 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India show by People's Dispatch. In this episode, we take a look at the Pegasus scandal in the country that avails of a tribal community in the state of Tamil Nadu and the impact of the past few years on tourism in the Union Territory of Kashmir. In our first tour, India has figured majorly in project Pegasus, which has rocked the world in the past few weeks. The scandal consists of the leak of a huge database of numbers which belong to those who are believed to have been of interest to the clients of an Israeli company, NSO Group. So what was the product of the NSO Group? It's the Pegasus spyware, one of the most advanced in the world, which can infect someone's phone without them even clicking a link. Once the phone is infected, it becomes a spy in the pocket and can send all your information to those spying on you. Now globally, the names on the list include presidents, prime ministers and activists. In India, the main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, serving ministers, journalists and activists have all figured in the list. An analysis of the phones as some of those mentioned in the list shows that they were indeed compromised. Now the opposition in civil society have of course accused the government of spying, which it is denied. The government has said that there has been no unauthorized surveillance in the country. However, it has not actually said that it has not purchased Pegasus. In this context, many have asked why common citizens, for instance those who are not in positions of power, should care about this issue since their names may not figure on the list. Journalist Anandio Chakravarty explains the various dimensions of this issue. I'm going to talk about, of course, Pegasus. The Pegasus Snoop Gate, where Neta's opposition leaders, bureaucrats, activists, journalists were targeted, their phones hacked and we don't know what information was taken out of it. Who did it? I'm not getting into that. But let's start with one particular point and that is, look at this. The Pegasus project involves 17 news organizations across the world. Pegasus, from these 17 news organizations, have been working very hard for the last several months to track down people who were targeted by this Israeli software. And remember, this Israeli software, the company claims, is sold only to governments and state actors. No one else. So whoever used it is most likely a state actor. Which state? Which country? I'm not going into that. The only way for the investigators to find out if there is ever an investigation into this. However, the point is, out of these 17 organizations, there's not one mainstream Indian news organization that was included. The news organization, that Indian news organization, which is part of it, is an independent website, The Wire. And one particular reason it got into the process was because The Wire's editor Siddharth Vardarajan was one of those who had been targeted by this particular Pegasus software. So they got into that. But think about it. In the past, we've had WikiLeaks, US WikiLeaks, we've had the Swiss Bank accounts and mainstream Indian news organizations were involved in this process. Out of these 17 news organizations, we have big names globally. We have Washington Post, one of the big newspapers of the world. We have Haaretz of Israel. We have The Guardian in the UK. We have Le Mans in France. We have one of the top newspapers in Germany. But in India, not a single big newspaper or news organization TV channel was included in this. This tells you what global, the journalistic community, the news gathering community which does journalism, which is speaking truth to power, exposing the way in which power operates, what they think of Indian news organizations that they were not even asked to participate in this process. And if they were asked, they clearly did not agree to do it. So this tells you about the state of news media in India. And in a sense, this also leads us to the second part, which is surveillance. I have often said that one of the biggest reasons that India's news media is so timid right now that it does not take up this massive case. Think about it. This is almost like what happened in the US Watergate, the Watergate scandal. It's almost like that, where the opposition was being spied upon by this sitting president. Here we don't know who did it, but we know that Rahul Gandhi's phones and his associates' phones, Prashant Kishore, who was working for Mamata Banerjee, his phones, they were all targeted. And yet not a single Indian news organization thinks or any news editor thinks it is important or worth their while to take this up as a story and to investigate it. Well, the reason for this is partly because today news media is corporatoned. I know I keep saying this, it is corporatoned and it's very easy to lean on corporates. Because every day to do business in India and probably everywhere in the world, you constantly break rules. It is extremely easy for any agency to send a notice and say, your production in this particular factory is being shut down because you violated rule numbers so and it's a huge loss of business. An income tax notice or an ED notice to the company is unnecessary hassle. The stock price falls, you have huge legal expenses. So as soon as corporates or big companies begin to own media houses, they become vulnerable to state action, very easy to handle them. They're no longer independent. Number two, number two is that when corporates own media houses, they essentially represent power because corporates are part of the ruling elite, the ruling class, which basically determines state policy. So it is in their interest to keep running the state as it is, to reproduce the system of power as it is. And that is why corporate ownership of news media, which has happened in various ways either directly or through the extensive dependence that news media has on advertising, has made it timid, easy to manipulate, and in general, in favor of power. It does not speak truth to power. It essentially bats for power. Now that is one of the crucial reasons and that becomes even easier when the state undertakes surveillance. In our next story, we'll bring you a ground report from the state of Tamil Nadu, specifically the city of Chennai, on the situation of the tribal Narikurva community. The community has always faced a variety of issues relating to livelihood and social discrimination and the pandemic has only made it worse. Take a look at what they have to see. We don't know where to go, where to go, where to stay, and who to ask for help. If we come to this country, people from other countries are coming to see us. We don't know what to expect, we don't know what to expect, we don't know what to expect. We are a group of people. These are the people of the village of Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, no one knows about this. When it comes to Tamil Nadu, Narikurava is well known. In the Indian development gateway, there are more than 60 people from all over the world around the world, including the people of the Karkasia. Along with that, there are also 10% of people who are active in India, including the people of the Karkasia region of Nadu. More than that, the area of Karkasia, the Karkasia region of Nadu, It is also clear that there are only 500 of them in the country today. In 2016, the majority of the people in Tamil Nadu were brought to the OBC party. There is a large number of them. In Tamil Nadu, there are more than 30,000 families in Tamil Nadu. In many places, in Manila, there are more than 30,000 families in Tamil Nadu. We have to go to Thirumulayal, where Chennai is well known. There are more than 110 families in Tamil Nadu. They have been living here for 35 years. Let's meet them in person and see what they have to say. We are not in our house. Mani is not in our house. We have to go around the shop to buy food and food. We don't have a shop. We don't have a place. We have to give someone a message. We have to teach them a lesson. We have to teach them a lesson. We can teach our children. We can also listen to them. We have a name. We have 15 children. What do we do with them? We have lost our children and children. But we do not have to eat. We have to show our children where a Chitra Mittra Mallai is. The Chitra Mallai will sit with their children. When they are done eating, they will give the Chitra mallai. They will buy the Chitra sambar and the Rasachada, and help them eat. They will keep a plant in front of them. The main problem is that these people do not have basic facilities and land with patas. The Renke Commission in 2008 had submitted a comprehensive report on status of denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes. The most important recommendation in the report was to provide adequate basic amenities and government land with patas to be used as their residence. Similar to the Renke Commission, another commission has submitted a report on them in 2017. That report insisted on not only providing adequate places to these communities but also said the government should ensure the constitutional rights of these people by giving appropriate reservations to the communities. As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, 14 nomadic communities fall under the OBC category. Thus, the rights and priority of these people have been denied socially. Professor Sumathi, a researcher and anthropologist at the University of Madras speaks about this community. Particularly in Tamil Nadu, there are 36 communities are listed as scheduled type which does not include Narikuravas. Okay, so this is the one thing. But if you could compare the list of communities which has been mentioned in Tamil Nadu with Andhra Pradesh and other Karnataka and there are a lot of variations in this list also. And if you could ask me, from the culture perspective, they can very well fall within the category of tribes. And hence, the ethnographic studies and the socio-cultural anthropologists have constantly recommended that they should be in the list of scheduled tribes. But whereas this process is a very long process, as I said, the number is not really curious for the politicians and the administrators and they have been neglected. That's what raised my strong feelings. The pandemic-induced lockdown period is causing additional problems to the Narikurava community. Children of this community attending school find difficulty in accessing online classes. I am studying online classes. I am sitting on the phone and I am studying. How did you get in touch with your parents? I am studying. They come and tell me and I go to school every day. Do you study online? No, I don't. I don't attend school. What do you attend? Collector. My name is Inchal. I am studying in the 6th grade. Since I was in school for the last two years, I was not able to study properly. I used to go to school two or three days before the pandemic. After that, because of the lockdown, it was very difficult for us. Even though the other thing is, again, claiming themselves and falling into the categorisation of a scheduled drive-in, it will become 37 communities as far as I am not least concerned. So, again, getting into the competition and among the communities who have already seeking or grabbing the reservation facilities is not simple, again, I would say. But still, their perceptions has been completely streamlined and felt strongly. If they could fall into the category of drive-in, they always think they can also seek the other facilities. There are other facilities also because the central government is also coming out with a lot of facilities and a lot of funds has been unloaded for scheduled drive-in. The ministry is giving so much of funds so that they could become a beneficiary of that. But definitely falling into the line of MBC and competing with the groups like One Year's and Davos and Pramalai Kallas are very, very highly impossible for these people to think about such competition because all these categorisation, all these claims ultimately revolves around the developmental component in our country and every individual who are part of the community always think they should be. And that is a reality also. So though we all say in Chennai also we can say that caste and community know it is not, even today I could say 95% of marriages are endogamous. They marry within the community and hardly 5% all over the world. India, if you could take that is what the reality is. We believe in communities but my only concern as a community expert, every community has its own beautiful culture as a part of it and it has to be relished and it should not be perceived in a derogative sense. That's what I've been constantly putting it and I strongly felt this, their culture, their language, their kinship patterns of this community, has to be strongly supporting that they should be categorised into scheduled right, not in any other categorisation. That's how it goes. If we don't study, if we don't read in the forest, if we don't study in the forest, will they help us? If we see so many leaders, they will definitely change. If we go to M.Jar, we should go to Karnanidhi. If we go to Karnanidhi, we should go to Jalaltha. If we go to Jalaltha, we should go to Pannirchala. If we go to Pannirchala, we should go to Mukashtani. If we go to Karnanidhi, we should go to Kalesh, if we go to Adulensa, if we go to Adulisa, if we go to the village, if we go to the village, we wouldn't be a part of this country, we wouldn't be a part of this country, we wouldn't be our family, we are human beings. And finally we head to the Union Territory of Kashmir where the past few years have seen tourism really take a hit. Kashmir is famous as the hub of tourism but the pandemic and even before that the political crisis stemming from the stemming from the removal of special status from the then state, had led to a huge decline in footfalls. Some of the worst affected have been those whose livelihoods depend on tourism. Here is a report on their conditions. The current economic crisis, a by-product of the COVID-19 induced lockdowns, has brought economic activities to a standstill in India. But for Kashmiris, the lockdown had started much before the pandemic. With the abbreviation of Article 370 and 35A of the constitution, on August 5th, 2019, the central government had put the state under an indefinite curfew, resulting in the collapse of its crucial tourism sector. In the past two to three years, no one has come here. Now it has been two to three days and the locals have come here empty-handed. We have no work to do. We have no work to do with the locals. The government had given us a thousand rupees, a thousand rupees, a thousand rupees. But what will be the expenses in that thousand rupees? Will be the expenses of a horse, the expenses of a horse, or the expenses of a house? It has been three years, three years. It has been three years. There is no work, no tourism. Our expenses are a little less, for the children. You know how much the expenses of the house are. If the private children are paid, then how much the expenses of the house are. The day at that time, thank God, the day at that time, we used to get such expenses. So now there is no work to be done. Due to countless lockdowns, the commercial drivers are badly hit and they see a huge challenge to pay the monthly installments of loans that they have taken to buy their vehicles. The people working in tourism sector feel completely let down by the government in Jammu and Kashmir. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back next week with more news from India. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.