
who is “mother merci-
ful”. It’s none other than
former President Prati-
bha Patil who showered
her kindness on 87 per-
cent of those who ap-
pealed to her, and left 11
uncleared petitions for
her successor.
Mercy,mylordship
Outgoing RBI Gover-
nor Raghuram
Rajan’s suggestion that the
incumbent’s tenure should
be fixed for four years in-
stead of three, like that of
the FED chief in the US,
has triggered a number of
outlandish proposals. Like,
the term of our PM should
be four years, similar to
that of the American presi-
dent; we should replace
our national flag colors
with red, white and blue;
we should replace dosa
with pancakes, aloo paran-
tha with pizza, and our
parliamentary form of
government with presi-
dential. Path-breaking
proposals, all?
What’sinaproposal?

It seems sequels are gaining
popularity. After objections
to Udta Punjab, now the Goa
government has objected to
a Hindi movie,
Missing on a
Weekend, for pro-
jecting the state as a
drug haven.
Not that people are un-
aware of the drug scene
in different
parts of the country, but the
film sure gets
publicity and rakes in good
moolah eventually, no matter
how upset the government gets.
—Illustrations: UdayShankar
—Compiled by Roshni Seth
Loyaltypays
Former Delhi police com-
missioner and retired IPS
officer, BS Bassi, who took on
Chief Minister Arvind Kejri-
wal and the AAP government,
has been rewarded for his
faithfulness to the current es-
tablishment at the center. He
has been appointed as UPSC
member, a prestigious post-
retirement slot, which is often
followed by governorship.
Rainingsequels
9VIEWS ON NEWS July 22, 2016
The scientists of Junagarh
Agricultural University, Gu-
jarat, have discovered traces of
gold in the urine of Gir cows,
after analyzing 400 samples.
Gold has been found in the form
of salts in urine! It has been
proposed to now test the sample
of all 39 indigenous breeds of
the Indian cow. So now we can
raise a glass of cow milk as a
toast to our golden future!
Goldencows
Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley is
under perpetual at-
tack from Rajya
Sabha MP Subra-
manian Swamy.
After attacking his
close confidants, the
economic adviser
and the finance sec-
retary, Swamy has
commented on Jait-
ley’s dressing style
on foreign tours.
He has also ques-
tioned PM Modi’s
achhe din, saying
that the real GDP
figures would trig-
ger a huge furore. It
is believed that such
attacks will continue
until he gets a cabi-
net berth. The latest
reshuffle hasn’t
taken care of that.
Swamy’stroubletactics
Oursandtheirs
Congress’ Kapil
Sibal continues to
be afflicted by foot-
in-mouth disease. Re-
cently, after the PM’s
interview with Arnab
Goswami, Sibal said:
“Modiji, host a press
conference. Let our
journalists ask you
questions. This is bet-
ter than an interview
with one person.” Has
the concept of unbi-
ased journalism gone
for a toss?
Of course this is an
extension of the time
when BJP ministers
chose BJP-covering
journos over
beat journos
for the routine
briefing.

U O T E S
Barack Obama,
US president
Enough has been enough for a long
time. Congress needs to vote on
sensible gun legislation now.
#DisarmHate
Shekhar Gupta,
senior journalist
Erdogan'sTurkey has a familiar
disease: Pakistanitis. Patronising
one set of terrorists while fighting
another can only burn your
own home
Subramanian Swamy,
BJP leader
New problem: when publicity re-
lentlessly seeks a politician. 30 OVs
outside the house, 200 missed calls
from channels and paparazzis.
Chetan Bhagat,
author
Brexit: 'cos end of day, English
speaking white guys would rather
hang out, think like, work with and
b around other English speaking
white guys
William Dalrymple,
historian
Vote Brexit and lose pounds imme-
diately: British obesity problems
solved forever
Sanjay Manjrekar,
ex-cricketer
(on Ravi Shastri)
Longer career talking cricket than
playing cricket, shows which is eas-
ier…. More than Sourav, Ravi is
miffed with the rejection. It is a
new experience for him.
Hrithik Roshan, actor
Curiosity killed d cat! False. I think
curiosity has been d secret 2my
success.
I understand that David
Cameron wants to have some
time, because he was
advocating remain. What I
don't understand is that those
who wanted to leave are
incapable of telling us what
they want. I thought, if they
wanted to leave, they have
a plan.
—European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker, at the EU Brexit
Summit in Brussels
The meaning of Qurbani is to sacrifice
something which is close to you instead
of any goat or sheep which you just buy
to sacrifice. Before sacrificing we should
share a bond with that thing, otherwise
just killing of an animal will not
serve the purpose.
—Actor Irrfan Khan, at the promotion of his
upcoming film, Madaari, in Jaipur
We will ensure there are no
negotiations based on the principle
of cherry-picking…. Anyone wishing
to leave this family cannot expect to
lose all the obligations
but keep the privileges.
—German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on
Britain leaving the EU, at the
Bundestag in Berlin
If Ravi Shastri feels that Sourav Ganguly was
responsible for him not being made the
India coach, he is living in a fool's world.
—Former India skipper Sourav Ganguly, reacting to
Ravi Shastri's salvo that he had shown disrespect by
staying out of the interview board for coach selection
when Shastri was making his presentation

EDIA-GO-ROUND
Times Now’s Arnab Goswami
is known for his strident de-
bates and no-holds-barred com-
mentary, yet his interview of the
prime minister, aired on June 27,
surprised everyone with its mel-
low tone and conspicuous ab-
sence of tough questions.
Topics covered by Goswami
included questions regarding the
GST and the economy, farmer
suicides and India’s relationship
with Pakistan, China and the
United States. While Modi was
forthcoming on most issues, he
dodged the Pakistan issue with a
“smart reply”. Many felt his body
language spoke of agreements
reached beforehand regarding
issues to be broached. Ques-
tions on communal polarization
and right-wing politics were not
asked and the topic of Subra-
manian Swamy’s attack on
Raghuram Rajan was raised
without naming anyone.
In what might be interpreted as a contro-
versial remark by some, Press Council of
India Chairperson Justice CK Prasad has
debunked the assertion that there has been
an increase in the number of attacks on
journalists recently, on the ground that not
all of them are killed for their writings. In a
web-exclusive interview given to Hindustan
Times, Prasad said: “When a journalist is
killed, then there is an attempt to convey
that the journalist has been killed for his
writing. In many cases, it is not true.”
On a different note, Prasad commented that
journalism has been reduced to one of alter-
native outcry and cheerleading. “Yahan par
hahakar aur jaijaikar ka journalism chal raha
hai. (We either have a journalism of outcry
or of cheerleading in the country.) If some-
one is good, then he is even better than God
for you and if he is bad, then he is the
worst. This outcry or cheerleading only
works in creating a perception,” he said.
Editor under
plagiarism cloud
The Jammu & Kashmir government has
suspended three government school
teachers moonlighting as journalists. The
head of Directorate of School Education in
Kashmir, Shah Faesal (left), took punitive
action against Syed Tahir Bukhari, Reyaz
Ahmad Ganai and Muneer Ahmad Dar who
were moonlighting for Kashmir Images,
Early Times and Greater Kashmir, respec-
tively. However, citizens and analysts feel
that the arrests are only the tip of the ice-
berg as the Valley’s news culture is report-
edly dominated by government employees
working as journos. These journalists pur-
portedly act as gatekeepers of their re-
spective departments, making sure nothing
unfavorable goes into print. They are used
by media organizations for two reasons—
they provide easy access to the corridors
of power and accept lower pay.
Govt staff
doubling as journos
—Compiled by Sucheta Dasgupta
Outlook executive editor Dilip Bobb
has come under the scanner for pla-
giarism once again. A 550-word com-
bined review of Bob Dylan and Eric
Clapton’s latest albums—Fallen Angels
and I Still Do—apparently has 200 lines
lifted from NPR’s review of the former
compilation of songs and Consequence
of Sound’s take on the latter collection.
In 2010, Bobb, then the managing
editor of India Today, was rumored to
have picked up sentences of a Slate ar-
ticle to use in a Letter From the Editor for
the magazine.
“Not all scribes killed for writings”
Arnab’s Modi interview raises eyebrows

When the
Media
Shovels
Trivia…12 VIEWS ON NEWS July 22, 2016
A stage has been reached when the press
gives publicity to every statement made
by a VIP, losing its innate judgment and
throwing caution to the winds
BY BIKRAM VOHRA
Focus
Journalists’ Role
thought of writing this piece after
reading the uniquely profound
statement by defense minister
Manohar Parrikar to Indian troops
in general. “In the past two months
we have killed over 70 percent terrorists, who were
trying to infiltrate the Indian borders. And during
these operations our men did not die because we
had already told them that I respect martyrdom,
but you are trained to kill the enemy, not to die.”
While the genius behind this sentiment is dif-
ficult to wrap your head around, compare the
texture of the content with the original bellow
from General Patton in WWII who said: “We do
not win wars by dying for our country. We win
I

him quotable. He is so delighted with the first
wave of exposure that he increases his pitch and
becomes more outrageous, knowing that in its
competitive zeal, the media will love him the
more ungracious and outlandish he is and present
him the bigger headline. Win, win all the way.
To a point, the media has to record idiocy as
much as it does genius, especially if the individual
is in the public domain. After all, you, the reader,
be the judge. We are only the vehicle.
Herein lies the rub. Have we converted the ve-
hicle into a rocket and now engage in propelling
nonsense to stratospheric heights as we wrestle
for room at the top? In our fight for TRPs and rat-
ings and circulations and ad revenue pie shares,
journalists have lost their raison d’etre. Financials
are not our business and yet, they have been made
so. Consequently, the lowest common denomina-
tor counts. Because it sells the maximum.
TACTLESS MOVE
Take, for a moment, the statement made by actor
Salman Khan over his shooting ordeal being so
intense that he felt like a raped woman. Bad
them by making the other bas#@%rds die
for theirs.”
SPIKE IT
Now that was a soldier’s speech, not this clumsy
fracture that Parrikar produced which twisted
and turned six weeks to Sunday and still makes
no sense. What was he saying? How do you train
people not to die? Then we, the media, pick it up
and transport it through our various and now in-
stant routes to the public and to the men in uni-
form, thereby contributing to the undermining of
their morale. Do we think, hey, just a second, this
is not worthy of attention, spike it. That is the dif-
ference. There are no spikes left.
Although news is now editorialized way be-
yond acceptable levels, few of us grab the nettle
and critique the high-profile individual who so
seeks and gets his publicity. In the deluge of the
daily news flow, he gets away unscathed.
Take Subramanian Swamy. The media finds
Let’s go back to the Swamy war with
Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian.
The media never questioned the insidious
manner in which the dramatis personae
manipulated the press to suit its own needs.
BORROWED BITES
Manohar Parrikar’s
address used an
idea from a speech
by Gen Patton but it
was hardly inspiring

Every utterance of
Arvind Kejriwal is
set to music and his
war with Modi is
recorded faithfully.
Making Salman Khan’s
remark the pivotal
story of the day is
making ourselves party
to its vapidity.
taste, certainly. Totally tactless, of course. But to
make it the pivotal story of the day and spend
reams of space on it and dissect it and weigh it
and project it is to make ourselves party to the
vapidity of the statement.
The mass com monster that is now the
Godzilla of social platforms has so ripped and
torn our sacred Fourth Estate values that the
greedy ogre that it is, it now wants more and more
sleaze and smut and still won’t stop. So we give it
everything we have, the good, the bad and the
ugly, eclipsed entirely by the stillborn, the gross
and the malicious. We build people and their sto-
ries into houses of horror and have begun to be-
lieve that the more we stun the end user, the
better we are doing our jobs.
Media in India today shrilly demands quality
control in every detail of life except itself. That is
an incredible irony but it is true. As we deteriorate
we conceal our flaws with righteousness.
Against that backdrop, selling garbage is man-
dated. Take the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind
Kejriwal. Every utterance of his is set to music
and his war with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
and Lt Governor Najeeb Jung is recorded faith-
fully, especially in its exaggerations.
Because it is open house, one can go to town
with it and generate a froth of nastiness. What if
the media prioritized as it should and said,
enough of the inanities, it is a dead in the water
story, give us something constructive.
MEDIA THE CULPRIT
There was a time not so long ago when journalism
was just that. Now it shovels trivia into the back
of its truck and then spreads it around exactly like
the manure that it is. In having dispatched all cau-
tion to the winds, we have become culprits, more
rabid mongrels than watchdogs of society.
This is not an essay in hysterical dramatics. It
is an acknowledgement that the super rapid evo-
lution of technology has broken our commit-
ments and made us venal when we were once the
purveyors of sobriety, of introspection, even hon-
esty and probity in conveying at least a larger
chunk of the truth than we do now. We offered
thought. Now we offer trinkets.
Let’s go back to the Swamy war with RBI gov-
ernor Raghuram Rajan and economic adviser
Arvind Subramanian and other bureaucrats in
the finance ministry. The media per se fanned the
flames and created an all-out war and never ques-
tioned the insidious manner in which the drama-
tis personae manipulated the press to suit its own
needs. Swamy trampled on the Fourth Estate and
it welcomed the intrusion with glee instead of un-
ease. We brought Swamy back to life and created
a dimension that had died.
In such scenarios lies the need to ask the front-
line of journalists if there isn’t a dereliction of duty
in that it is not their role to be co-opted or com-
mandeered in other people’s battles. If we do not
ask this question now and seek answers and solu-
tions, we will continue to be willing pawns and
that tattered gown we wear will be all that is left
of our credibility... singly and as a profession.
Focus
Journalists’ Role

Focus
Aveek Sarkar
HERE are still some editors
who can make journalism ex-
citing and newspapers vibrant.
And yet, there was a time
when reportage was stodgy
and run-of-the-mill—a mere vehicle for dissem-
inating information that was everywhere and
merely recycled. Among the breed of those above
the ordinary, please include Aveek Sarkar of the
Ananda Bazar Patrika Group (ABP), one of the
most prominent newspaper groups in the coun-
try and definitely the largest and most influential
in eastern India.
GOOD PROPRIETOR
Sarkar had his own ideas about how a daily
should be positioned and designed. Of course, he
was just a modern-day innovator as he did not
start the group’s flagship, Ananda Bazar Patrika,
the Bengali daily that rules with a circulation of
over 1.2 million. It took birth in 1922, in the
hands of his grandfather. But Sarkar was instru-
mental in shaping the group into a veritable
media conglomerate and the Bengali daily into a
staple in the Bengali bhadralok’s household.
Sarkar’s claim to national fame was The Tele-
graph which he launched on July 7, 1982, in the
penumbra of the venerable The Statesman. Scep-
tics did not give the nascent paper a chance but it
caught the imagination of the readers. The ABP
chief had the talented and dynamic
M.J. Akbar to head the daily. He was ready to ex-
periment and try out new ideas. He was allowed
the freedom to choose his team. The proprietor
seemed to follow Henry Ford’s credo: “I am look-
ing for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity
to not know what can’t be done.”
The Telegraph was not only a hit but remains
the largest circulated English daily in eastern
India, despite the presence of the national leader,
The Times of India, in the region.
How was it to work with Sarkar? Having par-
ticipated in a few projects with him at the helm, I
can confidently say that he urged me to think out-
of-the-box and to be bold. There was contempt
evident, no doubt, for the mediocre and his sig-
natures with a gold-tipped Mont Blanc pen had
an almost regal flourish. But what would you ex-
pect from a man who is known to be one of the
best connoisseurs of good wine in the country, a
T
An
Enigma
QuitsWas the surprise exit of the chief editor of
the ABP Group, Aveek Sarkar, triggered by
Mamata Banerjee’s return to power?
BY SUJIT BHAR

tasteful art collector, or a man who revels in a
round of golf at a Pro-Am with Tiger Woods?
He was also my chief editor.
Vir Sanghvi, who edited Sunday magazine,
had this to say in his tweet: “Aveek Sarkar's retire-
ment marks the end of an era. Finest editor-pro-
prietor in India and a wonderful human being.
A great man. An institution.” It is not out of
nowhere that such adulation emanates. It wasn’t
out of thin air that The Indian Express ranked
Sarkar as one of the most powerful Indians
in 2009.
WRONG PREDICTION
But all things must pass and every innings must
end. Sarkar finally hung up his boots on June 22
as the chief editor of the ABP Group. But why the
sudden exit? No one in Kolkata is buying the of-
ficial explanation that it was “part of our ongoing
process of streamlining news operations”.
Many see a political subtext to this sudden
exit. The ABP Group had read the wrong signals
in the recently-concluded Assembly elections in
West Bengal. It had predicted Mamata Banerjee’s
defeat but she came back with an even larger
victory margin than in the 2011 polls.
However, would Sarkar have quit just because
his publications got an Assembly result wrong?
There are others who think that he read too much
into Banerjee’s threat that she would see to it that
“ABP goes out of business” if she returned to
power. Whatever the truth, we will know it only
if the reclusive boss chooses to speak his mind.
His younger brother, Arup Sarkar, is taking
over the chief editor’s post (earlier he headed the
Bengali magazines of the house). Veteran jour-
nalist (of The Statesman) Nikhil Mookerjee calls
it a “palace coup”, though this has yet to gain “ver-
ified” status.
MEDIA CONGLOMERATE
The reasons for his unexpected exit apart, Sarkar
had a formidable role in shaping the ABP Group
into a media conglomerate. It was he who found
synergy in the different media outlets. The ABP
Group today has 11 premier publications, three
24-hour national TV news channels as well as
mobile and internet properties. It also has an FM
radio station.
The entry into television was through a
purchase of a major stake in Star News. It was a
success. But then, Star wanted to exit the news
business in India. That left ABP with a conun-
drum about how to rebrand it. Of the three chan-
nels in the bouquet—Star News (Hindi), Star
Ananda (Bengali) and Star Majha (Marathi)—
Star News was the most established. Star was a
brand that existed for over 13 years and had es-
tablished itself, while ABP did not have any na-
tional identity.
On June 1, 2012, Sarkar took the bold decision
to rebrand Star News as ABP News. It was a
success story.
Whatever his position today, Aveek Sarkar—
who trained under the legendary Harold Evans,
then editor of The Sunday Times—will be remem-
bered. He was an enigma to many, but a thorough
professional with foresight.
Aveek Sarkar
would sign
with a
gold-tipped
Mont Blanc
pen and was
one of the best
connoisseurs
of good wine
in the country,
a tasteful art
collector and
a man who
revelled in a
round of golf
at a Pro-Am
with Tiger
Woods.

Past is just a
click away
Museums and cultural organizations are using innovative ways and
the web to get more people interested in history
BY MEHA MATHUR
Culture
Modern Museums
GOING BACK
INTIME
(Above) The
jewelry displays
at the
National
Museum in
Delhi;
(Right) A virtual
tour of the
museum at the
Google Cultural
Institute website

to 2011 and 2012, and at the time of writing this
story, there was hardly any activity listed for 2016.
GOOGLE PARTNERSHIP
The National Museum in Delhi (not to be con-
fused with the National Museum of Natural His-
tory) is more proactive about projecting the past.
Joyoti Roy, consultant with the Outreach program
of the museum, said: “Our media policies are de-
signed with the view that the collections should
reach the public. Whatever happens in our
museum should be talked about on our digital
platform. We make use of various social media
platforms like Twitter and Facebook.” The
HEN the National Museum
of Natural History in Delhi
was gutted in April this year,
Delhiites mourned the loss
of a milestone that they had
come to associate with during their growing-up
years. But there was also an undercurrent of un-
happiness at the way the museum had become
fossilized because of its inability to innovate in
keeping with the changing public tastes.
Its failure is in stark contrast to the multiple
ways adopted by other museums and organiza-
tions to engage more with the public, both in the
physical and virtual space. From offering a myr-
iad activities on the premises to reaching out to
the public via websites and social media, they are
doing it all.
VIRTUAL TOUR
The Indian Museum in Kolkata has tied up with
Google Cultural Institute to upload its exhibits. It
has uploaded 150 exhibits of Buddhist art online.
The museum had taken these exhibits to several
cities including Shanghai, Tokyo and Singapore
as part of an exhibition titled “Indian Buddhist
Art”. Thanks to the Google initiative, these
exhibits, along with detailed descriptions, are now
just a click away. In what would be a great play-
way initiation into history, the museum also
facilitates a virtual tour on the Google Cultural
Institute website, where you can navigate your
way through the museum’s galleries (visit
http://bit.ly/29gYQJq).
The museum’s own website is quite exhaustive
and deals with major groupings like archaeology,
zoology, geology, botany and anthropology. The
presentation is zany, though when you click
on individual exhibits, you are left yearning for
more information.
Surprisingly, while one expects a rich year-
round schedule of cultural events, seminars, ex-
hibitions and tours, the listing is old. It goes back
“Our media policies are designed with the
view that the collections reach the public.
Whatever happens in our museum should
be talked about on our digital platform.
— Joyoti Roy, Outreach program, National Museum
W

museum has also uploaded its exhibits on Insta-
gram. However, it has not gone for apps or gam-
ing tools to popularize its facilities.
It has partnered with the Google Cultural In-
stitute and posted 398 exhibits on its website
prominently, primarily of artefacts dating back
5,000 years. These include the dancing figurine
of Harappa, an early medieval bronze Nataraj, an
ornate medieval water sprinkler and the sword of
Tipu Sultan. There are also sculptures in stone,
bronze, terracotta and wood, miniature paintings
and manuscripts, coins, arms and armor, jewelry,
textile, costumes and anthropological objects.
There is a virtual tour of some of the galleries of
the museum on Google, especially its aestheti-
cally designed jewelry gallery.
Roy informs that a curator associated with the
museum takes up discussions on social media.
Thus, on “miniature Mondays”, along with several
other museums across the world, the museum cu-
rator posts an image of a miniature object from
the past and initiates a discussion.
In the physical space, thought has been given
to the layout of the various galleries, that include
the jewelry display chambers, the Indus gallery
and the bronze gallery. The museum also has a
tactile gallery called Anubhav, where replicas of
art objects have been displayed in a way that vi-
REACHING OUT
(Right) A virtual
tour of the
exhibits at
the National
Museum,
Kolkata, on the
Google Cultural
Institute
website;
(below) a display
of masks on the
museum
website
Think new, stay ahead
Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad: Its website claims
that it has a certificate of excellence from TripAdvisor
for 2015.You can do a virtual tour of the jaw-dropping
collection of the museum. It hosts many activities in the
physical space on occasions such as Heritage Day and
Ambedkar’s birthday.
Chhatrapati Shivaji MaharajVastu
Sangrahalaya (earlier Prince ofWales Museum),
Some museums that have
innovated and forged ahead:
Culture
Modern Museums

sually challenged people can touch them.
The museum organizes mock digging for
children to inculcate in them an interest in his-
tory and lets them visit storehouses of armor and
other objects which are not on display. In Decem-
ber 2015, the museum installed an art gateway at
the Udyog Bhavan Metro Station.
ONLINE DOCUMENTS
There have been other attempts too to involve the
public in art. In Delhi, a group of history and her-
itage experts got together to start Sahapedia, an
“online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage
of India”. The website describes it as: “‘Saha’, San-
skrit for ‘together with’, is an invitation to explore
together the richness of our cultural landscapes.”
The initiative has ONGC, Jamnalal Bajaj
Foundation and Petronet LNG as its partners and
its executive director, Sudha Gopalakrishnan, was
earlier Mission Director, National Mission for
Manuscripts. She, along with other experts in his-
tory and heritage, performing arts and literature,
are striving to make documentary material avail-
able to the public through this online encyclope-
dia of heritage.
From knowledge traditions to visual and nat-
ural arts, performing arts, literature and lan-
guages, rituals, oral history, built spaces and
natural environment, the website is building up a
huge repository.
Mumbai: This museum, housed in a grand building,
goes out of its way to attract visitors, literally. Starting
March 2015, the museum is travelling to semi-urban
and rural areas in an air-conditioned bus, with displays
of objects, interactive demo kits, audio-visual equip-
ment and digital media like touch screens and tablets.
It toured several locations in Maharashtra with an exhi-
bition titled, “MagicWorkersofHarappa”.Within the mu-
seum premises , there are activities like making your
own memorabilia, to hook visitors.
Bhau Daji Lad Museum (formerlyVictoria and Al-
bert Museum), Mumbai: A British-era 19th century
museum, it went in for major renovation with INTACH’s
help and reopened in 2008. But even in the midst of ren-
ovation, it won UNESCO’s 2005 Award for Excellence in
the field of cultural conservation.The Industrial Arts
Gallery and the Kamalnayan Bajaj Mumbai Gallery,
which tell the story of Mumbai’s origins and develop-
ment in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and the
life of its many communities, are the two major attrac-
tions.The Museum Plaza, its cultural hub, offers a range
of activities like DIY workshops and performances. Its fas-
cinating exhibits are on display on the Google Cultural
Institute website.
“Sahapedia is a
participatory
exercise. People
will be
submitting
content that
will be vetted
by the experts.
We have tapped
university
professors,
documentary
filmmakers,
authors
and writers
for this.”
— Niharika Gupta,
content director,
Sahapedia

Niharika Gupta, content director with the
project, informs: “It’s a participatory exercise.
People will be submitting content, which will be
vetted by experts. We have tapped university pro-
fessors, documentary filmmakers, authors and
writers for this purpose. We are also collaborating
with various government organizations. For ex-
ample, the Archaeological Survey of India has
shared some of its archival material with us.”
The organization has also created an online
material base for the Central Board of Secondary
Education (CBSE) to create an interest in history
among students. Besides online activities, Saha-
pedia is also organizing lectures on university
campuses for students.
These initiatives show how people of all ages
can be made interested in seemingly staid sub-
jects such as history and heritage. Those dabbling
in the past need to adopt futuristic methods or
else they will be consigned to history.
The new
initiatives are
meant to
engage
more and
more people
with
seemingly
staid subjects
such as
history and
heritage.
Culture
Modern Museums
HISTORY
COMES CLOSER
(Top and above)
Exciting displays
at the Bhau Daji
Lad Museum,
Mumbai;
(right) an
interactive work-
shop at the Daji
Lad Museum;
(below)
Chhatrapati
Shivaji
Sangrahalaya’s
mobile museum

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Book Extract
The End of Karma
n the third Sunday of No-
vember 2012, a dead man
in sunglasses brings hus-
tling, bustling, no-elbow-
room Mumbai to a
standstill. More than a mil-
lion people line the streets for the funeral caval-
cade of the city's most influential and most
controversial politician, a right-wing party boss by
the name of Bal Thackeray, who, even en route to
cremation, wears his trademark black shades.
His supporters weep, chant, and wave party
flags, which are orange and bear the image of a
roaring lion. Most everyone else stays indoors.
About two hours up the coast, in Palghar, one
of Mumbai's far-flung commuter towns, a twenty-
year-old college student named Rinu stays indoors
too. That evening, while her parents go to the tem-
ple, Rinu goes on the Internet. On her laptop, she
bounces between three open tabs. On one, she
chats with a friend in the United States; on an-
other, she fiddles with a music-recording pro-
gram; on the third, she scrolls through her
Facebook page, clicking like as indiscriminately
as only a twenty-year-old can.
She has heard about Thack-
eray's demise. Who hasn't? At
eighty-six, Thackeray was
among the most feared political
bosses in contemporary India—
a chauvinist, according to his
critics, who over the years en-
couraged his followers to beat up
migrants from other parts of
India, then Communists, then
Muslims, as well as to destroy
gift shops that carried Valentine
cards, because he considered
Valentine’s Day to be a corrupt-
O
In her book, The End of Karma: Hope
and Fury among India’sYoung, Somini
Sengupta discusses how two young
women landed up in jail over some
innocuous remarks posted on social
media after Bal Thackeray’s death and
how that led to the quashing of Section
66A of the IT Act by the apex court.
An excerpt:
Facebook
Girls
UNLIKELY CHANGEMAKERS
Shaheen Dhada and Rini Srinivasan

democratic India's increasingly delicate pillars,
but it is one that Rinu's generation takes as a given.
By 2012, the year of the girls’ arrest, India is home
to one of the largest concentrations of Facebook
users in the world, and nearly half of them
are estimated to be between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-four.
So, quite by accident, Rinu and Shaheen come
to symbolize the demands of their generation. No
matter how forcefully the state tries to tie their
tongues, they holler back. They spur an intense
legal and political battle, between a state machin-
ery nervous about the nonsense that flows
through the pipes of the Internet and a generation
of digital natives for whom it is like air. In turn,
they reveal an important fault line in the world's
most populous democracy. On a global index of
free expression, compiled in 2014 by an American
group called Freedom House, India ranks only as
“partly free”, alongside Myanmar and Belarus.
India has wrestled with freedom of expression
since independence.
The preamble to the Constitution, which came
into effect on January 26, 1950, enshrines “LIB-
ERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and
worship”. Among the “fundamental rights” of In-
dian citizens, article 19 of the Constitution is un-
equivocal in its support for this idea: “All citizens
shall have the right to freedom of speech and ex-
pression.” Free expression is a celebrated legacy.
From India’s creative ferment has come an
ing Western export. The writer Suketu Mehta
once described Thackeray as “the one man most
directly responsible for ruining the city I grew up
in”. Rinu has zero interest in politics, and therefore
spends next to no time pondering Thackeray’s
death. Her passion is music—specifically, pop
songs, and not those arduous Hindustani classical
scales her mother forces her to learn. Rinu is into
Bruno Mars at the moment. She listens to his hits
again and again. She plays his videos on YouTube
repeatedly too, until she gets the words, the feel,
the drawl exactly right. She records herself singing
his songs—his “It will rain” is one of the songs she
is presently working on—and if she is pleased with
her own rendition, she posts it on Facebook. She
posts a lot of stuff on Facebook, including pictures
of her gorgeous curls, pictures of dogs, and a
whole lot of minutiae about her daily life:
“Made capsicum bhaji. Delicious!”
“6 billion people and I'm still single.”
“Off to sleep! *Feels like a ninja!* :D.”
That Sunday night, Rinu thrusts herself into
something bigger and scarier than she could ever
have imagined. With a couple of off-the-cuff clicks
and comments, she finds herself inside a police
station and charged with a crime—for the first
time in her life. Without meaning to, she also
prompts a high-stakes national debate over the
right to free expression for Indians in the net-
worked age.
Rinu is arrested that evening under one section
of a federal law, the Information Technology Act
of 2008, designed to prevent posts online from
sparking lawlessness offline. Her college friend,
Shaheen, is arrested too, making them among
the first to be charged under the provisions of
the new measure—and certainly the most famous.
News of their ordeal spreads instantly on social
media, incenses their peers, and unleashes so
much public outrage that within days, govern-
ment officials promise to review the rules restrict-
ing online speech.
The right to free expression becomes one of
DEFINING MOMENT
Funeral procession of Bal
Thackeray, founder of the Shiv
Sena. Rinu and Shaheen’s
comments on Facebook about
how it disrupted normal life led
to their arrests and mobilization
of public opinion against
Sec-66A

zine, Cross Roads, after a state government banned
it, on the grounds that it threatened public order.
Its publisher, Romesh Thapar, argued that his con-
stitutional right to free speech had been violated.
The second case was brought by a magazine
published by Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, the
same Hindu organization where India's future
prime minister Narendra Modi received his polit-
ical education. The Sangh went to court after it
was ordered to have its publication prescreened by
government authorities. The group was already a
grievous thorn in the side of Prime Minister
Nehru's government. In court, the state's attorneys
contended that the Sangh magazine could endan-
ger public order.
In both cases—one from the government's left-
ist critics, the other from the right—the Supreme
Court was skeptical of the state’s argument. The
judges said that a threat to public order alone was
not enough to override the constitutionally guar-
anteed right to free speech, unless the state could
prove that the published material specifically
threatened the security of the state or sought its
overthrow. The court ruled against the state.
These twin rulings unsettled Nehru. He as-
sembled his cabinet and proposed that the Con-
stitution be amended. His ministers vigorously
debated. They weighed the perils of squelching
dissent versus allowing radicals, whether right or
left, to threaten the stability of the new nation.
The language they finally came up with seems
now extraordinarily broad. They agreed on a con-
stitutional amendment to limit the right to free
speech if it was “in the interests of the security of
the State, friendly relations with foreign States,
public order, decency, or morality or in relation to
contempt of court, defamation, or incitement to
an offence”. The amendment empowered the gov-
ernment to impose “reasonable restrictions” on
speech; Bhimrao Ambedkar, law minister at the
time, had insisted on the insertion of “reasonable”.
Nehru made his case to the nation's parlia-
ment. He said that like other democracies, India
extraordinarily rich mix of music, dance, theater,
and literature—not to mention the world’s most
prolific film industry.
India has never had the gulags of Solzhenit-
syn’s Soviet Union. It has never forced its citizens
into reeducation camps as China did under Mao.
Even Mrs Gandhi’s emergency era was mild by the
standards of modern totalitarianism.
And yet, since independence, India has been
ambivalent about any speech that can inflame
emotions and disturb the public order—all the
more so because the state has had to pay attention
to the sentiments of so many castes and creeds.
India has had to weigh the cultural and religious
sensitivities of all its people against the values of a
secular, plural republic.
Nothing exemplified independent India's anx-
ieties about civil liberties more plainly than two
cases that reached its Supreme Court shortly after
the passage of the Constitution.
The first case was brought by a leftist maga-
Nehru's cabinet passed the First Amendment
which empowered the government to impose
“reasonable restrictions” on speech; Bhimrao
Ambedkar, law minister at that time, had
insisted on the insertion of “reasonable”.
Book Extract
The End of Karma

could not afford to protect speech that allowed
someone to advocate “crimes of violence”.
India's First Amendment passed on June 18,
1951—“the first major crisis of the nation state”,
a law scholar named Lawrence Liang called it.
“It exposed the inherent tensions between bal-
ancing freedom of speech and expression and the
promotion of national security and sovereignty,”
he continued.
When it was born, at midnight, on August 15,
1947, India was a most unlikely nation. It con-
tained a multiplicity of faiths, languages, and
races. There was no obvious glue to bind its peo-
ple, only an idea that was radical for its time: that
a poor, populous, incredibly diverse people could
live together as a modern, secular republic. Its
closest cousin among nations was the US.
By and large, in the first two decades of inde-
pendence, what the state banned revealed the
prickliness of a new nation. Racist tracts were not
welcome. Prohibited too were writings that
preached secession for Kashmir—the Himalayan
territory that both India and Pakistan claimed.
There were other sensitivities. In 1956, the
state banned Rama Retold, a cheeky retelling of
the Ramayana written by the Indian-English
satirist Aubrey Menen. In 1960, it banned Arthur
Koestler's collection of essays The Lotus and the
Robot, which was skeptical about India's ability to
nurture democracy.
In the coming decades, India outlawed films
that state authorities thought might engender vi-
olence. The 1984 Hollywood film Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom could not be screened in
India because it suggested that Indians ate chilled
monkey brain for dessert. (We did not, not chilled
anyway, as I assured my sixteenth-birthday party
guests in California that year.)
The most notorious ban came four years later,
when Rajiv Gandhi's administration banned the
importation of The Satanic Verses, published in the
US. This was even before Ayatollah Khomeini of
Iran put a price on Salman Rushdie’s head.
Mahesh Bhatt’s 1998 film about Hindu-Mus-
lim strife, Zakhm (the Hindi word for wound),
could be screened only after it erased references
to a Hindu extremist group. (Its members could
not be shown waving orange flags, which is the
color of Thackeray's Shiv Sena party. Bhatt agreed
to turn them into gray.)
No one party or ideology has held a monopoly
on squelching free expression. The Congress Party
called for a ban of Katherine Frank's 2001 biogra-
phy of Indira Gandhi, which suggested that Mrs
Gandhi had had an active sex life. In 2003 the
Communists who ruled my home state of West
Bengal banned an autobiographical novel by
Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi feminist who had
angered some Muslim clerics. (Perhaps only in
India can Communists be so concerned about of-
fending clerics that they order police to confiscate
all copies of a book.)
Sometimes, it’s the fear of hooligans that
squelches free expression. Parzania, a film based
on the true story of a family that lost a son during
the 2002 violence against Muslims in Gujarat,
could not be shown in that state. Gujarat's movie
theater owners refused to screen it; they said they
feared vandals, and the state authorities said noth-
ing to reassure them.
The demands of digital natives sharpen
In 1956, the
state banned
Rama Retold,
written by the
Indian-English
satirist Aubrey
Menen. In
1960, it
banned Arthur
Koestler's The
Lotus and the
Robot, which
was skeptical
about India's
ability to
nurture
democracy.

So on Facebook, she goes on to suggest that it
would be better for Indians to devote their ener-
gies to commemorating the achievements of those
who fought for the country's independence. She
cites one popular anti-imperialist hero, Bhagat
Singh, “because of whom we r free living Indians”.
Shaheen’s post floats up in Rinu’s newsfeed
shortly after seven. “Wow!!!” Rinu writes.
Shaheen and Rinu aren’t super close. Students
at the same local college, they are what Rinu de-
scribes as “hi-bye friends”. Shaheen studies man-
agement science. Rinu majors in biology. They live
a short distance from each other. And their cir-
cumstances are similar. Both their families settled
in Palghar because Mumbai, which is a two-and-
a-half-hour ride away, in a stinky, flesh-packed
commuter train, has become way too expensive
for middle-class families like theirs. Rinu’s father,
who comes from Kerala, in the south, worked on
merchant ships. Shaheen’s father, who moved here
from the state of Chhattisgarh, in central India,
sells bolts of cloth. Both Rinu’s and Shaheen’s
mothers are homemakers. Neither Rinu nor Sha-
heen plan to be homemakers. Rinu imagines run-
ning her own recording studio; Shaheen plans to
work at a bank. They spend hours on their com-
puters at home. Facebook is a big part of how they
pass the time.
Shaheen’s opinion resonates with Rinu. After
India’s dilemma over free ex-
pression. It is hard to suppress
content on the Internet, unless
you’re China. India is not China
and cannot be perceived as being China.
India’s predicament is further complicated by
the fact that the companies that run Internet plat-
forms have their own rules about what they allow
on their sites—their own jurisprudence, if you
will—which complicates matters for governments
that want to censor digital speech.
Neither Rinu nor Shaheen know quite where
freedom on Facebook begins or ends.
On that balmy Sunday in Palghar, Rinu’s friend
Shaheen is also at home, on her computer, scroll-
ing through Facebook. It is about seven o’ clock.
There is still a bit of light in the sky. A sea breeze
comes in through an open window.
Her Facebook newsfeed is peppered with
mentions of the death of Thackeray, the political
party boss, and of his followers thronging the
streets of Mumbai for his funeral. They have called
for a bandh, effectively shutting down the city.
That Shaheen finds excessive. And she says so,
on Facebook. “With all respect, every day, thou-
sands of people die, but still the world moves on,”
Shaheen writes. “Just due to one politician died a
natural death, everyone just goes bonkers.”
Shaheen is shy in person, but expansive online.
Book Extract
The End of Karma
ABSURD DECISIONS
Gujarat movie theater owners
refused to screen Parzania, a
film on the 2002 violence;
(right) India banned the 1984
Hollywood fantasy, Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom

an initial “wow”, she clicks “like” under Shaheen’s
post, just as she clicks “like” a bunch of times every
day on a bunch of things. That little blue thumbs-
up. A boy named Akaash soon weighs in, furious.
“Just mind your own busyness,” he writes, as a re-
sponse to Rinu’s post. Rinu clatters out a rebuttal:
“We agree that he has done a lot of good things,
we respect him also, it doesn’t make any sense to
shut down everything! Respect can be shown in
many other ways! Even his soul might be like
‘Why so much?’”
Around 7.15 p.m., Shaheen’s cell phone rings.
A stranger, a man, barks at her: “Was it right to say
that about the bandh?” She hangs up. She is rat-
tled. So she clicks “delete” next to her post.
It is too late. Her father gets a call too. He
comes into the bedroom. “What is this about?” he
asks her.
His face turns ashen when she tells him what
she wrote. Her face turns wet with tears. “He was
a little bit shocked. He didn’t say anything,” Sha-
heen recalls. “I was crying and crying.” Ten min-
utes later comes a knock on their door. Police
stand in the stairwell—maybe three or four, she
doesn’t remember. They tell Shaheen there are
some very angry people at the police station, and
that she will need to come and apologize.
Shaheen throws a dupatta over her shoulders,
puts on her sandals. She is terrified of what awaits
her. She has never been to a police station before.
“Totally frozen,” she says.
A bit later, across town, Rinu’s phone also
rings. A friend calls to tell her that the cops have
picked up Shaheen and that there’s a big crowd of
Shiv Sena followers outside the police station.
The policewomen have no idea what they are
talking about. What is this Facebook? they want
to know. What is a “status update”? they ask. Rinu
says it would have been funny were it not so terri-
fying. Shaheen starts weeping. Her uncle’s medical
clinic has been vandalized, apparently by a group
of Shiv Sainiks, as party loyalists are called. It does-
n’t help that Shaheen’s family is Muslim. The Shiv
Sena is not known to be fond of Muslims.
Finally, at midnight, comes an assistant super-
intendent of police who knows what Facebook is.
He urges Rinu and Shaheen to compose an apol-
ogy, which they do. “I’m sorry for offending Shiv
Sainiks,” they each write by hand, like schoolgirls
made to compose notes of contrition. They are
scared out of their wits.
Close to midnight, once the crowd outside has
dispersed, the girls are allowed to go home. But
their ordeal is not over. The next morning, Palghar
police announce that they will file criminal
charges against Shaheen and Rinu for “promoting
enmity”, among communities, and for sending
electronic communications that cause “annoyance
or inconvenience”. The two young women walk
into the police station once more. They are ar-
rested under Section 66A of the Information
Technology Act and punishable by up to three
years in jail.
Their images flash across television screens
throughout the day. Rinu covers her face with a
pale handkerchief. Shaheen uses
her dupatta.
The Internet had given them a
way to express themselves and,
in a flash, taught them how dan-
gerous expressing themselves
could be. “I was totally shattered,”
Rinu recalls.
The Indian state has been con-
founded by the power of the In-
ternet. India has not erected a
firewall, to keep out forbidden
content, as China has. To do so
would be to fly in the face of
everything that a secular, demo-
cratic republic stands for. It
wouldn’t work.
Like many other nations, both
autocratic and democratic, India
keeps a close eye on what its citi-
zens do online, generally with
SHE MADE A DIFFERENCE
Shreya Singhal whose
PIL against Sec 66A
led to the Supreme
Court striking it down
Shreya Singhal
told reporters
that her mom,
a lawyer, had
suggested that
if she cared
so much about
free speech
she should file
a petition with
the Supreme
Court.

thirty-six hours any material
that, among other things,
the government considered
“harassing”, “disparaging”,
or “hateful”.
By this time, it was im-
possible for Silicon Valley
tech companies to ignore
the Indian market: a billion
people, so many of them
young, and 90 percent of
them yet to be connected to
the Internet. At the same
time, it was becoming ex-
tremely hard to do business
in a country that had such a
muddled policy on what
users could and could not
post on their platforms.
To operate in India, of course, means that the
web companies must abide by India’s own laws.
And so they must take down content when gov-
ernment authorities order them to. On this score,
Indian authorities have been unusually aggressive.
In 2014, Facebook removed 5,832 pieces of
content at the request of the Indian government,
more than in any other country in the
world. Facebook, for instance, said that content
was restricted specifically inside India because
it violated Indian law “including anti-religious
content and hate speech that could cause unrest
and disharmony”.
In the summer of 2012 came a new crisis. A lo-
calized Hindu-Muslim clash in northeastern
Assam spread swiftly across the country. As at-
tacks against ethnic northeastern migrants inten-
sified, turning fatal in many places, the
government blamed the Internet. It ordered a host
of Internet companies, including service
providers, to block more than three hundred web-
sites. Twitter was blamed for flaming communal
tensions. The government told the company to
shut down more than a dozen accounts.
the help of surveillance technologies available on
the open market.
It is unusually aggressive in monitoring who
says what on popular web platforms. India was
number two on the list of governments asking
Google to disclose information on its users in
2014, second only to requests from the United
States. Its requests ranged from the names of
Gmail users and their Internet Protocol addresses
to who posted which YouTube videos. In a major-
ity of cases, Google provided what the govern-
ment asked for.
Likewise, from Facebook: India sought infor-
mation on more than 7,000 users in the second
half of 2014, second only to the United States.
As for gagging expression, India has had
mixed success.
In the spring of 2011, the Congress-led coali-
tion government put into place a set of regulations
to restrict web content based on a vague set of cri-
teria. Known as the Information Technology (In-
termediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, they
required Internet companies that run platforms
like YouTube and Facebook to take down within
Book Extract
The End of Karma
WRONGED!
Artist MF Husain and
writer Taslima Nasreen
(right) have both been
let down by governments
which failed to safeguard
their creative freedoms
30

In a compromise, Twitter agreed to suspend
about a half-dozen accounts that, it concluded,
had violated the company’s terms of service (a bit
like its own constitution) by impersonating Indian
government officials. Twitter bucked the govern-
ment’s request to take down several obvious par-
ody accounts, including one that mocked Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh with the Twitter han-
dle @YumYumSingh.
Government authorities seemed to grow ever
more incensed by posts, pictures, and cartoons
circulating online. In April 2012, police in Cal-
cutta arrested a middle-aged chemistry professor
for emailing a cartoon that mocked the chief min-
ister of the state. That October, a businessman in
the southern city of Pondicherry was arrested for
a tweet that criticized another businessman, who
happened to be the son of India's finance minister.
Then, in November, Shaheen and Rinu were
hauled into the Palghar police station for speaking
up. Nothing enraged India’s Internet generation
quite like it. They revolted.
All these arrests were made under Section 66A
of the Information Technology Act. That section,
vague and heavy-handed, imposed up to three
years in jail on anyone found to “transmit a) any
information that is grossly offensive or has men-
acing character; or b) any information which he
knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing
annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction,
insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, ha-
tred, or ill will, persistently by making use of such
computer resource or a communication device”.
The legal bar was mindbogglingly low: you could
be jailed for “annoyance”.
Within weeks, police dropped the charges
against the two young women.
The government also swiftly agreed to tweak
the controversial section of the law. A beat cop was
no longer allowed to make a decision to arrest
someone based on that law. A senior police offi-
cer—holding the rank of at least a deputy com-
missioner—would have to sign off before a case
could be filed under that statute.
However, young Indians were not content with
such a cosmetic fix. Before the end of 2012, just
weeks after watching television images of Rinu and
Shaheen being paraded to the police station, a
young Delhi woman named Shreya Singhal went
to court to challenge the law. She told reporters
later that she had been outraged by it, and that her
mom, a lawyer, suggested that if she cared so much
about free speech she should file a petition with the
Supreme Court. Singhal was twenty-two years old.
She called the law “a gag on the Internet”.
In March 2015, the Supreme Court agreed
with her. It struck down several provisions of the
Information Technology Act, including Section
66A. The judges concluded that it was vague and
unconstitutional. The court also cited the case
brought before the Supreme Court in 1950 by the
publisher of Cross Roads magazine, one of the two
lawsuits that led to India’s First Amendment.
The judges wrote: “The Preamble of the Con-
stitution of India inter alia speaks of liberty of
thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. It
also says that India is a sovereign democratic re-
public. It cannot be over-emphasized that when it
comes to democracy, liberty of thought and ex-
pression is a cardinal value that is of paramount
significance under our constitutional scheme.”
The judges went on to say that under the law
“no distinction is made between mere discussion
or advocacy of a particular point of view which
may be annoying or inconvenient or grossly of-
fensive to some and incitement by which such
words lead to an imminent causal connection with
public disorder”. The italics are mine.
It makes it all the more remarkable that Indi-
ans have insisted on their right to speak their
minds rather than trade it away for a sterile, but
peaceful, model of authoritarianism. This is by no
means a done deal. How much can be said, sung,
filmed, or written is still very much being negoti-
ated—and it is Rinu and Shaheen's generation that
is pushing the envelope.
THE END OF KARMA:
HOPE AND FURY AMONG
INDIA’S YOUNG
BySominiSengupta
PublishedbyWWNorton
Company
Pages:256;price:`499
31

DD scores
with Air
India CMD’s
Candid
Conversation
Ashwani Lohani came across as a man who
was ready to lead this beleaguered airline
out of the woods in a well-done interview
that was poised and dignified
BY SHOBHA JOHN
Anchor Review
DD Interview
OORDARSHAN News was a
revelation recently. In the face
of the glitzy and loud on-
slaughts by private news chan-
nels, it has often been
relegated to the background by viewers and for-
gotten. But a June 26 episode of Candid Conver-
sation watched by Views on News changed some
of those perceptions as what came through was a
superior show.
The guest being interviewed was the CMD of
Air India, Ashwani Lohani, and DD News anchor
Munmun Bhattacharya held her own with her
pleasant demeanor, clear voice and measured dic-
tion. She gave enough space and time to Lohani
to speak his mind without constantly intruding
as some of the private news channel anchors do.
D
But then, they behave like stars and not anchors
who are supposed to facilitate an interview.
FRANK AND CANDID
Various contentious topics were touched upon as
was expected from the chief of a beleaguered
national airline and none of them were evaded.
Rather, Lohani was surprisingly frank and candid
in his views despite being a government servant.
Bhattacharya asked about FDI, the National
Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP), fleet infusion,
losses, restructuring plans, the AI and Indian
Airlines merger, poaching of pilots and the
work culture in AI. Lohani came across as an
honest officer doing a hard day’s work and pulled
no punches.
When asked about the increasing competition
among airlines, he pragmatically said that com-
petition was a fact of life and he couldn’t wish it
away. “More competition means that travelers will
have more choices, so why should I come in the
way of that. It is good.”
He said the new aviation policy was good as it
would allow airlines to fly to smaller towns and
32

no objective in mind. Mergers needed a lot of ad-
ministrative leadership and hard decisions. “If
you don’t do that, there will be a mess.” And while
AI was going through the pangs of merger, planes
were bought at huge sums, he explained, leading
to accumulated losses of `38,000 crore. He can-
didly admits: “We can’t wipe out these accumu-
lated losses. That is a tall order.” He said he would
want to aim for profits on a year-to-year basis.
He adds: “Airline business is tough and mar-
gins are low unlike other service sectors….”
Asked why he didn’t buy planes outright instead
of going in for leasing, Lohani asked: “How do I
buy them? I don’t have money…I would need to
take a loan.”
BATTING FOR ALL
But where he came out as a leader was when
Bhattacharya asked him about the perception that
AI was a flabby organization with too many peo-
ple on its rolls. He batted for all his employees,
not just the hallowed category of pilots, and said
that even the peon in his company was as impor-
tant as every other category. Asked why there
were no pilot strikes ever since he took over,
Lohani thought over it, and said that perhaps they
had faith in the management. He also said that
indiscipline would not be tolerated and anyone
indulging in it would be taken to task.
A dignified Bhattacharya in her blue coat gave
the impression of coolness, which she was, and the
sparse and clean surroundings of a corporate office
gave the interview a classy touch. Except that one
wished Bhattacharya wouldn’t have used her hands
so often to emote and her hair wasn’t out of place.
In the end, Lohani said: “There is nothing
which can’t be done. Everything is possible.” And
seeing this positivity in a CMD who had the Her-
culean task of steering AI out of the woods, one
understood why the government had appointed
him. And his professional capabilities were
brought out well by DD News and its anchor,
Munmun Bhattacharya. Way to go!
cities and AI was also interested in flying there
with its Alliance Air planes. After all, the Indian
middle class was exploding and many more
people were flying, he said.
OPERATING PROFIT
He spoke frankly and disarmingly about AI’s ac-
cumulated losses and said that if his airlines asked
for more money from the government after 2021-
22, it would not be worth running the airline. But
he said, in 2015-16, the airline had been able to
meet the basic costs of operations, and this year,
the airline was looking at `600-700 crore of op-
erating profit. He made it clear that the debt bur-
den which AI had inherited was not something
the airline was responsible for. “It is not the air-
line’s folly which created this,” he said. Are former
aviation ministers and bureaucrats squirming?
Bhattacharya then asked the question which
has plagued this airline for the last few years:
“Who and what was responsible for the financial
mess in AI?” Uncomfortable question. He said
that AI and IA were two separate entities and had
two separate cultures and had been merged with
Ashwani Lohani
came out as a
leader when he
batted for all
his employees,
not just the
hallowed
category of
pilots and said
that even the
peon in his
company was as
important as
every other
category.
33

Film Review
Udta Punjab
ONTROVERSY is usually good
for a film. And Udta Punjab has
had enough and more of it,
thanks to the Censor Board
wanting many cuts in the film,
which the Bombay High Court
stymied. Thank God for that because the final
version of the film is a gripping account of the
malaise that has hit Punjab, which was one of the
most agriculturally rich states in India.
The film shows how young, sturdy men and
women of this proud state have been consuming
drugs. Groups of young men are found in derelict
corners and abandoned houses shooting up as
their grimy hands get hold of needles and their
eyes take on the deadened look of hookers too far
gone out.
The protagonist of the film is Tommy Singh
(played by Shahid Kapoor), a wild and raunchy
rock star who endorses the use of drugs through
his lyrics and himself gets caught in it. Kapoor
does a good job with his punky and senseless
lyrics, long hair and crazy and disoriented man-
nerisms, all of which give credence to his drug
habit without which he cannot perform on stage.
There have been reports that he has been styled
on Honey Singh, the rapper. As Tommy descends
into a hell of his own making, the hangers-on
around him fuel his drug habit as he acts more
and more weird.
STERLING PERFORMANCE
But the most gripping story accompanied with a
sterling performance is that of Kumari Pinky
(Alia Bhatt), who is a poor Bihari orphan working
on a farm. She suddenly comes across a consign-
ment of heroin flung from across the border and
realizes it is worth crores. Drug dealers get to her
C
The film takes a hard and bleak look at a crisis that is subsuming
this agrarian state, plunging it into turmoil and despair
BY SHOBHA JOHN
Gripping
film on
Punjab’s
Drug Crisis

despite her running for her life to escape them,
and lock her up in a house. She is then injected
with drugs and sexually exploited. The transfor-
mation of this feisty and vibrant girl into one with
lifeless eyes, frail and punctured limbs and a
deadened soul is the saddest commentary on the
whole drug situation in Punjab.
But it is the police in Punjab that comes in for
the maximum indictment as they are hand-in-
glove with the truckers who transport these drugs
and make a killing in the process. They are blasé
about it till one of the cops (played with elan by
the handsome Diljit Dosanjh) finds his own
young brother in the grip of drugs. As he and
Preet Sahni (Kareena Kapoor), a doctor handling
drug addicts, try to find out who the actual drug
dealers are, the story takes a tragic note.
The politicians are no less to blame for allow-
ing drugs to flood this once-successful state and
come across as cold and cynical. It will take
decades for the state to get out of this habit which
has taken a heavy toll on its youth.
The performances are powerful, earthy and
warm, in keeping with the nature of Punjabis.
And despite the spattering of Punjabi in the film,
it is well understood by non-Punjabis. The
spunky and plain Alia steals the show with her
superlative performance of a woman who fights
like a cat to save herself and claws herself out of
the miserable and dangerous life she has found
herself in for no fault of hers. Her father, film di-
rector Mahesh Bhatt, must surely be proud of her.
She deserves a National Award for the film.
Director Abhishek Chaubey has tried to keep
three-four story lines going along parallel lines,
and makes sure that Kareena and Shahid have no
scenes together. At times, the film seems dis-
jointed, but kudos to Chaubey for showing the
drug menace in all its ugliness, warts and all.
UDTA PUNJAB
Director:AbhishekChaubey
Starring:ShahidKapoor,Alia
Bhatt,KareenaKapoor,Diljit
Dosanjh
Rating***anda1/2outof*****
The transformation of Alia Bhatt from a
feisty, vibrant girl into one with lifeless
eyes, frail limbs and a deadened soul is
the saddest commentary on the situation.

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S THE WORLD TURNS
Guto Harri, former BBC journalist and ex-communications di-
rector of Boris Johnson when he was the mayor of London,
said that Johnson acted prematurely on the Brexit issue and
“did not play to his strengths.” He called his ex-boss “a na-
tional treasure”, and said that as a politician Johnson was “now
busted and it’s down to his miscalculation.” When in a speech
Johnson said he did not believe he could provide the leadership
or unity needed, Harri told the BBC that “having embarked on
the path” he should have “seen it through.”
Ex-media aide
criticizes Boris Johnson
In China, the state-run media
continues to provide a critical
analysis of India’s bid to enter
the elite Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG). An oped-page ar-
ticle in Global Times, part of the
publications of the ruling Com-
munist Party of China, said:
“The Indian public seems to be
having a hard time accepting
the outcome of the Seoul ple-
nary meeting of the NSG late
last month after India failed to
gain entry into the NSG.” Global
Times also carried a number of
articles including a hard-hitting
editorial claiming that
China's stand is “morally
legitimate” and the West has
“spoiled” India.
Chinese media on India’s NSG bid
The Cyberspace Administra-
tion of China is set to
launch a crackdown on the re-
porting of news gathered from
social media. This move by
the government will ensure
that online media does not re-
port any news gathered from
social media sites without
prior approval from the author-
ities. In spite of extensive con-
trol over the internet, China
has seen headlines like “Infant
soup made of babies’ bodies
has been available in Guang-
dong province”, and “Six
criminals escaped from a
prison and then murdered 78
women and raped 16 in Au-
gust.” This led to the forming
of a rumor and fake news-
monitoring group in August
2013 by the government.
In the face of allegations from Israeli offi-
cials, Facebook has defended its stance of
not allowing content that promotes violence
or terrorism on its platform. Israel’s Public
Security Minister, Gilad Erdan, reportedly said
that since the rise of Daesh, Facebook had
“simply become a monster.” He also accused
the social networking site of “sabotaging” Is-
raeli police efforts in countering Palestinian
violence and of being uncooperative regard-
ing investigations of potential suspects in the
West Bank region. Erdan urged Israelis to
hound Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
with demands for a policy change which will
enable the government to order social media
sites to remove postings which are deemed
threatening.
—Compiled by Shailaja Paramathma
China to nip
rumors online
Israel pushes
for control on FB posts

Saumit Sinh hanged himself to death in his
Patparganj apartment. A fellow journalist,
pays tribute in a social media post
VON publishes in each issue the
best written commentary on any
subject.The following write-up
from Facebook has been picked
by our team of editors and
reproduced for our readers as
the best in the fortnight
left he gave us in DNA some pretty good stories.
He broke the Priety Zinta-Wadia spat and the
harassment complaint story which I picked up
from his website and published on DNA page
one. Saumit moved with the Mumbai jetset and
had access to some of the top among the richie
rich. With one of them he went by private jet to
watch an IPL match and stayed at a plush hotel.
But he had to vacate the room when a “better
guest” arrived to entertain the IPL owner. When
the time came there was no one.
His page two column was something that
gave the paper some spark and life. His website
mumbaiwallah.com had some interesting stories
but the funding that was promised never came.
We had great sessions at the Mumbai Press
Club, and later at the Delhi Press Club. He
moved to Delhi last year to be with his family.
Together we went to some of the great nihari
joints in Mohammed Ali Road late at night. It
was not just the beef and the marrow that was
memorable. Though we disagreed politically we
talked at length. We were opposites in many
ways but we laughed a lot too.
Now what’s the point in recounting all that?
Of such journalists who tried to make an honest
living, will anything be remembered? Nothing.
Only The Hindu dutifully announced his passing.
Most journalists are busy trying to keep away
the impending clouds of doom and apart from
a handful of crorepathi journalists the rest are
busy warding off danger. Some like Saumit just
give up. For a day we mourn and then pass on.
Rest in Peace man.
T is not fashionable in this click-
bait age of journalism to write
obits about an unknown or
“failed” journalist. Saumit Sinh
who hanged himself to death in
his Patparganj apartment belonged to the latter
category. The ones who could not survive or had
no place in a profession which is undergoing an
unimaginable churn. Not many know how to
swim with the tide. Some try to swim against it
and more often than not they are washed ashore
like some debris. Some of us get washed ashore
but still manage to keep afloat while the currents
of depression and ruin tug at your feet.
Saumit was a celebrity gossip writer for DNA
in Mumbai and did his job admirably well, till
the daughter-in-law of the owner of the paper
removed him with nothing asked or given.
Saumit took it bravely on the chin even though
the then editor did not move a little finger to
help him. Most editors master the art of survival
before they master the front page of the paper
they edit. Saumit was thus doubly victim.
Saumit was not a bitter man. Even after he
Editors’ Pick
Binoo John
HeTriedtoSurvive,butCouldn’t
LOSINGTHE FIGHT
Saumit Sinh,
who committed
suicide after his
controversial exit
from DNA
I

DESIGNSTHATMADE
IMAGINATIVEUSEOF
PHOTOGRAPHS,FONTS,
COLORANDWHITESPACES
TOLEAVEANIMPRESSION
By ANTHONY LAWRENCE
Design
When less is more.
Hopefully, Britain will
evade this dreadful fate.
From the Indian perspective, Brexit might be a worrying
news. Brace up for a more guarded, less welcoming
island nation.
The first pillar has
fallen. Which one
is next in line?

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. But
why challenge spectators to such a
grotesque extent?
Lest you thought this was a deserted temple
town, like the one depicted in the recent Hol-
lywood movie Jungle Books, this is a sand
zoo created out of 270 tonnes of sand. Tour-
ing various cities of Australia, this mega sand
art exhibition lets you roam amid exhibits of
life-sized animals— elephants, zebras,
giraffes and tigers alongside polar bears,
pandas, koalas and other animals. A “golden”
chance to watch wildlife at close quarters!
Here’s a case of childhood fantasies let lose
in the open.
Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone has created
this colorful rock installation in the winder-
ness in south of Las Vegas, Nevada. No
doubt the Seven Magic Mountains—with bal-
ancing rocks in fluoroscent colors—are a
feature not to be missed in the otherwise
bleak landscape and might also be a pleasant
sight. But what is the artistic merit?

NEWSDATE NEWS CHANNEL TIME
22/6/16
23/6/16
23/6/16
24/6/16
EDtakesfirstactionagainstVadra;directs
himtoreplybyJune24;sendsnoticeto
Vadra’company.
Tiff in Mulayam’s family; Akhilesh cancels
all functions for the day. Source of conflict
is Mukhtar.
DecisiononIndiancricketteamtoday;
coach’sjobcouldgotoShastriorKumble.
11:00AM
10.04 AM
22/6/16
Indiacreateshistoryinspace,launches20
satellitesthroughPSLV-CB5inSriharikota.
9:27 AM
10:10AM
CongressnottoholdIftarthisyear;to
distributefoodtothepoorinstead.
3.03PM
BritainvotestoleaveEU;rupeefallsby96
paiseagainstdollars.
9.40AM9.33AM
Sensexfallsby960points.
10.07AM 10.07AM
10.05 AM
3.05PM
9:27AM
10:17AM
3.18PM
9.39AM
11:13AM
10.20 AM
11:57AM
10.58 AM
3.15PM
9.35AM
10.08AM10.06AM
9:27AM
11:02AM
10:15AM10:10AM
David Cameron wants to resign; says he
wants to quit before October.
12.56PM 12.58PM12.57PM
24/6/16
24/6/16
9:27AM
22/6/16
12.58PM

Here are some of the major news items aired on television
channels, recorded by our unique 24x7 dedicated media
monitoring unit that scrutinizes more than 130 TV channels in
different Indian languages and looks at who breaks the news first.
DATE NEWS CHANNEL TIME
NEWS
27/6/16
11:39AM
AAPMLADineshMohaniyaaccusedof
molestingawoman.
12.50PM 12.56PM
2.25 PM
PM’sfirstinterviewtoaprivatechannel.
Indiawillhavetobealert;theworld
admiresIndiaunanimously,saysModito
TimesNow.
Delhionhighalert.Terroristssuspectedto
betravellinginSwiftcarfromJKcould
enterDelhi.
Newrevelationsofblackmoneyworth
13,000crore.
1.05PM
25/6/16
MahboobaMuftiwinsAnantnagbypollby
11,800votes.
27/6/16
1:08PM
10.03AM
1:08PM1:06PM
10.01AM
2.15PM
11:28AM11:25AM
10.06AM 10.10AM
3.03 PM
1.06PM
10:08AM
3:10PM
SadhviPragya’sbailplearejected;Mumbai
NIAcourt’sdecision.Accusedin2008
Malegaonblasts.
3:15AM
28/6/16
29/6/16
OneterroristkilledinKupwara;gunbattle
withsecurityforces.HafizSaeed’sson-in-
lawbelievedtobebehindtheattack.
10:02AM 10:10AM
3:26PM
10:03
10:04AM
11:30AM
1:09PM
3.31PM
3:23PM
Istanbulairportunderattack.Thirty-six
peopledead;150injured.
10:03
25/6/16
10:02 10:03
27/6/16
28/6/16

Ablack woman walking
her dog in Florida, US,
was accosted by her 63-
year-old neighbor who
abused her and attacked her
physically even while admit-
ting that she wasn’t tres-
passing her property.
Aspiring model Rayne
Burse (24) was speaking to
her mother on the phone
when the incident took
place. She hurriedly put the
call on hold to speak with
the older woman, identified
as Maria Dorrbecker, but
when she learnt that she
was not at fault and her tor-
menter refused to relent, she
ended the call and recorded
the encounter on her mobile.
It has since gone viral after a
follower of her blog took it
from there and posted it on
Twitter. In the blog post,
Burse writes: “She wasn’t
making any sense. Telling
me I’m from south Miami
like I even knew what that
meant, following me as I’m
trying to just walk away.”
Both later called 911 and
Dorrbecker was charged
with simple battery.
Web Crawler What Went Viral
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabi-
net expansion on July 5 dominated
news headlines. The biggest takeaway
of the second reshuffle of the cabinet is
the demotion of Smriti Zubin Irani. Twit-
ter reacted eloquently and creatively to
her new portfolio allocation with #Bye-
ByeSmriti trending on the micro-blog-
ging site. If anything, the Congress
Twitterati were comparatively mild. “The
next generation will now be much re-
laxed that their future isn’t bleak,”
tweeted Youth Congress. “At last some-
one more educated than 12th pass Sm-
riti Irani as HRD minister” went another
of their tweets.
And a host of other Twitter users
made sure everyone would have a good
laugh over the Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi
Bahu Thi actress. “Woah! It turned out to
be an aunty-climax,” wrote a user.
Some, however, felt that the move was
akin to “beti ke haath se kitab chheen
kar ke silai machine thama dena” and
that it was, in many ways, typical of the
current political climate.
SmrExit sparks social
media humor
—Compiled by Sucheta Dasgupta
Apolice complaint was filed
against Abhijeet Bhattacharya
after the Bollywood singer
abused a female journalist on
Twitter, calling her “anti-national”
and a “shameless old woman”
after she objected to his dubbing
the Chennai techie murder a case
of “love jihad”. They were
trolling against me. These all are
anti-nationals. I will give a firm
reply to these journalists. I am
not against any religion. But I am
not going to tolerate anything
against my country, Abhijeet
said. He even refused to apolo-
gize, saying he is on a “mission
to expose funded presstitutes”.
Singer slanders
journalist on Twitter
YouTube has removed two
short movies, Kriti by Farah
Khan’s husband Shirish Kunder
and BOB by Aneel Neupane, a
Nepali filmmaker, after a plagia-
rism row erupted between the
two, with the latter claiming in a
Facebook that the plot of his
film was lifted by the former.
Both filmmakers served each
other a legal notice. Kriti has an
all-star cast comprising Manoj
Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and
Neha Sharma.
The spat, however, gener-
ated much chatter on Twitter
where people gave their opin-
ions on whether Neupane’s
claim had any merit. Many felt
that it did not.
Victim teaches racist
a hard lesson
Kriti versus
BOB

Education Govt’s Social Policies
Girls
overnanceG
A Long
Way to Go
HE last two decades have
been marked by several so-
cial policy innovations
across India. At the national
level, the Sarva Shiksha Ab-
hiyan (SSA) and the
Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)
have been initiated by the government to univer-
salize primary and secondary education across
the country. SSA is being implemented in part-
nership with states to cover the entire country and
address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1
million habitations. UNICEF and the State Coun-
cil Education, Research and Training will roll out
RMSA by 2015-16. For girls living under the
Below Poverty Line (BPL), the Kasturba Gandhi
Balika Vidyalaya is available which provides them
residential education along with training in skills
development. And yet, a lot needs to be done to
raise education levels.
Several state governments have also initiated
specific programs such as Bihar’s Mukhyamantri
T Bicycle Scheme which is a conditional cash trans-
fer and welfare scheme that awards Rs 2,000 to
every student enrolled in standard IX in a govern-
ment high school and is meant to purchase a bi-
cycle. In 2005–2006, free bicycles were distributed
to students belonging to Scheduled Caste, Sched-
uled Tribes, and those below the poverty line. In
West Bengal, the Department of Education has
initiated several schemes such as separate girls’
toilets under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan.
RTE ACT
However, several bottlenecks remain in the im-
Though the center has begun many
schemes, India still lags behind in children’s
education and health due to programs func-
tioning independent of each other and
having poor budgetary commitment
BY KEERTY NAKRAY

plementation of the Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act (RTE) in terms of
quality of education, poor school results and poor
rates of completion of upper primary education
amongst socially marginalized groups such as
girls, children in rural areas and those belonging
to minority groups and from the poorest sections
of society.
According to UNICEF (2014), an estimated
8.1 million children are still out of school, the ma-
jority belonging to disadvantaged groups. Despite
achieving close to universal enrolment at the pri-
mary level, 27 percent of children drop out be-
tween Class 1 and Class 5, 41 percent before
reaching Class 8, and 49 percent before Class 10.
These figures are higher for children from Sched-
uled Castes (27percent, 43 percent and 56 percent
respectively) and Scheduled Tribes (36 percent,
55 percent and 71 percent respectively).
Gender discrimination too persists in educa-
tion as for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary
education there are only 81 girls enrolled. Worse,
less than half (47 percent) of Class 5 students can
read textbooks from Class 5. Children’s atten-
dance rate in rural primary schools has shown a
decline from 73 percent in 2007 to 71 percent
POLARIZED DEBATE
A meeting of
villagers at Bisada
village near Dadri
after the lynching of
Mohammad Akhlaq

in 2012. Forty-one percent of primary schools
have a pupil–teacher ratio (PTR) of more than 30,
and 31 percent of upper primary schools have a
PTR of more than 35. Other concerns include
safety issues in conditions of civil unrest and use
of corporal punishment across the country.
On the surface, the presence of so many
schemes seems to indicate that India has em-
barked towards a more child-friendly approach to
social policy. However, much of the government’s
focus has been on schemes to ensure bare mini-
mal nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating
mothers or provision of pre-natal and post-
natal care in terms of nutritional support,
encouraging women to give birth in hospitals and
immunization.
REDUCED ALLOCATION
The Integrated Child Development Scheme re-
ceives the bulk of government spending along
with polio immunization. In terms of expenditure
on social well-being of children, that of Sarva
Shiksha Abhiyan, a supplementary education pro-
gram, has seen a marginal increase in budget
from Rs 10,671 crore to Rs 15,000 crore. Accord-
ing to HAQ Centre for Child Rights, an NGO, in
spite of the staggering number of orphan chil-
dren, there was a 74.6 percent reduction in the
budget allocation for the Central Adoption Re-
source Agency. The scheme—Inclusive Education
for Disabled at Secondary Stage—has also seen a
decline in budgetary allocations.
The International Labour Organization’s
World Social Protection Report, “Building Eco-
nomic Recovery, Inclusive Development and So-
cial Justice 2014-2015”, has drawn attention yet
again to the poor coverage of social protection for
children in developing economies. Globally, gov-
ernments allocated 0.4 percent of their GDP to
children and family benefits, ranging from 2.2
percent in western Europe to 0.2 percent in Africa
and Asia and the Pacific. In UNICEF’s State of
World’s Children 2014, India has the poorest chil-
dren’s outcomes among BRICS countries.
The Sustainable Development Goals (2015)
include a range of goals that include reduction in
poverty, hunger, quality education, gender equal-
ity, clean water and sanitation and reduction of
inequalities which have serious implications for
achieving universal health and education among
children. In order, to meet these targets, the gov-
ernment will have to shift its focus on not only
improving food security, education and health
and also address other domains of well-being
such as access to recreation and freedom from
abuse.
Three office-In some social policy areas,
the government seems to have done
well.The Purna Shakti Kendra, initiated by
the National Mission for Empowerment of
Women under the Ministry ofWomen and
Child Development in 2010, mandates the
creation of a National Resource Centre for
Women where all information on social
services will be available.The Integrated
Child Protection System too brings together
multiple child protection schemes of the
ministry under one comprehensive um-
brella and integrates additional interven-
tions for protecting children.
And in a pleasant development, India
recorded progress towards meeting the Mil-
lennium Development Goals (MDG) 2015
targets. India managed to bring down ma-
ternal mortality ratio from 212 deaths per
100,000 live births in 2007-09 to 109
deaths. One contributing factor has been
the introduction of a conditional cash trans-
fer scheme—Janani SurakshaYojana—
which improved the delivery of babies in
hospitals and nursing homes from 38.7 per-
cent in 2005-2006 to 72 percent in 2009.
Let’s CheerThis!
Education Govt’s Social Policies
Girls
overnanceG

YES brimming with tears,
Santosh explained how her
salary was a pittance and not
enough to support her fam-
ily of five. To make things
worse, she hadn’t received her salary for four
months in a row. The irony was striking—the
woman trusted with taking care of children in her
community felt helpless when it came to support-
ing her own. Asked why she hadn’t asked the gov-
ernment for a pay-hike, she said: “Nahi, nahi. Yeh
government job nahi hai… ho hi nahi sakti, gov-
ernment servants ki toh salary increase hoti rehti
hai. (No, no. This is not a government job. It
can’t be. Government employees have periodic
salary increases.)”
Santosh is a helper at an anganwadi in Delhi.
Her monthly salary is `2,500. She and other an-
ganwadi workers form the backbone of the Inte-
grated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the
health-care and food security initiative of the gov-
ernment, touted as the largest scheme of its kind
anywhere in the world.
But despite this, the working conditions of an-
ganwadis and the pittance the workers is de-
plorable. According to the World Bank, India has
60 million under-nourished children, nearly dou-
ble than that of Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this,
the government has reduced budgetary allocation
for ICDS from `18,195 crore in 2014-15 to `
8,335 crore in 2015-16.
ANGANWADI WORKERS
The All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers
and Helpers (AIFAWH) has been raising its voice
about anganwadis for decades. In March 2016,
there was a huge protest in Delhi called “Save
ICDS” where these workers drew attention to the
drastic cuts in this scheme by the Modi govern-
E
VIEWS ON NEWS July 22, 2016
Don’t Kid
Around!Despite India having 60 million under-
nourished children, the government has
reduced allocation for ICDS from `18,195
crore in 2014-15 to `8,335 crore in 2015-16,
dealing a blow to anganwadis
BY PUNKHURI CHAWLA
Integrated Child Development Scheme
overnanceG
IN NEED OF HELP
A malnourished child with mother at a
hospital in Bihar
50

Views On News 22 july 2016

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