00:00It was literally like on the night of the 25th at midnight, emergency was declared.
00:08And when we got to work on the 26th, we had no idea what this meant.
00:13And we were told there's press censorship, we didn't know what press censorship was.
00:17If anybody traveled abroad, they would bring back newspapers and from that you would get
00:21more details of what is actually going on in India because you don't get any other details.
00:51So there's a lot of turmoil in the country at that point, but I think nobody, I mean,
01:03we were all very young then, so we couldn't even think about it.
01:06But even the older people expected that Mrs. Gandhi would go this far as to declare a state
01:12of emergency and with such suddenness, you know.
01:15So I remember we also, you know, ran editorials that were virtually blank because we didn't
01:20know what to say about the emergency.
01:31For them, they were very happy that the streets were clean and the trains were running on
01:34time.
01:35The people who suffered the most were the people who were anyway voiceless.
01:39The people who were the targets of the compulsory sterilization campaigns, the slum dwellers
01:45whose dwellings were just completely demolished overnight and they were not given any alternative.
01:52The amount of people who were out of work even at that time and the poverty that nobody
01:57wrote about.
01:58We couldn't write about it because it was seen as critical.
02:05In the days of print, people would say, oh, but I read it in the newspaper, you know,
02:09which was as if, if it has appeared in the newspaper, it must be true.
02:13Now you don't find that at all, you know, and if you go as a journalist, there's often
02:17hostility when you go to interview people, there's not the kind of respect that many
02:22of us used to get when we used to go to interview people.
02:25But the competition has been raised to the bottom to see who can do the most sensational
02:32and nonsensical story to capture, you know, eyeballs and readers.
02:43Many journalists and media houses do not want to be seen as anti-national.
02:47So they hedge their bets in the way they criticize or investigate things.
02:52So there are some obvious things to be investigated that never get talked about.
02:56And again, as I said, the government doesn't have to do anything, but when it does, it
03:02sends out a chilling message, you know, in UP for instance, just in the last year, around
03:0840, 41 journalists have been either charged or arrested under laws like sedition.
03:13For what?
03:14For writing stories, which were critical of the government or exposing something that
03:18the government has not been able to do.
03:20It takes a lot of courage then for a journalist to decide that despite all this, they're still
03:25going to pursue these stories.
03:27And on top of it, they have to have the backing of their media houses.
03:30So media houses themselves are pulling back from criticizing this government on a whole
03:36manner of things, you know.
03:43Many people say this is another kind of emergency and I always argue and say, no, it is not.
03:48Let us be clear that it is a combination of the politics of today, the kind of government
03:54we have, the kind of laws that we have that are being misused.
03:57I think at all times in a democracy, I mean, we've always said it, speaking truth to power
04:03is the role of the media within a democracy.
04:06I think this, again, an eternal truth that people read about people.
04:12So I think the story of what is happening in our country has to be told through the
04:16voices of the people.
04:18And which means journalists have to use good old shoe leather to get out there and do those
04:24stories and connect, you know.
04:31Check, check, double check, you know, and check again before you write.
04:37To me, the encouraging thing is despite this dismal situation in India today, you still
04:41have the journalists who are doing this, you know.
04:44Many of them are freelance, many of them write for these smaller digital platforms, but because
04:49of social media, you know, the stories travel.
04:53And really, if during censorship, we could still find space to say what we wanted.
04:59I don't see why now, despite all these laws and despite a government that is often seen
05:04as draconian, that this cannot be done.
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