Even seemingly straightforward accounts on the unfolding COVID-19 catastrophe in India -- never mind ones that contain direct, scathing criticism -- are the sort of things that Modi and his government want expunged from social media.
Politicians and others are dubbing it a "Modi Made Disaster" on
Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media, but you may never read
these posts.
This is because the
Indian government has been busy ordering the platforms to take down the large number of posts flagged by them that
are critical of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu
nationalist government's handling of the latest devastating wave of the pandemic.
"Not a surprise.
But terrifying nonetheless," tweeted author and activist Naomi Klein, as reported by the publication Truthout, who
has previously written about the authoritarian ways in which Modi's
government has throttled basic free speech in India.
Over the last six
days, India has registered over an average of 330,000 COVID-19 cases per day,
and two days ago, the number of cases crossed 350,000, making it the site of the largest single
day number of cases in the word so far.
Many estimates suggest that even these numbers are extremely
undercounted.
Reports have described
scenes of innumerable bodies being cremated in parking lots instead of
cremation grounds in various cities, so overwhelming is the death count. These
images haunt the internet and is giving fuel to the fierce criticism that is now dogging Mr Modi.
CHOKING
DISSENT
Modi's administration,
though, hopes to choke that potential torrent into a trickle, so it doesn't
besmirch his reputation.
The WSJ reports that according to the Lumen database, a Harvard
University project that tracks requests to remove online content, the Indian
government asked Twitter to de-list as many as 100 posts critical of the
government's handling of the pandemic over just the last few days during which
the virus has laid waste to the country.
Some of these posts
were by rival politicians such as one by Moloy Ghatak, an opposition party leader in the
state of West Bengal, who wrote: "India will never forgive PM
@narendramodi for underplaying the corona situation in the country and letting
so many people die due to mismanagement. At a time when India is going through
a health crisis, PM chose to export millions of vaccine to other nations."
He used a hashtag in Hindi #ModiHataoDeshBachao, which means "Remove Modi,
save the country".
Others were by
photographers, journalists, and filmmakers. Truthout details how a post that showed patients lying on the
floor while being treated in makeshift tents is now coming up as blocked, as
just one example of many.
Another post, by Reuters chief photographer, Danish
Siddiqui, showed images of mourning families in packed hospitals and makeshift
cremation sites.
"Never imagined
that I would be a witness to these scenes in my hometown. Coronavirus disease
(COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc in New Delhi, India's national capital.
Pictures taken on 23.04.21," the blocked post said.
It may seem absurd
that many of these posts contain nothing outside the realm of reportage but
nevertheless have been blocked.
Yet, chances are you
won't find any honest analysis of what is taking place in India on either
Indian news sites or television channels, say critics. Most of them are either champions of the
government since they get the bulk of their business from them, or they are
simply too terrified to say anything that could be seen as tarnishing Modi and
his large cult of followers.
This is not without
good reason. In the last few years alone, India has imprisoned a large number
of journalists, poets, writers, academics, stand-up comedians, and activists who have dared to offer solidarity to
historically oppressed minority groups.
The Muslim stand-up
comedian in question was famously arrested for a joke he didn't tell.
GROSS
INCOMPETENCE
Finding a pliant
public may no longer be so easy.
It is becoming
painfully clear from dispatches, such as the one in Time
Magazine, that instead of spending the last six to twelve months honing a
national COVID strategy, building up resources such as desperately-needed
oxygen supplies now being shipped in from foreign shores, ramping up
vaccination production, and preparing the country for the onslaught of the next
wave, Modi and his ministers did very little.
In fact, it was much
worse.
Reports proliferating the internet suggest that not only did the government not persuade the
Election Commission to postpone elections that were scheduled for early this
year, it went on a massive campaigning spree across five Indian states that are
going to the polls right now.
Modi personally
addressed 20 political rallies, each of them with thousands of unmasked people
attending.
There's a video embedded in an NDTV news story
where Modi is boasting of the large crowd he has drawn just a few days ago,
even when India at the time had already registered two days of over 200,000
COVID cases.
Incomprehensibly, Modi
and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) actually approved of India's gargantuan
religious fair, the Kumbh Mela, being brought forward from its scheduled date
next year to this April -- despite the pandemic. Even when things appeared to
be getting worse, they inexplicably endorsed the fair.
100 million pilgrims
attended it over the past few weeks possibly making it the largest super-spreader ever in the history of contagions.
As Indians either lie
dying in the corridors of hospitals or on foothpaths outside, there has been no
sign of anyone in any governmental authority on location helping to ameliorate
the crisis.
Instead, Yogi
Adityanath, a Modi acolyte and hardliner who is chief minister of the state of
Uttar Pradesh that has been accused of terrorising Muslims, had declared that anyone talking about oxygen or hospital bed
shortages in the state would have their properties seized and that they would
be arrested.
Meanwhile, images of desperate, frantic, and sick in the hospitals
and cremation grounds of the capital city of Lucknow populated the internet.
A
COMPLICIT SOCIAL MEDIA?
Have Twitter and
Facebook betrayed India in its time of need -- a need for honest news,
information, analysis, and debate -- by capitulating too easily?
Twitter says that the blocked posts are not being taken down
entirely. They can be seen in North America, but are being blocked in India
"as per local regulations".
"When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the
Twitter Rules and local law," a Twitter spokesperson said.
"If the content
violates Twitter's Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it
is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation
of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only."
The Indian government,
via its Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, defended its
actions stating that "certain people are misusing social
media to create panic in society" through false images and said that they
were using its Information Technology Act of 2000 to request
that the tweets be removed so they could "protect the sovereignty and
integrity of India and maintain public order".
Twitter has gone
through this before. When the government rammed three farming laws down the throat of Parliament
without discussion or debate last year, never mind having consultations with
farmers themselves, there was an outpouring of protests and support for the
farmer's movement.
The Modi government
was livid, dubbed the whole lot to be "separatists", and directed
Twitter to take them down. When Twitter stalled, the government in true
form threatened to throw the social media company's staff in
jail for seven years. 500 accounts were duly blocked by Twitter.
Then the Modi
government went one absurd step further. They jailed a
22-year old climate activist whose parents are farmers for forwarding a
"toolkit", a standard MS-Word template that is globally used towards
mobilisation.
Modi made sure that
the Delhi police travelled all the way to Bangalore to cuff her in front of her
mother, take her back to Delhi, and throw her in a jail until a judge could
hear her case. A thoroughly antiquated colonial-era law of sedition was used as a legal pretext, including the now
familiar explanation of being a "threat to the territorial integrity of
India" to imprison her.
Twitter may be a
reluctant actor here, but Facebook's actions are at another level of
complicity. As I explained in this prior ZDNet piece, Facebook's India
head Ankhi Das has been a long-time acolyte of Modi.
She has used her
talents to train Modi's team to win Chief Ministership of the state of Gujarat
and supported him during the 2014 elections, which Modi won.
Last year, Das refused
to take down incendiary posts by a BJP politician that goaded Hindu mobs to
kill as many as 53 people in India, say local observers.
So, to think that
Facebook is going to put the interests of Indian citizens ahead of the BJP may
be naïve at best.
As the brutal
nightmare of the past few weeks keeps repeating itself daily, one wonders how
much the current carnage will damage Modi and what role will social media play
in his continued takedown? After all, you can't strongarm a virus into going
away.
This wave is expected
to peak in mid to late May, where the daily infection count
is predicted to rise to a horrific 500,000 with a projected daily death rate of
at least 5,700. India's respected environmental magazine Down to Earth projects a million deaths by August.
By then, how much of
the narrative will Modi be able to control?
Modi is not one of the
world's shrewdest politicians for nothing. Despite putting India into reverse
-- he has devastated its economy in the seven years he has been
Prime Minister, fomented deadly communal strife, jailed ordinary citizens
including farmers and students for expressing their views, coddled big
business, and presided over the oppression of its minority groups -- he has
prevailed, and been re-elected to power. He has thrived.
However, escaping the
wrath of the virus will have to be his biggest and most dazzling trick as yet.
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