The RTI petition which forced the Press Council's hand

The first time I heard about the paid news report being prepared by the Press Council of India (PCI), I remembered my journalism class in which the teacher told us how PCI stood for press freedom and integrity. It monitors and pulls up newspapers, magazines and other print media entities when they fail to do be fair and conscientious. At the same time, the teacher pointed out how the 44-year-old organization has mostly remained a paper tiger with no genuine punitive powers.

I wondered how good the paid news report would be, my suspicions stemming from the fact that the Indian media has always dodged scrutiny. Whether it’s about witch hunts through sting operations, promotion of occult practices or the insensitive coverage of 26/11 terrorist attack, the media has always silenced critics by holding meetings on self regulation and projecting that things have been put in order. The revelation that some media groups, including the big ones, got money to publish news in favour of certain candidates during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections was the right opportunity for the media and the PCI to set their houses in order.

The 71-page document by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and K Sreenivas Reddy mentions allegations of paid news, detailing the procedure, naming the people and organisations involved and backing this up with circumstantial evidence. The sub-committee also gave ample space to accused media houses and politicians to defend themselves.

It was on July 29, 2010, at the India Today conclave that media tycoons and well-meaning editors publicly sought a blanket ban on paid news. The very next day, the publishers’ lobby prevailed over the PCI and it was decided that the well-researched report won’t be made public and a new 12-page watered-down version sans any names was released. This new version also removed references to the menace of “private treaties” and the sabotage of the “Working Journalists’ Act” by media owners who are forcing their staff to toe the management line.

The fact that the original report was leaked on the Internet took the air out of PCI’s protective posturing. However, what is displayed on the Council’s website is the watered down version.

PCI is an independent body established under the Press Council Act 1978 and financed by the central government. Moreover, the sub-committee report provides credible information on corruption in media and politics hence catering to the larger public interest. There is no reason why we, who paid for the investigations, should be forced to seek the findings through unofficial means.

It was with this idea that I filed an RTI application seeking a copy of the report besides other details on January 3, 2011. The PCI was quick to reply that a legal opinion had been sought on the issue on September 7, 2010, and on receipt of the same it would consider providing the report under the RTI Act. A delay of around four months in securing a legal opinion seemed to be unreasonable. I filed first appeal under the RTI Act on February 2, 2011 but got the same reply. Second appeal was filed to the Central Information Commission on May 13, 2011 and the final hearing took place on September 19 with central information commissioner Mr Shailesh Gandhi presiding over the case.

Even before the hearing could start, the PCI’s information officer claimed a letter had been sent to me on September 14 offering to provide the paid news report on payment of the requisite fee (I did not receive the letter till September 25). The information commissioner was not amused by the change in stand by the PCI and asked why the information had not been provided in the first instance. He also underscored the point that even if legal opinion had to be sought, it should have been done within the 30 days period stipulated under the RTI Act.

The fact that PCI was clueless about the grounds on which it rejected the application can be gauged from the divergent stances the information officer took. He first said that the document was an official report which was in the PCI archives for anyone to access, then they said it was not a PCI document since the council had not accepted it and finally they also added that in any case a version had been made available by some source on the net. It should be noted that even the watered-down version made available publicly draws content from the original document. The commissioner ignored the PCI’s arguments and ruled that the document be made available to the public and also added that this version be put up on the PCI site.

It was the RTI Act which turned the daunting task into a cakewalk but is it really the end of this issue? I hope not. The Cabinet Secretariat had a meeting of the group of ministers on September 7 in which it decided to study the 12-page paid news report of PCI and suggest a comprehensive institutional mechanism to check the corruption in media. Would it not be prudent for the ministers to consider the original, much more comprehensive report?

Got a plant, will republish for a fee

On August 28, 2011, the  Times of India attempted to present “ old wine in a new bottle” in its own style. A full page story “Reaping gold through Bt Cotton” appeared in its Sunday edition just when the media was busy celebrating end of Anna Hazare‘s fast.

A group of labourers carrying baskets of cotton balls on their heads looked out of the page while the bottom half splashed success stories of two villages in Maharashtra where the villagers had apparently hit gold mine. With anecdotes of three families, the story looked strikingly in-depth.

However, the real information was concealed at the top and bottom right of the page in fine print. The write up was re-print of a story from the Times of India, Nagpur edition, October 31, 2008 and it was being published under the TOI’s “Consumer Connect Initiative”, a benevolent nomenclature given to paid news.
Also, the news report says “The trip to Yavatmal was arranged by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech”, the company which has been selling Bt Cotton seeds to farmers since 2002.

Around the same time in 2008 when TOI, Nagpur edition, published the original story, similar news reports appeared in the  Economic Times and news feeds of UNI and PTI which indicates that the company had arranged the trip for a group of journalists to farms of Yavatmal district.

The reason for such a PR exercise seemed to be the flak it had been receiving from civil society groups in 2008 which blamed the high price of Bt Cotton seeds and consecutive Bt crop failures for farmer suicides.

So, why did the company get the extolling story republished after three years without any updates?

Again, the trigger seems to be the bad press it has got recently. On August 9, the Association for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), a conglomerate of several civil society groups including Greenpeace, launched a ‘Quit India’ campaign against Monsanto for its “anti-farmer and monopolistic policies”.

Also, the National Biodiversity Authority recently found Mahyco Monsanto guilty of violating rules in procuring local brinjal varieties for development of Bt Brinjal.

The fact that the original story was also fraught with errors is another important issue. The story has a blurb on the top saying:”Yavatmal district is known as the Suicide Capital of the state, but two villages - Bhambraja and Antargaon - are an aberration for the better. Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.”

Yavatmal has 2,117 villages of which 1,845 are habited as per the information available on the website maintained by the district administration. Why only these two villages out of 1,845 were chosen is quite clear - apparently they represented a small island in the sea of discontent because around 2008 the Bt Cotton crop had been failing over consecutive seasons despite promises that the hybrid will fetch handsome returns.

By the reporter’s own admission majority of the farmers interviewed owned land anywhere between 10 and 40 acres and none of them was ever a marginal farmer. This means the farmers to be showcased to the visiting media had been carefully chosen from a higher income group.

Also, the information that no suicide occurred in these two villages is factually wrong. Ganesh Mate of Bhambraja village committed suicide in August 2004 due to rising farm debt. This was week after his neighbour, also a farmer, ended his life. Their widows claimed it was because of debt burden and long spells of drought that they had to take the ultimate step .

On March 23, 2008, 37-year-old Manohar Mahadev Raut of Antargaon village committed suicide by jumping into a well. He owned six acres and had borrowed money from private banks and moneylenders.

So news reports related to at least three suicides by farmers in these villages is available on the Internet. Needless to say there must be more such cases which either went unreported or are not available online.

Later in the story, the “positive” experience of these two villages is portrayed as a scenario in the whole district.  Raj Ketkar, deputy managing director, Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (MMB), is quoted as saying, “In Yavatmal district, the ability of farmers to purchase on cash instead of credit; increased ability to invest back in agriculture in implements like drip irrigation, tubewells, and in life insurance policies for their family speaks for the success of Bt.”

The news reports appearing in The Economic Times and news feeds of UNI and PTI were also fraught with misrepresentations. The UNI story’s headline claimed “Bt cotton brings change in suicide belt of Vidarbha” while PTI had a headline: ”Bt cotton gives a new lease of life to Vidarbha farmers”.

The news story by The Economic Times (published on November 2, 2008) out rightly rejected the concept of farmer suicides: “Mention farmer suicides to any Yavatmal villager and he laughs. "Woh sab hamare yahan nahin hota. Our sarpanch won't let it happen. We hear people in some villages have committed suicide over family disputes and alcoholism. But politicians think it is because of bad loans. Good for us,'' chuckles Gangadhar Maske at Antargaon.”

According to official estimates, Yavatmal district registered 1,708 farmer suicides between 2001 and 2009. Of them, 1,173 farmers took the extreme step owing to the debt liabilities while 83 farmers committed suicide due to crop failure.

Reminds you of Peepli Live? It’s running successfully in our newspapers.

This post was first published in www.thehoot.org

Get a better idea, Sirjee

Had we been a power surplus nation, our population would never have been second largest in the world. The 1.2 billion could well have been just a few millions. This is because a man’s desire for sex is inversely proportional to availability of a TV set. At least that’s what Idea Cellular’s new ad campaign tries to depict.

Taking off from the widely-criticised utterance of Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad that watching late night TV can help control population, Idea depicts its 3G service as an alternative when a power cut proves to be a kill joy.

3G applications such as mobile TV, gaming, video calling and social networking on “superfast” Internet can help keep the people entertained and they would no longer be interested in their wives. “TV to Biwi” says the voiceover as men across India get disappointed due to a power cut and give lustful looks to their wives. None of the dutiful wives are actually enthusiastic at the prospect of a rocking time even though more women than men watch TV and hence should logically have higher levels of boredom.  

After some shots of a rocking bed, the ad shows women with bulging stomachs and more children sharing resources in the country. Enter Idea 3G and people get busy with their mobiles watching TV, interacting through Facebook or making video calls all of which leads to no new births.

The new ad goes on to make fun of vasectomy. Two characters standing in front of a vasectomy clinic declare, “Ab iski kya zaroorat hai” even though the procedure is the best known long term means for birth control. The commercial, developed by Idea’s creative agency Lowe, ends with a tagline “No Abaadi, No Barbaadi”

However, the creative directors forgot that mobile phones run on batteries which need to be charged through electricity and using 3G services would only squeeze up the batteries faster thus bringing people back to square one in case of a power cut.

In fact, the Idea officials feel the ad, one of their “champion ideas”, will bring in a social change.

“This time, the Champion idea is 3G which has a strong entertainment appeal, and has been designed to resonate with the larger audience, on a critical subject that looms large on the country,” Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, IDEA Cellular, is quoted as saying on the company’s website. The 3G service is relatively a new mobile service which is why we still need to wait till the next census before handing over the “social change” award to the company.

Idea, it seems, is no stranger to such a misrepresentation of facts. Its other “champion ideas” have also been bereft of logic. The ‘Use Mobile, Save Paper’ campaign propagated use of mobile phones to reduce consumption of paper and hence fewer trees to be cut. 

The ad failed to mention the e-waste generated by mobile phones. Made up of non-biodegradable plastic, chemicals and metal, these toys of communication are not all green. Moreover, they also don’t run on clean energy. The telecom sector burns subsidised and highly polluting diesel to power its mobile network towers.  In fact, Greenpeace is currently running a campaign against sector leader Airtel so that it shifts to renewable energy for running its lakhs of network towers. In addition, the batteries used by mobile phones need to be charged with electricity which is generated through coal, hydro or nuclear power.

While coal needs to be mined out by clearing acres of forests, hydroelectricity disrupts the water bodies and surrounding ecologies. Paper production from pulp would actually pale in comparison to the cumulative and long term sins of mobile industry.

The mood of both the ads remain light and humorous, but the fact that the company has high hopes from its campaigns mandates that we also take them seriously and hence put them under  scientific scrutiny.  Sadly, they fail to live up to the expectations. 

This write up was first published at www.thehoot.org/

HT's dubious sex change scoop

On the morning of June 26, 2011, readers of Hindustan Times (HT) woke up to front page news of girls being converted into boys through surgical procedures in the city of Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

The news claimed that due to their fetish for sons, several families are getting the genitals of their new born daughters converted into male genitals.

This seemingly horrifying news led to shock waves with everyone from Prime Minister’s Office to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Indian Medical Association (IMA) getting into action. Teams were sent, state government asked to take action and there were also suggestions for enactment of laws to deal with such medical practices.

HT then went into an overdrive highlighting the impact its “expose” generated and also getting celebrities like Sonam Kapoor to comment on sex change operations and gender discrimination.

The whole episode highlights the insensitivity with which media covers delicate health issues. Not only was the story incorrect with lack of supporting evidence, it was full of critical labelling. Let’s talk about non-medical issues first.

The story starts by depicting the city of Indore as ‘conservative’ thereby accusing the whole city of supporting gender discrimination through these “illegal” surgical procedures.

It further says: “The low cost of surgery and the relatively easy and unobtrusive way of getting it done in this city attracts parents from Delhi and Mumbai to get their child surgically `corrected.'’ This suggests that Indore is a better place than the metros for these surgeries not only due to low cost but also because citizens will not vehemently oppose such a procedure. On what basis such observations were made is not known.

It scores better than metros in gender parity. It has a sex ratio of 892 female children  per 1000 boys which is better than 866 per 1,000 in Delhi and 874 for every 1,000 in Mumbai as per provisional data of 2011 census.

Another point: “The parents press for these surgeries despite being told by doctors that the `converted' male would be infertile.” This information defies the whole logic of the fetish for sons in Indian culture. It’s well known that parents who prefer a son want the family name to be carried forward and they also believe that in old age, a son is more likely to support them. So why would a family prefer an infertile son who can’t reproduce and hence will live a depressed life in comparison to a daughter who is born perfectly normal?

Now the medical part. The news report said: “The process being used to `produce' a male child from a female is known as genitoplasty. While genitoplasty is relatively common -it is used to correct genital abnormality in fully-grown patients.” It’s wrong to say that genitoplasty is being done in children because what they undergo is corrective surgery not sex change.

The fact is thousands of children across the world are born with ambiguous genitals. During the early phases of development in the mother’s womb, there is no distinction between the genitals of a boy and a girl. The development of both genders starts the same way, until male and female  hormones kick in to determine shape of the external sexual organs or genitals.

If something goes wrong at this point, the parents end up with a child with abnormal or ambiguous genitals. A girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris giving impression of a penis or lacking a vaginal opening. A boy may be born with a notably small penis or with a scrotum that is divided so that it looks like labia, a part of female sexual organ.

In absence of correct diagnosis these children either grow up as adults confused with their sexual identity or are spurned by the society and labelled ‘third gender’.

The fact is that if examination of external and internal sex organs is done properly this ambiguity can be resolved with help of a surgery. This is what the doctors quoted in the story were also doing but the writer went on to use it against them.

The news story reported: “They (the doctors) say these operations are done on children whose internal organs do not match their external genitalia….they claim a strict procedure is followed to determine the sex of the new born, after which the external appearance of the child is changed to match the sex. There is no system to monitor that claim and is completely open to abuse.”

If there is no system to monitor the claim on what basis do we reject the claim?
Only one anonymous parent of a child who underwent surgery was quoted as saying: “I think my child would not be confused over his gender when he grows up and can live a normal life as he would not have any memories of the surgery.“ Nothing in the quote suggests that sex change not corrective surgery was done.

Another point the story made is “The doctors accept that parents willingly convert girls to boys but opt out of the opposite procedure.” There are more than one reason for such a trend. While gender bias can be a major social factor that prevents parents from getting their seemingly male child surgically corrected into a female, another reason is medical.

As mentioned earlier genetic females may be born with a noticeably large clitoris (depicting a penis), or lacking a vaginal opening. In cases where enlarged clitoris is noticed, proper levels of hormones can be given through medication to shrink the tissue close to a normal size which is why surgery may not be required. Also, for girls with ambiguous genitalia, the sex organs often work normally. If vagina is hidden under her skin, the surgery to remove the skin can be performed during puberty if there is no other complication involved. Many a times, parents also approach the surgeons when these children reach the age of puberty and start to show signs of female growth.

Unfortunately, the awareness regarding such a procedure is low not only among general public but even among gynaecologists and paediatricians, who are mostly the first medical professionals to examine a new born. But this surgery is commonly done in multi-speciality hospitals. For instance, at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, every month 2-5 cases of gential correction are done.
Luckily, the “seven paediatric surgeons associated with top private and government hospitals” in Indore knew about the procedure and were legally performing their duties thus saving so many lives from an almost certain misery. However, the HT news story and the negative impact it has generated will not only force such surgeons to put down their scalpels but will also push the already little-known procedure to further oblivion.

Dr S V Kotwal, one of the very few experts in the field of sex-change surgeries in India, categorically states that it's not possible to do sex change surgery in infants. “Such surgeries have never been done in medical history and hence no surgeon is qualified to perform them which is why the news that sex change operations were being performed in Indore is wrong,” he says.

In fact, this is what he had told the HT editorial team members who approached him to seek his opinion. “I was busy in a medical conference but did tell them that the facts don't seem to be correct and the cases seem to be gential correction and not sex change. I told them your reporter need to do more research, talk to family members and get medical records. However, they went ahead with the story despite my advice. What do you do? This is how media works,” he laments.

To make up for that, Dr Kotwal was asked to write an opinion piece on the issue which was published two days later on the edit page of HT. “Corrective surgeries done on infants should not be confused with sex-change and what Indore-based doctors were doing was absolutely legal,” he said in the comment.

However, on the same day the paper carried a front page follow up detailing the actions initiated by PMO and NCPCR on its ‘expose’ making it clear that it is not going to backtrack from its initial stance.

On June 30, HT did another follow up on the NCPCR exploring a possibility of forming a law on the subject. NCPCR has even asked the Madhya Pradesh government to take necessary action, including cancellation of licences and registration of doctors and hospitals involved and initiating criminal cases against them.


When a newspaper of the stature of HT raises an issue on its front page, everybody from a man on the street to the Prime Minister’s office takes note. But that is precisely why more research and more interviews might have been needed to put this “exclusive” on a firm basis. Can’t help but recall the message in a ‘Spiderman’ movie, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Something missing here.

This post was first published on www.thehoot.org/

A frenzied media fails to use the RTI Act

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.” This quote by US President Ronald Reagan summarises the significance attributed to facts, figures and data and the need to make them freely available across servers and bandwidths. In this age of internet and mobile networks, the amount of information available to us is far more than we can possibly assimilate. Ironically, our thirst for information has increased as forums like Wikileaks or the Right to Information (RTI) Act open up more possibilities. While the former engages in a guerrilla war against the powers that be, the latter works as a democratic tool to bring in transparency and accountability.

The impact of RTI since its advent in 2005, has given us new hope. The light at the end of tunnel has grown into a full blown torch of transparency held afloat largely by social activists and to some extent by a few dedicated government officials. An unexpected laggard who is yet to exploit the full potential of the legislation remains the Indian journalist. When the RTI Act came into force it was assumed that it would be the best tool in a journalist’s hands. Sadly this has not been the case and social activists are filling in the gap left behind by journalists. They are taking a lead in acquiring information under the act and in giving it to the media.

So why are journalists wary of using RTI? They know the inside stories on their beats and they can draft an RTI application by asking the "right questions".
The problem, it seems, lies in the time and persistence needed in procuring and analysing the information. Take for instance the recent Adarsh Society Scam in Mumbai. The information sought by the National Alliance for Peoples’ Movement (NAPM) made a brilliant story which ran for several months and also had the desired impact. Any journalist would have loved to get a by-line on this story. NAPM began looking into the issue six years ago. It filed around seven RTI applications with the Mumbai collectorate, state revenue department, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, state urban development and environment departments asking for details of file notings, sale of land and environmental clearances. It had to wait for almost six months to get responses even though under the RTI Act, it is mandatory for authorities to reply within 30 days of receiving the query. Needless to say, the fight for release of information was diligently followed for months by members of NAPM. To imagine a journalist doing something similar seems implausible.

In media organisations the stress is on exclusives and deadlines. A typical day of a print journalist includes looking at rival publications to check if she has missed any story, getting fired by her boss at the morning meeting, visiting her beat and then reaching office in time to file exclusives as well as jot down spot news. Filing RTI applications, procuring documents after several appeals to the appellate authority and then going through them to first understand and then get a bigger picture means extra slogging. So she takes the easier way out and cultivates a source and gets the same information (even if half baked). She gets the by-line and the newspaper gets its exclusive. The story maybe short of proof and the "reliable source" may abandon the journalist midway but nobody thinks long term.

To fill up eight columns of a broadsheet or 24x7 of video tapes, the media organisations need exclusives fast and now. The days of investigative journalism involving scrutiny of relevant documents have given way to spy cams, audio recordings and irrelevant breaking news. However, exceptions exist and are always welcome. In 2010, Outlook correspondent Saikat Dutta got the National RTI award given by Public Cause Research Foundation for his work exposing export of PDS rice to foreign countries by private companies in connivance with government officials. India Today Special Correspondent Shyamlal Yadav won the same award in 2009 for using RTI Act to expose foreign jaunts by ministers and junketeering by bureaucrats causing loss to the exchequer. However, journalists like Dutta and Yadav are few. The fact that Yadav was the only media representative among 1,130 nominees again underscores the fact that not many are following the lead.

A three month analysis (January 1 to March 31, 2011) of Mail Today newspaper and Times of India shows there were 15 stories (six in TOI and nine in Mail Today) using information obtained through use of the RTI Act to expose misappropriation of public assets or prejudice in government functioning. However only two (one each in TOI and Mail Today) were based on an RTI application filed by their staff correspondents. This means that over 86 per cent of the RTI related stories originated from the information provided by NGOs or independent activists.

It's not that journalists don't file RTI applications. They, however, get frustrated with the appeals they have to make and wait for CIC to give its rulings. Often the lure of 'sources' forces them to quit. Then the RTI-related stories are confined to getting information just to dig deeper into the already known facts. Consider the following stories filed by staff correspondents.

The Mail Today (14h Feb, 2010, ‘Blame it on Kalmadi and Co for Games empty seats’) reported that according to information provided in response to an RTI application, about 50 per cent of the tickets to the various events during Common Wealth Games were made complimentary but the tickets never reached the right hands. Those requesting for complimentary passes were made to wait endlessly with no definite answers as seats remained unoccupied till the end in many events. However, the fact had already been reported by the same newspaper by quoting a source and the RTI application only gave it a more authentic look.

Using RTI the Times of India (March 22, 2011, ‘RTI negates Nehru library heads charges’), story negates the complaint made by the director of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) that change in recruitment rules for directors post and revocation of suspension of deputy director were illegal.
The story goes on to say: “new facts accessed through RTI by TOI reveal that the idea of changing the recruitment rule from `eminent scholar of modern Indian history’ to `eminent scholar with specialization in social sciences’ came from Karan Singh, chairman, executive council, NMML.” Though the story does make some hitherto unknown information available, it does not serve any public interest. The RTI was filed to negate an officer’s complaints against relief awarded to another officer and change in department rules.
In contrast, the 87 per cent of stories based on RTI applications filed by NGOs and activists deal with issues including land scams, violation of school admission norms, misappropriation of funds by Common Wealth Games Organising Committee, illegal drug tests on Bhopal gas victims and false claims by a water purifier company.

It all boils down again to time in hand. If media organisations want their journalists to get bigger and better stories, they need to give them enough breathing space. Plodding through information that becomes available through an RTI application needs a dedicated approach. Unless this `breaking news’ culture which forces journalists to run into print or air baseless findings changes, we are not likely to see many genuine exposes.