soniasarkar26

Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

Breaking News: The rocket in your pocket

Posted by: on: April 3, 2018

A UP-based journalist has launched a broadcast service on WhatsApp. But the medium’s boon is also its bane, says Sonia Sarkar

 

What’s up? Rumours and fake videos about Mohammad Akhlaque (top) and Kanhaiya Kumar spread like wildfire through social media

At 8pm every day, Shivendra Gaur pushes out the evening bulletin to 15,400 subscribers on WhatsApp. The journalist based in Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, runs his broadcast service, Rocket Post Live, exclusively on this platform.

“People eagerly wait for my bulletin; if I get a bit delayed, I start receiving frantic calls,” says Gaur. From news updates to three to five-minute bulletins, everything reaches subscribers, courtesy the “broadcast list feature” on WhatsApp. “The broadcast list doesn’t work for spammers. Only subscribers who have my number saved in their contacts list get my broadcast message,” adds Gaur, who launched the service in 2016.

WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned chat app, has the highest number of users in India. Available in 10 local Indian languages as of January 2018, it has over 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide, out of which 250 millions, the highest, are from India.

Gaur disseminates news through 71 WhatsApp groups divided on the basis of blocks in every district. Last year, two stories were picked up by national dailies. “Our story forced the government to pay for the treatment of a farmer who was attacked by a tiger inside a tiger reserve. He was engaged for work there by government officials. In 2016, one of our stories on honour killing in Pilibhit led to the arrest of the accused,” he claims.

Rocket Post Live, available to subscribers against an annual fee, has proved to be a successful business model. Gaur leads a team of seven reporters and camerapersons who gather news from Pilibhit, Bareilly and Shahjahanpur districts. He says he didn’t approach advertisers because he didn’t want content to be governed by advertisement. But once subscription increased, advertisers made a beeline. “Last year, the revenue from advertisements was Rs 6.5 lakh. During Holi, an additional revenue worth Rs 2 lakh was generated,” he says.

Shivendra Gaur

Many have suggested that Gaur launch a separate app but he is not convinced. According to him, WhatsApp is the place to be. That is the global trend too. The 2017 Digital News Report, published by UK’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, says WhatsApp is the major source of news in over 34 countries. India, though, was not part of the study.

But in India, last year, the marketing solutions company, InterPublic Group, in association with FCB Cogito Consulting, released New Realities, a study which said YouTube and WhatsApp are the top two trusted social media platforms. A 2015 study, The Habits of Online Newspaper Readers in India, by photojournalist Pradip Tewari claimed 62.6 per cent people subscribe to online newspapers, most of which provide news free of cost. It also revealed that 56 per cent respondents share news with friends on social media or email them.

Digital strategists believe that at a time when a lot of people are reading news off their mobiles, WhatsApp as a news platform is an intelligent move. “It is interesting to see how a social relationship in a peer-to-peer network is being translated into a dedicated audience for news sharing. After all, WhatsApp is where the people are and news publishers cannot stay away from it when chasing greater reach and engagement,” says Sumandro Chattapadhyay, research director at Bangalore’s Centre for Internet and Society, which works on Internet and digital technologies.

But the platform has its limitations. First, only 256 people can be accommodated in a single broadcast list. Second, no more than 1,200 messages can be broadcast at one go. And after a broadcast to five lists (alternate term for groups), one has to wait for 11 minutes before moving to the next five. Third, subscription-based models cannot sustain traditional media houses, which depend on revenue from advertisements. Also, owing to end-to-end encryption, senders and recipients can only view messages, the origin of information is neither obvious nor easy to trace.

Most importantly, perhaps, the consequences of running fake news on this platform are far more immediate than any other. In 2015, Mohammad Akhlaque was lynched to death in UP’s Dadri after the rumour that he had stored beef at home spread like wildfire on WhatsApp. In 2016, fake videos showing the then students’ union president of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kanhaiya Kumar, shouting anti-India slogans and circulating on WhatsApp led to his arrest. JNU students faced harassment on the streets of Delhi and elsewhere for the longest possible time after that, all because millions had seen this video.

Tracing the source of problematic WhatsApp content is difficult. WhatsApp is working on a feature that will alert users to chain-messages but till then the onus is on journalists to counter fake news, says Gaur. In India, mainstream media does not play any immediate role in countering fake news on WhatsApp because it doesn’t have an organised presence there. Says Gaur, “When credible news agencies start using WhatsApp to disseminate news, people will take it seriously.”

Pratik Sinha, founder of anti-propaganda site AltNews, is not so sure that this will happen. Sinha, who used WhatsApp to disseminate news for over six months, says, “News which is ‘alarmist’ in nature circulates faster on WhatsApp. It is not possible to reach out to the same group of people circulating fake news using this medium because WhatsApp is a peer-to-peer network. The only way to reach this section is through traditional forms of mass media.”

Caveats notwithstanding, Gaur is on an expansion mode. Plans to expand the news service to all other districts of UP. Unstoppable, just like the WhatsApp forwards.

 https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/breaking-news-the-rocket-in-your-pocket-219820

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

‘Ideologies against the BJP should unify as an anti-communal force’

Posted by: on: March 26, 2018

Vijoo Krishnan, the man behind the stirring Maharashtra farmers’ march, spells out political necessities to Sonia Sarkar

 

There is no forgetting the image of the resolute foot. Calloused. Caked with earth and awash with blood. The skin torn in one place, flesh exposed – raw and red, screaming. It was one among 50,000, probably many more, pairs that covered 180 kilometres from Nashik to Mumbai for rights – the rights of the farmers of Maharashtra.

The march that culminated a fortnight ago ended with the BJP-led government in Maharashtra acceding to the key demands of farmers. The man behind this massive long march, however, remains steadfast in his refusal to take any credit for it. “I was just present in solidarity with them. Leaders such as Ashok Dhawale, J.P. Gavit, Kishan Gujar and Ajit Nawale made this happen,” says 44-year-old Vijoo Krishnan, joint secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the largest Left-affiliated farmers’ organisation with 1.6 crore members across India.

It has been difficult to catch Vijoo who is based in Delhi but has been on the move continuously. “The biggest thing is, it was the march of the farmers for their survival,” he says, as he leans back in the white plastic chair in his office in central Delhi. His words are forceful, without being aggressive. The pleasant smile never quite leaves his face.

You would not be blamed for thinking this mass protest was really easy to pull off, except that it was not. This long march didn’t become historic overnight. It was the result of a concerted effort of the AIKS for many months to organise farmers against the neo-liberal economic policies of the state and the Centre. “Our leaders have been preparing people to walk in this heat for months. Collecting grain, firewood and essentials for making this a success,” says Vijoo, who is also a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

He tells us how one of the comrades put out on social media a 40-second video of the rally, which caught the imagination of urban Indians. “Many social media enthusiasts, even those not belonging to our party, shared the video. Some even asked us for images which they shared on Twitter and Facebook – this forced mainstream media to cover it.”

Vijoo’s engagement with farmers’ woes is no one-off. For the last one decade, he has been proactive in raising agrarian issues related to minimum support price for crops, waiver of loans, land rights and land acquisition. And since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, he has been more busy than usual.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to bring ‘acchhe din’ or good times for farmers during the 2014 general elections campaign has fallen flat. He had promised cheaper loans, pension and insurance for farmers, fair and remunerative prices for crops as stated by the National Commission on Farmers but nothing happened. Instead, there has been a drastic cut in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Yojna, public investment in agriculture has been reduced, and cattle farmers have been lynched in the name of cow protection,” he says.

Speaking of lynching, didn’t the AIKS recently organise a two-day meeting under the umbrella of Bhumi Adhikar Andolan, a conglomerate of 300 grassroots organisations, to address the issue? He nods. “Attacks by cow vigilantes are not just attacks on minorities and Dalits but also attacks on agriculture and the economy of the farmers.”

Has the AIKS been able to garner support of the farmers of Bengal who moved away from the Left parties following the Singur and Nandigram land acquisition controversies? “Attacks on cadres by the Trinamool Congress workers have led to a considerable fall in our membership,” says Vijoo.

The AIKS apparently had one crore members across Bengal until 2011 but the numbers dropped to 60 lakh in 2013. “It has gone up to 80 lakh now,” he points out. According to him, the farmers of Bengal are in distress under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. His Bengal-based colleague, Amal Haldar, also told The Telegraph that reeling under huge debt since 2011, 208 potato and paddy farmers across the state have committed suicide.

Vijoo continues, “Plus, the minimum support price announced by the central government is Rs 1,550 per quintal for paddy. In Bengal, the farmers get around Rs 800-1,200 per quintal because there is no government procurement. The traders procure it, so they eat up the money.”

In one corner of Vijoo’s spartan office room is a red martyr’s column – meant to commemorate comrades who have died. It is a mobile structure and scribbled on it is the red salute – ” Amar Shaheedon ko Lal Salam“. It brings to mind the recent bloodbath between the Left and RSS workers in Kerala. According to one estimate, 85 CPI(M) workers and 65 RSS workers have been killed between 2007 and 2017. “RSS has opened shakhas even in Kannur, where the Left has the strongest base. But they have not been able to gain prominence,” says Vijoo, who originally belongs to Karivellur village in Kerala’s Kannur district.

He talks about the RSS’ violence in Tripura, how its workers have been torching CPI(M) offices there. “They started by demolishing Lenin’s statue, then they demolished statues of B.R. Ambedkar and the Dravidian icon Periyar – their intolerance makes them want all those ideologies opposing theirs to perish.”

But he doesn’t believe the Left is going to perish anytime soon? The success of the recent farmers’ rally in Maharashtra – wherein the state government agreed to waive their loans, stop forceful acquisition of farm lands and compensate farmers hit by natural calamity – is proof for Vijoo that it isn’t. “These struggles ensure that an atmosphere is created for the defeat of communal forces. We may have had electoral reverses but nobody can write off the Left just yet.”

But given the recent electoral performance of the Left, it doesn’t look like it can defeat “communal forces” by itself. Then again, the top CPI(M) leadership has refused to establish an alliance with BJP’s biggest opposition, Congress. Since the Left withdrew support for the Congress-led UPA-I government in 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the two haven’t seen eye to eye. “We have to channelise all energies to defeat the BJP in all seats, whether we are directly in the contest or not. We need not have an alliance or understanding with the Congress,” he says. Then adds, “Yet our position against the BJP as the main enemy may indirectly benefit the Congress.”

Vijoo stresses that the Congress should be clear about its strategy, especially on the recent violence by the Sangh and affiliated forces. A fact-finding report – titled “Divide and Rule in the Name of Cow”, brought out by Bhumi Adhikar Andolan this month – criticises the Congress for not taking a stand on lynching.

What does he make of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his temple run? Does he think Congress is adopting a soft-Hindutva approach? “That also is there,” Vijoo says. “This is a hypocritical position – they have to give it up.”

And the Left’s own niggling issues – how does he see the Prakash Karat vs Sitaram Yechury fight resolve itself? “It is media hype,” he says. “Ours is a democratic party. For us, there could be different opinions but we go by what the party congress decides.”

At this point, a buzzing wasp enters the scene making Vijoo nostalgic. He recalls how a wasp stung him during his JNU days. Those days he was campaigning for the Delhi University Students’ Union elections. “I couldn’t recognise myself in the mirror for many days,” laughs the former JNU students’ union president, thus taking the sting out of an otherwise intense discussion.

We get chatting about his student days, JNU then, JNU now. The conversation turns to the current crop of student leaders from the institution – Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid. Vijoo says that individual leaders get a lot of attention these days. “In our times, it was always the organisation that got precedence.” Could it be that this seminal philosophy defines his characteristic reticence, the reluctance he expressed earlier on at being credited with the success of the farmers’ rally? Perhaps.

We are still on JNU. And he says after a minute’s thought, “There should be better linkages between the similar ideologies that have cropped up.” If you ask him, even beyond the campus, the band of young leaders – Jignesh Mevani, Chandrashekhar Azad and Akhil Gogoi – should come together. He says, “They should be part of the issue-based unity against the communal BJP. They should organise into a new, unified force.”

Is it possible in Bengal?

“Given the kind of attacks our workers have been facing in Bengal, the corruption, compromises with communal forces and the kind of policies, Trinamool has adopted, doesn’t give any scope for electoral alliance,” he explains. 

As I get up to leave, I spot a poster with the visual of a blood-soaked trident and the nib of a fountain pen. The message scrawled on it reads: “Choose which side you are on”. That’s for us, not him. His choices couldn’t be clearer.

https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/ideologies-against-the-bjp-should-unify-as-an-anti-communal-force-218139

Tags: , , , , ,

Search


  • Seeker and her search: Hi, thanks for liking it. I couldn’t open the link you sent. Thanks
  • desilvasachitha: Incredible post Sonia, I am so glad that I stumbled upon your blog. Simply stunning sceneries, instantly put a spell on me with breathtaking beauty o
  • Seeker and her search: Hi Ali Mirzad, Thanks for your note. But I am sorry, I cannot give you the permission to use any photo published for this piece. Kindly don't use it.

Categories

Archives

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.