Tough times for journalists in India

The Hoot Desk with inputs from IANS

Squeezed between professional hazards, insurgency and a recession, the journalist's lot is becoming an unenviable one.

Is journalism in India becoming more hazardous than it used to be? The question is being asked after a freak accident killed three reporters and a cameraman on September 30. They were from Aaj Tak, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express. The tragedy seems all the more meaningless because these journalists were not on the trail of some earthshakingly important assignment. Leading Congress Party politician Madhav Rao Scindia, going to a party rally in Kanpur, was ensuring press coverage by taking reporters and a cameraman along with him. Then suddenly a small private plane owned by the Jindal group used frequently to ferry
politicians, caught fire and crashed in Mainpuri.

The accident served to further depress a professional community that is already sensing grim times ahead. Several are losing their jobs, and several others were going on strike last fortnight to protest pressures on their profession in places of insurgency. Caught between a recession and militancy or insurgency in different parts of the country, the glamour that is supposed to be associated with media is definitely receding

Chronic insurgency, corruption, and lawlessness are making the practice of journalism in India more difficult and dangerous than it used to be. Just a couple of days before the September 30 plane crash, journalists in Manipur went on indefinite strike, protesting against attempts by separatists in that state to muzzle press freedom. Newspaper editors and journalists of at least 50 English and vernacular publications, including a news portal from Manipur, decided to cease work following threats from two outlawed rebel groups over the publication of a news story.

Militants in Manipur have killed at least five journalists during the past one-decade, besides intimidation and threats to newspapers over publication of stories. Over the last year and a half, two editors have been killed by gunmen here, Lalrohu Hmar, editor of Shan Daily, a Hmar language newspaper published from the Churachandpur district, and Th Brajamani Singh, editor of Manipur News, an Imphal-based English daily, for much speculated but actually unexplained reasons.

The government forces have not been any kinder. In December 2000 two district correspondents stationed in the remote Jiribam town on the Assam border, of two Imphal based newspapers, the vernacular Poknapham, and The Imphal Free Press, were very badly beaten up and publicly humiliated by personnel of the India Reserve Battalion, (basically an armed police unit of the Manipur government) for reporting atrocities they committed in the aftermath of a raid by insurgents on the local police station.

When the country's trouble spots simmer, journalists are put at risk.. As Kashmir remains volatile, covering it remains dangerous. In August last year, when Hindustan Times photographer Pradeep Bhatia died in a separatist car bomb attack in Srinagar in Kashmir, nine other Indian journalists were also injured in the blast. Bhatia, 31, known as a very intrepid cameraman with the irrepressible urge to get a good photograph, clicked the picture of the car bomb moments before it blew up in his face. He is survived by his wife and a child.

But while the profession turns more risky news establishments are still to put in place safety nets and drills that are routine in news organizations abroad. Newspapers offer compensation to the