Month: December 2016

It can help me cope with a changing, unpredictable world, enlarging a personal worldview to embrace those outside my own experiences and ideology

We have been similarly clueless about those live-tweeting the end of their world from the frontlines of Aleppo. We cannot comprehend what it means to be refugees so desperate to leave a war-torn country that even risk of death is acceptable collateral

And before you know it, it’s here again. That time of year to make fresh resolutions, determined to wake up energised and renewed.

Learn a foreign language; meet new people; read more books; exercise more; get a new hobby. After years of facsimile resolutions (and years of breaking them), I gave the ritual a break. But this year, I’m going back, and instead of the usual self-improvement missives, I have just one word on my list: Empathy. Let me explain why.

As individuals, we ask, what can we do to make the world better? Can I take a position that will make society less divisive?

The year about to end has seen a planetary shake-up not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. We even have a catchy descriptor: The year of disruption. Undeniably, from Brexit to the US elections, from the rise of nationalism to demonetisation, we’ve had a year of unprecedented upheaval, marked by divisiveness, shrill opposition, suspicion, and violence.

Read: The great Dalit cauldron and why it matters

It’s been a year when everyone has had an opinion and almost nobody has appreciated the idea of a counterview. An older, civilised concept of an exchange of ideas and the art of conversation is now a diatribe.

In India, a year punctuated by nationalism, Dalit unrest, agitating Marathas, encounter killings, protestors in Kashmir, farmers in distress, pollution in cities, fake videos on TV news, and continuing assault on women everywhere, is coming to a noisy end with the schisms in our discourse over demonetisation.

The rash of analyses, both for and against, had one thing in common – neither side could see the other point of view. Those in favour of the move spoke of short-term pain, social good and a nationalistic duty to stand in line. Those against were convinced of Armageddon, totted up the death in numbers of those standing in ATM queues and spoke of the unseen misery of fragile economic lives.

But the uncomfortable and obvious fact with both sides speaking so authoritatively for the poor was just this: neither had any first-hand experience of poverty.

Read: It’s yesterday again: Kashmir’s old wounds need political healing

We have been similarly clueless about those live-tweeting the end of their world from the frontlines of Aleppo. We cannot comprehend what it means to be refugees so desperate to leave a war-torn country that even risk of death is acceptable collateral. As we retreat into our isolated lives, it seems clear that we will see less and less of other experiences in the coming year.

In our own country we – and this sadly includes much of our media — shut our eyes to kids blinded by pellet guns in Srinagar, are clueless about the blockade by the United Naga Council, and are unconcerned with allegations of rights violations in Bastar.

Certainly, some things should never be tolerated — racial prejudice, patriarchy and the caste system for instance.

But we need to understand that there is a reality beyond our own comfort zones. That every life matters. I will never know what it’s like to be that child outside the car window or the transgender battling prejudice or the woman facing domestic violence. What I might understand, however, is injustice. And if I can see injustice in that life and raise my voice against it – no matter how feeble that voice – I will at least begin to make a difference.

As we harden our positions, we need to acknowledge too that an opposing point of view might have merit. That every right-winger is not a bigot; that every nationalist is not a fascist and that some men’s rights activists might have a fair point of view.

And so I can only hope that my new year resolution of empathy – the ability to share the feelings of another — would help me cope with a changing, unpredictable world, enlarging a personal worldview to embrace those outside my own experiences and ideology.

Unless we make a determined effort to get out of a narrow and confined complacency we are doomed for darker, not brighter days ahead. Empathy might not be a solution, but it will at least be a beginning.

Namita Bhandare is gender editor, Mint

The views expressed are personal

All of us with smartphones are now publishers of our own stories on social media, consuming, sharing, forwarding often to groups that think and feel like us. The truth must be out there, somewhere. But when we have a yarn to spin, does it really matter?

Just this past one week, a hacker called Legion accessed the social media accounts of two senior journalists.(Shutterstock)

The great truth about social media, it used to be said, was that it provided an alternative to mainstream media. Traditional media were almost pathologically biased against the BJP, or so went conventional rightwing lore, and, therefore, social media would right a historical wrong and open up a democratic space with ordinary citizens driving the narrative.

There is much that is wrong with old media. Paid news, where advertisers purchase news space, for instance. But the alternative narrative seldom, if ever, dwells on this. Instead, a vast spin factory that straddles geography, language, gender and, now, even ideology has come together to obscure the meaning of ‘truth’.

Read: Running away from the trolls

Just this past one week, a hacker called Legion accessed the social media accounts of two senior journalists. The story now making the rounds is that one of them had emailed an off-record conversation with Apollo management about the possible cause of J. Jayalalithaa’s death: Wrongly prescribed diabetes medicine. If true, it has larger implications, as details of the ailment that led to the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s death have never been revealed. Rumour, fact or innuendo? The journalist, news organisation and hospital aren’t talking, so it’s hard to tell.

The same week, faking news on demonetisation swung wildly from GPS-enabled Rs 2,000 notes to reports of bank lockers allowed to be opened only in the presence of income tax officers with thousands of retired officers being roped in. It doesn’t help that the government’s own demonetisation narrative keeps shifting from black money, counterfeit notes and terrorism to cashless society, or, well, not exactly cashless but nearly cashless.

Read: ‘Inactive’ BJP not digitally smart despite PM Modi’s social media push

In a post-truth world, facts are less-than-sacred. The political narrative is decidedly emotional. In Goa, voice choking with emotion, Modi speaks of how he ‘left my home and everything for the country’. In Delhi, Rahul Gandhi promises an ‘earthquake’ when he reveals the ‘truth’ about Modi’s personal corruption in Parliament.

The abdication of truth to emotion has, shamefully, crossed into some television news channels where ‘national interest’ often trumps the first journalistic rule of presenting facts. Taking its cues from social media, many old media channels now assume that it is against the national interest to question human rights in Kashmir, report on demonetisation’s pain, allow a Pakistani studio guest to speak without interjection, question a court order on the mandatory singing of the national anthem, probe any army action. Arnab Goswami’s new TV venture is reportedly, and unsurprisingly, to be called Republic.

To this mix of social media, traditional media, emotion and politics, add a fifth dimension — monitoring. Algorithms on Facebook, Google and Twitter track consumer preferences. A great deal has already been written about media ‘bubbles’ and how we receive and forward views that reinforce the way we think, moving further away from an alternative point of view. “Social media enable members of such groups to strengthen each other’s beliefs, by shutting out contradictory information, and to take collective action,” notes The Economist in a September article, Yes I’d Lie to You.

Read: Face of Congress ad faces social media fury

The decline of media credibility – in large parts justified — and the rise of social media comes at a time when technology in India is booming with 684 million unique mobile users, 370 million of whom access the internet. Each one is a potential news outlet, each one with the power to disseminate facts, spin or just rant. In a post-truth world, we don’t even need words; jokes, cartoons and memes will all do nicely.

As old media struggles to keep up and adopt many of social media’s tactics, especially its appeal to emotion, we find that both can spin, both can have agendas. Only traditional media remains (somewhat) accountable.

All of us with smartphones are now publishers of our own stories on social media, consuming, sharing, forwarding often to groups that think and feel like us. The truth must be out there, somewhere. But when we have a yarn to spin, does it really matter?

Namita Bhandare is gender editor, Mint

The views expressed are personal

@namitabhandare