OK, this is the time of look-backs and year-end round-ups. And one nagging look-back is the Indian mainstream media’s reportage on labour issues, or the lack of it.

There are an estimated 500,000 Indian workers in Qatar, who are primarily employed in unskilled and semi-skilled works. Thanks to Last Week Tonight’s epic rant on Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and The Guardian and Scroll’s unrelenting coverage, the plight of Indian and Nepalese workers in the Qatari construction sector, in the run-up to 2022 FIFA world cup has become a living-room discussion.

American satirist John Oliver has done a thorough take-down of FIFA and the death toll in the run-up to the Qatar World Cup. But the Indian mainstream media, which was both glued to the World Cup and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, chose to ignore the issue.

The precarious condition of migrant workers in Qatar came to the notice of human and labour rights organisations only when the government of Nepal protested against the unusually high numbers of fatalities of Nepalese migrant workers in Qatar. The mortality rate of the Indian migrant workers in Qatar was also very high. It is estimated that close to 1,000 Indian workers have died in Qatar in the last four years. The number of Indian workers who died in Qatar in 2012 and 2013 is 237 and 241 respectively. Despite the high number of body bags coming from Qatar, it never became an issue in India.

The wretchedness of these workers, who are Indian citizens, did not undermine the much-celebrated collective conscience of this nation. The Indian government has remained a mute spectator and the media, which has the irresistible habit of getting outraged at the drop of a hat, was conspicuously silent.

These workers were not Devyani Khorbragade, the Indian diplomat, who, many believed, was deliberately humiliated by the US authorities. The issue of Devyani Khobragade was given front-page reportage for many weeks and was debated on primetime slots in TV news channels, both in her glory and her fall.

The attitude of Indian authorities towards the plight of Indian migrant workers in Qatar has been, at best, indifferent, at worst collusive with the exploitative conditions of the Gulf employers. Instead of addressing the exploitative and inhuman working conditions of workers, the Indian authorities seemed to be justifying the high mortality rate of the workers. The Indian Embassy officials in Doha argued that most of these deaths were natural and that the number of deaths was not unusually high given the large number of Indian migrant workers in Qatar.

Human and labour rights organisations, however, rejected this flimsy and dubious explanation. That India has the highest fatality rate in the construction sector anywhere in the world, also made Qatatri deaths an unsurprising reality to our mainstream media’s tame, effete and immune sensibilities.

Many human rights organisations and intrepid news reporters have highlighted the miserable conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and have termed the Kafala system there as modern-day slavery. The blatant violation of basic rights of migrant workers in Qatar has attracted worldwide attention, since Qatar has won the much coveted right to host the football World Cup in 2022. Bribery scandal behind this bid victory is another issue that has rocked FIFA.

In order to build necessary infrastructure for the Football World Cup, Qatar requires large number of migrant workers and it is estimated that if labour conditions prevailed without intense public gaze, close to 4,000 workers would die before a single ball is kicked in the 2022 FIFA cup.

Eighty per cent of the workforce in Qatar is comprised of migrant workers. It has been reported that these workers are forced to work in extremely hot conditions without adequate safeguards such a facility of drinking water.

The real strength of a nation lies in its unflinching commitment to safeguard the basic rights of its citizens and protect their dignity and integrity. The Indian government, so far, has failed to discharge its responsibility towards migrant workers in Qatar or for that matter workers, as a community. It is also important that the media shines a light on the plight of the workers in Qatar, for more often than not, governments take only those issues seriously that capture the imagination of the vast population.

Juxtapose that with Indian media’s coverage of the Iraqi labour issue on the back of the Islamic State (ISIS) crisis, the silence on Qatari body-bags becomes even more stunning. Ever since the ISIS crisis erupted and news of kidnapping of Indian nurses and labourers surfaced, many TV news channels, newspapers have given wall-to-wall coverage, asked the nodal ministers and officials hard questions and ferried families of kidnapped workers to air their appeals and views and triggered national outrage and public discourse.

In fact, the Iraq issue had triggered state governments calling for national government to set up a monitoring body on overseas labour conditions. About time!

Can the Indian media’s neglect of Qatar on the face of coverage of ISIS be rationally explained? After the super-hero-like rescue efforts of the Indian nurses, what about the drivers and the blue-collar workers? Where is the follow-up story on their plight?

Media’s conspicuous silence on everything labour

If coverage fuels public outrage that triggers governmental and international action, then the Indian mainstream media has effectively stifled the outrage and the consequent actions in case of the Qatari crisis.

But it would be erroneous to suggest, it was the first and the only silent/over-sight on part of the media. Some other stand-out labour issues that were under-reported or unreported in the past few years are:

Maruti-Manesar plant violence: On July 18, 2012, the general manager-Human Resources of Maruti Udyog’ Manesar plant was set on fire in the midst of conflicting reports that resulted in hundreds of arrests of workers and murder trial by the state against some workers. Inhuman working conditions and maintenance of dual pay and benefits’ structures with huge discrepancy between the permanent and temporary employees were some of the reasons that led to the flash-point. But the media coverage, had hardly any investigation on the back-story or any spokesperson/representative of the contractual agitating workers or their unions.

Tata Tea wage ladder investigations: In February, 2014, after a Columbia Law School investigation on the poor working conditions at Tata Global Beverages’ plants in Assam and West Bengal, the World Bank’s private finance wing, International Finance Corporation, the partial-donor of Tata, set up an independent enquiry which found the conditions of plantation workers is appalling while the global beverage giant and corporate sustainability champion registered massive profits. From exploitative working conditions to violation of minimum wages (forget about living wages) to precarious housing conditions, the findings were many. But the reportage was silent.

Why 2014 is an outlier of black-out on labour issues?

Thousands of hours of electoral programming in television and reams of newsprint has failed to provide coverage to the labour issues, workers’ struggles and realities. Labour in India is going through one of the longest crises periods with enduring informalisation, further lowering of wages (with minimum wages increasingly becoming maximum wages), lack of social security and illegalisation of unions and collective bargaining, becoming the new normals.

Even the ILO-IAMR report in April 2014 while highlighting the increase in employment, shined a light on the concerning decrease in the quality of employment. And even that study went unreported. That this growth in numbers could mean inhuman working conditions, lack of social protection, neo-bondage, debt bondage, modern-day slavery and non-living wages, is rarely questioned.

PM Narendra Modi’s labour reforms called Shrameva Jayate have gone inadequately analysed, under-reported and inappropriately scanned with the industrialists’/employers’ perspective being the mainstream narrative. The fact that dedicated labour correspondents are becoming an endangered species in Indian mainstream media could be a reason. Also adding to the stunning silence is the casualisation and informalisation of the journalists themselves. And increasing elitism in Indian newsrooms, edit boards with takeover by the privileged from the Republics of South Delhi and South Mumbai adds to the blindness and whiting out. Extreme inequality leads to extreme apathy/indifference and Indian mainstream media’s silence on labour issues is just a symptom.

Whatever be the reason, it calls for a thorough enquiry and remedial action, because a country with 97 per cent employment in informal sector, cannot have such a deafening silence on the issue of labour, when unions are being criminalised and workers’ rights rescinded openly and clandestinely.

Can we expect a better 2015 for labour reportage?