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I often say that we make sense of the world by joining dots.
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And the more dots we have, the clearer our picture of the world.
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So how do we gather these dots?
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The immediate experiences of our own lives will never add up to enough.
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And we need to have the humility to recognize this.
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We need to make an effort to learn about the world, to see the world through the eyes of
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others, many others, so that we can enrich our own understanding.
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For me, the best way to gather these dots is by reading books.
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If you read a lot and your reading is both broad and deep, your vision is that much more
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likely to be sharper and clearer.
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And this is also true if we have an appreciation of data.
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What is data but a gathering of dots, facts about the world that we can bring together
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to paint a picture in high definition?
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Our brains have evolved to prefer stories over numbers, especially large numbers and
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complex statistics, which is why so many of the best storytellers are those who have a
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sense of the bigger picture, and more importantly, who actively look at the data to seek out
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Rukmini S, a pioneering data journalist who learned her jobs at the
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Times of India and was the first data editor at The Hindu.
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She has written for a series of major publications across the world.
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And I'm a bit uncertain about the term data journalist, as I consider Rukmini an outstanding
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journalist who also happens to understand and use data very well, as indeed every journalist
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A few months ago, as this pandemic got underway, Rukmini started up a groundbreaking podcast
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called The Moving Curve, in which she explored her own intellectual curiosity about the pandemic.
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Every day she would ask a question about the unfolding crisis and try to answer it by examining
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the research out there, looking at the data and so on.
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Every episode was five to 10 minutes long, and she recently hit 100 episodes of The Moving
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I've been planning to ask her on the show for a long time now, and was delighted when
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we could finally make it happen.
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Before we begin with our episode though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Are you one of those people who not only loves to read, but also wants to write better?
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If so, I have something for you.
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Since April this year, I've been teaching an online course called The Art of Clear Writing.
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Four webinars spread out over four Saturdays, in which I share whatever I've learned about
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The course also contains many writing exercises, discussions on email and WhatsApp, and much
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It costs Rs 10,000 or $150.
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You can check out the details at IndiaUncut.com slash Clear Writing.
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This link will be in the show notes.
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If you want to bridge the gap between the thoughts in your head and the words on the
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page, then The Art of Clear Writing might be just what you need.
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November batches begin on Saturday, November 7th, so hurry and register before then.
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Go to IndiaUncut.com slash Clear Writing.
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Rukmini, welcome to the Seen in the Unseen.
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It's so exciting to be here.
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I feel a bit like a T20 player who's walked into a test match, except that you actually
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can get T20 numbers, so that's not a good analogy either.
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No, no, it's not a bad analogy because there are T20 players who walked into a test match
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and completely owned that field, like David Warner, for example, the first time he played
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for the Delhi franchise back in the day, his teammate Virender Sehwag told him that you
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have a game for test cricket, and that sounded very counterintuitive because Warner was a
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But look what happened.
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He's one of the great players, Steve Smith, Jaspreet Bumrah, and I just have to say that
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I am just an unabashed admirer of your podcast, The Moving Curve, and the things that you've
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I don't think I would be able to do something like that with that kind of regularity, asking
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important questions and all of that.
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But before we kind of embarrass each other with too much praise, let's move on.
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I'm very curious to know about your background because, you know, in our minds as often,
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you know, when you hear the words data journalists, which for some reason is how people kind of
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refer to you, though I think that's not, I mean, you're obviously just a very good journalist
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period and, you know, but and one of the things that obviously strikes me about your background
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is that you were a sort of a hardcore reporter or regular journalist who was reporting stories
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But I'd say take me even before that, take me to your childhood, what kind of person
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were you, what kind of career did you look at, how did you get attracted to journalism
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So I do think that anyone who knew me growing up would be quite surprised by this turn because
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I never really demonstrated any particular affinity for math, so I enjoyed it in school.
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So I grew up in Pune, my parents there, I am very much a Pune girl in most ways.
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I left home after I did a BA in psychology at Ferguson College for reasons that I could
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You know, one of those things that you drift into when you're 18, I enjoyed it.
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I do feel like it exposed me to statistics and experimental science for the first time.
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So that was interesting.
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But somewhere at the back of my mind, I always knew that what I was going to get into was
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I don't think I knew anything about how journalism worked, but that seemed like the sort of thing
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that people who like to write did.
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So I went to, you know, from Pune, the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai was very
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far, very expensive at the time, the more well-known and familiar yet well-regarded
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option was the Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai.
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So what I did is I did a postgraduate diploma in social communications media, that's the
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mouthful that that course is called.
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It's women's only college, 30 students living in a hostel for the first time, very political
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place and with very specific political ideas.
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And you know, I'm sure we'll talk about that later.
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Because one of the things that that I spend a lot of time thinking about and thinking
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about how journalism can get better about is about how to be less polarized.
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And I wouldn't say that that that wasn't a long polarizes to it was sort of like being
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I suppose on a mini-JNU sort of equivalent then, but yeah, again, none of this is a criticism
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of the course, which I absolutely loved.
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P. Sainath was one of our teachers, he's someone I, you know, hugely admire and love very much.
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He's like family for me a bit now.
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So that was the first time I read nonfiction, that was the first time I read newspapers
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regularly, that was the first time I felt engaged with any sort of political thinking
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I was very much one of those persons who floated through undergraduate college, building wonderful
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personal relationships, falling in love, joining a rock band and having the rest of the world
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So Sophia was when I woke up and I'm very much one of those people who's everything
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politically awakening, learning everything happened on the job since I sort of sleepwalked
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through college in that respect.
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I loved it, I think I did well and immediately after it was a one-year course, immediately
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after that there was some campus placements and I started an internship at the Times of
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India in Bombay and I ended up working there for four years and all.
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And that was, as you mentioned, very much regular journalism.
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So the first few months was very much you were the person who was, you were the spot
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boy, you were sent to run for everything, any press release, any event, you would never
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knew what your day was like.
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Anything that was in the furthest possible suburb, you were likely to be sent there,
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an experience that nothing else will give you, just knowing the local train system in
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and out, knowing every suburb in and out.
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So I did that, then I covered the education beat for a little while and the last beat
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that I covered in Mumbai was state government.
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In the course of news reporting, I ended up doing a bit of crime reporting and got very
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interested in legal reporting because of some trials that I ended up covering quite regularly,
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although I wasn't a court journalist.
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And then after that, after I did that for four years, I went to the School of Oriental
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and African Studies in London to do a Masters in Development Studies.
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So that again, in that respect, was a sort of standard lefty program.
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I enjoyed it, but I was also very sure that I immediately wanted to get back to Indian
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journalism that, you know, I really felt that that was the most productive use of my time.
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I was really hungry to come back and work.
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Around that time or a little before that, the Times of India had set up in Delhi, a
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group called the Times Insight Group, which is a small team of reporters focused on data
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So, you know, I think this most people don't associate the Times of India with data journalism,
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but that really is the first place that set up a systematic team to do this.
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So Jayadip Bose, the editor then and now who had hired me in Bombay, when I came back,
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I talked to him about things that I could do when he mentioned this team.
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Because one of the things that had happened is when I was doing my Masters, I felt I was
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reading World Bank reports for the first time, you know, it's not that they hadn't existed
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I had just not known anything about it.
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And I felt that there was so much research that I was reading that I should have been
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incorporating into news stories.
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So it wasn't yet data as such, it was more the feeling that there's rigorous research
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and academic work that I should be incorporating into news reporting.
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And then it was really three years of learning on the job.
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I joined that team in Delhi, I moved to Delhi, I got to do a whole lot of very sort of straight
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placed data journalism, which is NSS has put out a report today, report about it, World
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Bank has put this report out a report and I'm really glad I got to do that.
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And really on data work, I was starting from learning how to do addition and subtraction
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I hadn't done anything of that sort before.
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And that group is headed still by Shankar Agaraman, who's a, you know, old school financial
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journalist, very well known among the old school Delhi journalist, a great boss, someone
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who really shines on election and budget days in particular.
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And again, this is not something people give the Times of India credit for, but it truly
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does shine on election days, especially.
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And the other great thing I got to do then was travel, there was nothing that no one
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said no to me for any idea I had, you know, around then in 2009 and 10 food prices started
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escalating the price of dal, all of that started escalating.
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So I could write about it and look at the numbers and do all of that, but then also
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go to Bundelkhand and report on it.
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And these were just things off the top of my head, I wanted to do the Bihar elections
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because it seemed like development indicators had really improved in Mitesh's first term.
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I got to go and cover the Bihar elections.
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I wanted to write on the panchayat system because I could see that there was incremental
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change going on in political representation there.
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So I got to cover Rajasthan's panchayat elections.
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Similarly, political representation, I got to report from Nagaland where there has never
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been a woman MLA and I got to, you know, trail two women candidates as they went campaigning.
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So that, that I really, I remember feeling then that I was getting paid to understand
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the country and just nothing I could have asked for better than that.
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I did feel like I was maybe getting a bit slow and maybe a bit lazy, you know, spending
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too much time unproductively staring at a screen sometimes in office.
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So I'm glad then that Siddharth Vardarajan, now the Wires editor, then the Hindus editor
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got in touch with me because I do think I was stagnating a bit then.
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He hired me to the Hindu in 2013 and I was there for three years.
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And after Siddharth left and Malini Pathisati took over, she made me the data editor then,
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which was the first Indian publication to have a data editor position.
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So both Siddharth and Malini did have that vision for, that vision that focused that
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emphasis on data over there.
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So that was the last sort of mainstream media full-time job I had.
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In 2016, I quit the Hindu, I worked for the Huffpost for a little while doing similar
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work and since 2018, I've been doing this independently and I moved to Chennai in 2016.
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So, the lesson for this for people listening, by the way, is that good Indian podcasters
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come out of Ferguson College, Pune because I also graduated from there.
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Yeah, I passed out in 94, so I think that might have been a little before your time.
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So what did you do in a rock band?
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Are there videos on YouTube that we can embarrass you with?
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There are pictures from Pune Times that my parents can embarrass me with.
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Wow, instantly thousands of listeners immediately try to Google and figure that out.
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What I find very interesting about this whole narrative, and this is something that I've
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been thinking about for a while now, is the distinction between the abstract and the concrete
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in people's experiences.
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Like, it strikes me that when you go to college or when you go do whatever academic thing
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you do, you're being taught abstract ideas, you're being taught abstractions about the
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world and then at some point, of course, if you remain in academics, you can just remain
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in that abstract realm forever, but if you go out in the real world and you actually
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engage with it, then you get exposed to concrete realities.
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And it seems to me that this distinction between abstraction and reality is something that
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can possibly apply to journalists like you in many ways, like first you do the journalistic
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training and all of that, and then you're out in the real world, you're reporting from
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the weeds, and that's one sort of element of it.
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Another element of it is just how you engage with data, like many people would, and we'll
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of course, explore this later in the episode in more detail, but people will often bring
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their own biases to data and try to make it conform to their narratives.
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But to do that, you really have to understand the data intuitively and all that.
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And like you said, it strikes me that it might actually have been a feature and not a bug
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that you had to learn all that from scratch, how to add and subtract in Excel, for example,
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which I still don't know, and you know, which would have also given you a concrete sense
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of data and its limitations and what it can be used for.
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Is there something kind of to that, like as you engage more and more concretely with India,
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are your old frames sort of collapsing and new frames taking their place?
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Is there a journey like that, that you sort of consciously thought about?
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Yeah, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head because that is what has been my process
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for the last five years.
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So I would say that I still have, you know, largely left of center politics and ideas,
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but one of the big things which has really come through both the points that you mentioned
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simultaneously, which is one part of it is through reporting directly and part of it
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is going with the data.
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You know, it didn't even come as a moment of reckoning that I felt that I was confronting
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all that I believed or held dear and that it was all withering away.
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I suppose it had been happening continuously and didn't really come as a surprise to me
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But yes, accepting that a lot of what the left in India in particular holds true and
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passes on through universities or even through leftist academics and the journalists who
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faithfully report everything that they say is deceptive, it's problematic, it's not
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doing anyone much good.
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So you know, all of this sounds a bit quaint, all this UPA era stuff is now very quaint
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that we were having all these intense discussions about things like the public distribution
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system, but that's what we were discussing back then.
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So I think, you know, things like accepting that, you know, holding the public distribution
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system as a model for something that must be upheld at every cost and anything that's
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seen as an alternative like cash or a universal basic income must be sort of reflexively attacked
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is something that I had to unlearn and I'm, you know, happy to have been able to do that
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and I consistently find that the data and research continues to back these things up.
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The other thing, all sort of mass publicly provided goods that I remain a, you know,
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firm supporter of in the middle of a pandemic, the importance of affordable, accessible public
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health is there for everyone to see.
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But to go on talking about these things as, but we must strengthen public schools, but
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we must strengthen the public health system without accepting how discriminatory and demeaning
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it can be to have to be entangled with it is privilege, is ultimately privilege.
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So the economist Jishnu Das is someone whose work I admire very much and I like engaging
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with because it makes me rethink things that I might have gone in thinking of a certain
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And I think his work on healthcare has been one of those things that I really feel I wish
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a lot of journalism students would look at and read because things like accepting that
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an MBBS doctor in a public hospital necessarily cares more and provides better care, gives
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better prescriptions even than quack in a private clinic is something we would all assume
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and something we would all, you know, put our weight behind, but he's consistently
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shown that not to be the case, you know, good solid research in both urban and rural settings
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in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
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I feel in 2012 and 2013, these are things that I was confronting and at that time it
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felt like a debate with two sides, but now I see there are a number of people who sort
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of, you know, exist in the middle and don't see these as choices, but as let's all start
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with the belief that care or education should be something that is available to everybody,
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but at their own, with their own agency, with their own self-respect alive, you know.
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So yeah, I think both reporting and dealing with the data has made me rethink many of
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And when you talk about the value, if any, in having to do everything longhand and the
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hard way, I, it really is true.
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It sounds like some, you know, some fuddy-duddy thing that your dad says, right?
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Which is that you'll only know it when you write it out by hand, but you will only figure
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it out when you've done some data stuff manually is something that I've just had to accept.
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There's a lot of, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this in a bit, but I spend a shocking
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amount of my time doing work manually.
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And this isn't a humble brag.
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If I had better skills, I wouldn't be doing this manually.
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It's a colossal waste of time.
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And anyone who's building their skills right now should build skills so that they're not
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This, this is not smart, but there are, you know, every time I think I was just thinking
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when I go on Amit's podcast, maybe I should put out an appeal to people, to anyone who
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wants to do this work for me, you know, paid for credit, that I need developers now that
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I don't work in a newsroom anymore.
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I can't hire a developer and I don't earn enough to like hire a full-time developer
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I said, you know, this sort of geeky person, if they listen to the show, I should put this
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But it's not just not letting go of control, which is a problem, but it also is.
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That reading so much of this stuff manually gives me insights that I wouldn't miss otherwise.
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So just to give you an example, I've really enjoyed engaging with legal data.
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And while this sounds like something that I'm doing that's complicated or with great
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skills, but a lot of it is just reading court judgments.
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Again, if there were good machine learning tools, I'm sure people could reduce the sort
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of donkey work they put into it.
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But a lot of what I do is just reading a lot of court judgments.
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So there was a point at which I was having to manually read Metropolitan Magistrate Court
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rulings in Mumbai, because I was looking actually for sexual assault cases, for something specific
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But while I was looking for this, I ended up noticing that on the daily sort of docket
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of most judges, there was a large number of cases of a particular IPC section.
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And I was, couldn't really understand why it was coming up that often.
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Then, when I looked up the section, it was causing hurt using a poisonous substance.
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And I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I was seeing so many every day.
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Most Metropolitan Magistrates were seeing many of these cases every day.
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And then I started noticing that they were all acquittals, all acquittals.
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So I just couldn't figure out what was going on.
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So what I ended up getting to the bottom of, and then I ended up investigating and writing
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about that separately, was that at that time, the drug mephidrone, which was called Meow
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Meow on the street, was not in the NDPS, the India's Narcotics Act.
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It wasn't in the schedule that gives cops the powers to go after it in those ways.
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So the only IPC section that they felt they could use to catch the peddlers was this one.
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But it's completely the wrong section, because it requires you to not just prove possession
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at that moment, but also intend to cause hurt, which a peddler doesn't have.
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So it was one of the most common cases that Metropolitan Magistrates were looking at,
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and it had a hundred percent acquittal rate.
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So yeah, it's the scene and the unseen, I was just thinking about that, that this is
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what I saw, and this is the entire world of things behind it.
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I ended up going to Mumbai for it and speaking to the NDPS person and a couple of ACPs as
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And they were all like, yes, we know that it wasn't the right one to use, sorry, but
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there's nothing we could do about it.
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And the judges were so sick of these cases coming to them, because in each one, they
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had to say, you haven't shown intent to hurt, acquit, acquit, acquit, and the cops were
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also using it to do a bit of petty score settling.
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And there were people who'd been in jail without bail for a year.
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I found a disproportionately high number of Muslim men in it, so there was all of that
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No, it's so fascinating.
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I mean, it's almost like you're a forensic detective when you're going through the data
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to figure all this out.
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No, I read in one of your interviews about how you mentioned that possibly during this
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case that you had like these hundreds of tabs open, and you're manually going through one
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judgment at a time, and that's just incredible.
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So I actually second your appeal, and if there are listeners of the show who can create solutions
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for this, whether at scale or whether at an individual level, please do get in touch with
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Another part of your sort of personal journey, which you also I think referred to in one
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of your interviews as being interesting and affecting your perspective was moving away
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from Delhi, shifting to Chennai, having kids, choosing to kind of be located there.
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Did that also like shift your frame of reference and make you, you know, take you out of that
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Delhi journalism bubble, so to say, and make you look at things differently?
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I did, but the more I think about it, the more I want to make sure that I don't start
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looking back at that experience as something frothy and silly and, you know, full of narcissistic
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people who only talk about each other's work.
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There is that too, but that's not all of Delhi's journalism.
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And to everyone who wants to continue in, at least in public policy journalism, I would
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highly recommend working in Delhi for a while.
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I feel like the journalism I'm able to do now and in all sort of ways, even personally,
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is because I was in Delhi for those key years in between.
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Moving away from Delhi has, it's made me more conscious of how it's impossible to understand
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some of the things that matter so deeply to people from a particular part of the country,
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not just from Delhi, but from anywhere else.
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So being in Chennai, I feel like I could see the media trying to make sense and grapple
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with this jelly cut issue when it happened a few years ago.
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I still sense it when they try to write about NEET, the medical entrance exam and, you know,
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Tamil Nadu's feelings on it.
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And I just realized how lost in translation this stuff is.
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Things like self-respect are impossible to communicate through journalism sometimes.
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And it underpins so much of what goes on in Tamil Nadu in particular.
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So you know, I think while a lot of people who move away from Delhi or even people who
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talk self-deprecatingly about being in Delhi diminish it a fair bit, I do think that it's
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possible to move away and write, you know, more considered stuff only after you've actually
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So I'm very happy for, I loved Delhi, I loved living there, I loved working in journalism
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And, you know, the conversations I had and the arguments over public policy, over politics,
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you know, over dinner and people's houses on terraces, they were very formative and
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I still, they are the sort of contours of the debates and discussions I'm still having
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Having kids, yeah, that, now that's a big change in multiple ways.
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I mean, one of it is just the time part of it.
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So it just means that there's a significant shift in the type of journalism I do because
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of the hours in the day I have.
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It's also definitely changed my consumption diet of journalism.
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My, I mean, some of it is just, it sounds so silly and childish to say, but I know that
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a lot of parents feel this is that I can't consume violence much at all.
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I'm someone who's always pushed back against things like trigger warnings and I still would
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I mean, I'm sorry, not in an entertainment show, but even in journalism, I have no, I
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cannot consume violence anymore.
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And also, I mean, it really came home to me in the pandemic that I no longer can keep
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up with things on a sort of minute to minute basis anymore, which then means that my need
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to distill information both for myself and then for people who read me or listen to me
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has now become a part of my journalism because it really is that the only time that I really
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can think at length about the world is sort of at the end of the day.
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And I'm glad that I'm not reacting to events immediately and that I have had a few hours
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of considered time to think about it.
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So it's a luxury, but I'm glad that I'm able to do that sort of work.
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The thing about journalism is across the board and definitely I see this about data journalism
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teams in newsrooms is that you're sort of expected to do a bit of everything, which
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is you have to put out the daily NSSO, put out this report sort of thing too, as well
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as the well-considered longer things.
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And that just leaves very little space to think.
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It was surprising to me, it made me very happy and it was surprising to me that especially
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during the pandemic when people were home and so much more housework, so much more childcare,
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other people were suddenly consuming news in a similar sort of way.
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And then that feeling of, especially in the beginning of the pandemic, I mean, it's hard
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to remember it now, but we were starting from figuring out, is this a virus or a bacteria?
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How do these things work?
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Was it an uterine coughing?
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So it suddenly felt that, wow, it's nine o'clock and I just take the news and okay, now we
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know for the first time that it isn't mutating or something huge and significant had happened.
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So I think other people too were feeling that need, that I can't follow ball by ball commentary
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I need to know by the end of the day what happens.
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So a couple of tangential questions which I hadn't planned to ask, but they came up
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from what you were just saying.
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One question, one is, writers often talk about how when they become writers, the quality
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of their reading changes, they start reading differently, earlier they are sort of reading
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whatever books they are just, they're just going with the story or whatever, but when
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they become writers themselves, they start noticing nuanced aspects of the craft and
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Now you spoke a little earlier about the consumption diet changing as you had your kids and you
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had responsibilities at home and all of that, the way you consumed it changed from a real
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thing where people might be tracking everything on Twitter all the time and all of that.
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But when you look at journalism today, has that also changed over the years that you
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are also looking at the craft and practice of journalism with that critical eye of someone
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And also as a sort of an adjunct question to that, does your sort of understanding of
#
data then sort of also affect how you look at the work of others and does it then seem
#
that much more inadequate and misinformed?
#
So one of the most frustrating things to me that continues, see the thing is I'm very
#
much a mainstream media person and even though I'm not in a newsroom now, I sort of think
#
and even plan or imagine very much around a newsroom.
#
So it's incredibly frustrating to me to see that although newsroom integration is something
#
that has existed on a Microsoft, on a PPT slides for the last 10 years in every presentation
#
made to anyone in the media, it's not happening in any meaningful way.
#
And I see this particularly for data stuff.
#
So a couple of things have changed in how I consume the news.
#
One is time, one is reading much more on my phone and than reading physical newspapers
#
and in the sort of stuff that I want to read considering, as you're saying, considering
#
what I want to write as well.
#
I always find it very amusing when journalists sort of express fears about bots because so
#
much of the time journalists are actually writing like bots.
#
So one of the things about COVID coverage that I've noticed is that I regularly open
#
something that I feel was written by a bot because it will say so many cases today and
#
this region more, that region less, and it's painful to think that it wasn't written by
#
This shouldn't be what, and this is not one news article, right?
#
If you put the same search words in Google News, you'll find about 50 Indian publications
#
alone will have written exactly the same thing.
#
So I'm very much a fan of lots of little regular news.
#
I enjoy my TOI kind of bits of everything in the city news.
#
I think it works very well for a city newspaper.
#
I don't think that that's a bad way of going about it.
#
But if you look at it as a consumer, not as a captive consumer of one newspaper, it's
#
incredible how little value add most news articles are doing and what a waste of time
#
it is for the journalists who are working really hard to put that out.
#
Yes, the working on data has made it impossible for me now to see a good news report that
#
So for example, it's ruined political reporting for me because I just cannot wrap my head
#
around the, I landed in this constituency, one JAT is saying this, one upper caste man
#
is saying this, one SON.
#
I cannot wrap my head around that kind of journalism anymore because I don't know what
#
And most large Indian states are pretty well covered by opinion polling.
#
Now there's differences in the quality of the polling.
#
But to read one of these parachuted, even if not parachuted, even by people who deeply
#
understand the region, I just find it impossible to read it anymore.
#
These are, you know, hardworking journalists who are going out there and as such getting
#
you the voices from the ground, but I don't know what to do with it anymore.
#
I don't know what part of my brain that's thinking about an election to put it into
#
It's, it's like watching a fun show now.
#
It's not something that I can slot into any usable thing.
#
And I think a lot of political reporters feel the other way.
#
They feel very frustrated by opinion polling, heavy reporting, which they feel is like missing
#
all the nuances on the ground, but, and opinion polls get it so wrong too, right?
#
So they do feel that how can you hold this as some sort of gospel when they're getting
#
it wrong, we get the real feel on the ground, but yeah, that's what it's done for me.
#
And another thing is when there are elements that can be answered through numbers, when
#
it doesn't happen, then it leaves me very deeply dissatisfied.
#
So more than even looking at the craft of writing differently, what I've been doing
#
a bit in the last few months is looking at podcasts differently.
#
I always listen to them a bit, but I think I listen to journalism podcasts a little more
#
In general, I feel like I hear too much from journalists and I try not to listen to more
#
of them, especially American journalists, but there were a couple of podcasts that I
#
And one that I was listening to over the last few days was called Canary by the Washington
#
And it's by the journalist Amy Brittain, the entire podcast covers her investigation into,
#
well, it starts into a sexual assault trial.
#
Now, this is something I feel very strongly about, and not strongly, it's something I
#
sort of engage deeply in and I'm not sure yet what to feel about the reporting of sexual
#
You know, it's beyond any, nobody still needs to discuss the fact that, that the way women
#
complainants are written about is a problem, their trials through the judicial system,
#
the questions that are still allowed, the way the police behaves, all of that is a problem.
#
But I still have a problem with over-involved journalism around sexual assault, starting
#
from the point of using things like victim and perpetrator instead of complainant and
#
accused, all of that stuff.
#
So this podcast centers, starts around a sexual assault trial in which the man admits to the
#
crime, but it seems as if the judge has given him a lower sentence.
#
And then what we end up finding out is that after she writes about, Amy Brittain writes
#
about this trial, because the complainant didn't take it lying down and she started,
#
you know, pasting flyers around the city saying that this person has been convicted, he's
#
He did, you know, he was a serial offender, but see, it hasn't, you know, he was back
#
In fact, he got a promotion, stuff like that.
#
It was all factual what she was putting out.
#
And after she wrote, Amy Brittain wrote about it, she was contacted by a woman who ended
#
up telling her the story of how she was herself systematically, sexually harassed and molested
#
by the judge in the case, you know, many years before.
#
So that part is really a model of journalism.
#
It's, you know, corroboration, contemporaneous accounts, letters, all of that, none of which
#
you see in, you know, sexual assault.
#
This isn't sexual assault.
#
This is a complaint of a sexual assault, right?
#
You don't see that in the coverage, yeah, and it's great to see that.
#
But you know, I can see her sort of moving this towards.
#
So did this, his own experience affect his sentencing and the way he was as a judge because
#
of what he had done in his own life?
#
And what happens, she puts her data journalist onto it, the Washington Post data journalist,
#
and ultimately they come up short because they just can't sort out the court data.
#
And part of me was feeling, well, you know, open a hundred tabs and read them one by one,
#
but also there was some information they just could not get.
#
So she doesn't answer that part.
#
So she says, I don't have an answer on that.
#
And to me that felt, I felt like I was being led down a path and then just completely,
#
you know, disappointed on that because I did want that data part in that story.
#
Otherwise, this was a very well-told story about how one judge 30 years ago had sexually
#
harassed and molested someone.
#
And that's not the story that I felt I was being sold at all.
#
So yeah, it really does take away from my enjoyment of a lot of reporting now.
#
And of course, in cases where I can see that the data exists and should have been used
#
and maybe in some cases would have even not answered exactly that, as I said, particularly
#
for political reporting, it's absolutely ruined election coverage for me now.
#
Couple of the things you said.
#
One, of course, I like your, I mean, it made me almost LOL when you said that so many people
#
write like bots and you can't make out the difference because I think, you know, as journalists
#
and writers, we can fall into such reflexive habits of both thinking and writing that for
#
all practical purposes, we might as well be bots, except that we are incompetent bots
#
because we don't have that kind of computing power.
#
Like I often say that Trump would fail the Turing test and I think that might well be
#
true of many other humans as well.
#
The second part that you said that really struck me and I'm obviously going to search
#
out canary and binge on it now is a bit where journalists at the end says that I don't really
#
have an answer, which is so refreshing because there are, you know, it's in India, for example,
#
it's almost like you have a compulsion to give an answer and this percolates down for
#
some strange reason to everyday life where if you ask anyone on the street the directions
#
to somewhere, even if they don't know, they will feel compelled to tell you that, oh,
#
I said, I never said by name and so on and so forth.
#
My other sort of question which came out of what you were saying earlier was, you know,
#
when you were talking about how moving to the south, you realize that there are areas
#
which are, for example, not covered by Delhi questions that they are not asking and so
#
And I was being interviewed for another podcast today where I was chatting about tick tock
#
where, you know, I taught a brief course on tick tock in Indian society and I'm quite,
#
you know, I love tick tock and one of the things that to me tick tock did was that before
#
it came along, popular culture had arbiters in the sense that, you know, you had Bollywood
#
and it is as one example, you have other film industries also.
#
But for example, you have Bollywood, they are based in Bombay, there are elites who
#
Some of them are, you know, these old school elites who have these aggressive attitudes
#
from the past, been in Bombay all their lives.
#
Others have, you know, are all your foreign educated young elites who've come in with
#
their attitudes and they don't get the real India at all.
#
And what tick tock kind of did was that it empowered millions of people, not just in
#
terms of letting them express themselves, but of giving them a platform where other
#
people like them were expressing themselves.
#
And suddenly that became the popular culture, you know, bottoms up kind of way.
#
And it was not just, you know, what these arbiters kind of put out.
#
And it struck me while you were speaking and I know this is a bit of a tangent, but it
#
struck me while you were speaking that, you know, is there a case to be made that that
#
is what the situation is in Indian journalism as well?
#
That you have these arbiters, you have these, you know, big media houses, even where you
#
have independent outfits that do such amazing work like scroll and wire and so on.
#
They are still run by conventional journalists who have the conventional points of view,
#
you know, and maybe they're all really missing things, not out of any blindness or incapacity,
#
but it's just the way that it is.
#
And you know, that there are gaps there that could be filled.
#
Yeah, I do think that we have not allowed ourselves to go crazy a little bit trying
#
to think both about form and content.
#
So I do, you know, even when I was writing data stories and that sometimes still feedback
#
I might still get, which is that why don't you humanize it a little?
#
And then the sort of temptation to have the first paragraph being a sort of archetype
#
of the type of person that the data story describes.
#
And then in paragraph two, you come to the data element that sort of contextualizes.
#
I see that in a fair amount of data journalism.
#
And I feel like what that does is allow the reporter to, if it is a choice, to tick the
#
box that I spoke to real people.
#
This wasn't just Amcha journalism.
#
I included human aspects in it.
#
I brought in an element of creativity into what's otherwise quite cool.
#
So yeah, you know, it's so hard to think of a piece of journalism that truly surprises
#
And it doesn't have to be that way.
#
And I agree with you that I don't understand why newer places have not allowed themselves
#
to experiment with that to the point that they really read like the Indian Express if
#
they have one sort of journalism.
#
So there was, and I was looking, trying to look this up before this call, but I didn't
#
get to the name in time.
#
You might remember this.
#
At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a guy who wrote a piece for the Atlantic,
#
I want to say, which sort of described what happens to your body when the virus hits you.
#
But through a hypothetical story of a man who meets a friend for lunch without realizing
#
But the science in it was hardcore.
#
It got right into all of the cells and all of that.
#
So I felt like I did actually learn about how the virus does the human body and what
#
That was the first time I sort of properly understood what the cytokine storm even means.
#
Though it was told in a sort of semi fictionalized way.
#
And you know, I just remember that just struck me also right now because these kinds of stories
#
that truly surprise you, I feel like I can really count them because there are so few
#
in the form really takes you takes you by surprise.
#
I think people are doing much more inventive stuff in video.
#
So that's that's where you occasionally see people breaking out of that very old school
#
NDTV documentary kind of format of reporting, reporting on everything.
#
And you know, the other thing that struck me when you were giving a tick tock example,
#
when I was thinking about the south is that to me, in a way, which I am in no way fluent
#
in and I knew no Tamil until I moved to Chennai and I'm still not great at it.
#
It was like, you know, what maybe learning about tick tock felt like to you seeing this
#
entire universe of people who other filters and bubbles had not brought to you maybe or
#
to any tick tock user, Tamil feels like that to me.
#
And I've got nowhere near, you know, even reading.
#
It's just popular culture that I am in some ways able to consume right now.
#
Everyone likes to say this about their own language, but I truly so far feel that the
#
Tamil meme industry is just just off the hook.
#
They are so funny, so quick, so savage.
#
And these are some of the great, you know, untranslatable because again, when I see the
#
Tamil pop culture that filters up and makes it to the rest of the country, it's the most
#
boring, sanitized sort of yuppie stuff that that gets popular.
#
The guys who are on the, you know, comedy circuits, but the stuff that's actually getting
#
shared over WhatsApp or that's really, you know, popular among friends or my husband
#
and his friends over here is so much more subversive.
#
So it's something like tick tock would be something that opens these worlds to you later
#
I think I have no brain cells left for any more new social media, so I've given up on
#
But I hope that Tamil can be that for me a little bit, you know, this opening up of people
#
of a culture that arbiters had not, my own arbiters had not allowed to get to me so far.
#
If you want to look for the, you know, the story in the Atlantic, which you were mentioning,
#
we'll take a quick commercial break and come back to that.
#
I suspect it might be by either Ed Yong or Yasha Monk or those were the not one of them.
#
Okay, so, so let's take a quick commercial break and you know, during that commercial
#
break, we can look up the story and, you know, tell our listeners who it is.
#
So we'll be back in a minute.
#
If you enjoy listening to the scene on the unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The scene and the unseen has been a labor of love for me.
#
I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe
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and hopefully yours as well.
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Scene unseen dot i n slash support.
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Welcome back to the scene and the unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Rukmini S about data journalism, Covaid and we both have sort of a sheepish
#
smile on our faces right now, because before the break, we promised you we'll find you
#
a link to the story she mentioned.
#
And we have failed despite our substantial Googling skills.
#
So, but it will be in the show notes because that gives us a few days to find it.
#
We are recording this on Monday, October 19th.
#
It comes out this Sunday.
#
Without finding it, it's going to come tonight.
#
Yeah, yeah, eventually.
#
And even though I haven't read the story, I suspect I can't sleep until one has discovered
#
So back to, you know, your fascinating journey, discovering data, I mean, I mean, one thing
#
that often strikes me is that I just find that term itself data journalism kind of odd
#
because it's almost like saying, oh, that person is a word journalist or that person's
#
the part of journalism he does is writing or reporting or whatever.
#
And to me, all of those are kind of a package which come together.
#
If you are a reporter or a journalist, you are supposed to examine the facts and data
#
after all is a collection of facts.
#
So, you know, is there a point at which the data journalist becomes a different sort of
#
Like, when did you start thinking of data as something special that kind of data consideration
#
of data sets you apart from, you know, not from others, maybe, but maybe from the person
#
Like, what was the first TIL moment that you got from data?
#
So I think what happens and what sets things apart then and then what does create a unique
#
category is when you are able to independently come up with insights from numbers by yourself.
#
And this is important for a number of reasons for, you know, across journalism, the point
#
is to be able to move past the handout, the press release and be able to say something.
#
So that that means that you develop a mastery of some sort, either you're able to, you know,
#
understand what was missed, you get to the spot and find what really happened, or you're
#
able to get to multiple sources who tell you what really happened, or you're able to look
#
at numbers and say something entirely new that hasn't been told to you and that hasn't
#
been put out like that.
#
So I think that came much later, there was months and months, maybe even years, but months
#
and months are definitely a faithfully reporting what the NSS who report was wanted to say
#
before getting to the point, you know, starting from the point where I was able to say new
#
things to moving to the point where I was able to say things that the press hand out
#
was very purposefully not saying.
#
So I think, you know, one of the moments that it really struck home was, I want to say in
#
2015, the highly delayed census religion data was finally put out by the new government.
#
It was late, it had been expected before the elections.
#
But I suspect the UPA government just, you know, just out of like sort of lily-livered
#
nervousness sat on it, for no particular reason, maybe they just felt that this was a conversation
#
they did not want coming up at all, because of the sort of criticism that came their way
#
So the census organization in India comes under the Home Ministry, and for a lot of
#
important census releases, the Home Minister, Rajnath Singh at the time, or any Home Minister
#
in the past as well, would have a press conference and the census commissioner would be there,
#
the Home Minister would be there, they would put it all out.
#
The census data operation is truly uniquely opaque in a lot of ways.
#
So a lot of the archival census data that I have is on CDs, which I got from the census
#
when I used to report in Delhi.
#
It's not available on their website, and it's not easily available even in a book form.
#
So what happened is that at 7 p.m. on a weeknight, the person who covered Home Ministry told
#
me that they've put out a press release and the press release says that now the proportion
#
of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. in India is this much, this much, this much.
#
Hindus have grown at this rate, Muslims have grown at that rate.
#
And clearly, the growth rate of the population of Muslims was much higher than that of Hindus.
#
And that stood out in the second paragraph of the numbers.
#
There was no context, no background, no past numbers, nothing given.
#
And obviously, everybody had to run with the story.
#
So I think what happened that day is, A, because I had been by then at the Hindu for a couple
#
of years as a journalist whose job was to look at numbers and data specifically.
#
It was part of my job, you know, I took it very seriously as part of my job to create
#
these archives of data for myself.
#
So I had extensive past data, even though it wasn't available from the census's website
#
And to create, as for all journalism, a phone book of people who I could call upon to interpret
#
So what we were able to do is that we were able to look at the proportion of people by
#
religious group from pre-independence time onwards.
#
And what that showed and what was confirmed by the demographers I spoke to was that the
#
Muslim population growth rate was expected to slow as Muslim women got better educated
#
and with better access to health and as Muslim incomes rose.
#
What had happened actually between 2001 and 11 is that the Muslim growth rate had slowed
#
quicker than the Hindu growth rate even and quicker than expected.
#
None of this meant that, you know, the Muslim population was at shrunk or any of those.
#
It was a nuanced sort of change.
#
But to me, the reason that this was the news was not just out of some sort of, you know,
#
It was also that the fact that Muslims are growing faster than Hindus has been unchanged
#
So I didn't understand how that could be a news point in 2015.
#
If there's a change in the speed of growth, that's what demographic transitions are all
#
about and that's what the story needed to be.
#
So every single newspaper the next day reported that Hindus now below 80%.
#
I mean, as of 80% is some scientific number.
#
It was quite immaterial, but you know, that was the easy number to pick up from the first
#
few lines of the press release and our very Hindu headline at the time said, Muslim population
#
growth slows and it sounded like literally the opposite of what everybody else was saying.
#
It created a big issue on social media.
#
I was actually, you know, stopped and even the Hindus always and asked by people in HR
#
and finance, why is our paper saying the opposite of what even the Tamil newspapers that they
#
were reading or any of the other more southern focus newspapers that they were reading were
#
I think that was one of the moments that I felt that there was value in this as a specialization
#
and it not being left to the poor, overburdened and under equipped home ministry reporter
#
to have to come up with the best possible news report around it that she could at 7
#
And then we criticize the next day for feeding into propaganda or a narrative when she had
#
just not been given the tools that she would need to be able to say something more.
#
So I'm not sure I answered your question.
#
I mean, it's such a fantastic example of using data to go past the intuitive conclusion that
#
one might draw and go a little deeper and find that, hey, the truth is exactly the opposite.
#
You know, obviously your Hindu headline wasn't in any way contradictory of what the others
#
It's just that is going deeper and kind of giving more perspective.
#
A couple of questions kind of arise from this, like as this very example shows, in fact,
#
that you can always present the data or interpret the data to fit your own biases.
#
Now we live in times where it seems that narratives are more important than facts or than truth,
#
you know, where possibly enabled by social media and the way WhatsApp and all has been
#
People choose narratives, they choose whatever facts fit those narratives.
#
And that's basically it.
#
And you know, whatever ways data is presented in goes through that narrative and they ignore
#
So a couple of questions here.
#
One is that even at a personal level, every time you choose a story to do and in the case
#
of a data journalist, every time you choose what analysis to run on a particular piece
#
of data or what further inquiries to make, your own biases do come into play because
#
we're all biased as individuals and good journalists obviously are aware of those biases and they
#
just try to do the most fair job that they can in terms of negotiating with facts.
#
So part one, and I'll come to part two later, but part one of my question would be that
#
then do you, is that something that you've had to watch out for where you sometimes have
#
to take a step back from yourself and say that, okay, this might be the way I am approaching
#
it, but let me just take a step out of that or do you feel that completely taking a step
#
out of that is kind of impossible?
#
This is something I spent so much time thinking about and when I was listening to Samant on
#
your podcast and you were talking about subjectivity and bias and I think Samant said that what's
#
important is being fair, going in with fairness and subjectivity, bias, all of these are things
#
that exist in all humans and I sort of kept that in a part of my head too when I try to
#
answer these questions for myself as well, that what am I aiming for?
#
What do I think I'm going in with?
#
What am I as a human able to do and what should I aspire to?
#
So I would agree that fairness is one of the things that I aspire to.
#
There is no doubt that particularly now when I'm in a position to choose the stories I
#
do much more than and I'm assigned stories much less, there is absolutely a few things
#
that I go into the data looking for and specifically report on.
#
So I go into most data sets looking for gender and caste dimensions because these are things
#
of interest to me and what I'm most keen on reporting on.
#
When this sort of harks back to the quaint UPA era, it's hard to believe then that one
#
of the biggest cleavages then was between the center left and the left of the left.
#
It's so hard to imagine that that was the key cleavage then but I remember, you know,
#
I don't want to date it too specifically because I don't want to talk about who this was but
#
someone who assigned, you used to assign me stories at one point when I was reporting
#
on the census and, you know, this was information on asset ownership by household and he very
#
clearly told me, I said, you know, I was, it was very early so I was just not sure what
#
part to look at and he said, see, don't tell me the things that have got better and that
#
was one of the defining features of how we all, of how the UPA was covered which is that
#
these, you know, neo-liberals following market forces sort of things, turning their backs
#
on the PDS and, you know, everybody's trying to say liberalization has been great but look
#
after 10 years of UPA people are so poor still and, you know, asset ownership, only so many
#
people have a cell phone and have a toilet and that's, and, you know, of course, one
#
of the things to, for everybody to think about is the enormous damage that this sort of discussion
#
created even to the overall political space, to the, to possibly even to electoral outcomes.
#
I mean, that's obviously not what that election was fought or won on but it's really something
#
to think about how dangerous and damaging that was particularly because it was not in
#
any way borne out by the data. 2005 to 2015 was the period of the fastest reduction in
#
poverty in Indian history and it's, some of it we didn't know then but some of it should
#
have been obvious and was absolutely not the story of that election. So, you know, we were
#
talking earlier as well about what I studied and then the questions that I had to ask myself.
#
Having studied and sort of come up in a, you know, vaguely leftish atmosphere, one of the
#
things that I did have to sort of think hard and confront and worry about whether I was
#
trying to sort of torture the data into constantly confessing that some of these leftist truths
#
hold true, which is that liberalization was bad, which is that, you know, migration is
#
happening at a mass and dangerously terrifying scale showing mass impoverishment of the poorest
#
of the poor from the villages, all of these things that are not borne out by the data.
#
That was a particularly damaging time for that sort of journalism. There's other kind of
#
falsehoods that are happening now and, you know, we all know about them and focus on
#
them and criticize them but it's important to think of how damaging these, this sort
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of now what looks like a micro polarization but that was a polarization that existed and
#
that ideological divide that existed then, the shoddy and sometimes downright dishonest
#
journalism that happened around that then is also, is also pretty shameful.
#
And it's pretty telling to me like you pointed out when you sort of found that sort of nuance
#
in that headline that you ran in the Hindu when you said that you were actually accosted
#
in the corridor by people wanting to know and all of that, that also tells you a little
#
bit about the desire to believe certain narratives and the pressure to conform to them and all
#
And my sort of follow up question from there is that, you know, does, I mean it's a two
#
part question, part one and I don't want to be too cynical about it but does journalism
#
of this sort, rigorous data based journalism that is going that one or two steps deeper,
#
does it really make a difference? Is there an appetite and a longing for it? And part
#
two of that would be that assuming that the answer is no or that it is not enough to,
#
you know, validate what we do on a daily basis, is there still almost a moral imperative for
#
us to continue doing this kind of work so that there is a record for the future? Like
#
in a sense, like you've pointed out earlier that, you know, in a sense you're probably
#
one of the pioneers of data journalism in India, right? So you had to do all the manual
#
work of going through hundreds of court judgments and all that. But now everybody who works
#
in data, who works in data journalism is in a sense creating a repository for their future
#
selves and future data journalists. So is that something that you take seriously and
#
are you more hopeful about, you know, your journalism having an impact in these current
#
times? And, you know, I seem to be from my question. Yeah. So this is something that
#
I've usually been on the more cynical side of, which is that I feel like that just as
#
it is very difficult for news to penetrate bubbles, I feel I don't think that data journalism
#
is in any way an exception to that. And now there's quite a range of, you know, ideologically
#
tainted data journalism, quote unquote, available as well. If you want to share it on WhatsApp,
#
you can find, you know, something that argues that the GDP is in great health, you'll find
#
something written somewhere about it. So I've usually tended to not feel that I'm changing
#
minds that that's, that's not what's happening. I feel like I'm being, you know, maybe uncovering
#
truths for people who want to read it, but not necessarily changing minds. But the more
#
I think about it, the space, the position and the context of people matters a lot when
#
it comes to mind changing. So I don't think that we change people's minds in in terms
#
of electoral outcomes, for example, you know, a lot of energy was invested. And I don't
#
think it was wrong, because it was something that the numbers showed about the Gujarat
#
model in 2014. See, if data journalism worked, then data journalists conclusively showed
#
the problems with the Gujarat model in 2014 and that it absolutely nothing. So, you know,
#
I think it's crazy to think any journalism has electoral impacts. And that includes data
#
journalism as well. Similarly, I feel like people don't like being called out and confronted
#
on social media. And especially if they can find a large and noisy support group, they'll
#
they'll shout even louder to not hear what you're saying. But the quieter and more intimate
#
spaces are the ones in which I do feel that some of this percolates at some level. So
#
and, you know, maybe it doesn't for things that matter. Maybe it doesn't for politics,
#
for example. But I do think that things like, like, for example, demonetization, which which
#
in a way, after the election was won, people didn't have to worry anymore that accepting
#
that demonetization was a problem would derail the BJP's chances. Now they were not worried.
#
Now the election had been won for BJP supporters, for example. So in, you know, quite a one
#
on one more intimate context, I do feel that then people might consider the value of being
#
shown or told numbers that don't necessarily that uncover a true truth for them as well.
#
I'm not a confrontational person. And I similarly feel this about the tone and the way in which
#
these conversations need to happen as well. So if we're only going to think of this in
#
terms of changing people's minds in terms of party politics, then then we're not just
#
going to feel cynical. It's just it's a lost cause. And if that is going to be the sort
#
of igniting force for journalism, then that's that's just a hopeless enterprise. But if
#
it is to try and think at a more human human interaction level of this truly is what the
#
numbers that I in all fairness have found. I don't need to beat you over the head about
#
them. I don't need to show you that you were wrong to believe them. But here they are.
#
And I don't feel like one needs to be very that this sort of kindness needs to be extended
#
to people who as a casteist or you know, anti Muslim, it doesn't apply to all contexts.
#
But when you are trying to change people's minds about, say, you know, poverty numbers
#
or health numbers, that sort of stuff, I would like to think that it gets somewhere to think
#
that it's going to make big societal changes. I don't see evidence of that happening. And
#
I don't I don't know if that is journalism's project at all.
#
It's actually, you know, a fascinating note to continue on. But I mean, my aside there
#
is that I think that writers and public intellectuals and journalists might sometimes overestimate
#
their impact in the short run, but underestimated in the long run. And I think therefore what,
#
you know, we have to keep doing is just keep banging on and just leave that historical
#
record and just kind of make the task of those who come after us a little easier. You know,
#
the last few words when you were speaking with journalism's project, what is journalism's
#
project? Because on the one hand, there is an idealistic view that and a view which is
#
dear to me in certain ways that we must sort of comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable
#
as the cliche goes, and journalists have a duty to keep questioning whoever is in power
#
and all of that and all that is fine. At the same time, there is another more pragmatic
#
view that look at the end of the day, you have to think of the market and every company
#
has to make a profit and blah, blah, blah. And those are a different set of imperatives
#
which in some sense are immoral. And more and more what we find in the present time
#
is that one, there is a lot of journalism which is going in one direction, which is
#
saying that we will not question those in power because that could affect our bottom
#
line in many different ways. And two, on the other hand, we have people who should just
#
be reporters, just focus on facts, just maintain the sort of balance between news and opinion,
#
which once used to be sacrosanct, almost turning into sort of journalistic activists in a sense.
#
And of course, the finest journalists that I read do not do this at all, you know, their
#
reporter speaks for themselves, people like you and Supriya Sharma and so many fine people,
#
one could go on and on. But at the same time, there is in other places, you see these little
#
strains of sort of you can make out which side the journalist is on, so to say. What
#
is journalism's project according to you?
#
I do spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, what you call activists. I also try
#
and think of it in terms of very, sort of very sort of engaged and involved kind of
#
journalism, you know. And I try to think about why I have such discomfort with it, and whether
#
if I wasn't wrapped in all the privilege that I am, I maybe I too would be, would feel the
#
need to be much more involved and angry about the things that I was talking about.
#
I don't think journalism's project is unchanged. And I don't, you know, neither the political
#
environment nor the financial environment for me changes that key project of beginning
#
by questioning, holding those in power accountable, speaking truth to power, bringing forth the
#
things that those in power seek to hide, you know, adding weight and courage to the people
#
who are trying to talk about things that are being hidden, but also in bringing out just
#
the, you know, how in news stories, people never sound like actual humans. They sound
#
like either archetypes or they sound like some sort of quote bot, or nobody sounds like
#
an actual human in a news story. So part of journalism's project should also be the feeling
#
of encountering people. And that happens not at all. Because the most engaged and involved
#
people aren't unafflicted by this. They too are reporting in a way, talking to people
#
in a way to push, you know, to make their own point admirable, though it may be forcefully,
#
but without allowing people to be anything more than what that quote needs to be. So
#
I mean, I wish journalism project was a little more of all of that as well. You know, the
#
joy that should be coming from it doesn't need to come from writing about purely joyful
#
things. But that element of getting a window into, into just some, some, like a moment
#
of humanity that doesn't necessarily need to be either bringing you to tears or, you
#
know, producing great awe. I haven't read a lot of Hindi books, but my extremely boring
#
middle of the road, most, most favorite book is Raghdarbari. And I want more of Raghdarbari
#
in journalism, not purely because, you know, of all the ironies that it exposed, but also
#
because nobody can tell you the plot of Raghdarbari. It is, it's a meandering journey of all sorts
#
of human experience. And obviously, that cannot be what every news story does. But I wish
#
there was more of that, a bit of whimsy, a bit of, you know, people allowed to be a little
#
more than, than what journalism's project requires them to be. Because there's no way
#
to feel empathy or to feel, to see people as anything beyond the categories that journalists
#
have decided they fit in. If we, if we don't report with, with anything beyond, you know,
#
all of the while, all of my time in newsrooms, I never wrote more than 350 words per piece.
#
And what that meant is that I had learned to switch off people so fast. I didn't want
#
to know much more about them because there was nothing I could do with it. And one of
#
the things that I would really, you know, want, even if you aren't in an organization,
#
young journalists aren't in an organization that requires them to also take videos or
#
whatever. I wish people would record people at length and not just keep it, you know,
#
make something out of it, even if it's just for your family to listen to. But like a long
#
podcast of your conversation with someone who just made it to one single quote in your
#
news story will lead you to, even if you're not able to write a Raag Darbari into your
#
news reporting, at least there's a Raag Darbari in your mind, you know, your experiences
#
are at least adding up to that. Yeah, no. And I've just discovered that besides podcasts
#
and Ferguson, we have a third thing in common, which is our love for Raag Darbari, which
#
is, like you said, you can't describe it. It's just such an incredible, capacious book.
#
It contains so much is beautiful. And you know, you're speaking about the long podcast
#
and you know, that's one of my personal frustrations that I'll read a great piece of journalism
#
and I'll see these quotes in it. And I'll be like, shit that, you know, I wish I could
#
listen to the full thing. Like, I think some month during the conversation, I don't know
#
if it was on record or, you know, when the tapes weren't rolling, as it were, mentioned
#
how many hours of sort of interviews he has. And I'm like, I would like to listen to all
#
of them. And similarly, while reading, you know, my last episode was with the artist
#
and historian Anshul Malhotra on her, you know, the oral histories of partition, deeply
#
moving book. And while reading that book, again, I wish that my God that imagine being
#
able to listen to these conversations. My next question sort of is about, you know,
#
that sort of what can often be a dichotomy but should not be and the best writers combine
#
it very well like you do, which is the two conflicting impulses that one, you want the
#
data to tell you the bigger story to give you the big picture. But at the same time,
#
you want to make it relatable and you want to make it real and human as it were, by actually
#
sort of telling a story about it. And you know, and they can often sort of exist that
#
sort of conflict where someone who doesn't look at the bigger picture at all might be
#
simplifying or might be, you know, not getting anywhere close to the truth, while someone
#
who is only focused on the big picture might be able to communicate in abstract terms what
#
the big picture is, but not make it so real and concrete that the reader can empathize
#
with it. And you know, in a lot of your writing, you kind of marry these two. Like, for example,
#
I want to quote from this piece that you wrote in March, I think March when you heard in
#
Al Jazeera about migrant workers, where you wrote, you began the piece by saying, quote,
#
On Saturday, the 50th day since India's first coronavirus case was confirmed, Parma Bhandari
#
called his family in Nepal to reassure them that he would be coming home. They were not
#
all going to die without seeing each other, he told them. Stop quote, which is such a
#
lovely human beginning and immediately makes the reader interested. And then you there's
#
a lot of data in the piece, but very relatable. And then towards the end, we have the line
#
where you know, you quote his roommate Padam Bhandari saying, quote, now there is no going
#
back, whatever it is, we have to face it here. Stop quote. And this is from an aspect that
#
you discussed in, you know, episode five of The Moving Curve, your amazing podcast, which
#
we'll go on to discuss. But here again, it seems that you've, you know, managed beautifully
#
to marry the personal with the overarching, you know, what's happening in general. So
#
is this something that you've thought about a lot that, you know, how do we marry these
#
two aspects? Does it sometimes become conflicting in some ways?
#
So it's actually one of the things that I don't feel that I do very well. It's partly
#
on account of circumstance and partly on account of having just not figured out yet, not being
#
sure yet, both in what I read and what I write, what, where I want, what I think the sweet
#
spot is. So, you know, when I think about what should be ideal journalism or what what
#
should be the ideal journalism that I'm doing, I would usually want to say to myself, I should
#
be doing more travel, I should be going out and meeting more people. But partly as you
#
know, on account of the circumstances of my life right now, that's not, that's not something
#
I do much now, much, much less than I did before I used to. I got the opportunity to
#
really see a lot of the country and learn a lot that way. So I don't think I do that.
#
And I don't know how much more of it I want in both what I read and what I write. So the
#
example I was giving you earlier about Ghaneri, which is that it's a staggering piece of journalism.
#
It's, you know, model for looking into corroboration of accusations. So I suppose if I, you know,
#
the reporter should feel, the journalist should feel very proud of, of all of that, the humanizing
#
the larger story, the narrative, all of that. But then, as I told you, I felt it fell deeply
#
short on the data part of it that was a necessary link, I think, to make the point that it sought
#
to be making. So, you know, I should have felt that that story was a triumph, but I
#
didn't ultimately feel that. And then would I have been happier with not a seven part
#
podcast but a one, you know, 2000 word Washington Post piece that did actually manage to get
#
at the heart of the judge's record, and then mention the allegations as well. Perhaps that's
#
what I'm looking more for. The trouble is that I find it very hard to think of examples
#
of news reports where I felt that, you know, the narrative and the elements of storytelling
#
that it brought to it brought in something to the news story, to the story that to me
#
would have otherwise, you know, I would have otherwise felt that it didn't give me what
#
I want from it. I'm well aware that I have a much more involved way of looking at data
#
stories and it's probably. So one of the things I wanted to mention earlier too, which I forgot,
#
which is that the way maths is taught in this country is such a disgrace on the whole, mainly
#
because it makes people feel that they can't do it for very unfair and often discriminatory
#
reasons. And I feel very bad when I occasionally take data journalism courses to see very bright
#
people completely freeze at, you know, very simple numbers, 20 year olds who get absolutely
#
frightened by the simple percentage of subtraction. And I, you know, imagine that people who have
#
been taught math similarly feel the same when they see a data story. So, you know, that's
#
the last sort of thing that I would be, that I want readers to feel. So maybe, maybe more
#
of this is important to not make, I don't want readers to ever have to feel that he
#
has someone saying something very smart. And because I am, I don't understand numbers,
#
I'm not smart enough. And that's why I haven't understood what they're saying. So, you know,
#
maybe sacrificing some of the charts and the numbers to be able to tell the story better
#
would not alienate people who have not been, not just not had the opportunity to study
#
math or logic in a way that would help them. Because having not been trained in statistics
#
myself, the level of statistical analysis I do is extremely basic. And in a way, you
#
know, that holds me back from being able to do more ambitious stuff. But I would hope
#
that it makes it more accessible to readers who are more likely to be at my level and
#
that, you know, regression analysis level. Sorry, I got a bit lost over there.
#
No, all of it made sense. And all of it sort of spoke to my question about, you know, the
#
trade off between narrative and data, the big picture and the concrete.
#
Yeah. So, occasionally, I see people who do it wonderfully. I was reading recently a Pro
#
Publica investigation into Chicago's first 100 COVID deaths. And here, there was original
#
data journalism because there had been no analysis yet by, you know, either the local
#
administration or the government. So this is something that journalism needed to do
#
because I think they found something like 70 out of the 100 deaths were African Americans.
#
So that was an important thing to get to quickly because that was still at a stage at which,
#
you know, the medical fraternity could rejig and rethink. And it begins with a very moving
#
story as well. And what I liked is what, you know, centered on the point that African Americans
#
are much more likely to have what are known as co-morbidities for COVID. But that doesn't
#
make these deaths inevitable. And just sometimes you read a line and you're just like, why
#
was I thinking, this is what I was thinking. Someone has called me out. You know, making
#
morbidity sound like inevitability is something I was doing. And I read that one line and
#
it just made me feel like, okay, this is something I should keep in mind when I'm reporting about
#
Indian COVID numbers as well. So that was, you know, to me, one of those examples of
#
really being drawn in by the, by the narrative and then being kept there by the original,
#
truly original data work over there. But yeah, I suppose this is where knowing your audience
#
becomes important. And I don't know my audience at all. So knowing how much more storytelling
#
my audience would like is a vague sort of guess that I make. Like at the Hindu, for
#
example, there were a lot of young students who read the newspaper and I know that they
#
were really hungry for information. So I did want to speak to them very much. I loved that
#
audience and I think they were okay with not having the storytelling elements. They really
#
wanted to get to the meat of it. So I don't know, maybe I hope at some point I can figure
#
out what my audience wants.
#
So there's something you said earlier, which I think is profoundly important and I feel
#
strongly about it. So I'll kind of underscore that, which is, you know, when you pointed
#
out that people who may not have studied math very well, and they might come across a story
#
they don't really understand and they feel that, Oh, am I the stupid one here? And you
#
know, I sort of teach this online writing course where I constantly tell them that,
#
look, if your reader doesn't understand something, it's not their fault, it's your fault. You
#
know, and I think that's true of journalists as well, that, you know, do not condescend
#
to your readers. And, you know, if any reader doesn't understand something you have missed
#
out, that person is not stupid. And I think that, you know, that basic level of respect
#
for the reader is not something that writers are mindful of enough. We get into these reflexive
#
habits of using jargon and opaque prose and all of that. And we're not really thinking
#
about sort of the reader's experience. So, you know, and I guess for a beta journalist
#
that there must also be that tussle, right? Because in the sense that you don't want to
#
dumb anything down, you want to say what you have to say, but at the same time, you have
#
a lot of complex things you want to say, you want it to be understood. Is that sort of
#
a tussle that you faced internally? So I think what's very useful for me here is not having
#
statistical skills myself. So there isn't very far that I can go with it myself. So
#
I do think that that helps keep all of what I write at a level that's, you know, going
#
to be manageable for the lay reader and probably too little for, say, many mint readers who
#
would be able to understand much more complex statistical concepts that I'm not actually
#
familiar with. I think a lot of data journalism is trying to figure out where to stand on
#
this. And you realize immediately when someone is being, is showboating, it's profoundly
#
annoying to see in data journalism. It's, you know, not necessary in the least. And
#
I suppose part of growing up is realizing how annoying 538 and Nate Silva are, right?
#
You go into data journalism thinking, oh, this is what it's supposed to be like, oh
#
my god, I can't believe I discovered Excel yesterday. And then after a few months of
#
it, there's a second, I'm so pleased I can't do anything beyond condition and subtraction
#
on Excel, because if I'm going to start sounding like this, I mean, it has its own readership,
#
it would be ridiculous for me to have a value judgment on something that does so well, is
#
so successful, but I can't stand to read most of it. I can't stand the tone, I can't stand
#
the place at which it sits. And in Indian journalism, occasionally there's some of that
#
very rarely. The other thing that tends to happen now is that there's a great confusion
#
between data visualization and data journalism. So what you occasionally see are wildly indulgent
#
and extremely expensive data visualization efforts that involve very little journalism
#
actually. So that's another, that's another sort of, you know, someone with man skills,
#
who has been given a long rope by an editor, you can see that happening. And you can see,
#
you can see a big budget being, being burned, sometimes for pretty, for a pretty modest
#
And I guess that's a natural journey for, you know, young people to make when they come
#
into the profession. Like I remember when I was a young writer, I also liked to show
#
boot in my writing, right. So here's a fancy phrase and all that. And it says you go along
#
that journey that you realize, as the saying goes, that you have to kill your darlings
#
and you have to put the reader up front. It's not about showing how smart you are. And I
#
guess data journalists make the same question. My next question sort of harks back to something
#
we were discussing earlier about how, you know, that as you kind of started, you know,
#
discovering the users of data and what it can be for your frame also subtly shifts in
#
the way you kind of, you know, look at things, shifts. Now I would imagine that, I mean,
#
one would you agree that at some level, every journalist needs to be a data journalist,
#
not in the sense of knowing all the tech and doing all the Excel and all of that, but just
#
in terms of understanding the bigger picture through numbers and all of that. So that's
#
part one of the question. And, and part two then is that, you know, in all your years
#
of experience where you've both reported and looked at data and all of that, you know,
#
can you, I mean, simply put, what about India do journalists not understand that they would
#
if they had an adequate understanding of data? Okay. Let me get to the first one and then
#
let me slowly let the second one marinate in my brain. I'd say that a lot of what I
#
did for the first few years of what I looked at as a data journalism specific job is actually
#
what all journalists should be doing. It was not specialized at all. And anyone with, you
#
know, for Saturday's training should be able to do that stuff. And absolutely all journalists
#
should be able to incorporate a certain amount of data into all the news reporting. This
#
applies deeply to political journalists. It applies, you know, very deeply to crime reporters
#
about, and I have some, you know, very strong feelings about crime reporting in this country,
#
which I think is a, is an absolute, it's truly dangerous and destructive, not just about
#
the people who, you know, are reported on. It's just that so much of our understanding
#
of the country, about crime, about, you know, relationships, about so much of everything
#
is colored by the fact that a large part of crime reporting in this country is a crime
#
reporter, uncritically reproducing an FIR as fact. And an FIR is not fact. An FIR is
#
one person's attempt at storytelling mediated by a deeply involved and deeply problematic
#
police system. And that's the basis on which we form so much of our understanding of this
#
country. It really worries me. And there's not been any reckoning around crime reporting
#
at all in this country, despite so much momentous stuff around crime having happened in the
#
last seven, eight years. So yes, I really don't know why more newsrooms don't do this.
#
It's really quite, it's relatively cheap. It's easy to do now. Everyone has a data journalist
#
on their roles anyway, to just give reporters the training themselves. Again, a lot of news
#
reporters would be afraid of numbers. So maybe it's harder to get through on that. Even working
#
in teams is so rare between data journalists and other journalists. So yes, absolutely.
#
I mean, hopefully we'll reach a point where desks start returning reports, news reports
#
that don't have any sort of references to data or research to substantiate at least
#
the key point that the article is making or at least the fact, you know, just as you need
#
to be able to tell your editor who your anonymous sources most of the time and why you've not
#
quoted them, you should be able to at least assure your editor that the arguments that
#
your anecdotes are making are sort of supported by what research says. And you know, that
#
should be a sort of line that you need to benchmark that you need to achieve for a story
#
to go forward. So yeah, I think it's really inexpensive and I hope more energy is put
#
into that. And the other thing is, you know, most journalists, especially younger journalists
#
and especially in non-glamorous beats, are so undertrained, under-resourced, under-focused
#
on, you know, they deserve it. They deserve being given these skills and frequently, you
#
know, I get other people getting in touch with me and from non-English media where really
#
I feel like the hunger and the desire to have data journalistic stories in the paper is
#
so enormous and such an unmet need that nobody is able to still fill this gap at all. So
#
I wrote for a while for, I mean, I say I wrote, but I wrote for a while for Denik Bhaskar
#
and I just, they just said, just write in English and we will translate it and carry
#
it because, you know, just be mindful of roughly who our audience is. So, you know, they don't
#
write completely sort of a Tamil Nadu-Kerala story. But yeah, I mean, the problem is that
#
most non-English media can't pay very well. So that's immediately a problem. But yes,
#
I wish all journalists could get some of these resources and all non-English media in particular
#
could be given some of these resources. What is the second thing you are hoping for?
#
Yeah, my second, I mean, before we get to that first, I guess, you know, the Arushi
#
Talwar case or the way the SSR in Broglio was reported would be prime examples of, you
#
know, how horrendous the crime reporting in our countries. Is it partly because, I mean,
#
do we take shortcuts because we are also understaffed in the sense that, you know, people except
#
in places like Caravan and so on, people don't really get 10 days to work on one story and,
#
you know, let the, let it marinate, talk to 15 sources. Instead, everything is like, okay,
#
where's your story for the day and, and therefore you take these shortcuts and that's just how
#
Yeah, there is that. But I mean, that's a feature of it. And that's not, you know, an
#
entirely all-encompassing explanation as such. So in Mumbai, for example, just as in Delhi,
#
the crime reporting is an extremely competitive beat over there. A crime reporter would easily
#
have five, six stories available to file every day. So, you know, they're not short on the
#
stories to file. They don't necessarily need to file all of them. They have enough stuff
#
always. No, it's just that we've made this, and editors know this very well because, you
#
know, most editors are very friendly with senior police as well. We've just made this
#
an acceptable form of journalism. Most beginning crime reporters, your job is to go hang around
#
the police station and then faithfully report whatever the key FI has of that day. We haven't
#
gone into it. You know, asking someone to take 10 days and corroborate from multiple
#
places is another thing. We haven't even said, get, if you're reporting on an FIR, speak
#
to the complainant. We haven't even started from there. Let the accused person get their
#
side of it. We've made it an acceptable practice for just the FIR to become a statement of fact.
#
So yeah, in the high profile ones, we saw that. But, you know, when I was at the Times
#
of India in Mumbai, there was a shift thing that used to come to us every few weeks, which
#
is that you would have to be the day shift reporter or the night shift reporter. No matter
#
what your regular beat was, you'd have to do it in rotation every few weeks, which is
#
your job would be to basically in Mumbai, if a building fell down, you would have to
#
go and cover it because, you know, that happens all the time. So who are you going to assign?
#
You can't have a building falling down reporter. You need to assign someone who's just free
#
to do the running around for the day. And your job was to call key police stations every
#
few hours and check what's happening. The fire department, you know, in no way have
#
we made it, you know, when I used to see those briefs that would come in from the cops also,
#
there was just stuff that was clearly an issue or you could see that it was a script because
#
you would, this is one of the things I find a lot in, even in reporting on court judgments
#
is that cops in India follow a script so regularly about for a particular IPC section. So, for
#
example, on suicides in Mumbai, I remember on this press notes, they would regularly
#
say Azharpanala Kantaloon, which is tired of his illness. And you'd immediately think,
#
wow, you know, I'm sure there's more to it. Maybe the person couldn't pay for it or, you
#
know, Kantaloon means almost like a board of something. And so what was it? Was it was
#
it? What illness was this? Was it TB? Are people still having to kill themselves, you
#
know, as people still being driven to suicide by TB? Was it what illnesses are bankrupting
#
people are so much more that needed to come out of that. But, you know, yeah, that that's
#
how it was reported by the cops and then duly and faithfully reported by crime reporters
#
as well. Even the the sexual assault investigation that I ended up doing in Delhi's district
#
courts came out of regularly reading in the newspapers in the days after the 2012 Delhi
#
rape. Regularly reading, a girl was kidnapped in a busy market and given a sedative laced
#
cold drink. And I started seeing this so often or pulled into a moving car. I started seeing
#
this so often I really started wondering about this sedative laced cold drink. Is it an issue?
#
Should we now be careful that, you know, there's some sort of adulteration and cold drinks
#
going on and this moving car business at that time, you know, I lived with flatmates in
#
Delhi. It used to terrify my mother to think that there are these moving cars just constantly
#
pulling people and girls into cars. So that's what I mean, looking into it came as a result
#
of me myself making my own assessments about Delhi and my own safety from newspaper articles
#
that were essentially faithfully reproducing FIRs that it turned out had much more to do
#
with parental criminalization of consensual, often inter-religious and inter-caste relationships
#
than anything else. And it was such a fundamental disservice to everything, to the city itself
#
that this kind of reporting was forming the basis of our judgments about everything. I
#
mean, I felt that maybe I shouldn't be going out that much, maybe I shouldn't be living
#
in Delhi anymore. That's what started me looking at it and reporting on it at all.
#
So they weren't moving cars. So this was basically parents are pissed off that their daughter
#
was going in for an inter-religious or whatever. And then they file a case and then the FIR
#
has moving car. Wow, that's incredible. Okay, so my larger...
#
The sedative-laced cold drink was usually the hallmark of that because you needed to
#
say how this boy was able to kidnap her from a crowded market, there was a sedative-laced
#
cold drink. So that's where it is. And there was, I looked at 650 cases and all and I can't
#
remember how many had sedative-laced cold drinks in them. Many, no cop was able to produce
#
a single cold drink bottle in court, in even one. It was just complete fabrication from
#
beginning to end, that part. The cold drink part was a complete 100% fabrication in all
#
of those. It was just, I mean, the level of it was just appalling.
#
I mean, it's pretty mind blowing. I mean, imagine the first person to put that in an
#
FIR, at least there you got to give them some credit for imagination and becomes a meme.
#
So perhaps must have been some Tamilian gentleman who made it a meme and as you pointed out
#
their talent for that. So the larger question, which actually I want to make even larger
#
and I want to kind of take data out of it because you've been a journalist for so long
#
and I've seen the whole industry so intimately. And my question simply is this, what about
#
India do journalists not understand?
#
So my favorite way to think about this is through elections. I love elections. I love
#
opinion polling around it. I love the news reporting around it, even though it drives
#
me crazy. And at least, you know, when I think about elections, the thing that journalists
#
do not get is that the motivations that people believe drive them are often not the motivations
#
that truly drive them. They are not trying to lie or obfuscate at all. It's just that
#
most people, especially upper caste people do not get how central self respect is to
#
Indians. I think this has come home to me more and more in Tamil Nadu. But what's come
#
home to me is not how much Tamil's value self respect, which they do, and which has,
#
you know, a rich political history here. But it's also brought home to me the fact that
#
so much of what I was seeing in the country was an expression of self respect. Shankar,
#
my boss at the Times of India, always told me that he felt that every election was and
#
every campaign, every political party was about ideas. No matter how, you know, these
#
narratives get set about this is an election of this, this is an election of rejection
#
of that. They are very much about ideas. And now there is strong evidence for this. I was
#
one man, Pradeep Chibber, have a superb book on ideology in Indian politics. And it's exactly
#
in a sense, what Shankar had felt about elections, which is that Indians are deeply ideological.
#
Most of them, and these are ideologically coherent positions. They change very little
#
over time. And these positions are getting stronger. So I don't think people realize
#
how much ideas and ideology matter to people. And this is not just in elections. Now I want
#
to say this apply this, I feel this even when people talk about, about finance and about
#
well, household finance and poverty, which is failing to understand the motivations for
#
why people spend money on the things they do is also a big issue with how people fail
#
to understand so much of the economy, you know, feeling that when people talk about
#
spending on marriages as a social evil, and then, you know, so all of this comes down
#
to pride, self respect, and the power of ideas. And it doesn't take more than 10 minutes
#
of involved talking to anybody to be to anybody to any Indian to be so struck by to feel so
#
struck by how deeply they hold ideas. And it's just that just as you and I, you know,
#
anyone who tries to talk to us in an involved way will feel our passion for our ideas quickly.
#
It just takes that extra, it takes that belief that people are more than what you've decided
#
that they are. And so in some ways, I'm glad that now I cover elections largely through
#
data because there is no way I would be able to translate into words, how much of electoral
#
motivation comes from, you know, the desire to be seen as a worthy human. And this does
#
explain a lot of why people vote along cast lines. And it's not for the reasons that you
#
that usually get reported as well. It explains, you know, party commitments. So yeah, you
#
know, you'll always find this right in in if you decide to engage in a conversation
#
with anyone, it's always exciting to discover someone's passion, right? You don't expect
#
them that your driver is is deeply passionate about a movie star about, you know, some singer.
#
Sometimes I'm in, you know, I've been in cabs in Chennai and been so amazed by the by young
#
boys who are huge fans of some particular Hindi movie. And, you know, because they know
#
that I'm not I'm not speaking Tamil very well. They assume that I speak Hindi and, you know,
#
not to know about that movie or that particular singer. It's usually something that's been
#
released in the last few years. So I know nothing about it. But I love discovering people's
#
passions in that way. And and this is what most journalists miss that that most Indians
#
And it's very interesting. This reminded me of something corporate. In fact, where Zomato
#
has started this recent thing where if a delivery boy is coming to your thing, they'll say,
#
oh, you know, Emma, this fund of conversation or whatever, they'll throw in a little telling
#
detail and I'm immediately getting my mic set up ready and saying, should I engage in
#
a recorded conversation with them? But, you know, and this also goes back to, you know,
#
what Stephen Covey once famously said about how we listen to respond and not to understand.
#
And you would think that this would be such a simple thing that, you know, that we listen
#
more. But listening is something that we just so horrendously bad at. And I don't know if
#
it's something to do with a certain kind of insecurity that is also greater and perhaps
#
Indians and in other places that we are always so, you know, in need of that validation and
#
showing that we are smarter than the other person and we know more that we simply don't
#
listen enough. And that's also something that, you know, I kind of find quite evocative.
#
Let's take another commercial break then. And after that, when we come back, we shall
#
finally, finally, dear listener, finally get started talking about your wonderful podcast,
#
The Moving Curve and COVID.
#
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Welcome back to the scene and the unseen. I'm chatting with Rukmini here, remarkable
#
data journalist, remarkable journalist period and also the podcaster of The Moving Curve.
#
Tell me a little bit about what was the impetus behind starting this specific podcast. Like
#
one of the things that I was struck by is that, you know, people often talk about journalism
#
as the first draft of history. And what you know, The Moving Curve seemed to do to me
#
since it was a daily podcast and you know, it's not twice a week, is sort of actually
#
almost document that in real time. And it was so fascinating to kind of binge through
#
it and, you know, listen to the episodes because one can see your sort of understanding also
#
evolve and the kind of questions that you ask and what made you think of starting it?
#
So I've always loved audio as a medium without ever having done anything in it at all. There
#
was one point at which I sort of, I talked to someone about doing a podcast and then
#
I realized I had such clear ideas of what I wanted it to be and sound like. And, you
#
know, it didn't really, I don't think I was very receptive to suggestions and then it
#
just, you know, fell by the wayside. I listened to, I mean, I don't listen to a ton of podcasts,
#
but I do, I know I love it. I love it as a medium. The early days of the lockdown was
#
so strange, right? We were all in such, all of us suspended in such strange positions,
#
you know, frozen and all sorts of unusual outposts that I don't know if in normal times
#
I would have done it. You know, it sort of felt like we were all on little boats out
#
into the sea and it was okay to send out these mosque code messages to each other. And, you
#
know, someone would listen to it and would feel nice hearing another sound. I would have
#
felt much more self-conscious if I really felt like this was, you know, if I thought
#
of it as everybody in their houses or their workplaces listening to it. So what was happening
#
in the early days is that we really were finding out everything about the virus so fast every
#
day and there was not just news to catch up on. There was also research that I felt that
#
I needed to read academic research and understand it. And I felt like every day at the end of
#
the day, there was something that I was taking away from it. And I liked the feeling of maybe
#
just saying it out to myself that this is what I felt that I had learned through the
#
day. And just on a whim, I thought, okay, let me just use this as an opportunity to
#
get this started. And again, because I didn't think of it too much, I actually put it out
#
because otherwise now I'm so scared of making any sort of commitments because my time is
#
so scattered right now that if someone had approached me and said, would you like to
#
do a hundred episode podcast around the pandemic, I would have cried with fright and said no
#
before they could have finished their question. I really like the fact that I did this entirely
#
on my own terms and that's the only way I would have done it at all. At least I really
#
would have felt too scared to do it. And I don't feel, you know, I should feel embarrassed
#
by the fact that some of it was so wrong and figuring so many things out that are probably
#
wrong now, but I don't, I don't really. And it is from the sort of impulse that you're
#
describing as, you know, first draft of history, which is, I feel like this is that hopefully
#
that was an example of fairness, that all I felt that I was going in was with a questioning
#
mind and seeing what my questions were producing and then fairly reproducing that without making
#
up my mind too strongly, you know, more strongly than what the evidence was showing at least.
#
I hadn't even thought at the time that I was going to have guests on it because all of
#
that would have felt like such a grandiose and pompous thing to do for just something
#
that I was trying out for a few people who wanted to listen to, who might want to listen
#
to it. But immediately, I mean, just a few days in, I realized that I had questioned
#
that actually someone needed to answer that, you know, the information wasn't really available.
#
And this is the part that's been really amazing to me. So people I already know, I'm of course
#
thankful that they come on this. But people in government or people, similarly sort of
#
experts who I haven't spoken to before because I don't cover science or even health that
#
much, them agreeing to speak to me and come on this is the truly unusual part. And I suppose
#
that's what demonstrates true commitment to science, that if somebody wants to know the
#
science of it, you're committed enough to go and talk to them about it. And the other
#
thing that always felt intimidating to me is because I'm truly very, you know, totally
#
the opposite of being tech savvy. I wouldn't have known how to do any of it, you know,
#
but this is where friends just have done things for me. And that's been great. So Anand Krishnamurthy
#
who does the sound for it is a very well known, well regarded person in audio and it's, you
#
know, I'm just, he's a friend and I'm hugely thankful that he's just doing this for me
#
because he too likes podcasts and, you know, is interested in this and of course is doing
#
it to help me out. So because of him, I even knew that, okay, then now I have a sound file,
#
then I have to put it out somewhere. Then another friend did the RSS feed part for me,
#
which I truly know nothing about even now he did it. Another friend did the artwork
#
for free because at some point someone said, put it on Apple podcast. Oh God, how do I
#
do that? And then Apple podcast said original artwork. And then me like a complete dimwit
#
instead of just throwing together something on Canva, I was like, oh, that means someone
#
has to create original artwork for me. So I went to an actual artist friend, Satyak
#
Gaddi, who's a wonderful illustrator and he very kindly, you know, came up with actual
#
original artwork, which truly seems excessive for an endeavor of this size. But so yeah,
#
it's still, it's, it's, I enjoy it very much. And, you know, it's an indulgence. It's a
#
very small thing. It has, you know, very few, very small numbers, very few listeners. So
#
I know I'm doing this for myself and because I enjoy it. But yeah, I kept thinking it was
#
there going to be a time when I would have to start winding it down now that I've reached
#
100 episodes, should I just sort of call it off? But it's, I still enjoy it very much.
#
So I'm going to continue doing it. No, no, it's, it's lovely. And this whole story of
#
this podcast is so incredibly inspiring. And a shout out to Anand Krishnamurthy, old friend
#
of mine and someone like you rightly said, he's a, he's a big name in these circles and
#
Chennai. So for him to do a podcast is just shows, you know, his passion and his kindness
#
as well. Remarkable chap. And I love the artwork by the way. And you know, why I said I find
#
it inspiring and you know, I'm not being overly kind here is that, you know, when I spoke
#
to you when we were sort of laying out the logistics for this particular recording, and
#
I was so surprised to hear that you don't have a mic and all of that, that you do it
#
on your phone and the load, the kind of lo-fi way you've been doing it. And people keep
#
asking me about advice on how to start podcasts. And there are two or three that have kind
#
of helped bring into being. And I'm in fact, toying with the idea of teaching a course
#
on starting a podcast. And what I would say to everyone who is listening is that, listen,
#
you do not need anything. Do not overthink it, just jump into it. You know, if there's
#
something that you think you'll enjoy doing, just kind of, you know, jump into it. Don't
#
overthink what is the mic I need? And how will I edit it? And, you know, and should
#
it be 10 minutes or 12 minutes and all of that. And I think people just need to kind
#
of jump into stuff and let it find its own momentum. And congratulations on 100 episodes
#
and the Emergent Ventures Prize. It's all, you know, so incredibly inspiring. Let's now
#
talk a little bit about sort of the subject matter. Like you said, when you started and
#
we were really in what one could call the fog of pandemic, that, you know, everybody's
#
trying to figure it out. And you are sort of, in a sense, documenting your own intellectual
#
journey through your podcast of figuring out what's going on. So, you know, where did that
#
quest begin? Like, did you look at the way it was being reported and said, okay, these
#
are the lacunae and these are the areas where I wish somebody was, you know, looking at
#
XYZ and hey, I'm going to do that. What's the available data at that time? How do you
#
begin to make sense of it? There are so many models and projections also, you know, going
#
around. Where does one begin? What was your thinking in those early days when you kind
#
So, I think there were two stages to this. The first was the absolute, you know, early
#
days when I felt that there was very little sort of big picture reporting happening from
#
India. I was seeing a lot of this in the US and the UK, but I didn't feel like there was
#
much reporting happening yet about the nature of the virus, how it spreads, you know, what
#
we know about aerosols, any of that right then, because it was more about, you know,
#
what the government's going to do, are we going to have a lockdown, that sort of stuff
#
in the early days. So, I felt like I was able to at least maybe not say things I knew, but
#
synthesize things I knew. There was that sort of new endeavor to do in that. But then the
#
other thing that ended up happening very quickly, and you know, I know this is a theme that
#
I've talked about before as well, which is that I struggle a lot and think a lot about
#
polarization. And it became very evident to me very quickly that, that there were two,
#
that this had once again become a left right thing. And, and it really bothered me deeply,
#
because it became very clear that for people on the left, it was now becoming necessary
#
to say that the Modi government was mishandling everything that its testing strategy was not
#
just conservative, but was also conservative to try to show low numbers, that there was,
#
you know, pseudoscience running amok, that, that there was soon going to be millions of
#
deaths that was happening. And then on the other side, immediately that the lockdown
#
was an enormous success. The lockdown was going to make sure that we were not going
#
to have any more cases. You know, there's the very memorable graph by D.K. Paul, who
#
held the government's COVID task force, which showed, I think this was in early April, and
#
it showed a curve of cases rising and then inexplicably on May 16th hitting zero. I mean,
#
it just nosedived into an axis in a way that you rarely see any graph anywhere doing. So
#
there was that sort of optimistic graph storytelling as well. And it was incredibly frustrating
#
to me that this was again becoming a left right thing. And I wanted to, I wanted to
#
talk about, I'm not a science journalist and I knew that there was very little of the science
#
that I was going to say anything meaningful about. I was listening and reading about it.
#
I'm interested, even though I'm not a good science communicator, but I knew I wanted
#
to talk about the policy parts of it. And in a way that could get through this sort
#
of frustrating left right situation that was already developing. So around mortality, for
#
example, there, you know, at the point at which numbers became large enough to start
#
sort of comparing with the rest of the world, it became clear that there was a larger story
#
to tell about mortality, which included the fact that India does underreport most deaths
#
from most diseases, while simultaneously reconciling with the fact that there did appear to be
#
a lower COVID mortality in India than in some Western countries for reasons that needed
#
to be understood and analyzed. So I do remember feeling at that point that I absolutely had
#
not seen. And this is where we talk about, you know, the lack of imagination and how
#
to tell stories, right? You know, no one is going to pitch or get approval for an op-ed
#
that says I'm going to, I'm going to write an op-ed considering all the aspects of the
#
mortality issue. News reporters never go in for a 360 thing anyway, either. So, so this
#
became a sort of way to be able to talk about all of the different things that were happening
#
on mortality. So yes, there were a couple of very specific things that I felt that were
#
that I was not hearing, or at least that I wanted to synthesize and be able to say.
#
And you know, the polarization, the politics is something that you mentioned in a bunch
#
of episodes, episode 22 and 93 are about sort of the left-right binaries. You know, in episode
#
65, you handled another political issue, the discussion around hydroxychloroquine. You
#
spoke about the missing deaths in episode 80 and whether the understating of deaths
#
could have sort of a political impetus. And is there then from readers, say, I mean, I
#
know, like, thankfully, you mentioned that you're not on social media all the time and
#
all of that. But is there also then a sense of frustration among some people that you're
#
not sort of that you're going into a level of nuance that doesn't really fit any of the
#
easy narratives, you are, you know, kind of carving your own path through it? Was it that
#
sense also kind of happening?
#
So I get that from my regular journalism a lot, I get that sort of response very often.
#
So for example, you know, I got pushed back after in the very early days, pre-lockdown
#
as well, I wrote for Mint about death statistics in general in India, so that, you know, the
#
feeling of let's go into this pandemic with an understanding of how deaths get reported
#
in India and where things might fall short. And, you know, it was immediately, I mean,
#
it's not uniform always, but there was some criticism of that, okay, here, you're already
#
building a narrative that we're undercounting deaths. So I get that from my regular news
#
reporting quite a bit. And this is where, you know, as I said, I don't have big numbers
#
at all on the podcast. And so what I feel is, you know, the podcast audience is in some
#
ways, a new sort of pandemic community has built a little bit on social media as well.
#
And many of them are scientists who are not epidemiologists, but who are sort of more
#
amateur enthusiasts. And that's the sweet spot for me, because I'm not going to make
#
points of great interest to experts at all in any way. But people who want slightly research
#
back and considered arguments that look at a number of points of view, this is of interest
#
to them. So no, what I actually get is, I get, you know, appreciation for the nuance
#
on the podcast, because that is a community that is very different from my news reading
#
community. Yeah. And that's in fact, you know, even though
#
you do T20s and I do test matches, I can say that I have kind of noticed the same difference
#
with my podcast listeners that I'll never get those kind of harsh, real, personal, almost
#
toxic responses that one otherwise might get in social media, where people are just reading
#
the headline of your piece and responding to that at the level of engagement and respect
#
is much deeper and in your case, obviously earned. One of the things that sort of interested
#
me is that, you know, while charting the journey of your podcast, one of the beautiful things
#
that you did was you decided that you'll ask one question in every episode. So episode
#
seven, why aren't we all wearing masks? Episode eight, there is, you know, how are hospitals
#
treating the virus when we don't even know the cure? What will life after the lockdown
#
look like? Should we trust the models? And so on and so forth. And it was interesting
#
for me to see those questions evolve from sort of specific questions like around masks
#
or around lockdowns and go to those deeper, broader questions as the series progressed.
#
For example, in episode 20 and 21, you, you know, worried about how through this covid
#
crisis, our rights and our privacies and all of all of those are sort of being eroded and
#
the danger of greater authoritarianism in the power of the state expanding. Tell me
#
a little bit about sort of your thinking on that. And do you feel that those worries are
#
kind of born out? What do we need to watch out for? What are the concrete signs that,
#
you know, citizens are being even more disempowered than they already were?
#
Right. So the question part of it, I thought I was going, you know, I did feel like I was
#
going into it with a questioning mind. And I did feel like I was going in trying to answer
#
a question each time. As it went on, I started worrying about whether this was going to become
#
like an artifact that I was hanging on to. But it hasn't. I do I do feel that I do have
#
these questions and that I am in pursuit of some sort of answer to them in each of these.
#
I think, you know, there was a phase in the pandemic when we all wondered how different
#
things were going to be after this was all over. And, you know, I think we all went through
#
a phase of great hope, a feeling that there was going to be a sort of pan-human solidarity.
#
Then, you know, there were times when that evaporated and we worried if we were going
#
to get into a, you know, huge surveillance when Arogya Setu started, that was that was,
#
you know, a real concern then. So all of those great hopes for great change, I think, have
#
gone through their own waves and dissipated a little. And I think what we're increasingly
#
left with is that we're going to be left with a world not dissimilar from what was there
#
before, with some things having been made worse for the most vulnerable people. So,
#
you know, what we're seeing is, for example, you know, jobs beginning to return. But everywhere,
#
people are seeing that working seniors are deeply struggling, even with very little elbow
#
room, is struggling deeply. So I don't think the sort of dystopian vision that we were
#
also once having was that, you know, all of the worst in people was coming out, the sort
#
of awful stigma that began at one point. And, you know, it seemed like we were going to
#
build the ghettos of our nightmares were now going to start coming up. I think that's all
#
also giving way to pragmatism. And that's not how how things are going to be like as
#
well. But but I don't know, I'm sure that there are going to be traumas from this period
#
that are not going to go away easily. So, for example, you know, I know, it's extremely
#
obvious, but having recently spoken to someone about it, that there have been 1 million deaths
#
worldwide. So that is 1 million families, for the most part across the world, who were
#
not able to get a final goodbye. That is an enormous sort of shared drama that a truly
#
large number of people have had to go through the sort of terrifying fears of the lockdown,
#
which are now you know, now they're a bit of a distant memory. I don't go out that much
#
as well. But sometimes it's really something to remember, you know, that it was not allowed
#
you were not allowed to leave home. And what that meant like for people for anyone for
#
whom home was not happy. Again, I know someone firsthand who lived an absolute nightmare
#
through those days. And that again, is a huge cohort of people for whom that trauma of living
#
in, you know, imprisonment for those days is not going away. I don't think that, you
#
know, either our worst fears are our best hopes about the post covid world are going
#
to come true. But but there are going to be scars and cleavages and maybe even little
#
sort of seedlings of better things that that will slowly make themselves apparent, not
#
in any of the terribly obvious ways that we had once wondered about. But it's going to
#
be that that part's going to be interesting to see how that changes. You know, for example,
#
one of the things that happened was a big change in the number of hours of unpaid housework
#
that men began to do. And that that gap has narrowed significantly now. But if that gap,
#
you know, still that space remains, then that is still a fundamental shift in society and
#
what that means for the next 30 years, because if that slight increment, if we don't go
#
back to that little bit of the old normal, that's still that's still something. So yeah,
#
it's it's I don't think that there's going to be, you know, dramatic changes from what
#
happened. But you know, a series of small and maybe even unknowable as of now changes.
#
I mean, just thinking aloud, it strikes me that what happened to all of us very suddenly
#
when all of this happened was that we were sort of, you know, living with complacence
#
in the inertia of the cocoon of that normality, which we had built around ourselves. And,
#
and by breaking us out of that, we were all forced to examine deeper truths of different
#
kinds. Maybe it could be that you cannot stand the person you're living with. Maybe it could
#
be that you discover new things about them and fall in love all over again, or whatever
#
in various different ways we kind of broke out of, you know, the different cocoons we
#
might have created, which were perhaps set in our everyday routines and all of that.
#
The other thing I want to ask you about, and I guess you'd, I think you'd have insight
#
on that in a different context also, and not just COVID is when you were talking about,
#
you know, fears of the surveillance of the state and all of that. And it struck me that
#
the one thing that saves us from even greater oppression by the state is the incompetence
#
of the state, because the state typically just doesn't have state capacity, there isn't
#
much depth and nuance to what they do, the tools with which they oppress are blunt tools.
#
And many of these high tech tools of surveillance, and even using Aragya Setu in meaningfully
#
oppressive ways, is possibly beyond the state. Now, in a larger context, is that true? Because
#
of course, you have to, you know, I'm sure you've thought that deeply about your relationship
#
with the state, because in a lot of cases, you're depending on data from the state. And
#
sometimes you've pointed out before you realized that it's not that the bad data is necessarily
#
malign, it is just incompetent. And what are your sort of thoughts on this?
#
Yeah, I find myself saying this a lot to people a lot, which is that so much of what is imagined
#
to be malice is actually incompetence. And I, you know, this is a recurring theme through
#
reporting and through reporting data as well. And, you know, assuming malified is something
#
that bothers me when people are talking about people that they are ideologically opposed
#
to. Again, this is something that I felt that marks some of the criticism of the government's
#
handling of COVID as well, which is frequently assuming malified intentions when I don't
#
think it called for that, you know, assuming suppression of numbers, when the sheer capacity
#
to count properly, you know, did not exist, assuming that the government was trying was,
#
you know, keep reducing tests so that it wouldn't discover more cases when I feel they just
#
did not have the capacity to conduct more tests then. And similarly, about deaths as
#
well, when you see that this is something that they fail, you know, they fail at with
#
all diseases, it isn't a new decision to start failing at it when it comes to COVID. So this
#
is true. But I should also, you know, sometimes I make this such a, I make such a point of
#
this that I don't want to sort of fall in love with my own point and get carried away
#
with it as well. I do think I do this about the government and incompetence. And occasionally,
#
journalists prove malice. And it's great when they do that, because it reminds me then
#
that I shouldn't, I shouldn't assume that the bumbling Lathiwala cop is the Indian state.
#
It's not true at all. There's a sort of lovable awfulness to that. But that's not true. So,
#
you know, one of the most excellent journalists of the last few years has been Somesh Jha,
#
Business Standard, who has come at data journalism in a way that I don't think I have been able
#
to do for the most part. And that that is a very valuable new direction to be going,
#
which is to get into the making of the sausage and the corruption of the sausage makers to
#
extend this too far. He's the journalist who discovered that the government was sitting
#
on both employment and household consumption information, data, which had been cleared
#
by all committees and was statistically sound but showed uncomfortable truths as clear,
#
you know, as malified intentions get us that showed the government in a poor light. And
#
then the government too was shameless enough to deny his news reporting, you know, have
#
surrogates criticize it and him and then release exactly those numbers the day they came back
#
to power. I mean, that was one of the most brazen and shocking things to have happened
#
when it comes to data. You know, I too was willing to accept that, that there were some
#
reasons that there was some fine tuning, but this sort of brazen release of it on the day
#
they came back to power was truly shocking even to me. So I think Somesh has done a good
#
job of showing how much malice exists as well. And, you know, much as I've criticized crime
#
reporting so far, I think sometimes what good crime reporters do is to show the most venal
#
part of the Indian state. The venality of cops can be sort of the most distilled form
#
of the venality of the Indian state sometimes. So I like making that Raghdar Bari's ironic
#
bumbling incompetence point. But I think people like Somesh and a lot of crime reporters are
#
able to show that, that we wish it was as cute as that.
#
Yeah, and I guess one thinking a lot one could even say that, you know, even if the means
#
are incompetent, the end is for all practical purposes malicious. I mean, what difference
#
does it then make what the intent is, if that's kind of where we ended up. Let's kind of talk
#
about COVID and your sort of understanding of it through data. So, you know, when it
#
all broke and when you began the moving curve, what kind of data were you looking at specifically
#
to make sense of all of it? And then how did that sense of what data should you look at
#
evolve with time? How did the frame shift?
#
So I think in the early days, a lot of what I was looking at was scientific research rather
#
than data. And then I think that continued for the most part. So again, when it comes
#
to COVID and data, I think this was one more moment when I had to re-examine one of my
#
favorite beliefs about the Indian state, which is, I often get a bit annoyed by people cribbing
#
about how little data the government puts out or how little data that exists, what difficult
#
formats it is in, because I don't think that there's very little. I think there's quite
#
a bit. I think it lacks in some key areas and might be frustrating to not have that
#
there. There's a periodicity issue for sure, because it just takes so long to put things
#
together. And sure, formats are annoying, but there are tech solutions for that. But
#
when this came around, I had to accept that the amount of data that the government was
#
and is until today putting out was a real shame and a real travesty. And either it's
#
appalling that government systems are only able to capture that much data, or it's appalling
#
that they think and have successfully until now got away with giving us that little. So
#
I look not only at Western countries' data, I look at quite a few Latin American countries'
#
data as well. And I've looked at South Africa, at least. And for all of this, I go to their
#
government websites and use Google Translate. Chile, Peru, everybody is able to put out,
#
drill down to the smallest municipality, historical data for confirmed cases, deaths, in some
#
cases, hospitalizations, some countries put out asymptomatic, symptomatic, some of them
#
put out probable cases, all of this in downloadable form. I have not come across a single country
#
that officially puts out as little data as the Indian government does. And it's just
#
shameful that we've allowed them to get away with this, to the point that every international
#
media organization and researcher uses a crowd-sourced website. All of us use covid19india.org,
#
which is an amazing resource put together by people seeking no credit and money, who
#
collate official data from government handles. And you know, all of us are just using it
#
and considering it acceptable to be using it from a.org website, when this is, this
#
is absolutely the core job of a government. And I have not seen any country that does
#
such a poor job. I have not seen a single Latin American country or any of the few African
#
countries that I've seen do such a poor job of putting out data in the pandemic. So, you
#
know, reporting on data was limited in the early days. Now we have, we have through covid19india.org
#
and through other some sort of research efforts based in India as well, you know, more data
#
to write about. But even now, the most interesting insights to me continue to come from scientific
#
research, understanding just how the virus spreads among whom and why remains the key
#
thing to try and understand for people trying to live their lives going forward. And I hope
#
what we're going to have now, we've had one good paper coming out of India so far, I hope
#
what we're going to have more of now is good Indian scientific, you know, and by good,
#
I mean, not published in ICMR's own in-house journal, but in sort of peer-reviewed reputed
#
journals that explain transmission patterns in India. And from what you're saying, you
#
know, would it be correct also to say that Indians fundamentally have a shallow understanding
#
of what it means to be a democracy, that we often think of democracy as, oh, there are
#
elections and we vote one of the competing mafias into power. But actually democracy
#
should also include the state being accountable to the citizens and empowering them with information,
#
which is why data becomes so important. It's not an aside that, oh, other states do this
#
particular thing well and we don't. This should actually be essential to what the state does
#
and, you know, in a sense, part of the justification for its existence. Would you agree with that?
#
Yeah, I do agree with that. Though I don't fully agree with the shallow democracy part
#
of it. I mean, it's sort of like a puddle that's shallow in parts and deep in others.
#
This part is certainly shallow in the expectation that government should give you this information
#
and you see it from just the, you know, the attitude that anyone assumes in a government
#
office while demanding information that the office requires in law to give you. But it's
#
still a sort of, you know, please, can I have this posture that everybody is sort of obliged
#
to take up? And yes, I've had this in a couple of interactions with government officials
#
myself. At one point, some weeks ago, I, at the point when Telangana was having a pretty
#
bad time with its numbers, Casey's son did a ask me anything sort of thing on Twitter.
#
So I asked why Telangana's bulletin had so much less information than other states did,
#
which was an issue and still is. And he replied saying, no, it's all in there. And it wasn't.
#
And I said, you know, the reason I'm asking you is because it's not in there. And he didn't
#
get back to me further. Then one of the, you know, municipal corporations that's been doing
#
a relatively good job with data is Mumbai. And, you know, there's a very impressive IAS
#
officer who's leading the data side of things as well. So recently on Twitter, I pointed
#
out to her that while they had this dashboard that was doing a very good job, like most
#
government websites, it was updated afresh every day with no archive. Like, you know,
#
one of those sort of Cinderella things where everything disappears at midnight every day,
#
which is so deeply frustrating to me to not be able to say, you know, make a chart for
#
myself looking at trends over time. And she said, well, we don't want to overburden people
#
with information, anyone who wants more can always get in touch with us. And I just felt,
#
I mean, how hard would it be just to just have a drop down where you give the option
#
of having historical data there. But you know, that was, I mean, although she seems really
#
great at her job and has done a lot, there was that attitude of, you know, don't ask
#
us for excessive amounts of information, though this was something that every, you know, municipality
#
in Colombia, for example, is putting out. There's another official in Bangalore as well,
#
who's really very good on data and very good at sharing as well. But one of the things
#
that India has been doing, that many Indian states are doing, which is quite unusual is
#
doing much more rapid antigen tests than the sort of gold standard RTPCR tests. There's
#
ways to argue it either way. It's a discussion to be had. And one of the things that, you
#
know, would be very valuable to have is the relative positivity rates for antigen tests
#
versus RTPCR. And no state is putting out that information. Mumbai puts it out in a
#
graph. And when I asked for it in Excel form, I was told, you know, that's an excessive
#
amount of information to ask for. And similarly, the Bangalore person was not happy to be asked
#
about it, said, Delhi doesn't put it out. How many columns can we put in every page?
#
So yeah, there is that information, that attitude even among the relatively, the ones who are
#
putting out much more data than you're used to getting from and are much more responsive
#
than you're used to government officials of, you know, don't like, don't push this so
#
far. Don't ask for like Excel sheets, you know, it's pretty good how far we're getting.
#
So definitely that attitude of anything more than sort of the headline number is a favor
#
we're doing for you. Yeah.
#
You know, one of the things I sort of noticed through the series is that it is of course
#
not just about COVID. It is about a lot else. And a lot of that comes from, you know, prior
#
work you must have done. For example, in episode three, you know, there is sort of what was
#
certainly a new insight for me where you say quote, poor people report more illness, but
#
less hospitalization will stop quote. And again, that's something that, you know, was
#
an important insight and I had to kind of sit down and process it and all of that. And
#
equally you've touched on many sort of larger issues like what would COVID mean for India's
#
women in episode 47, Dalits in episode 46, children in episode 70. In fact, you had multiple
#
episodes where you've looked at the impacts on parents and children. Now, you know, one
#
thing that is often said, you know, Orville has spoken about the link between writing
#
and thinking and one saw that is often given is that just forcing yourself to write clearly
#
forces you to think more clearly. And one of the things that sort of struck me was that
#
by the end of the series, and of course it hasn't ended, but you know, at episode 99
#
where we are and just touching 100, what struck me was that you've gone in there asking questions
#
as a generalist, which all journalists are in a sense, they are generalists. But have
#
you then by asking questions repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, looking at the data, looking at
#
the research in a manner of speaking, transformed yourself into an expert of sorts also just
#
has a process of reporting on something for so long, which such depth enhanced your understanding
#
of the subject kind of massively.
#
What I definitely feel it has done is expose me to a much wider range of perspectives than
#
would have come to me normally. Yes, I do think that some of the, that, you know, the
#
complete cluelessness of the early days has been replaced with some baseline understanding.
#
But this is the thing, it's every day continues to bring in very key fundamental, not esoteric
#
aspects of it at all, very key fundamental parts that I have no, not the slightest answer
#
to, to the point that when I begin by asking the question, it's, I'm really not being
#
cute. I actually don't know. So for example, right now, you know, if I would like to fashion
#
myself as some sort of expert now, I should be able to say in at least one line, why have
#
the cases started reducing from mid September? And because I haven't worked on it for an
#
episode, I have no clue. I wouldn't be able to answer it in a single word. I have not
#
one word of explanation for why this is. So no, I would only feel that I'm able to say
#
much more about the things that I have looked at. But I don't feel any closer to feeling
#
that I understand. I don't understand why it's spread more widely in some places than
#
others. I haven't seen convincing explanations for the most basic things. And this is one
#
more thing where we, you know, you, I, I would come back to journalism, a regular sort of
#
mainstream journalism, which is how, how is it that I haven't in any news publication
#
yet seen, forget an answer, at least an attempt at answering. Why did Pune have so many cases?
#
I mean, why did Pune district have like four and a half thousand cases per day at a point?
#
Why did Pune city have over 2000 cases for so many days? There's no good, you know, forget
#
good explanation. I can't see anything that got anywhere near answering that. Then why
#
did Punjab have such incredibly high mortality for a period? And you know, the numbers in
#
Punjab are still non numbers are properly understand. And then again, the news reporting says things
#
like rumors spread on WhatsApp about, you know, treatments or some rumors spread on
#
WhatsApp everywhere in the country, there's no way to understand why in particular in
#
Punjab, this is what happened. Why are Bihar's numbers so low? I mean, it has to go beyond
#
just a low population density because that so, you know, no one has this is, I just don't
#
know if people are going in with clearly questioning minds, because if you can start with a position
#
of humility of accepting that there is a big central question that you have no idea what
#
the answer to it is, maybe that would help you a frame questions that people actually
#
want the answers to. And then we get any closer to to answering them, rather than regurgitating
#
what some expert panel is saying. So there is some government expert panel that's saying,
#
you know, this September was a peak and things will taper off by Fed with no convincing explanation
#
of why this has happened now. So yeah, I don't I don't feel at all able to answer those things
#
and I don't see the attempt to answering it, attempt to getting to those questions more
#
Well, I mean, one of the sort of things that struck me and impressed me while going through
#
the full series was not necessarily, you know, even if you don't listen to the episodes,
#
even if you just go to the medium page, and you look at the question that's been asked
#
for every episode, I think so much of our quest for the truth really comes from asking
#
good questions, which we don't see enough of. And, you know, you've asked, you know,
#
almost every episode has interesting questions like episode 71. What does the lockdowns disruption
#
and health services mean for the health of Indians now in general? 72. What is it like
#
to deal with COVID-19 in rural India? 44. Where does COVID fit into India's disease
#
landscape on Labor Day? You know, in episode 38, you asked, what is the future for work
#
and workers? You know, what would life after the lockdown look like? And it seems to me
#
that just the act of being able to frame these questions comes from a sort of a position
#
of insight, you know, I've taken enough of your time, and I don't want you to actually
#
answer any of these questions here, because I would rather that listeners go and listen
#
to all those episodes. Sort of like Rukmini said at the start, it's like T20 matches,
#
you know, five minute episodes, six minute episodes. And I don't say that disparagingly.
#
I'm just, I'm just full of enormous envy that, you know, one can pack in so much insight
#
into that kind of space. So I'll probably end with a couple of questions. And you know,
#
my penultimate question really comes from, I guess, my self interest and the self interest
#
of all of the listeners who are still sort of struggling to cope with COVID in this difficult
#
year. And that comes from a question that you in fact asked in episode 66, where you
#
asked, how do we measure the risk to ourselves? And this strikes me as an important question
#
to ask, because what we often see is a kind of pandemic fatigue has set in a lockdown
#
fatigue where people are like, just screw it, you know, it's fine. And, you know, all
#
of that, and maybe people doing things they shouldn't do, but at the same time, you know,
#
one can't blame them. It's just horrible to live with this discipline and wear masks all
#
the time and all of that. What is your sense? How would you advise people on how to sort
#
of navigate the road ahead in the months to come?
#
So I wouldn't like to think of this as advice, but most sort of what I feel I've heard that
#
makes most sense and is most convincing for me. So, you know, intimate, closed, mixed
#
age events seem like a terrible idea. You know, research has shown this across the world
#
and in India as well. Long shared transport is also a bad idea, though with the level
#
of masking compliance that, you know, flights require that might need to be recalibrated
#
for that. But the thing is, what remains is, because there are so many unknowables, it's
#
hard to understand what it is exactly that shakes some of these broad trends. So what
#
suddenly causes deaths among younger people without co-morbidities is impossible to say.
#
You know, there was a period of time where young children were experiencing an inflammatory
#
condition sort of associated with SARS-CoV-2, even though it wasn't directly that. So it's
#
hard to say what those characteristics of those kids were and who were facing that.
#
I suppose what I've taken broadly away for myself is as much as possible, whatever my
#
privilege allows me to continue avoiding, I am continuing avoiding. So, for example,
#
I know everyone with little kids is, or even older kids who aren't going to school now
#
is being driven up the wall now, having done this and homeschooling. But whoever's privilege
#
allows them to continue keeping children at home, it seems to me like a good idea to do
#
that. Now, recent research is showing just how much spreading happens among children
#
and among intergenerational cohorts that include children as well. It's something we need to
#
take more seriously in India, especially, you know, anyone who can continue working
#
from home, all of those seem like things to continue to try to do. But, you know, I want
#
to be very mindful, not just of work and money related privileges, but also mental health,
#
right? I mean, it's hard to advise these things to people struggling without other people
#
to talk to, without other outlets, maybe even safety. So, I think everyone is trying to
#
build matrices of what they can avoid and what they must do. And, you know, these are
#
going to be deeply personal things for most people. But, you know, the broad things of
#
closed indoor events, any sort of, you know, large mass gatherings, of course, masking,
#
you know, though I have to say what frustrates me is that I've still not seen proper research
#
about cotton masks, the sort that we're all using. I know that there was simulation which
#
was, you know, the sort of when the advice was put out. But yeah, I'm an absolutely passionate
#
mask user and my little children use them as well. So, I don't mean that I haven't
#
seen anything to convince me. I'm completely convinced. I'm just saying that I would love
#
to see a great research paper around it by now. So, yeah, these are the decisions I am
#
taking to just continue. My life has not really changed that much even since the lockdown.
#
I still don't go out that much because as much as I can, you know, part of reporting
#
on all of this is not just feeling terrible for the people who weren't able to continue
#
staying in and, you know, realizing your enormous privilege in that and to be very, to remain
#
humble in the face of this virus, to not feel that there are ways to be, you know, to not
#
feel that youth or any of these are sort of guarantees against it. I remain extremely
#
humble in the face of the virus.
#
Very wise words. And now my final question, which is, you know, almost a bit of a cliche
#
to my listeners, I think, but I have to ask it and especially in your sense, since, you
#
know, your amazing journalism has given you such or at least has caused you to think so
#
deeply about our democracy and our society. If I ask you to say look ahead to 2030, away
#
from this cursed year 2020 and look ahead to 2030, what gives you hope and what gives
#
you despair about what our country, our society, our democracy could, is going through and
#
could go through in this time?
#
I see this, I hope it remains true. So what gives me hope is that I see enormous transformational
#
power among people who fall in love. It amazes me the, I mean, first of all, the amount of
#
love I see around, and I mean this in a sort of, you know, romantic love among young people,
#
that sort of, it's incredible. I mean, people are on the phone with each other all the time
#
and finding places and the power to take radical decisions around being in love is really quite
#
something. I see, I see it quite a bit. I hope it continues to grow and I, the strength
#
in that is something else. So it's, it's one of the few things that gives me, it gives
#
me hope that people will take, that young people will take otherwise enormous leaps
#
that they might not have planned to just out of being in love. So that's my, that's my
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extremely strange, you know, that's something that gives me hope. I see, I see it a lot
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around me and when people tell me, you know, I don't know, some people want to tell you
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stories, when they know that you've had a love marriage, people want to tell you their
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stories very often. And the things that people tell you about, you know, leaving home and
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just getting into a bus with no money and it's just, it's amazing. It's so brave and
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it's very, it's something else. So that gives me hope. And the immense self-respect and
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pride that young people have much more than every generation increasingly so gives me
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hope. What fills me with despair is, I think conservatism among young people again is what
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fills me with despair. Conservatism among older people less so. But, but yeah, to hear,
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to hear, I can't currently see enough outlets and pushback against the sort of toxic Muslim
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hatred that is being pushed in most of the country. I can't see ways out of it right
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now. I don't see, I don't see like a big movement of young, anyone, people strongly
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saying that this is a totally unacceptable thing and you know, we're going to put, really
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put our weight behind it. So yeah, the, the Muslim hatred in this country is what gives
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me greatest despair. Indeed. And you know, we'll cycle back to the hope so we can end
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on a note of hope. You are literally the first guest over, you know, 196 episodes who's,
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who's spoken of romantic love is something that, you know, gives them hope. And it's
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such a delightful answer. And I'll sort of, you know, advise all my young listeners now
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that do not be conservative, fall in love, but at the same time, don't get into a bus
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with no money. That's not such a good idea. Okay. But wear a mask also. Definitely don't
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get in without a mask. Rukmini, thank you so much for being so patient with your time
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and so generous with your insights. It was so amazing having a podcaster like yourself
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having a T20 star in a test match is so delightful. Thank you so much. A huge pleasure and thank
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you to your listeners. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do head on over to the show
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notes where I've linked Rukmini's exceptional podcast, The Moving Curve, and you will also
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find a lot of her journalism over there. You can follow Rukmini on Twitter at Rukmini.
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You can follow me at Amit Varma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. You can browse past episodes of The Scene
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and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening. Did you enjoy this episode
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of The Scene and the Unseen? If so, would you like to support the production of the
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show? You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like
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to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
