Thread:
1. Yesterday @Kum_Sambhav tweet-threaded an important story on Justice Arun Mishra, Land Acquisition Law and the Reliance Group's interests ().
1. Yesterday @Kum_Sambhav tweet-threaded an important story on Justice Arun Mishra, Land Acquisition Law and the Reliance Group's interests ().
2. It came out of a brilliant deep-dive series on the fate of the Land Acquisition law, 2013 (LARR), which he lead. Remember, PM Modi once tried to dilute the law and we thought he failed. As we found out, he hadn't really. As journalists, we had taken the eye off the ball.
3. First we found out how many states, had flouted the law, with the help of the Centre, to not give adequate compensation under LARR
business-standard.com/article/econom…
business-standard.com/article/econom…
4. Then we figured state govts of all hues and shades were merrily going about amending the law to dilute their responsibilities under LARR - even when the law said they cannot. And, the Modi govt at the Centre didn't care.
business-standard.com/article/econom…
business-standard.com/article/econom…
5. Then, as @Kum_Sambhav narrated in his thread, we found how the Supreme Court had played a murky role in also breaking one important pillar on which the LARR stood. Breaking that pillar advantaged the Reliance Group, among others
business-standard.com/article/econom…
business-standard.com/article/econom…
6. It took us a month and a half to pull all the evidence together. That too, after substantial amount of research work had already been done by teams in the likes of @CSEINDIA, Ambedkar University and @CPR_India on it.
downtoearth.org.in/news/agricultu…
cprindia.org/system/tdf/wor…
downtoearth.org.in/news/agricultu…
cprindia.org/system/tdf/wor…
7. It took a month or so to corroborate evidence from documents and ground. Two weeks to draft it. It didnt make it to the print version of the publication finally. But, its here to read and share.
Researching for this series brought us leads, ideas and understanding. Which helped us crack the Patanjali Land Scam faster than we would have otherwise. business-standard.com/article/curren…
8. Yet, it took us roughly two months of work-hours spread over six to eight months, with the help of some superbly committed and public-purposed sources, to crack the Patanjali scam
business-standard.com/article/curren…
business-standard.com/article/curren…
9. We learnt how surface-thin our reportage is of a game on which our corroded political-economy hinges so critically business-standard.com/article/curren…
10. We also met several other journalists in the course of these investigations, who are so capable and so willing to do this genre of work if their editors and owners of their publications back them up. But, they dont. Instead you get punished, as some of us have experienced.
12. My, and i daresay my friend and colleague @Kum_Sambhav's, request to readers: Pay for reportage. Support deep dive journalism of all kinds and whoever does it. Demand it. Publicly celebrate newsrooms that enable it. Recognise those who dont or those who merely pretend to.
13. This journalism has always been difficult to do in India. Its got excruciatingly difficult to do it over past few years. Yet, there are far more young journalists today, compared to earlier, willing to put themselves to the task, given the chance. Enable them. End.
ps.
my excuse today for bad grammar, syntax and language: the thread was written travelling in haste between two cities, after i landed in the wrong one. (damn, doesn't sound like a decent enough excuse even to me).
my excuse today for bad grammar, syntax and language: the thread was written travelling in haste between two cities, after i landed in the wrong one. (damn, doesn't sound like a decent enough excuse even to me).
