 education on proxy wars from South Asia. Troubled very fairly. A senior editor with a minority, a renowned personality, a good journalist, a good teacher, a successful editor, and above all, a good human being. And we are really happy to have him here to share his experience and speak on of him, media and conflict with reference to the normalist experience. So May I now request Honourable Sir, wanting to come up on the stage and speak a few words. Respected friends on the tyres. Honourable Sir, show it up. All my good friends from Yibda. And dear students, what I'm supposed to speak on today's media and conflicts, the normalist experience. But what I'll try to do is not just to speak, my lecture is not going to be a narrative. I'll speak with certain themes in mind and I'll use my rather rich experience spanning over 32 years as a journalist to actually build on my themes and reinforce my key arguments. I would like to actually remind the Assembly here that I'm no longer in the BBC. I left the BBC in the month of April this year under very tense circumstances because the BBC decided to close down the entire Hindi service. I just say one little thing about the newspaper I'm trying to do, which is we are going for a hyper-regional paper. I have no pretensions, I have no intention to do a national media. Because I think national media is neither national nor media. It's metro media, somebody comes out with a paper from Delhi or Calcutta, doesn't make them national. We're as much a part of this nation and if people don't think we are, it's their problem and not ours. We are going for a hyper-regional paper but with a great broad outlook. And there are certain new things that we are going to do in our paper is that we will carry a separate page on the neighborhood. Very often there are things in the neighborhood that happens which affects us in the northeast. So we will have a separate page which will just cover Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, China and perhaps a little more into Southeast Asia. Why? Now do you realize something? Assam had had the most peaceful elections in recent years in which the Congress came out victorious but I'm not interested about the result. This is the first time since 1991 that the alpha could not influence an election. Otherwise, whenever they are back to party since 1991, that party has come to power and that's a fact of life. Why? Who gets the credit for this? Man in this pool? No, the credit goes to Sheikh Haseena. In the last three or four months she has decimated the alpha. Alpha is today without money because something like 3,000 crores worth of their funds which was bought in 42 bank accounts in the Sonali bank have been seized. Almost all the senior leaders except Parish would have been picked up and handed back to India. It's a different thing that these people have had to go into these talks under considerable pressure and I don't want to get into that debate because that is something I've argued out with a lot of people like Professor Hayden Goa. You know, I believe that this whole process is about splitting the alpha and not about bringing peace to a stand. And the crooks in Delhi and I use that language extremely consciously are playing an entirely different game which goes totally contrary to the aspirations for peace that we genuinely have in this region after nearly 25 years of conflict. But to cut the long story short, the reason we are going is we are going to have this region page. We are going to have one whole page of cities but not just Goa, the metros. We are going to have one whole page on the rest of Assam, one whole page on the rest of North East, maybe two whole pages later as we spread out. And, you know, our supplement. I am one editor who is not going to put Bollywood heroines on my supplement. I am going to have a proper literary supplement. The idea, of course, comes from the best edited paper in this region, Anand Vajrapatrika. If you look at Anand Vajrapatrika's Rovima Shigel, it's mostly creative writing. And I am going to do that because the North East in the last few years has blossomed, a lot of writers have blossomed. Some of them write directly in English. Many people outside Assam actually write in English. It's only in Assam and Tripura and partly in Manipur. People write in Varnagra. But in Varnagra, the Varnagra literature will have it translated. This supplement, almost three pages of that, is going to showcase the original creative writing of this region. And the rest of it, yes, we'll have a beauty corner. Those of you who think you're interested are welcome, but no Bollywood-Hollywood dresses, okay? Traditional costumes. I want to showcase the beauty of this region, the beauty of our sisters and brothers, but in our own regional costume. And I don't hesitate to say I am an extremely regional person. I am not a part of the national elite. I don't want to be one. I don't want to be Mr. Arnabh Goswami who will go to Delhi. I try to be more Indian than actual Indians up there in Delhi. I have no pretentions. I belong to this region. I'm extremely proud of it. As Sharath Bosch has said, I believe in that vision of India, which was articulated partly by Shubhash Bosch, and then more by his brothers, Sharath Bosch, who lived longer, that the future India of my dream is that of an overarching civilisation state in which politically we will have a collection of republics. But at the level of thinking and attitude we will do one. It's a state which will be sustained by consensus and not by the guns of the Indian army, not by the armed forces special forces. It's something that will be sustained by consensus. But without getting into all these philosophical questions, I'll return to my subject rather quickly and I'll write to make five important points. That's how I go about doing it. I'll make five important points. I'll end with my rich experience in this region and I can tell you one thing. There are better writers than me in my profession in this region. My good old friend Udpol Bordoli, any day he writes a better copy than me, because of his inconsistency, he has gone out of the profession. There are others who are rare to write. I can tell you one thing for sure, nobody has a set of more powerful legs than I have. I've actually physically walked 253 kilometres in six days to go into rebel bases inside Burma where the Nagar rebels and the Alfa and the Manipuri were based in the good old days in 1986 to do one single cover story in the Sunday magazine which used to be edited by M.G. Angad until it of course folded up in the late 90s. Just one cover story, 250 kilometres up and down. Most people won't survive that kind of a trek. There's one more boy who's not working with me but done something like that, not as far as I've gone, showing Polo guys that he's a rebel, but he's more Naga than Benguki, because he's a Gimapur boy and therefore he can make that trek. I had to go without a cameraman because I worked for this Calcutta Grove where Sunday was a part and there was no cameraman who could take this physical load. I can tell you one thing for sure and much more experienced than most people in the sense, not just in terms of years but in terms of diversity, variety of assignment stuff and the sheer physical load that they've taken especially because I've actually gone into Burma without a passport, without a visa, 27 times and every time I've come back. The thing is, the Burmese Army is not famous for taking prisoners. It's famous for shooting them. So if you get caught, you're up there in the long again in Madurai. The first point that I realized as I came into this profession, you know I hail from Thipura where the newspaper industry is totally dominated by the Bengali settlers and that's a bit of a problem. The tribals were the indigenous people, the son of the soils. Their demographic preponderance has changed in the 25 to 30 years after independence. They were never a decisive majority though. Even before independence the tribals were about 55% of the population and the Bengalis were about 45%. The reason for that was the kings of Thipura, the only imperial force in northeast who actually conquered a lot of area into eastern Bengal at various points of time in history. Their armies actually defeated the armies of the Bengali Sultan and one recent inscription found near Dhaka dates back to 12007, the reign of King Bijoy Manikur. This is the Thipura inscription. It proves that the kings of Thipura, that the kings of Thipura Bijoy Manikur had actually given Dhaka under his control. And therefore this whole stretch that lies between Dhaka and Chittagong on the one hand and the present state of Thipura which is basically hill state was at various points of time conquered by the kings of Thipura and therefore the subjects were Bengalis and we hail from something like that of a place. I hail from it, my ancestors hail from a village in Chaklaroshenabad which was the Zamindari of the king of Thipura. After the British came and started and captured Bengal the status of the king of Thipura out there became that of a Zamindar who pay tax to the British whereas the hill state of Thipura remained an independent principally state but you know three fourth of the revenues of the king of Thipura actually came from Chaklaroshenabad and the famous signer of Thipura was in the Burma actually married into a family which hails from one of the villages of Chaklaroshenabad called Kalikoch. His wife Meera the Burma is the elder sister of the famous Bengali editor who used to edit the statement and then went on to edit New Street Times in Singapore Shulanda Kumar Doctorate. That's the links. So Thipura always had a huge link with Bengal because their kings had physically conquered these areas and therefore when I would have a problem in Calcutta with the baboos over the last three years I would have to tell them. Don't forget that. But the good point that I'm trying to make is that after the partition when all of these areas which were actually areas of the king of Thipura but they went into a state called Pakistan which came into existence on the basis of a religion the Bengali Hindus there whose perception was it's very different from the migration that's taking place in Assam. Bengali's migration is essentially these people who felt that they are the projab king of Thipura the subjects of the king of Thipura and in times of dire straits where else will they go they will have to come to Thipura. This whole flow of population altered Thipura's demographic and in the matter of 25 years the Bengalis became about 73% of Thipura's population. Now there are whole Bengali families who have lived in Nagar Tala. I'm the chief of the royal boarding house. I see myself as a Thipura, I see myself as a son of the soul. As much a son of the soul as any tribal. But the point is that the settlers who came after the 50s had a problem identifying themselves and therefore as they took control of the economy as they took control of most of the other levers of social and political power the tribals felt very upset and many of them took to insurgency. The point I'm trying to make here is that in 1980 Thipura encountered the first major ethnic riot almost 33 years after it became a part of the Indian Republic and in these riots initially which was the Bengalis who were affected because this riot was started by some of the tribal organizations which felt very upset about certain things like the autonomies and stuff like that but at the end because the Bengalis controlled police they controlled the media which was in one sided affair they suffered very badly and their sufferings were hardly reflected in the newspapers that were published from Thipura. It's at that point of time that I left my secure college job in a government college you know and came into journalism to work with a local paper who was paid at least 300 rupees less and took that risk, calculated risk and one of the first things I did was I went and had a fight with my editor and I had these problems right from my days in the Russian Indian military college but actually I screwed up my military career after beating up an instructor because he was positively racist and I don't want to describe that story here because it will be sheer waste of time the point is I had this problem with the editor and I told him if I were to get out of a legality I would try to get out of a legality I didn't know what he told me he just said I was stuck here for a long time no read zero paper, think of that I said look how are we going to be totally dictated by the market or by our perception of truth and this is a fight I had everything for almost six months as I desperately tried to change the balance of the newspaper I got many stories that I wanted to but not always and then I finally came to a sand in one of my trips you know because my editor had sent me after I had done my job I had been coming to a sand in the late 70s because my moha was the general manager of the northern frontier railway and my brothers were footballers one of them went to go where moha knows him where he played for East Bengal I used to come to them and they said I will go and play football with the Ulu Goris he was a reasonably good footballer again the power of legs had more punch than dribble and I scored a goal against Goris Goris he still remembers that from an instance of 40 years the reason is that he was a restless man even at that time I would very often leave the crossbar and come out right up to the D trying to instruct other players A-fellaj, A-fellaj, A-fellaj and that kind of thing and I noticed this man doing this again and again I had the power of my legs a long deeper K which he tried to recover and could not get and he still remembers that that was the first time I scored a goal against Goris Goris Goris I was in the same team when I was a kid I was in the same team anyway now jokes apart and at that point I came to a sand the key thing that I realized in 1979 I actually had this experience which many people have had at that time because of the spirit of the agitation if you remember the Bordeaux Loïc trophy match I'm a compulsive football freak and I went to see that finals the great finals of the Bordeaux Loïc trophy at the peak of the agitation East Bengal playing Thailand Port Authority for the first half 45 minutes the great coach of East Bengal P.K. Banerjee failed to realize why I am playing in my own country and everyone is against me if you remember and East Bengal took in two goals it was a fantastic team that East Bengal had but Durgol Hyder it's only in the half-dive when Podipta turned to some of his local friends and they told him under all these dynamics and then he of course went and he's known for the famous vocal tonic and he gave his players a great vocal tonic you know Banerjee, Vijay, Pijay and all that stuff that he's famous for East Bengal came back into the field like a team possessed they scored four goals they won the trophy they could not carry their trophy back to hell because of the the atmosphere in the field I was in the field that day and I had had some experience I don't want to describe that and anybody else his view of a Sam would have been colored by that experience but I'm a rather objective person at the risk of being my own drummer I would say that so I went back home to my Mohan and everyone was very sarcastic I said to myself I argued with my brothers and I said why do I support East Bengal what is East Bengal is it just football I could be supporting three other football clubs why do you support East Bengal it's got something to do with my identity my East Bengal youths if I'm so passionate about this identity several, several years after the partition the Assamese has a right to be passionate about his own identity and he has a right to feel threatened in view of the Thirupura experience the Assamese has a bona fide right to feel threatened by the slow but steady process of demographic change and this objectivity stood me in good steam as I came to Assam I had a look at the paper in the morning in the railway station I said this looks like a good paper it's not the Assam Tribune sorry brother but Assam Tribune maybe the most red paper in this state where it's not starting in the best produced and the most inspiring I hope you agree with that it's a new start and just come Dr. Varua publishing good paper well done I said I need to carve Mali three groups I went to Mali Go and I got an appointment with Aaren Dottobalu of the editor after some difficulty with the chaprasis and the bearers and the signatories and all that intermediate staff and I saw a job with him I saw his appointment I interviewed him for my own story from the Thirupura paper then he asked me certain things and he got interested in me and then he asked me would you like to come to Assam and I said why not I would love to but are you aware of the circumstances I said yeah but I think I will be a professional this is the time to be in Assam big agitation the biggest mass agitation since the death of Gandhi why not he said I will have a desktop and I will give you a Tiktor and I will give you a Tiktor and I will ask you to come to the dinner to eat I said no I will not I insisted I said no I will not The syntax is closer to Assamese than to the great, polished Bengali of Nadia and Shanti. You know, proximity has its own sort of dynamics. Geographical proximity has its own dynamics. So I told Gathore, I reassured him of this interview. I got him a question, what happened to football? He asked me, do you have friends in Assamese? With some nervousness, but with little bit of hope, he took me into the newspaper. And even in about 15 days, I had made friends with good, great friends, with the late Bhrigu Phukon, who used to always take me to Paradise restaurant, which was there in a very small one, by Teebhalka Wale Ahar, and that kind of thing. And believe me, for the rest of my period covering the Samayagitation finally, I'll find out that I've never had a problem in Assam. And a lot of people don't believe me. The reason is, and this brings me to the key point that I'm going to make, when media is in conflict, what you need to do if you're a journalist covering a conflict. The first and the foremost requirement of students, please take a note. If this is something original, you'll not find it in any text book. This is my own thesis, okay? I'll of course leave your paper that I've written on this subject, not some, some time back, in a book called Media and Configuration Experience, where I've written about my own stuff. It was edited by India's best photojournalist at that point of time, who is now a professor of mass communication in Singapore, Naniya, Technological University, Shantikwani, is that you have to rise above your identity. So, if my identity as a Bengali and my experience in that Baudelaume trophy had colored my vision of Assam, I would have been reporting like many other reporters who come here and think this is an hostile place. You have to rise above the identity. This is the first and perhaps the biggest challenge. And in Assam later, when I came for a longer spell later, when I have some newspapers like North East Times, if you remember, the North East Times had a multi-lingual kind of a newsroom. I set it up for them. I ensure that people from different communities are there. And there's a practical side to it. The proof of that, the proof of the pudding is in the 80. I got this benefit of this whole thing, a multi-cultural character of the newsroom, but then there was riots between the boroughs and the immigrant Muslims in Western Assam in the 1990s. If I had said one of the reporters with my favorite, he came from my home state. His father was a judge in the Goaati High Court, Mr. Esam Ali, in our practices in the New York bar, because he's left journalism, gone and done his LLM, and has got the membership of the New York bar. He's gone places, but I tell you, he's one of the best legal reporters in the country at that point of time. He started his career with me here. I hired him because he was in the North East Times. If, on the morning of these riots, there was a decision to send Liaquat to Western Assam. I said, I'll send Liaquat back to the immigrant agents. If I send him to the border agents, his press card, where his identity is clearly written, will be a cause of his death. The Maraudi moms don't, you know, they just go by your identity. So you have to care for whom, who I'm going to send there. Well, I didn't have a border reporter in my newsroom. I hope I have one. But I thought the areas which are affected, there's a strong border Christian population. I had a boy called Martin, he's from South. He was a Kerala Christian. I said, Martin, from Lausanne, a few practical stuff. That's how you deploy your newsman, because no story is worth a dead body. And I don't, as a senior manager, have to take care of that. So what I'm trying to say, but as a professional, when these people come back, you have to rise above the identity barrier, and they have to rise objectively. If they don't do that, they're doing a disservice. So one of the key things for those of you who are in this profession, please try to make this a point that when you are reporting, when you are producing a paper, please try to make a conscious effort to rise above the identity barrier, behave like a journalist, behave objectively, try to go for the truth to the best of your knowledge and ability. Sometimes you may not be able to find the truth, but if you try, you'll rise above the identity barrier. This is the most crucial thing for someone in the media country. And I'll give you one simple example. In the 1980s, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. The BBC decided that they would send those who had no television. At least BBC had no television. It was a radio service, but it was highly popular across the world. And they decided to send a full BBC radio team to cover the war from the Argentine side. So some journalists would go with the British navy and the army, some went to go. So they approached the Argentine embassy in London, and they said, do you want to send it? Oh, but then it's difficult, you're British. Yeah, we are British, but we are journalists, man. We're going to cover the war also from Argentine side. And please note, we want an appointment with your president. Well, our president is the enemy of Britain. Doesn't matter, enemy of Britain, Margaret Thatcher will take care of that. We are going to interview him. And Margaret Thatcher believed we didn't like it. She said, yes, Oxbridge Rockskills who run the BBC, liberal guys, they operate on the taxpayers' money in Britain, and they are going to give coverage to the enemy. And Margaret Thatcher was so upset with the BBC's coverage because she found that there was a 14-minute interview of Juan Valterri, Juan Valterri, with the Argentine president. She said, how the hell are you giving 14 minutes to the president of an enemy country? And so John Tuca was at that point of time the BBC's chief said that Margaret Thatcher is better running the country. We are better running the radio station because we know each other. We know exactly what we're doing. We are a global service and we live up to the standards. The BBC used to broadcast in 44 languages in radio, four languages in television, almost 18 languages on the internet. We are not a British. We are fine, but we are for all intents and purposes a global broadcasting service. And the best evidence of that is the BBC's panting. But at any point of time, you'll find something like 30 to 40 dishes stretching across the globe. So my favorite was, of course, the Ishmael kebab which used to be cooked by a Moroccan chef called Alf. He was my favorite when I went to the BBC for training. And I had to go to the canteen for lunch. Ishmael kebab is something I've heard truly global in its ethos. And that brings us to the gold problem. Is that people, is that? A couple of years back, Mark Laiting, he was the BBC's NATO correspondent. And if you remember, the NATO forces were involved in possible. Okay? In a peacekeeping role. And in a controversial peacekeeping role, Mark Laiting made a mistake. He was British, and he thought that the British troops were his own. So in a BBC, he just took his camera, just face the camera like this, and he said, our troops, as they were in the background of British troops walking back, had a very tough day. They faced three ambushes and they lost about 17 people, blah, blah, blah. In about something like, when his story, when his thing was up on television, in something like an hour, just under an hour, he had something like 47 days from fellow colleagues across the world in various BBC bureaus, many of them in London. How dare you say our troops? Say British troops. Why are you identifying yourself with the cause of the British Army? You're a BBC journalist. That is the extent to which the BBC would go. And therefore, throughout the various wars in the Middle East, when American networks were totally out, rightly identified with the Western cause, the BBC, A because it had Persian and Arabic services, and because it made a conscious effort to position itself in a balanced and impartial position, it retained the kind of credibility it has. So, rising about the identity barrier is such a key objective for any journalist, any media covering conflict, because that gets you the credibility. Without credibility, do you realize something in media? What is power? You're not a politician. You can't order big projects. You can't order the arrest of somebody. What is your power? Your credibility is your power. So long as you have credibility, so long as people believe you and a lot and a lot of people believe you, that's the source of your power. Media is the source of the truth. If you have credibility, regardless of the source of the truth, then there's no need to reveal anything. Both them, I am a man, a man, I'm a woman, I'm a man, I'm a woman, I'm a woman, I'm a woman, I'm a man, I'm a woman, I'm a woman, I'm a woman, You have to rise above that because that's crucial to the credibility of your entire media operation. The second thing that you need to do is, and this follows from this, is that you have to have the widest network of sources, widest most diverse network of sources. And the reason for that is that if you don't have a wide network of sources within one community, you have one type of sources, you'll get always one-sided views. If you're calling up just one minister, if you're only calling up or he'll go away, you'll get a perspective from the people's movements side. If you're only calling up Mr. Bishra Sharma, you'll only get the Congress perspective. What you really need to do is to call up both, get their views, and then write it in a way in which you are seen as balanced but perceptive. You give your perspective so that the reader understands. Don't think that the readers are fools. If you're biased, they'll find out. Hey, I'm not the most monotonous pocket lover. All credibility is gone. Nobody takes it seriously. There are many media operations these days which are owned by politicians. You think they have credibility? Nobody takes them seriously. I'm there for them. Despite all the money that they have spent, if you've gotten money out of hazard to say, they don't have the kind of response that you need to get. And there are people who run credible operations with much less money and who have the respect and the audience to witness their operations. So you need a very diverse variety and the widest possible network of sources. And it's something like this. If you have a wide circle of acquaintances, or if you don't know, if you have friends, this is the circle of acquaintance, there will be a smaller circle inside which there's a circle of friends or people with good relations, and a still smaller circle of sources. But if you have met only five people, you're likely to have just about good sources who will feed you information. You have 100 people that you know, you're likely to have 30, 40 people who may be feeding you information. You need to carefully evaluate them. Otherwise, there are people who try to plan stories. Okay, and I'm coming to that in a moment when I discuss the phenomena of science and force multiplies. I'll talk about that later. But you have to carefully evaluate. I still evaluate my sources. I have detailed notes. Maasarabh, Kimman's story to credible, and then I grade them A plus A. It's exactly like an intelligence officer. He grades his sources. Okay, and as far as news gathering is concerned, the way I do it, the way I evaluate my source is exactly like that of an intelligence officer. What is the difference? The difference is I go public. He doesn't go public, he reports to the government. I am supposed to play a straight game by representing a situation on ground. Intelligence often play games because they are guided by his master's choice as well as his master's voice. Both his master's choice and his master's voice. Now that, therefore, is the key thing. And in journalism, you have to find this possible network of contact, both in terms of diversity, in terms of variety. You need to have scientists. You need to know people from the fields of art, music, politicians, student leaders, movements, what have you, everything under the sun. And please don't forget. Don't ignore. The small man. Hey, hold on a minute. If you're really getting into the business of hard journalism, not this nonsense-based kind of stuff that Tanks of India Culture has promoted, hard journalism. And if you realize it's hard journalism what people are looking for, do you recollect the Tehalkar tapes? Bangalore Lachman taking one lakh rupees. Was it done very properly? It was not done very properly. It's a spy cam operation first time. And it was just about clear that it's Mr. Lachman and he's taking one lakh rupees. How and why did all networks in this country run that tape hour after hour after hour? That's what people wanted to see. These are not people like me who are procedures or something. These are hard-nosed businessmen who only understand TRP. They knew, this tape will run the TRP from 5 to 11 hours. So this tape will run. So which means what? Which means to use a mock system for if we don't think because I'm regularly a moxist. I've seen these problems with people who practice Marxism in this country. But I tell you, I would go back to Lenin where it said imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. I'd rather say that investigative journalism is the highest form of journalism. That's what people want. They don't want this rubbish pastry stuff. Some of them do want Salman Khan running away with Fulana heroin and all that. After a while there is a saturation. You don't want it. And who all wants this? People who are sort of okay in life. They don't have any problem. Any crisis in their life. So they are very bothered about what Salman Khan is doing with his next heroine. People who have a crisis are interested why they're not getting water in the city in spite of the fact that this city is just right next to the biggest river which has the highest volume of water. It's a very masculine river. And they call it a city with no water. A city with no water. A city with no water. So in my paper we're going to do this, the big water crisis. We're going to screw the daylights of those authorities. I promise you. This whole city has grown after Big Bazaar. There is no water really. There is no water supply. There is no backup. How can there be an open expansion like this? And why the hell? A new water project that's coming into the city going to Jalu Bhai, just because of public health and humanitarian ministry. That's its constituency. You have allowed the city to grow your gaming building permission. What about public water supply? What about GNC water? Why not? These are bread and butter issues. We're interested in them. So that brings us to the fact that apart from having a diverse base of sources you also need to represent diverse interests in your coverage. Not just the interests of a couple of ministers or a couple of political parties or a couple of important persons or a couple of business groups. You will realize that the circulation of the Bengali newspapers and the Bengali TV channels audio rate and TRP ratings rose very sharply in the last two years in West Bengal. You know the reason? They all closely, thoroughly, sincerely covered the movement of his Mahatma Banerjee about Shingur and Omniprao without being political. Any of them were political. Some were because they were very anti-GPM. But many of them thought that they have to cover people's issues and the people of Bengal were pissed off, absolutely pissed off out of three decades of communist rule because they would not accept the situation in which a left government which is supposed to be a pro-government their police will open fire on unarmed, innocent peasants. Look here, Khethikara, Manu, J. Vila, big, big communist party, big, big, must not do. I say, the police will not accept the people of Bengal or Manu. Three-year-old communists will not support him. They will say, you have to save the people otherwise people will not read us. They will throw us out. They will say, otherwise the communists will be pissed off. Finish. So they supported this. Even the buddhiji-bhisreni of Bengal, most of them are pro-left. You have to accept that. I have seen people like Koshik said one of our top theater personalities three generation communist party members. He told me, look here, that chap has gone against Buddha. Why? They all resigned from the Natok Academy and now he is personally a playwright, Natok League head again, chief minister. And that Natok Academy was all his friends. And he said, one time, the police, for each other, everyone has gone against him. Then tap with the eggs, except two persons, they are personalities. They have personalities to be very close to him. Everyone else has gone against him. And this is the reason that the types won so decisively against the communists. Otherwise, believe me, they are the best election machinery in this country. It's like an military organization. That's how it operates. So the thing is, what did the media do? It represents the expectations of the people. Here the point I am trying to make is that you must have a diverse base, you must also have diverse interests, and you should generally try to identify with the aspirations of the people unless that aspiration is very parodial and reactive. The third point that I am trying to make and I will make only one more before I finish is about this whole dilemma of whether you get it first or you get it right. Breaking news like it. What is breaking news? Let's talk about the breaking news. From today, the fastest in the area of Kuala Lumpur two men of the army came there and they were given support to get them out. Here, like Dheema Ji, there will be a war. No one will come to cover it. There is not a single man of today in your city. If you say that the people here don't understand you, then they will not understand you. Before giving the language there are 7 states in North East and there is a area of 2,25,000 km and at least keep one person here. And if you don't keep because Guwahati is not TRP city then there is Kripya Jai Bhol, don't force us. Simple as that. It's all a two-way traffic. It's all a two-way traffic. Sharma, Iman, I think they're crazy. This whole business of, you know, lack of balance. I'm a scoop lucky. I'm a breaking newsman. Mark Tally. Sir Mark Tally, who was very long time the BBC in India is my Guru. He recruited me. He taught me audio-visual journalism because I was a print journalist. I'd go on radio and television He took me under his wings, and he, you know, he speaks Hindi, I saw an AI, I saw a Pagan, I saw an AI. This man used to tell me one very simple thing, Subhe, it's very important to get it first, but it's equally important to get it right, perhaps more important to get it right. So in the name of school, there are people in Assam who have written stories, Hathi Manukhai, Namna Pradangaram, foreign media please. You know, Bhagavan can be sensational, Bhagavan, what sort of a story do you love? And one more dollar, if you tell me the power story, as a stringer, I'll get it. Hathi Manukhai is the one who committed suicide. And so many other things, very important people, the filing for foreign agencies, absolute lies. There are people I've seen sitting in Calcutta, the telegrapher debate, and all the telegraphs are in the same place, and that's when the operation started. What's going on? So many telegraphs, a lot of stores, and Amukh, you know what, the last operation in Hathi Manukhai, you were debating the telegraph, it must be covered. I'll cover it from here. I'll cover it from Calcutta, I've done several North East stories from Calcutta, which are the day one. But be honest to put the date line of Calcutta. Don't put Lokhipad on the date line, and don't say, Indian tanks rolled into Lokhipad. Why? A, he does not know the difference between tanks and armoured personal carrier. Armoured personal carrier also has the chain, which goes in, it's an anti-mine thing. Indian Army, for us, they are from the mine side, and Al-Fattab, LTT in Manukhai, they were experts in mines. Right, later on we know that a chap called Rajen had visited, because after Poriguru had met Prabhakar, and Prabhakar had put him in touch with some arms dealers in Southeast Asia, Poris requested some help from Poris, and he sent a chap called Rajen, Al-Fattab, he said, he was very scared. He was like, what insurgency is going on with the Indian Army? They brought up the minimum professionalism, camp guarding them. Anyway, I don't want to get into that. This great journalist, and I don't want to name him, because at a personal level, he's a friend. But at a professional level, I abuse him every other day. He wrote in the telegram that Indian tanks have rolled into Lokipal. He's sitting in Khalkata, he writes Lokipal, the deadline, Indian tanks rolled into Lokipal. If you understand, as a tank now, it's an armoured personal carrier, and Al-Fattab will force you into a tank. Honestly speaking, Indian Army, whatever you think of it, it does not need tanks against the army. It's not such a strong armoured. A tank, fire for our risk, go and let for the damage. Armoured personal carriers, take the same type of vehicle, take the same type of vehicle, take the same type of vehicle, so that if there is a mine blast, they are protected, they don't harm you. And it will leave it. Three months later in a party, at the headquarter of the 4th court, as I said, I studied in RIRC, many of my friends are in the army, General Balji, he was the chief of staff, not the court commander, the chief of staff. This same journalist, such a fool, he goes up in the south, we don't know a bit, we don't know a bit, we don't know a bit, we don't know a bit, we don't know a bit, a gentleman, who are you? I said, I am Sachin Sach from the telegram. And the first thing General Balji, he is a Sardarji, he's got a full tongue, first thing he said, he said, and then in the filthiest of languages, he said, and then Balji turned to me, I was also having my drink, he said, in the same operation time, the first five days, he was with us, 73rd Brigade, five days I went around with the army, the army, no one used any service network, no one liked it, most of the time, I was actually Indian Army, Jacket, second pinning, five days, I was on the wrong side, failure, Indian Army professional army, General Jamil Babu, everyone in that goes into Nationals village, must have a Nationals speaking, that's how I managed, secondly, a complete list of the in the district, service, what was the service? Nihasam resident, from here, retired, from the village, Outpost commander knows that in this jurisdiction, in some village, a Gavildar, some Gogai is there, he is his wife. He goes into the village with 20 guys and says, Gavildar Gogai, this man comes. He means that he is the senior officer of Indian Army. And all these people when they leave the army they feel a vacuum. This is the psychology. I have seen it with my father. My father was an Air Force man. He was a civilian at that time. Now this man was used first to liaise with the villagers. So, I know T-Man Kajarov and his human rights atrocity. Number 2. So, chief products. Public relations are going to be like this. Nathi Rukhwan. Come to my tent a little. Ramsham Intelligence. A Kutekhini was to do much nicer because I was out with them. And I have reported it. First 5 days with the army. And I said, I thank Brigadier Deepak Hanu. Sir, I am going now. I will go back and do the story. 3 days, how the army is opening. That is the phone cup. Gibraltar District Commander Alpha. So, I wrote the story. Why did he write the story? Oh, God, I am going to die. God, I am going to die. I am going to lock myself up. I am going to lock myself up. And I said, what was that? I said, what was that? I said, what was that? So, I am standing under that bridge just ahead of Lepid Kathar. I am in the middle of nowhere. Army. I called everybody. I said, I am a soldier. So, I said, if there is any problem, I will talk to your colonel. He said, no sir, no sir. I said, don't do this. 1, 3, boom. God hit me. I did not turn. I did not turn. How far? 7 kilometers. Then they opened the vehicle. Out of nowhere, they opened the vehicle and I fell down. So I simply went into the pulverine. A big noise, because my weight is considerably lower. Of course, people were yelling, According to the actual alpha units, how they are turning this. And then I write that story also. So I've seen it from both sides of the picture. Nobody tries this. But this must be done. This must be done. At the peak of the Bhutan operation, I was speaking almost every day to the Bhutni's army chief, The Chief of the Redhorns Division General Gagan Ji is saying, And with the police, and he was telling me, I am selling to Korea. I am not selling to my mother, I am not selling to my mother. I said, okay, you have to take care. Because if you sell to Korea, you will be close to the army. My mother took a fire number. Do not put a motor on her. Because this Alpha guy, he is like typical Gagan Gurus, they have taken the whole family. During the war, I got my post work clearly, Koshu Ji, attacked to IS. Now, how about the drama? Look at these people. They are supposed to be fighting in the Indian state. Look at Prabhakaran. Much, much before, at the time, he was friendly with India. He had great alternate arrangements. He said, I have to go to India for work. Bhutan people ran away. I said, Koshu Ji, attack to IS. I said, no, why? Bhutan and other sides are Goniak. In Bhutan, the king has to marry all the sisters. If they marry you, then all your sisters have to marry you. So, they have four kids. But Sari Ta Goniak was the palace to write in. Sari Ta Goniak, like a trio. I said, you do not have to talk about this. You have to remove VCS. Because he calls me, you speak a long time. He didn't listen to my advice. He started firing at me. He said, okay. So, if Vishwara had a ceasefire for two hours or four hours, and the men spoke to General Gagan Ji, I told him, soldier is a noble profession. It is certainly not about killing women and children. And he agreed. And he said, oh, you are Theramitra Khan Saakyo. All these GM's are Gagan Ji. Whenever they speak to me, they never say porridge. Because porridge has a Bangladesh passport, Kamruj Jawan Khan. So, they are giving it to Theramitra Khan Saakyo. These women and children will not be removed from any camp. You will get a great reference for that camp. You close the shelling in that camp for four hours. And if you don't do a hair up, then it will be a full assortment. If you don't do a hair up, then I assure you. But if you have to protect the ground, otherwise, and I told Gagan Ji, I am going to get the red crossing. I am going to get the red cross because I don't want to get fat. Understood? We respect the, you know, we understand that we are in the business of fighting the alpha. Our children will be alive. But women and children will not be alive. So, if you realize, all the women and children came out alive. How? What I said. I communicated to Gagan Ji. So, this is how it is. So, they thought to corner over, but he equated. Oh, goodness of course. Satellite. Some inferences. Okay. I give time for four or six hours. Because there are children and women. It will be difficult for them to walk. It will start after six hours. There will be nothing on this camp. After six hours, we will instruct the voodoo's, our people's, they were conducting. To go to that camp, pick on all the women, children and all that. Then bring them to the, or some order and hand them over to a sample. It went to clock. Not one wife of anybody. And later on, these other leaders are killed. Their wives are agitating. They are like Bhutanok. They are like Mare Disha Uthai, Benin Brava, Orshantho Balkhapur. Their wives are sitting on hunger strike sometime. How are they alive? They are alive because of this. Age is an attitude. That you enjoy the credibility. There is a senior commander of the Indian Army also speaks to you. But the Alpha's military wing chief also speaks to you. Equal 11 of us. Believe me, this is not easy. This is acquired over a period of time. It's a test. It's an omnipotent camp. It will develop like a soft journalist. An omnipotent camp. It will develop like a soft journalist. You need to be absolutely sure about what you are reporting. In the name of a school, come out with stupid information and you confuse people. I'll give you one simple example. 71 war. All these Bangladesh refugees and their Mukti forces, they were in Tripura. They were in North East all over the place. One UNI correspondent put out a story that Laksham, one of the big towns adjoining Tripura, has been liberated by Mukti forces. So all these refugees who were in the camp started running towards Laksham. Pakistan is still in control of Laksham. When these Bengali refugees from Tripura camp, they cross the border and they try to enter Laksham, Pakistan is opened up with machine guns. 700 people are killed. And it's all because of this camp. That we in the media are seen as force multipliers. Do you understand what is a force multiplier? Anybody among the students? Force multiplier, very simply, is something that adds force and strength to your own self. How do you use the media as a force multiplier? Example number one. An army intelligence officer comes to me. I'm a credible journalist. He convinces me with evidence, so-called evidence, that Paresh Gaurav is involved in drug trafficking from Burma. I put out this story. What then happens is, people say, if 60 people in Assam are supporting Paresh Gaurav, his support will go down by at least 20%. Some people may not believe it. No one or any. Some people definitely will believe it. So what happens? His strength goes down by 20%. In real terms. In insurgency. In counter-insurgency. In this kind of a little war situation, where undergrounds are challenging the state, it's not a fight between two countries. In this kind of a situation, it's not a battle of guns. At the end of the day, it's a battle of hearts and minds. And in this battle of hearts and minds, whoever commands the allegiance and the support of the population, and I would recall Mauset, who had said that the guerrilla is fish, people are water. If you lose the water, the fish will do this and conk off. So the whole business is to deprive the fish of the water. How do you do that? You plant a story like this. This is how you turn the media into a force multiplier. And the insurgents will do the same thing. If the army has raped one woman, they can get to put the story that the army in the last 16 days has actually raped 59 Asimis women, a lot of Asimis officers and soldiers serving in the Indian Army will actually begin to have second thoughts about the army. And I'll give you the example of neighboring Bangladesh. On the night of 25th March, 1971, a big Pakistani general Ieya Khan and his man in East Pakistan, Tikka Khan, when they ordered the crackdown, they told their commander, Bengali people are very scared. 1 lakh people are killed, and the entire agitation is closed. 1 lakh people, 25 lakh people are killed. The new agitation is closed, and the movement is also gone. But the thing is, when they ordered this crackdown and the Pakistan army just went killing people, they entered the university, they killed everybody they found. They raped all the Bengali women and carried them back to the thing. What then happened was, immediately the Bengali officers and soldiers in the Pakistan army, they revolted, and later General Ieya, that time Major Ieya, he led one battalion. I don't really need the mic, so don't worry. Everyone helped Mila Ieya. So General Ieya, he led his East Pakistan, East Bengal regiment soldiers, they fought against the Pakistanis and slowly retreated into Tripura to a border town called Shabram. After 10 days of fighting, no food, these boys, they were absolute sort of, at the end of, they are not slept for more than an hour, as they came retreating out of Bangladesh, into Indian territory, because Ieya had said, we don't have the strength, we don't have the ammunition, you know, so many people, what do you say? So they just went to war, before we run out of ammunition, we have to aid Indian territory, then maybe we will get some support. So when they came into a small town called Shabram, my father-in-law was there, the Dysp of Tripurapur is there, he received them, and General Iya, and Major Ieya said, And rice was managed. And there is one rice seller, one saav seller. He still says, What I am trying to say is, the moment they started random rape of Bengali women and children, the Bengali soldiers of the army revolted. And they went to form the nucleus of the Mootsi force. The rest of the people in Bangladesh, Amilik was leading the education, but Amilik is like Congress. They were not a party of revolution, a communist party which had trained people. They were basically agitation, street agitation. Mokti jai omuk chai to omuk chai. But is this Bengali soldiers of the East Bengal regiment and the East Bengal, East Pakistan. East Pakistan rifles, which later became BDR Bangladesh rifles. They formed the nucleus. It's around them that other Khethigora Manu students, they came and the guerrilla force was built up. Now, if Paresh Borval, through all his interesting friends in the overground, including human rights, can get this story into the media. He says, Which is the real battleground. How man, Even when someone like General Tony Bortoloy, I had an exchange with him this morning. He is the first general. He is General in the Indian Army. Major General of Bortoloy, Tony Bortoloy. If Tony Bortoloy needs that copy, you will have second thoughts about staying in the Indian Army, believe me. That is how the media space becomes so important. Because insurgency and counterinsurgency at the end of the day is not a battle of guns. It's not about tactical positions. It's not about tank movements. It's all about the battle of hearts and minds. Win that battle of hearts and minds. Both sides, or rather all the sides in the conflict, actually need media space. Actually need to control the media space. Which is why you would have heard of this phenomena called embedded journalism. That journalists are accompanying American troops in Iraq. What are the reporting? They are only reporting the American side of the story. So this whole phenomenon in conflict you need to be aware. That the media space becomes one of the most contested space. And everyone involved in the conflict wants to get the story their own way. And that's why you really, really, really, really need to make a very critical professional effort to balance the whole scene. It's easier said than done. But it's nevertheless a key professional task which has to be attempted, which has... That's a battle we all have to fight and we have to win it. Soldiers are fighting their own battles to win them. Undergrounds and insurgents are fighting their own battles. We, in the media, will have to fight our own battle to ensure that we don't become victims of scyops. What is scyops? Psychological operations. The Indian army actually has a self. I have a car. A German. No, it's Kumar Sena. Star officer 1. Scyops Division. Indian military intelligence headquarter. Goody's car. He says this in his car that he's doing scyops. What is scyops? Planting lies about your opponent. Defending him. Discrediting him. So that he loses public support. And the insurgents do the same thing. Because at the end of the day, the insurgents replicate the state. The Indian army has a colonel. So Paresh Guru needs to be colonel. Because his army is not big enough. And the Nagas have a bigger army. So their chief of army staff is a major general. A major general of V.A. Sub-10. They exactly replicate the state. And they do the same thing. They're trying to win you over to their cause. They're trying to use you as their public relations officer. They're trying to deprive you of your independence. Your impartiality, your sense of balance. And what they're trying to do is, in the process, win the battle of hearts and minds. In which you are their most important weapon. What is your task? You need to be aware of this. Number one, you need to have a strategy to fight that out. Because you need to speak to these guys anyway. You can't afford to overlook them. Because you're reporting the conflict and their important actors in the drama. But you really need to have sources and a professional technique. By which you can actually find the truth and balance it. And balance your whole story. So in this whole business of Psyops and force multipliers. You need to be acutely aware of who you are. You need to rise above the identity barrier as I said first. You need to have a diverse variety of sources. You need to have complete clear idea of your agenda. Which should be a media agenda rather than a political or a military agenda. You need to be first with the news. But you need to be absolutely sure about what you're writing. So it's important to be first. But it's more important to get it right. Otherwise it could lead to the death of people. And last but not the least, you need to develop a professional capability. And technology. Technology I'm not meaning. All these gadgets. But a sort of professional technology so that you're not used. These are the key important arguments that I've sought to make in my presentation today. When I discuss media and conflict. And as I've given you old knowledge and experience, I can give you more and more experience. But before I finish, I would like to say one small thing. Is that because I'm trying to bring my 32 years experience as a journalist into this whole process of doing this new paper. I'm looking for different kinds of talent. I've got very senior people. Believe me, I've not got a single guy from Delhi, Calcutta or Bombay. It's all our boys. Senior people. Last few years, even in media, a lot of our boys have gone. I've just brought them back. All our senior positions are led by people including Shavir Wadhwa's daughter, Shama Mitra or Gemli, who is a dear sister of mine. She's come back from Hindustan times. So the entire top layer of our organization are people who are from the region, especially as Sam, but who have operated in a nationally competitive media environment and who will produce something better than what local papers are capable of. We have recruited quite a lot of youngsters here who can be more. What we have avoided is, we have avoided recruiting people, you know, who are senior in the profession here, but who have a reputation of being extortionist, who have a reputation of being very biased people. We have consciously avoided them. So we have recruited very good journalists from this region, but we have operated in a national environment. We have recruited some youngsters. I would like to actually work with this institute in the area of media research, because that's something essentially my interest was in ethnicity, insurgency and that kind of subject. My PhD is called Insurgency and Diplomacy in Post-Colonial South Asia. It's an Oxford PhD which later came out as a book called The Insurgent Crossfire. I've subsequently done another book on the Northeast standalone. But bilaterally I've got into media research and one of the recent books I've edited is called Counter-Gaze Media Migrants Minorities. It's basically an European Academy project where five Indian media researchers, rather researchers, I was a media researcher, one other medium, sent to Europe to study the minority situation. I studied the media and the minority situation in Germany. And the five scholars, Europeans, were sent to India. And then that's why the book is called Counter-Gaze. This was a gaze against each other. And I was finally asked by the European Academy to edit that book. I should have actually brought a copy and donated it to this organization. I'll do it at some point of time. It's called Counter-Gaze Media Migrants Minorities. So bilaterally in the last few years I have got into a little bit of media research and with the little experience of that I have, I'd be very happy to share my experience and develop some definite media research program in this region, the support for which may be provided by my newspaper because we plan to have a newspaper which will be very research oriented. But thank everybody, thank the organizers, thank the people who are connected with this institute and thank my young friends. We hope to interact more in the future. Thank you.