Shafat Mir, 32, thinks he wasted six years of his life in journalism.
Mir was a reporter with the Rising Kashmir, a leading Srinagar-based English daily, until August 5, 2019. On that date, the Indian government imposed a security lockdown and communications restrictions in the region to prevent protests against its unilateral decision to withdraw the semi-autonomous status of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution.
Journalist Anuradha Bhasin has spoken out against the media blockade and Internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir. She sees the recent ransacking of her flat as an attempt to silence her.
The move splits the state into two centrally administered union territories and presents a host of complex challenges such as the continued detention of political leaders under repressive laws like the Public Safety Act of 1978, which allows detention of any individual for up to two years without any trial. The imposition of a controversial new media policy, widely seen as a threat to press freedom, about a year after the revocation of Article 370 has dealt a major blow to the Kashmiri media.
“Little hope”
The current state of the media in Jammu and Kashmir, according to observers, sprang from the political situation bedevilling the region. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation even more difficult for the already battered news outlets.
During the initial days of the coronavirus lockdown, the newspapers in Kashmir could not bring out their editions. When they finally resumed operations, the newspapers did not keep pace with the political developments. They disengaged their district correspondents, columnists, and cartoonists. While the grassroots reporting completely disappeared, newspaper columns were largely filled with government-issued press releases and articles on subjects that were not even remotely connected with the political realities of Kashmir. The media’s self-censorship largely continues even today.
Now Mir occasionally writes for some national media outlets, and spends most of his time helping his father in their family’s grocery.
“I had little hope that my organization would retain me after the first lockdown is over,” said Mir, who has a post-graduate degree in journalism from the Islamic University of Science and Technology Kashmir. “But since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I have given up that hope as well.” He is now rethinking his career choice and is considering taking out a loan to start a small business and to earn a decent livelihood.
No job security
He recognized that the coronavirus-induced lockdown left a devastating blow to all media organizations in the city of Srinagar. “There are hundreds of journalists who have become jobless in the recent months,” Mir added.
There is no job security in the media, as journalists are mostly hired without any written agreement. “They don’t get salary slips or benefits like a pension and medical insurance,” said Bashaarat Masood, a Srinagar-based journalist who works with the Indian Express. “Journalists in most local media outlets are usually hired or fired through word of mouth.”
Ishfaq Ahmad Tantray, general secretary of the Kashmir Press Club, also pointed out the miserable conditions of jobless journalists, who have very limited future job prospects given the dismal media scenario, little presence of other private enterprises in conflict-ridden Jammu and Kashmir, and the lack of government jobs.
“On the eve of Eid-ul-Azha, Kashmir Press Club announced (that we will) provide some financial relief to the jobless journalists. We were shocked when a large number of media practitioners responded,” Tantray said.
With the pandemic, Tantray added that the media industry is now facing a third onslaught. “The pandemic-induced restrictions and the new media policy that followed last year’s security lockdown have ruined the health of Kashmir’s media industry,” he said.
The local media industry comprises newspapers, a few cable network channels, and newly emerging mobile journalism. According to the Registrar of Newspapers for India, there are 727 newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir. However, most of them did not have any reporters or readership even before the government imposed the security lockdown on August 5 last year.
The remaining newspapers have laid off nearly 80% of their staff in the past year, said Gulzar Bhat, a freelance journalist from Kashmir. “Those who were disengaged during the security lockdown have now given up hopes of resuming their jobs due to the ongoing pandemic that has completely ruined the media outlets financially,” he added.
Repressive environment for media
Since 2019, the media in Kashmir has been under assault. Scores of journalists have been roughed up, illegally questioned, and detained by security forces. In some instances, the police filed cases against reporters under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a draconian law under which a person can be designated a terrorist and jailed for up to seven years.
Aside from loss of job security and a repressive media environment, journalists in Jammu and Kashmir have also had to contend with an internet blackout imposed by the government on the region. Photo by Mubashir Khan
Under the New Media Policy 2020, the Directorate of Information and Public Relations is authorized to access the content of print, electronic, and other forms of media for “fake news, plagiarism, and unethical or anti-national activities.”
The directorate can also regulate advertisements, the lifeblood of media organizations. “There shall be no release of advertisements to any media which incite or tends to incite violence, question sovereignty and the integrity of India or violate the accepted norms of public decency and behavior,” the policy states.
Kashmir Times, the oldest English daily newspaper in Jammu and Kashmir, had to close its Hindi and Dogri editions in 2018 because it had been receiving negligible or no government advertisement since 2016. Its English edition is also on the verge of closure because government advertisements have totally stopped since November 2019.
Kashmir Times executive editor Anuradha Bhasin recognized that the magnitude of job losses is “alarming.” However, she said there is no concrete data from any organization to support this.
“Regular staffers have been fired or their salaries have been reduced, and the freelancers have not been paid for their contributions made to newspapers for months. There are remote possibilities of payment by organizations to freelancers as organizations are always noncommittal about their payments,” Bhasin added.
Unfair wages
Sanjay Pathak, president of Press Club Kathua, an elected district body of journalists, said that even before the pandemic, national media houses were not even paying minimum wages to their reporters. The rate approved by the Jammu and Kashmir labor department for unskilled workers is $3.05 per day.
Pathak cited the case of photojournalist Pankaj Mishra, who had been with Dainik Jagran, the most circulated national Hindi daily, for 15 years. He was “fired recently,” Pathak said. “While he used to get a salary of $203 per month, he has now started working with Amarujala, another national Hindi daily, as district reporter on a meager salary of $67 per month.”
Pathak said that many national papers have not given even meager pay to their reporters for the past few months. “Gurpreet Singh, a district reporter of Punjab Kesri, another national Hindi daily, has not received his monthly salary, which is $81.20, since March this year,” he said.
The union government has also proposed to do away with the constitution of a wage board–tasked with devising a permanent wage fixation machinery–along with axing the protections that were designed to protect the media.
Greater Kashmir journalist Arvind Sharma, who was also laid off because of the pandemic, said many young journalists in the Jammu region also lost their jobs. “The paper had to shut its Jammu bureau in March this year,” he said. “I made the wrong career choice. Journalism took away the golden years of my life.”
An ongoing slump
Ashwani Kumar, president of Press Club Jammu, said, “The Tribune, a leading English daily of north India, has closed down its bureaus in the winter and summer capital cities of Jammu and Kashmir. Similarly, the Hindustan Times, another national English daily, has shut down its office in Jammu city amid the COVID-19 lockdown. There is no hope of reviving the media industry and job availability to the media practitioners in the next few years due to the COVID-19 shutdown.”
Apart from Hindi, Urdu newspapers are also badly hit by the ongoing slump. Nazim Nazir, the associate editor of Tameel-I-Irshad, an Urdu daily published from Srinagar, said that in the wake of the pandemic, the circulation of his newspaper has declined from 25,000 to merely 2,000 copies daily due to financial problems.
Nazir said, “The printers have been demanding money, compelling the owners to sell their assets to meet expenditures.” The closing of operations, as well as retrenchment of employees, by the national and local media industry players are in stark contrast to the claims made by the union government that the revocation of Article 370 would usher a new era of development and open up new job opportunities in Jammu and Kashmir.
“The annual average revenue from the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity advertisement is around $135,333.40, but this year it will not be more than $13,533.34,” Nazir said. He added that both the Jammu and Kashmir government’s Department of Information and Public Relations and the central government’s Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity had drastically cut advertisements to the newspaper by nearly 80%. “Back-to-back lockdowns have ruined the local economy and the private sector has nothing to advertise,” he said.
Aside from affecting media workers, the financial crisis in the media industry also seems to discourage aspiring journalists from applying for media studies. Shahid Rasool, head of the department of mass communication in the Central University of Kashmir, said enrollment has recorded a drastic decline in almost all the institutions offering journalism and mass communication courses.
Since 2019, the media in Kashmir has been under assault. Scores of journalists have been roughed up, illegally questioned, and detained by security forces.
Rasool attributed the trend to the non-institutionalization of the media industry in Jammu and Kashmir, where journalists are always underpaid.
“After doing a Bachelor in Education, if one gets a job as a teacher, s/he will get a monthly salary of about $541.69,” he said. “But after completing a post-graduate degree in journalism, one will get less than $135.40 every month and no job security.”
Rasool stressed the need for reinventing media courses so that students could compete in other related fields and avail themselves of financially rewarding jobs.
“The loss of a large number of reporters at district levels would silence the voices of the common masses,” Bhasin said.
Bhasin herself has experienced what she considers an attempt to silence her. Last year, representing Kashmir Times, she filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the media blockade and internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370, reported Newsclick. Her government-allotted flat was recently ransacked.
Bhasin herself has experienced what she considers an attempt to silence her. Last year, representing Kashmir Times, she filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the media blockade and internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370, reported Newsclick. Her government-allotted flat was recently ransacked.
The lack of an independent press “will ultimately make the conflict dynamics far more complex in Jammu and Kashmir, said Bhasin. There is a dire need for collective introspection among the media industry players to save journalism in the absence of revenue resources.” ●
Akshay Azad is an award-winning journalist based in Jammu and Kashmir. He writes about conflict, politics, migration, and human rights.
