NL Hafta

Episode 28 of Reporters Without Orders features our host Cherry Agarwal, along with Rohin Verma, two-time Ramnath Goenka award-winning Rahul Kotiyal, and Atul Dev of The Caravan. Atul begins by explaining the gist of his latest story -- a profile of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. “There are a whole bunch of charges against (Indian CJI Dipak Misra) in the impeachment motion that was eventually rejected by Venkaiah Naidu…I look at his entire career, I examine how these charges came to be, how these charges came to public light. Then I also look at his family history…There’s an analysis of his High Court and Supreme Court judgments and coming up to right now, with everything that has transpired in the Supreme Court in the past year…” Cherry then asks Rahul why he chose to explore the story of communal violence in Uttarakhand. "It’s been 18 years since Uttarakhand was created, and it was an area of Western UP which was never communally charged up. However, these increased in the past few years. Almost a dozen big incidents like that of shops being burnt and destroyed." “In the hilly districts of Western UP, no place has a Muslim population of higher than 3 per cent, but even there people have the fear that their sources are being taken over by a foreign other," explains Rahul. He then remarks on the Right-wing's tying of this mentality to the mass migration of Rohingya Muslims to the region. “If you look on-ground, you will hardly find any Rohingya over there. This narrative is spreading really fast on social media.” After Rahul remarks about the lack of analytical or critical local coverage of the event, Cherry comments, “It’s up to the local media to take a side.” On the writing process (a 23-page story), Atul says, “You just have to sit down and get done with it.” He also reveals the role of the newsroom in the creation of the story. “After I give them the story, I think 7 or 8 people are actively involved for a whole month…” “In the end, everything that I had found, I was able to put down," adds Atul. On being asked if he was fearful about writing on the sitting CJI, he comments, “There is no fear per se but it’s more difficult to find people who are going to talk to you.” The panel then moves on to the Hindi media’s coverage of a Dalit groom getting on a horse for the first time at his wedding procession. “What should have caught everyone’s eye is that even now someone has to fight to get a horse, just because they come from a particular community," a panelist adds. “Looking at this and the Chamandih story, it appears as though neither development nor weddings can happen without the caste angle," adds Rahul. The panel then discusses subscriber models and how to produce sustainable and constructive story-telling. For more, listen in!