Reporting on the other India

Reporting on the other India

Mark Tully is an adorable reporter. He has been reporting on India for a few decades, but he is not opinionated. He doesn’t try to impress readers with a fancy literary style; he tells the story simply, as he saw it and heard it. Tully is 76 years old and has reported from all over India and has written several books, but he hasn’t lost his curiosity. His motto is: The more you know about India, the more you realise how little you know. So he wants to know more. And then some more. For Tully, India is a non-stop journey. His fans would say that India is non-stop Mark Tully. India is divided into two distinct classes: the contented and the discontented, the optimists and the pessimists, those who gush about the glorious future and those who anticipate a violent revolt. Tully meets both kinds during his extensive travels and presents objectively the scenarios which are provoking the extreme views. His conclusion at the end of the book is: “I am confident that there won’t be full stops to halt progress over the next twenty years.” Tully’s book should be compulsory reading for politicians, bureaucrats, and court judges. They are the most ridiculed and detested people in India. Governance is so incompetent that India is now a thoroughly corrupt country ruled by dadagiri. Scams are being exposed, but the public belief is that nothing will happen to the crooks. The words of ancient Greek wise man Anacharsis are valid globally, but more so in India: “Laws are like spiders’ webs; they catch flies but do no harm to larger animals.” Tully’s book is essentially about the suffering and anger of flies and the arrogance and contentment of large animals. But Tully believes that change for the good is coming because of education, social activism, aggressive vote banks, communication technology, breaking down of caste barriers, public awareness of environmental damage, and entrepreneurship, which is freeing people from slave labour. But Tully’s optimism depends on the democratic process, which is being suppressed. Protesters are beaten up or shot dead, journalists are killed in ‘encounters’, there are tax raids on ‘inconvenient’ people, and efforts to control the internet and other communication media. A dark, angry scenario is developing. It can be summed up by the rhetoric of deprived lower class youths: “The upper classes are stealing thousands of crores! So why can’t we steal a few lakhs? We will do it!” Crime is increasing and mafias are recruiting educated youngsters. This piling up of negatives could be the subject of Tully’s next book. Non-Stop India is about ten aspects of rural India: the Naxalite movement, caste conflict, creation and manipulation of vote banks, religious fundamentalism, building of communities, the future of farming, the war between English and regional languages, entrepreneurship, neglected Northeastern states, and the saving of forests and wild life. The book should be a textbook in journalism courses because mainstream media do not report on rural India. Urban Indians know more about Europe and America than about Arunachal Pradesh, Vidarbha, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, farmers, and tribals. That’s precisely where India’s future is developing. And nonstop Mark Tully will be reporting on it over the next few decades.