Thread by @gauravsabnis

Great work, Sir. The official line continues to lie and deflect.

In #OldIndia, this investigation & research would have been done by a newspaper or news channel. When we actually had investigative journalism in public interest.

Now Twitter is the only real news source in India.

https://twitter.com/d_s_thakur/status/1579843449859510273

I remember the #OldIndia even of, say 2012, where there was some real investigative news story or "sting operation" happening all the time. When, for a few fleeting years, the press was actually being the fourth pillar of democracy.

Now just wire, scroll, caravan, tnm, AltNews.

A decade ago, I used to tell American friends how we don't have any fox News or nypost or hannity types in India. That was the #OldIndia

Now I tell American friends how Indian media is like 12 different fox News and nypost and 36 different hannity types. #NewIndia is SuperFox!

The speed with which Indian journalism got taken over and dismantled by the Sanghi-Dalal-Street alliance is a cautionary tale for other democracies. A thriving growing promising ecosystem of journalism turned into an entire ecosystem of fix news types in less than a decade!

Can anyone remember the last time they saw real investigative journalism in India anywhere except @thewire_in @scroll_in @thenewsminute @thecaravanindia @AltNews?

Not even a rhetorical question. Serious one. None of the #OldIndia media has done anything journalistic in years!

A story like this from @thenewsminute, a decade ago would have been in Indian Express/NDTV/India Today.

Such a serious thing with huge ecological impact when climate change is flooding Indian coasts like never before. Textbook crony capitalism.

Ignored.

thenewsminute.com/article/govern…

I mean can you not connect the dots here?

A month before the government said it will lift the ban on beach sand mining, Adani coolly tells the BSE that he's starting to companies for beach sand mining. This is beyond even just Insider Trading. This is...I don't even know if there is a term for cronyism this blatant!

2019
Modi: We are banning private beach sand mining!
Everyone: *applause* (even from liberals)

2022
No one:
Literally no one:
Adani: I wanna mine beach sand to become richer than Elon! 😭
Modi: come to think of it, let's have private beach sand mining!

Bik gaya India!

A decade ago, such a move by the ruling govt would have unleashed so much mainstream investigative journalism in #OldIndia. Today, just a few plucky idealistic and well meaning online outlets even look at these things of everlasting importance. Read by the few despondent us. 😔

Apologies to @Ahmedshabbir20 for not tagging him in these tweets about his superbly researched and written story. That deserves a wider audience and at least some efforts at public debate on this before they ram it through the Parliament.

thenewsminute.com/article/govern…

Just so you get the full context for why this is particularly brazen.

For the past decade or so, activists have worked hard to bring focus to this catastrophe we are facing that we haven't even heard of. Cos rich people wanna get richer by mining beaches

weforum.org/agenda/2022/06…

If you've been on a beach, you've seen what stops those powerful waves when they come in.

Sand.

So obviously if private players start mining and removing sand in huge volumes to make huge amounts of money, the ocean will come in even more.

Popularly known as flooding!

Modi in 2019 banned it. Almost everyone applauded. A rare occasion when you couldn't tell the difference between Swarajya and The Wire!

It was a rare and as it turns out, fleeting instance of the Modi govt putting the interests of the country before the interests of rich ppl.

So this reversal is so clearly and obviously and completely for the sake of the Adani Group!

Now wait and watch as Swarajya poopindia types fall over each other u-turning to you why beach sand mining is essential to "development". And anyone opposing it is "urban naxal".