Reporters Without Orders Ep 238: Jharkhand’s loan sharks, Bihar’s RTI activists

Host Basant Kumar is joined by freelance journalists Anand Dutta and Umesh K Ray.

They talk about Anand’s report for BBC on loan sharks in Jharkhand, including how one pregnant woman was run over by a cartel of debt collectors. Anand explains how poverty is rising in the state and how people who took out loans before the pandemic are now trapped in huge debts.

Umesh talks about his story about the persecution, even murder, of RTI activists in Bihar. “Bihar was the model state in the days soon after the Right to Information Act passed,” he writes in the story, titled “Pending”. “Then began the slow slide into intimidation, chaos, silence – and much worse.”

This and a lot more as they talk about what made news, what didn’t, and what shouldn’t have.

Tune in.

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Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:01:17 - Jharkhand’s loan sharks

00:23:10 - Persecution of RTI activists in Bihar

00:41:00 - Recommendations

Recommendations

Umesh

Teesri Fasal

Anand

India Today Hindi

Basant

RTI Kaise Aayee

Produced and recorded by Tehreem Roshan, edited by Samrendra K Dash.