Topic: India - deteriorating?

[Bullet500]

"Jo Johnson resigns as director of firm linked to Adani allegations. Former UK PM’s brother quits board of Elara Capital days after it was accused of using funds to manipulate share prices." - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/02/jo-johnson-resigns-director-adani-elara-capital

[west_london_red]

I was listening to the radio a couple of days ago and Rachel Johnson was presenting her usual Sunday evening show and I was wondering what Jo Johnson was doing after he stood down from the Commons, should have guessed it would be something like this.

[Bullet500]

"Today’s last look: Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated 75 years ago last Monday. Today, some are trying to assassinate his character." - https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1622313357381607425

Very good tribute by Fareed Zakaria.

Criticism of Gandhi by the following is generally dishonest: (i) Hindu fascist sympathisers (Indian mainstream media, RSS/BJP), (ii) The other side of the border (mainstream media again). I would say, it's always dishonest in the case of RSS/BJP.

These are some examples of genuine/truthful criticism:

[1] https://raiot.in/the-ideal-bhangi/
[2] https://thewire.in/history/mahatma-gandhi-jayanti-ambedkar-caste
[3] https://theprint.in/opinion/ramachandra-guha-is-wrong-a-middle-aged-gandhi-was-racist-and-no-mahatma/168222/ (This was a response to - https://thewire.in/history/setting-the-record-straight-on-gandhi-and-race)
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women

[Nobby Reserve]

Indian fascist government trying to put the frighteners on the BBC there

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64634711

[Rawkybalboa]

No doubt Rishi Sunak wont see nothing as hes got his head so far up their backsides

[west_london_red]

Indian fascist government trying to put the frighteners on the BBC there

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64634711

It’s a regular occurrence now. Towards the end of last year a few Punjabi singers who had supported the Farmers protests earlier on in the year had their homes searched by the income tax department too, seems to be a common tactic now if you criticise the BJP the income tax department will raid your property.

The death of democracy in India is happening infront of our eyes and the international community seems happy to look the other way.

[Rawkybalboa]

Its not democracy. As we see in the UK Its just a few rich powerful people at the top who running the show with their media friends and control and big business friends. The man on the street just has the hollow vote and then your left at the mercy of the politicians of today.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

I am for a complete media-government independence. And I am just playing devils advocate here but Indian media has always been biased and is infested with hypocrisy as from this article. But at what point does it transcend from "being called out" to "fascist behaviour"? Genuine question.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/no-free-lunch/some-of-my-experiences-with-bbc-and-its-biased-agenda/

Having been both a documentary film maker for PBS and Discovery in America as well as a journalist, I was not really surprised by BBC’s bias against India. I have followed the BBC since I was a child growing up in India and they have some good archival footage of some interviews with India’s leaders during and after Independence, but the BBC then and journalism was different. Since I returned to India in 2007 after my career abroad, I could not help but notice that CNN and BBC had changed drastically, and for the worse, in its reportage of news and documentaries.

I was taught on how to report the news and also make films by some of the best in the industry, and to get all points of views.

My first personal experience with BBC in India, was quite an awakening — I discovered to my shock that it wanted to report on only sensational bad news in a country of 1-3 billion people. In 2013, I was in their bureau for an interview for my book.

I was asked to wait for a bit in their main reporting room where there were several reporters searching for what would make the headline news, with their stringers in various parts of India, via computer and phone. I happened to hear one who was rather loud and excited over the phone and was saying his story would make the headlines. The story was about how a young man was badly beaten up and was critical in hospital as he had taken his cows to graze in fields that belonged to a particular community.

I asked the reporter whether this was all that he could get from a country of 1.3 billion people. Isn’t there at least one big story about how someone was saved from certain death by a good Samaritan. His answer was classic and I have never been able to forget it.

“They only want to know about the rapes and lynchings and violence which makes Headline news,” he said.

I did some research and found out that BBC was established under a Royal Charter and is funded by a license fee charged to all British households, companies and organizations. But when it was established in 1922, it got financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. In the 1930s it started news from its colonies, including India.

In the summer of 1970, the BBC broadcasted two documentary films – Calcutta and Phantom India which caused outrage amongst the Indian diaspora and with the Indian government for prejudicial and negative depictions of India and was dispelled from India in 1972. It depicted only poverty and despair even though India had come a long way from when the British left India in poverty and despair in 1947.

In 1995, when the Charar-e-Sharif shrine was burnt down in Kashmir valley by terrorists, BBC aired footage of Russian tanks in Chechnya in its reportage, which created the impression that it was the Indian Army’s use of tanks that had damaged the shrine. Imagine BBC getting away with this kind of deception. In fact the BBC has consistently reported several such totally fabricated stories from Kashmir.

I do wish BBC had the guts to do a sensational piece on the treatment of Uighurs in China.

Then I met an Englishman in Nainital who came to see Jim Corbett’s home that had been bought by my husband’s grandfather. He told me that he had worked for BBC and said he was disgusted by them as they had done a false documentary on the Kaziranga Game Reserve where they gave a one-sided view of forest rangers killing poachers and had been banned from all Indian Game sanctuaries for 5 years. The BBC then gave an apology to the Indian Government for their biased reporting.

Why would they do this, I wondered. Why would they want to make India look bad? Is it a colonial hangover of losing the jewel in their crown?

Another case of BBC’s appalling reportage was when a young girl was gangraped and it shook India so much that it brought both men and women on to the streets in various cities. It was the Nirbhaya case. The UPA government responded to the mass uprising by bringing in a fast-track court for such heinous crimes. But that did not stop the BBC and Leslie Udwin, who calls herself a human rights activist, from interviewing one of the rapists in jail and trying to portray him as a victim by his saying he thought the girl deserved it. Had Leslie done a little homework she would have realized that Nirbhaya had got onto an unlicensed bus by chance. Instead she tried to promote Delhi as the rape capital of the world and some delinquents as stereotype of men in India.

When one connects the dots of even these few cases among hundreds of false reporting done in India by the BBC, one realizes how far down the journalism ladder this institution has gone.

Since the BBC has a relationship with the UK Government it should not be allowed to get away with this kind of yellow journalism. It is certainly bad for diplomacy and worse for journalism of the BBC kind.

[west_london_red]

I am for a complete media-government independence. And I am just playing devils advocate here but Indian media has always been biased and is infested with hypocrisy as from this article. But at what point does it transcend from "being called out" to "fascist behaviour"? Genuine question.

Being called out is just that, you call out what is factual incorrect or provide context that someone has missed. When you start banning critical pieces of work, locking up journalists who criticise you, or start raiding their premises to intimidate them (obviously it’s just a coincidence they raided the BBC a month after the Modi documentary), that’s when your in fascism territory.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

Being called out is just that, you call out what is factual incorrect or provide context that someone has missed. When you start banning critical pieces of work, locking up journalists who criticise you, or start raiding their premises to intimidate them (obviously it’s just a coincidence they raided the BBC a month after the Modi documentary), that’s when your in fascism territory.

I dont know if this is true or not but this what I got when I asked the same question somewhere.

https://twitter.com/darshanpathak/status/1617018040620834818

I dont think banning journalists or locking them up for critisism is the right thing to do. Media should do the reporting and thats it. Nothing more nothing less.

But its become far more of an agenda and propaganda (general media everywhere, not just Indian media) everywhere that its hard to be fair about what to do.

But I think its for an another thread. I dont want to derail this thread with my anti-media rants in a thread about India.

[west_london_red]

Yeah, that doesn’t really help if you can’t read Hindi!

[ChaChaMooMoo]

Nothing interesting really.

The same garbage articles from BBC hindi about pooping and peeing, a couple of seemingly sexist articles masked as liberal articles. How if China does it its a new year new era miracle but in India its a massive pollution. Lockdowns apparently saved lives in Europe but Indian lockdowns were the bane of existence. And a couple of cow related articles. You didnt miss much.

[Bullet500]

I am for a complete media-government independence. And I am just playing devils advocate here but Indian media has always been biased and is infested with hypocrisy as from this article. But at what point does it transcend from "being called out" to "fascist behaviour"? Genuine question.

This is a well written article and I agree on all points except for one: BBC has done features on Uighurs. You can easily Google them and I have watched several of them. They might not have done a full fledged documentary, however.

Take this Sky feature on Mumbai for example (I might have posted this here before). The Indian flag does look great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8dFsK_RAi0

The fact is, western news media does these kind of things for everyone in the east. It's not really a "they do it to us Indians, but not to them <...>" situation, which a lot of BJP supporters like to portray.

I'll tell you the answer to when does it transcends from "being called out" to "fascist behaviour": it's when you have got laws that you selectively apply by design. 

[west_london_red]

China is a one party, totalitarian state, if you want to be held to the same standards as them then I would suggest the argument is already lost.

[Bullet500]

Nothing interesting really.

The same garbage articles from BBC hindi about pooping and peeing, a couple of seemingly sexist articles masked as liberal articles. How if China does it its a new year new era miracle but in India its a massive pollution. Lockdowns apparently saved lives in Europe but Indian lockdowns were the bane of existence. And a couple of cow related articles. You didnt miss much.

I looked at the Twitter thread. BBC Hindi is horrible. But I feel it's a symptom rather than the cause. The Hindi language itself is suffering from malaise these days. Hindi literature is practically dead. Entire Hindi media is very tabloid-like. Hindi news channels are even worse. Hindi films are horrible. Hindi TV "serials" have been horrible since cable TV became the norm anyway. To be in this situation when you have over 350 million L1 and L2 speakers EACH... it just tells you where the society is headed. This is an article from 2008: https://www.livemint.com/Politics/Lc2BrUPpwJLWgOXV06WTtK/The-life-and-death-of-Hindi-pulp-fiction.html

Focusing on lockdowns, these are the original articles: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52968523 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56561095

Not too sure how things went in Europe, but I didn't see millions of workers walking thousands of kilometers to go back home. The article just says it was unplanned and there wasn't any consulting process.

China is a one party, totalitarian state, if you want to be held to the same standards as them then I would suggest the argument is already lost.

100%.

[west_london_red]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64636641

Can you imagine her actually winning it (not that she will), an Indian PM over here, and Indian President in the US and Indian nationalists in India… I’d have to find a new planet!

[Max_powers]

https://twitter.com/darshanpathak/status/1617018040620834818

Have you looked at greater Indian media landscape? Some of articles posted are not even biased, some are just true, others are just tabloid nonsense, and these are handpicked ones by the fella. Yes it sucks but it still looks better standard than 90% of journalism in India to me. Those are how low the standards are.  If you look at BBC Hindi website, it looks 100X better and more professional than most other Indian news sources that people use. 

The dickhead posting the thread is clearly doing so in bad faith too. The one that boiled my blood is the one showing two articles, one mentioning Indian Army beating up civilians. Other explaining how Taliban managed to capture many cities without fighting. Like what does that even show? Should Indian Army be treated to the same standard as the fucking Taliban?

The most popular "news" shows in the country often feature people shouting and swearing at each other for hours. My parents watch that. I have seen two men try to virtually fuck each other with arrows and plastic missiles on TV news debate.

If the government wants to remove bias in news then shut down every single news channel but that is not the intent. The Modi government follows the Putin blue print for consolidating power. Consolidating control over media is paramount to that. There is a reason why more critical news organizations get raided but goverment friendly faces can get away with anything.

[Bullet500]

Have you looked at greater Indian media landscape? Some of articles posted are not even biased, some are just true, others are just tabloid nonsense, and these are handpicked ones by the fella. Yes it sucks but it still looks better standard than 90% of journalism in India to me. Those are how low the standards are.  If you look at BBC Hindi website, it looks 100X better and more professional than most other Indian news sources that people use. 

The dickhead posting the thread is clearly doing so in bad faith too. The one that boiled my blood is the one showing two articles, one mentioning Indian Army beating up civilians. Other explaining how Taliban managed to capture many cities without fighting. Like what does that even show? Should Indian Army be treated to the same standard as the fucking Taliban?

The most popular "news" shows in the country often feature people shouting and swearing at each other for hours. My parents watch that. I have seen two men try to virtually fuck each other with arrows and plastic missiles on TV news debate.

If the government wants to remove bias in news then shut down every single news channel but that is not the intent. The Modi government follows the Putin blue print for consolidating power. Consolidating control over media is paramount to that. There is a reason why more critical news organizations get raided but goverment friendly faces can get away with anything.

ohh definitely, that Twitter thread is in bad faith. It's one of those threads where propagandists use screenshots to create false equivalences. That's why I posted actual links to the pair of lockdown articles that I thought matter the most.

Screenshots should have never been made easy to take. The world was better before.

[Bullet500]

Comparing the "pollution" tweets: (i) https://twitter.com/BBCHindi/status/1584801955062452224 "What do you want to say to those who fired crackers yesterday?" (asking for opinions, context is Diwali), (ii) https://www.bbc.com/news/av/60198659 (China)

Let's compare Air Quality of Beijing (https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/) in January 2023 with New Delhi in October 2022 (https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/jawaharlal-nehru-stadium). Delhi is horrible. Not that Beijing is great either, but Delhi is absolutely horrible.

List of cities with worst air quality (PM2.5): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-polluted_cities_by_particulate_matter_concentration 13 out of top 17 are from India. Later cities are from China, however. These are numbers from 2016.

You can see where the debate in India has shifted to. Nobody is asking for clean air and clean rivers.

"No Indian study has shown pollution shortens life: Prakash Javadekar" - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/no-indian-study-has-shown-pollution-shortens-life-prakash-javadekar/articleshow/72397413.cms

Above is the comment by India's then Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Hilarious, isn't it?

[Max_powers]

Comparing the "pollution" tweets: (i) https://twitter.com/BBCHindi/status/1584801955062452224 "What do you want to say to those who fired crackers yesterday?" (asking for opinions, context is Diwali), (ii) https://www.bbc.com/news/av/60198659 (China)

Let's compare Air Quality of Beijing (https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/) in January 2023 with New Delhi in October 2022 (https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/jawaharlal-nehru-stadium). Delhi is horrible. Not that Beijing is great either, but Delhi is absolutely horrible.

List of cities with worst air quality (PM2.5): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-polluted_cities_by_particulate_matter_concentration 13 out of top 17 are from India. Later cities are from China, however. These are numbers from 2016.

You can see where the debate in India has shifted to. Nobody is asking for clean air and clean rivers.

"No Indian study has shown pollution shortens life: Prakash Javadekar" - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/no-indian-study-has-shown-pollution-shortens-life-prakash-javadekar/articleshow/72397413.cms

Above is the comment by India's then Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Hilarious, isn't it?

Its strange that how this is taken as a sign of some sort of bias against the government. Air Pollution and Water pollution has been a huge issue in India for decades and it is getting worse over time.
The issue is not the fault of this government alone but see how the issue is batted aside using nationalism and whatabouttism. Like these people are fine being pro air-pollution just because of their political allegiances. This is the same air pollution that will cut their lives short.

[Bullet500]

Mentality of an average BJP supporter. https://i.imgur.com/xXE6tzx.jpg

I can translate if anybody needs it.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

China is a one party, totalitarian state, if you want to be held to the same standards as them then I would suggest the argument is already lost.

You are absolutely right. It definitely wont be as totalitarian as the Chinese regime for one there are multiple faiths and multiple regional strongholds. And incidents involving the minorities turn into local politics and (though utter cretins take advantage of it) there is nothing that can be done because I am of the opinion that only if religion and politics separate, we can view any incident objectively. But thats never possible in a country like India. Every incident has a religious background.

Secondly, the secondary reason why BJP is so much strong is because Congress have been doing fuckall since 2014. Rahul Gandhi went beyond a national joke with his interview with Arnab. Tell me who will challenge Modi on the national stage in 2024. No one. 2014 was a landslide. 2019 was a landslide. 2024 will be a landslide again simply because of the growth. Who can rival him?

[west_london_red]

Yeah, at some point they need to look outside the Gandhi family but as for who, I have no idea. I generally follow Punjabi politics closer than Indian politics and would struggle to name a senior Congress politician outside of the Gandhi family where as I could probably name a few BJP ones. The only way I can see someone shifting the BJP is via regional parties gaining strength on local issues (similar to what the AAP did in Punjab) and forming some kind of national alliance excluding the BJP and INC, but then as I think Bullet said some time ago the BJP are very good at getting popular figures to jump ship to the BJP.

[Bullet500]

There isn't much truth in BJP's growth narrative to be honest. 2024 will be a landslide, but the reasons are different and obvious.

It's also pretty easy to turn Modi into a joke in an interview or press conference, but he doesn't give any. Disagree with Congress not doing anything since 2014. They have won quite a few state elections. However, it's their persistence of sticking with Rahul Gandhi and absolutely zero media airtime that's stopping them. Neither they have the funding to run their grassroots organisation 'Seva Dal' anymore. It's practically dead.

Yes, Kejriwal might be the only person who might be able to rise to the challenge. However, this isn't happening soon. AAP needs to win a couple of more states and I'm not sure if their approach to politics is right. Now, I can't provide the links for these their approach to politics is like: In Delhi, they say Punjab and especially Harayana aren't giving water to Delhi. In Haryana, they say that they will get water through SYL canal for Haryana. In Punjab, they say that SYL canal won't be built and Punjab will get to keep the water.

The only good thing is that they don't have blood in their hands yet.

[ScouserAtHeart]

I don't think the BJP will win a majority on their own this time, they'll need allies

[west_london_red]

Yes, Kejriwal might be the only person who might be able to rise to the challenge. However, this isn't happening soon. AAP needs to win a couple of more states and I'm not sure if their approach to politics is right. Now, I can't provide the links for these their approach to politics is like: In Delhi, they say Punjab and especially Harayana aren't giving water to Delhi. In Haryana, they say that they will get water through SYL canal for Haryana. In Punjab, they say that SYL canal won't be built and Punjab will get to keep the water.

The only good thing is that they don't have blood in their hands yet.

It doesn’t have to be the AAP, that’s just an example in one state. I don’t think you can fight the BJP by going toe to toe with them at a national level as it currently stands, so maybe the only way is to try and move the narrative away from the national level.

PS Not one drop!!!

[Bullet500]

PS Not one drop!!!

My view on this has been that Punjab got worse end of the deal after the state was divided. Future industries all went to Haryana due to its proximity to Delhi and all tourism went to Himachal. It's fair to backtrack on the SYL 'agreement' if there was any. Doesn't make sense from the riparian point-of-view either.

However, a couple of propaganda videos make it sound like Hindus want to use SYL to revive the Saraswati river which I find hilarious.

[west_london_red]

There’s also the issue of Chandigarh which was eventually supposed to be transferred to Punjab but obviously still hasn’t happened 50 years on.

[Bullet500]

There’s also the issue of Chandigarh which was eventually supposed to be transferred to Punjab but obviously still hasn’t happened 50 years on.

Chandigarh is tricky. Ideally it should be according to the language spoken by the displaced people whose villages were taken over to build Chandigarh. I think it's just about in favour of Punjabi even after the inflated 1961 language census numbers for Hindi.

At the same time, substantial rural populace of Abohar and Fazilka is Bagri speaking as of today. These aren't people who intentionally misreported in the language census. The might even be the majority. As long as Haryana gets those, it's fair.

I think the only issue with giving Abohar/Fazilka is that it might make Haryana just about (lower) riparian to a wee track of Satluj basin. Not sure it will matter, but people definitely don't say this openly. Edit: Actually no, the river is already in Pakistan although it's flowing very close to the border.

[Bullet500]

"Seattle becomes first US city to ban caste-based discrimination" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/21/seattle-ban-caste-based-discrimination

> Opposition to this ordinance comes from groups such as the Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America who say it unnecessarily singles out a community already vulnerable to discrimination in the US.

Great mental gymnastics.

[Max_powers]

Also now George Soros conspiracies are dominating the news cycle in India. We have gone full Putin/Orban now with propaganda.

[Bullet500]

Also now George Soros conspiracies are dominating the news cycle in India. We have gone full Putin/Orban now with propaganda.

I wonder how daft Soros is. Should have kept his mouth shut. He didn't say anything special, but we all knew what would follow.....

[Max_powers]

I wonder how daft Soros is. Should have kept his mouth shut. He didn't say anything special, but we all knew what would follow.....

I mean sure but the man is 92 years old. He is not in the same league of wealthy as many other billionaires around like Ambani and Adani, yet the man is running everything from small-town amercian municipal elections to Russian opposition parties to giant conspiracies against a country of a billion.

I wish I have the same vigor in my 90s. 

But seriously the news will run all of these bullshit stories and barely even mention real issues in India that affect real people. Things like youth unemployment and underemployment.

[west_london_red]

Yeah, I noticed on my social media feeds that Soros’s name seems to be cropping up a lot from BJP types.

[Bullet500]

"Bengaluru: CM arrives late, Borg declines felicitation" - https://www.deccanherald.com/sports/tennis/bengaluru-cm-arrives-late-borg-declines-felicitation-1193589.html

[Bullet500]

Priorities: https://twitter.com/IITKanpur/status/1629122667428081665

[Bullet500]

https://www.wired.com/story/indias-youtube-vigilante-monu-manesar-murder/

> India’s YouTube Vigilante Is Wanted for Murder
> Monu Manesar built a huge audience with violent content, but he’s far from the only sectarian streamer in Modi’s India.

You can find this criminal's pic with: (i) India's Home Minister, (ii) India's Minister for Information & Broadcasting. He recently killed two Muslims on suspicion of cow smuggling. No coverage in the media.

YouTube and Facebook haven't been keen on de-platforming these hate mongers in India. It's by design.

[west_london_red]

The social media platforms are never keen to deplatform anyone, but usually in India the instruction comes from the government. Obviously if you critics the BJP you get deplatformed pretty quickly, kill a couple of muslims and they’ll leave you alone.

[Bullet500]

Yeah, and people think due to "multiple strongholds" and "local politics", the regime won't be as totalitarian as China. It's all because this Indian government doesn't have the tools yet. When they do, we will know. We already see what they do with their current tools when they have power in a state.

[Bullet500]

"Hindutva Groups in America Cry Wolf About ‘Hinduphobia’ to Cover Up Anti-minority Violence in Modi’s India" - https://americankahani.com/perspectives/hindutva-groups-in-america-cry-wolf-about-hinduphobia-to-cover-up-anti-minority-violence-in-modis-india/