If you are a newspaper reader in India, you would not have missed the biggest story that has dominated news space at least in one major national newspaper. The Indian Express has led the way by doing a special series “What will NOT count in Bihar” by taking a close look at the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that is currently being conducted by the Election Commission (EC) in the state where assembly elections are due in November.

I have qualified this statement by saying “if” you are a newspaper reader, knowing fully well that the number of people who pick up a physical newspaper and read it is steadily declining in this country.

The SIR has been challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it excludes people, mostly poor, who cannot produce one of the 11 documents demanded by the EC. On July 10, a two-judge vacation bench of the court refused to stay the process underway but suggested to the EC that it include three documents that have been excluded from the list of 11 – Aadhaar card, election ID (that has been issued by the very same EC conducting the revision) and ration card (yes, these still exist).

This column will not argue the rights and wrongs of the process underway. That will be addressed later this month by the Supreme Court. Instead, I want to focus on the print media’s coverage. Do note that it is exclusively print media as our TV news channels as always are preoccupied with other issues.

The Indian Express has done the most extensive coverage although now that this has become such a talking point, and been taken by the apex court, other newspapers have followed. The Hindu had flagged the problems posed by the SIR and has published several follow-up stories like this one. 

Looking at the ground reports, analysis, backgrounders and opinion pieces that The Indian Express has published in recent days, there are several facts about the “real” India that shout out to a discerning reader.

For instance, one of the documents that the EC requires to determine whether you qualify as a voter in Bihar is a birth certificate. You would think that in the year 2025, when our leaders boast to anyone willing to listen that India is making rapid progress on all fronts, this would not be a problem. Yet in 2007, the year that people who are 18 now and would qualify as voters, only 26.2 per cent of people in Bihar had birth certificates. In other words, almost two-thirds of potential new voters would be excluded if this was the only criteria. 

You could still qualify if you had a passport. But barely 2 percent of people in Bihar have passports. Or if you had a school-leaving certificate. According to the 2011 census, only 23 percent of people in Bihar have completed high school. 

Each of these facts ought to be triggers for follow up stories. Why is it so difficult to get a birth certificate? Why is basic education still a distant dream in the second largest state in India? 

Even as these facts emerged, buried in the stories about the revision of electoral lists, another story was prominently displayed in many newspapers.

Apparently, the World Bank has concluded, in a recent report, that India is one of the most “equal” societies in the world and is ranked fourth in the world. Although economists have torn apart the basis for this conclusion, it is ironic that this story was displayed prominently in newspapers without too much discussion even as the facts, stated above, about Bihar were emerging. 

Incidentally, the fact-checking site AltNews has exposed how this story, based on a press release sent out by the Press Information Bureau (PIB), misrepresented the actual World Bank report.  This is indicative of the blind reproduction of government press releases by the media without doing their own due diligence.

In any case, you would need to be a journalist who keeps her eyes firmly shut if you bought into reports about India being one of the most equal societies. You don’t even need to step out of the comfort of a metropolitan city to realise how far that is from the truth.  

Read this story by Sabah Virani in Hindustan Times about one municipal ward in India’s richest city, Mumbai. It tells you how a garbage dumping ground continues to be the site where the poor are dumped. Not just today, but for decades. And yet the media in the “city that never sleeps” apparently rarely stirs to recognise that this too is Mumbai. 

Then take another boast, that of “Digital India”. There is no question that India has made great progress. Mobile connectivity is extensive, payment through digital platforms has taken off in a big way. But still, there are islands of disconnect that coincide with those that also face developmental neglect. The reporting on the SIR has exposed this because a newspaper has given space to such stories. 

Some of Santosh Singh’s reports in Indian Express on the SIR have been especially interesting. He spent a day and a night with one Booth Level Officer (BLO) tasked with collecting documents and data and uploading them on the EC app.  

The BLO the reporter followed is a 49-year-old schoolteacher. As he struggles to connect, he tells Singh, “The app rarely opens during the day and the internet slows down at night. The officers tell us to go where the network is good. Kya pahad par chadhun (Should I climb a mountain?” It takes him 20 minutes to upload the first of the 60 forms that he has. He manages to upload just 30 of the 60 by 2.15 am, having started at 10 pm after a day of collecting forms from individuals.

This graphic description of the process, and the reality it reminds us of, is the real back story of the SIR. Digital India works for those who can connect to this other India, that is apparently making great strides. But the one that cannot, or does so with difficulty, tells us another side of a story that always remains to be told. And that is what the media ought to be doing, did do at one time, and now does only sporadically.

The India that dominates news space is the one that is entitled. There is another India that comes into view, often coinciding with elections, that is starkly different. Any respectable news organisation in this country ought to accept that both are legitimate areas for reporting and coverage. Yet, that these glimmers of the other India emerge so sporadically is a reflection on the state of our media.

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