Calamity Reporters & Soondas

Anand Soondas and other reporters tell us how they actually go about collecting data while reporting on calamities.

WrittenBy:Rajyasree Sen
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The last rescue sortie has left Badrinath. And Uttarakhand has been knocked off the front pages and headlines of our newspapers and TV channels. But along with the images of devastation and that of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi flagging off a relief truck and behaving like they were at the F1, there’re far more cringe-worthy and ridiculous moments which will stay with us.

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Topping the list is Anand Soondas’ claim in The Times Of India that “Narendra Modi lands in Uttarakhand, flies out with 15,000”.  While the BJP’s cheerleaders started cartwheeling and making human pyramids in exultation at their very own Schindler, we couldn’t help wondering how Soondas had got his hands on this figure. Was the government’s Disaster Response Cell releasing figures and details of who rescued how many and from which community? How delightfully informative and divisive.

I, for one, was more perturbed by how Modi had identified these Gujaratis, and what happened if a Bengali had tried to get onto Modi’s list? Were we left behind in the wreckage of Uttarakhand with our monkey-caps and harridan wives?

Where did Soondas get his data from was the main question.

Before us, The Hindu managed to get in touch with Soondas. He informed them that “his source for the figure was Anil Baluni, the BJP’s spokesperson in Haldwani in Uttarakhand. Mr Soondas said the conversation between him and Mr Baluni had taken place in ‘the presence of Uttarakhand BJP president, Tirath Singh Rawat, a bunch of youth leaders from Gujarat and a couple of bureaucrats from Gujarat.’ Mr.Soondas said he had asked them if they were sure if all those taken back were Gujaratis, and the answer was in the affirmative. Mr. Baluni is quoted in the story as saying, ‘It’s amazing what he (Modi) has done here.’”(Read till the end for more on Soondas’ curiosity about the ethnic leanings of rescuers and those rescued.)

So is this how journalists reporting from calamity-struck zones get their figures? From conversations with political parties?

We first spoke to the man of the hour, Anand Soondas. He repeated what he’d written in his aptly named blog, “15,000 For The Road”. Sorry, I meant “One For The Road”. According to him, “On June 22, as Narendra Modi held a meeting in Dehradun’s Hotel Madhuban with top BJP leaders and bureaucrats from Gujarat regarding the crisis in Uttarakhand, a party worker, clearly impressed by the relief-and-rescue systems the chief minister [Modi] had put in place, wanted to talk about it with me. He [Baluni] wasn’t even offering me a story. He was perhaps only hoping that I would be interested enough to write about it… So that’s that about the Modi story. That it came from one of the BJP’s leaders; that, to be fair to Biluni, he did not try to hardsell it”.

Soondas not just insinuated but also stated that this is how he collects his data. Through conversations with political workers. More than a little worrying for the ordinary news reader or watcher. Because all those numbers we see of the missing and dead on news tickers and in news reports could all be the figment of some political party worker’s very active imagination.

Thankfully though, it seems that Soondas is the only one who believes in this mode of data collection. Although, once we tried to gather some data of our own from Uttarakhand, we realised why he might have resorted to doing his own unique data collection.

A senior TV anchor and reporter, who has reported from disaster zones before, informed us that whenever a calamity of this proportion takes place, a centralised Disaster Response Cell in coordination with NDMA is set up. This Cell is the source for all data on people rescued, dead or missing. It collates data from all the rescue organisations in the area, compiles it and shares it with the Press. Because there is no real census which one can depend on, the only number which is undependable is the number of people missing. The other figures are what all reporters go with. This senior TV anchor/reporter has never heard of journalists getting figures from political parties. But then we can always look at TOI to show us the way.

TOI also showed us how to refute their own reporter’s news reports, a few days after. Abheek Barman, senior journalist with Economic Times, wrote an editorial Modi’s Himalayan Miracle in which he slammed the news report and said the 15,000 figure was a “barefaced, cynical lie” and claimed that “this miracle was played up in media”. How kind of him not to mention that “the media” was his own newspaper and his own colleague Anand Soondas. Who needs foes when you have colleagues such as this?

Atul, the Zee News journalist at the Uttarakhand desk said that Zee News gets their information from the Press Information Bureau website (www.pib.nic.in) and from the Dehradun Government Conference –which is where they also get soundbytes. All sources are official, there are no conversations over tea which take place with political parties.

We decided to try and see how easy it is to get data on figures from the centralised disaster managements cells and placed a few calls ourselves. It took us close to two hours to get through to the Uttarakhand Control Room phone lines since some numbers weren’t working and one was switched off. When we finally managed to get through, we were informed that they aren’t the authority to provide information on the number of dead or missing persons. According to them, the number of people rescued was 1 lakh to 1.5 lakh. Tripti Parul, the media consultant of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said that the State government gives NDMA and Ministry of Home Affairs the figures which are then given to journalists.

We then spoke to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police who are conducting rescue operations in the area. PK Tiwari, Comdt 1st BN, ITBP was more forthcoming and sure of his information than the government organisations we spoke to. According to him, the IBTP started rescue operations on June 16, 2013 and rescued 20,000 people from Badrinath, Hemkunt and Joshimath area. There was no information about the number of people dead as the numbers are from Kedarnath valley and ITBP is not present there.

After the run-around we got with the government organisations, we could almost understand why Soondas might have cooked up a news report of his own and gone for data to the BJP. Almost. But if data collection is tough now, what was it like reporting during Bhuj?

Shramana Ganguly, Assistant Editor –Economic Times who had reported extensively on Bhuj said that while reporting on Bhuj, the district collector’s office acted as the nodal office for dissemination of figures during calamities. The other sources for data on the number of casualties were hospitals, police stations, fire brigade, locals who guided journalists through the process, and government officials. But no one approached any political party for figures even during the Bhuj disaster. Although journalists did have to go to more than one rescue operation team to consolidate figures, both during Bhuj and during the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

We did try to get in touch with senior reporters from NDTV and CNN IBN to ask how the two channels collated data on casualties in Uttarakhand. But much like the government relief organisations, we didn’t receive any response from any of them to our questions.

Reporting from a calamity-ridden state is obviously not easy. Not when the state information dissemination system is difficult to access or contact. But there is a centralised system, one which all those we spoke to seem to know of. It is heartening to know that all of them categorically stated that it is not common practice or practice at all to approach political parties for rescue figures.

Getting back to Anand Soondas, one thing which struck me during my conversation with him and while reading his blog and news reports was that he seemed to always be very concerned about the religious or ethnical leanings of those rescued or doing the rescuing. He asked the BJP spokesperson how many of those rescued were Gujaratis, he then asked Commander Yunus who conducted the first rescue sortie into Badrinath, “what was it like for a Muslim to be one of the first to come to the aid of Hindu pilgrims?” He also reported that Yunus said, “In the Air Force we are taught only one religion – to be Indian. That is what IAF pilots are trained to be. Had it not been for such tragic circumstances, I would have been grateful and happy to see the holy shrine.”

Before ending my conversation with Soondas I couldn’t not ask him why he seemed so bothered about people’s religion and community? Did he not realise the irrelevance of his questions? Soondas told me that, “The airforce itself was very happy with the story. Yunus is as happy to see it”. And Soondas asked this question because he feels that there can never be enough positive stories about Muslims. And about Gujaratis it seems.

We spoke to Group Capt Maheshwar, Director Operations – Media and Public Relations to ask whether the Indian Air Force as Soondas claimed, was indeed “very happy” with the story. According to Group Capt Maheshwar, “Religion is a personal matter and we do not mix it up with our operations. IAF has not made a statement on Soondas’ news report that I am aware of”. Hmm, Baluni is not alone.

Hopefully this is the last we’ll hear of how many Tamilians, Parsis, Bengalis, Rajasthanis and Oriyas have been rescued from various calamity-zones. Or at least we can hope so. In the meantime, since Uttarkhand has been knocked off the front pages, to borrow the great reporter Anand Soondas’ words to Newslaundry – “it’s time for another story, another page of the paper to be done, another article to be commissioned, so…”

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