Senior Supreme Court attorney Indira Jaising recently tweeted that the upper caste composition of the judiciary has resulted in turning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 from protecting SCs/STs to protecting the upper castes. She got badly trolled for this bit of plain speaking, and the Bar Council of India was disturbed enough by it to issue a press release urging her to withdraw her observation.
Not one of her critics, however, could counter her argument about the representation bias within Indian courts, and we know well that this is also the case when it comes to mainstream media. The argument is often made that equality of representation does not really matter because true professionals, whether they be judges or journalists, bring fair play and a sense of balance to their professional responsibilities, giving the interests of both sides in a particular case equal play. But even a cursory look at the respective records of the two sectors would indicate that this is far from the case, that socialisation and personal experience are decisive factors whether it comes to framing a judicial verdict or a journalistic report.
Why did it take so long for racism to be confronted in supposedly “liberal” US? Because, as Martin Luther King – whose 50th death anniversary is now being observed – wrote in his famous letter from Birmingham jail, “it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say ‘wait’.” The commentary ‘SC/ST Act: Court Ruling Will Have Chilling Effect on Reporting Crimes Against Dalits’ (March 28) got it right when it noted that “TV anchors sitting in Delhi and Mumbai may not appreciate the gravity of untouchability as Dalits have almost no representation in print or electronic media, which are fully under the control of upper castes.”
How many of us inhabiting the upper-class, largely upper-caste urban milieu have even a simple understanding of the crimes that have been routinely perpetrated against Dalits over the millennia? I count myself as among those who are more aware of such realities than many, but here’s the point: I hadn’t realised that half the crimes so methodically set down in the Prevention of Atrocities Act, have kept taking place in this country of ours long after independence. All that the writer of the piece ‘The Dark Realities of the SC/ST Atrocities Act: An Ethnographic Reading’ (April 4), a trained sociologist, did was to list the various crimes cited under this law, and it made for arresting reading. As she put it, “That such specific offences have been included and made punishable under this Act, can only mean that they were commonly perpetrated, and it was anticipated that they may continue against the concerned people.”
Such an law may never have made it to the statute books if it were not for “a long-term process of democratisation leading to Dalit assertion, rise of movements and formation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1985 by Kanshi Ram, and the upsurge from below in many other states in the Hindi heartland”, as the piece ‘The BJP Is Losing the Support of Dalits in the Hindi Heartland’ (April 4), reminds us. So when the protections offered by an umbrella legislation of this kind are sought to be read down by the apex court, it is bound to fan social anxieties on a mass scale (‘Bharat Bandh: Clashes Reported Across States; Four Dead in MP’, April 2).
The country failed to anticipate the scale of the backlash to this verdict. But the parallel failure of mainstream media, despite ostensibly having an ear closer to the ground, to gauge the anger in the community was yet another reflection of how distanced they were from the Dalit public. Equally apparent was the unthinkingly biased nature of the coverage, particularly television reportage, as the bandh unfolded. We saw this misreading of the situation during the bandh over the Bhima Koregaon violence in January, and we saw it again this time.
Violence during collective action like a ‘Bharat bandh’, cannot be condoned, and many Dalit leaders publicly condemned the killings that marked the April 10 mobilisation, even suggesting that criminalised gangs had permeated the ranks of the protestors possibly with a view to discredit their action. That may, or may not, have been the case, but what was disturbingly clear was the manner in which the violence, even that perpetrated by upper caste groups who had counter-mobilised in large numbers, was passed off as violence perpetrated by Dalits.
The incident involving the smartly coiffured Gwalior resident Raja Chauhan, publicly brandishing and using his gun at fleeing protestors in order to kill them in cold blood, was a case in point. A live streaming video chillingly revealed the impunity with which he did this, even as the voiceover talked about Dalit violence. It was only much later that his identity as a Bharatiya Janata Party worker was established, and although he was booked by the police he managed to evade arrest for a long time thereafter. There were also, according to the police, gun wielders among Dalit protestors – after all gun possession in the Gwalior-Chambal region, long known as India premier dacoit territory is possibly among the highest in the country. What would have made an important media story in the context of the Bharat Bandh is the caste-composition of licensed gun holders in states like Madhya Pradesh – one that would have needed some application of mind, an approach free of caste bias and an ability to ask the right questions.
One of the structural reasons for biased reportage is related to the fact that in situations of caste and communal violence, it is the local police that remains the main if not sole source of media information, and here we have to contend with an institution strongly marked by attitudes of communalism and caste-centric prejudices and which has conformed to the will of the political and socio-economic status quo since the year dot. It is only when reporters are prepared to question the police version of developments is there a fighting chance of a narrative emerging that is closer to the truth. Take that tragic story from Gujarat village of Umrala, ‘Family Alleges Dalit Boy Was Killed for Riding Horse, Police Doesn’t Buy it’ (April 4). The local police all but exonerated the local upper castes from playing any role in this murder, neatly transferring the blame on to the dead youth himself by claiming that it was his antics before schoolgirls that precipitated a scuffle which led to his death.
But things may just be changing. What is important to register here is that this Dalit boy, Pradip Kalubhai Rathod, did get to ride Raju, his horse, and that Raju ultimately led his funeral procession. This was a clear demonstration of community assertion in the face of overweening power. The Dalit in India is changing, they are acquiring what social scientist Badri Narayan terms as “Dalit publicness”. If the media fails to understand this, it will be their loss.
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How is plagiarism to be understood? A recent mail from Aditi Surie wished to draw my attention to a piece in The Wire, ‘Ola, Uber and the Precarious Future of Blue Collar Platform Workers’ (March 26, 2018), which the writer claimed had plagiarised ideas from a 2016 piece she had written for the Economic and Political Weekly, ‘Tech in Work Organising Informal Work in India’. Surie then goes on to cite two passages to illustrate her point:
My article in EPW: “Formality” is in the banking channels used by informal sector workers. The object of fascination is the taxpaying taxi driver—now countable through his income and financial data—who is otherwise not easily traceable as someone part of the grey urban service economy. How informal sector workers use their income to buy cars to drive for Uber and Ola, an ostensibly new kind of spending, investment and borrowing, define the “formalisation” of the economy. Security, assurances of work and income, are not what constitute formalisation in this view. ”
The plagiarised portion: “These platforms bring ‘service providers’ (ie; workers) on through contracts, facilitating access to formal banking and taxation mechanisms. However, such ‘formalisation’ is inherently a form of ‘registration’ rather than ‘transformation’. In effect, such formalisation gives statutory bodies regulatory powers over these workers; the state can tax them, their earnings add to banks’ financial assets and so forth without facilitating the most crucial provisions that underline formal employment, which is job and income security, any form of social security, paid leave, fixed work timings and so on.”
While there are overlapping ideas in the two passages, I was hard pressed to pronounce a judgement of plagiarism being at work here. Certainly, even while some words like “formalisation” may have occurred in both passages, the vocabulary and emphases were different. Surie herself acknowledges that this was the case, but adds that “plagiarism need not be verbatim…(that) the least a fellow researcher can do is attribute arguments to where they originated.” An incontestable point, of course.
When we got back to the writer of The Wire article, she was unequivocal that she had not drawn from the EPW piece, and in fact had not read it until after her own piece had been published. She stated that although she understood the sentiments of someone what has done extensive research on the subject, the conclusion she had reached – she argued – was not a difficult one to arrive at “if anyone has been following recent trends on the a) platform economy, with the Uber Ola strikes etc; b) overall shifts in the Indian economy with demonetisation, GST, focus on entrepreneurship etc; c) and has some common sense.” She then went on to cite the sources she had relied on, which included conversations with reputed economists.
Another expert, familiar with the topic, while weighing in on the issue, pointed out that the argument made in The Wire piece, about how the platform economy is “disrupting structures of formal and informal work in India, but that it doesn’t necessarily reflect an improvement in employment conditions as workers continue to lack access to social protection/welfare , and so work continues to be precarious” is a general one, and has been made by several academics and activists, both at the global and national levels.
In many ways, scrutiny of an emerging phenomenon like the platform economy inevitably draws on a wide range of new scholarship. While careful attribution of previous work is a non-negotiable – it is the mark of good scholarship, as indeed journalism – accusations of plagiarism perhaps need to be tempered by the fact that sources of ideas in such instances could be both varied and interlinked.
To put on record, the editorial desk at The Wire assures me that they take the charge of plagiarism seriously, using online tools to monitor text and writing back to authors should problems arise. Ideally, our contributors understand that it is self-regulation and self-checks that work best when it come to addressing the unacceptable practice of plagiarism.
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Pravir Pandey, vice-chairman, IWAI & Project Director (Jal Marg Vikas Project), Inland Waterways Authority of India, Ministry of Shipping, Govt. of India, has a bone to pick with the piece, ‘Why is Narendra Modi Allowing Nitin Gadkari to Destroy the Ganga’ (March 22). He argue that the Rs 5,369 Crore Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) on National Waterway (NW) -1 (Varanasi to Haldia) is a wholly inclusive, economic and environment friendly game changer intervention on the Ganga. Along with giving a fillip to trade and commerce, he believes JMVP will help rejuvenate the river and not ‘ruin’ it, as portrayed by the writer of the piece. He adds that it is “sad to see a news organization run by such veterans like you… are not sticking to the basic tenets of journalism which is to carry both sides of the story”. He goes on to say, “One is surprised to see how the article managed to pass through the stages of editing by the desk without taking into account the versions of Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), resulting in the write up turning out to be a story based on half-baked information and hearsays.”
JMVP, could in fact be seen as an “an effort towards rejuvenating an already dying and polluted river. The huge silt loads have turned to be disastrous during floods as constantly, the ‘room for the river’ is depleting each year due to heavy siltation.”
He then appends a point by point rebuttal that is too lengthy to carry here. In conclusion, however, he observes, “Inland Waterway Transport (IWT) is the most environment-friendly mode of transport, compared to the other surface based modes of transport. It is a non-water consumptive transportation with minimal resource depletion. It will facilitate reduction of pressure on Railway network and National Highways, relieving congestion, reduced emissions from vehicles and railway engines on non-electrified routes, thereby reducing carbon emission and project footprint. Use of modern inland water vessels, with natural gas (LNG/CNG) as fuel will reduce emission of SOx (50%), NOx (70%), Particulate Matter (95%) and CO2 (25%). Hence, it will have negligible impact on ambient air quality. LNG/CNG engines on inland vessels have lower noise level than diesel engines. This has less impact on ambient noise level. Due to minimum requirement of land acquisition, there will be insignificant impact on ecology & biodiversity, agricultural activities as well as on the livelihood of the people.
Attention was also drawn towards the fact that Inland Water Transport (IWT) will not only augment the overall transport capacity of the country, but will also help correct the transport modal mix that impose huge logistics costs on the Indian economy. The costs of logistics in India, at 15 % of GDP, are about twice those in the United States.
Development of National Waterway-1, in short, would result in an environment friendly, fuel efficient and cost-effective alternative mode of transportation, especially for bulk goods, hazardous goods and over dimensional cargo. NW-1, along with proposed Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor and National Highway-2, constitute the Eastern Transport Corridor of India connecting the National Capital Region (NCR) with the eastern and north-eastern states and will function as a link to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and other east and south-east Asian countries through the Kolkata Port and Indo- Bangladesh Protocol Route.
It is empirically impossible, Pandey concludes, not to be convinced that IWT is the most environment friendly, cost effective and sustainable mode of transport and it is upon those who don’t buy this fact, to enlighten us how any other mode is better.
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Vaishali Diwakar from Pune, who has been an appreciative reader of The Wire for a while now, finds some of its content “very important for my teaching sociology, to generate debates in classrooms and more importantly for myself to introspect and reflect on my own views and confusions…” Pune, where she is situated currently, “has a very vibrant culture of activism. Some of the issues which The Wire is highlighting are relevant at the regional level too but because of language issues they don’t reach the people interested in them.”
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The Wire was the first with the story on Arun Jaitley’s health (‘Kidney Transplant Likely for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’, April 3). A modicum of courage helped in breaking this authentic piece of news a whole day earlier. As its writer tweeted the day after, “And here @arunjaitley confirms the story I broke in @thewire_in last night. Now bravely followed by up the rest of the media”. Some readers raised the question as to whether such personal information could be said to constitute “news”. One comment went: “An odd story to break. Perhaps it may have been more decorous to wait for an official communiqué. There is an issue of privacy, to which public figures are also entitled.” But I would go with what another respondent observed: “Any work one may be doing, requires the minimum physical and mental qualifications. A public servant has a duty to disclose his general health condition to the public unlike a private person.”