This article was written after 50 days of demonetisation induced note exchange period. I waited to update/redraft it after the PM’s speech. Alas, the wall-to-wall coverage of PM’s New-Year Eve speech notwithstanding, the entire content of the article stands.

Television news channels take great pride in being influencers. We’re constantly told when they get a spike in their ratings. They’re ever eager to tell us how often they’ve made an impact and often, their claims are true because mainstream media does exercise a powerful influence on the public and plays a disproportionately dominant role in establishing a narrative. Which is why it’s a good time to ask a few questions of the coverage and commentary news media provided during the 50 days of demonetisation.

The original reason that Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered for demonetisation was to purge the nation of black money. Although in between new goalposts were set up (cracking down on terror funding and counterfeit money, fast-forwarding India into cashlessness, for instance), the emphasis on purification has been a constant as was evident from the address delivered on December 31. With black money and corruption being held up as the target of demonetisation, television reportage and studio debates should have asked pointed questions addressing these issues. Unfortunately, mainstream media (by and large) couldn’t be bothered. Fortunately, we’re here with a few of the questions they should have asked.

What happened with the Panama Papers exposé?

The largest data-leak in the world history with 11.5 million files, investigated, analysed, deconstructed and fact-checked by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) threw up names that were relevant in the Indian context.  Indian Express is a member of the consortium and after eight months of investigation, they put out the names, from the Bachchans (Aishwarya and Amitabh), Ajay Devgn, to heavy-weight names in real estate like DLF owner KP Singh, IndiaBulls and Apollo Tyres’ promoters, and Gautam Adani’s elder brother, Vinod Adani. Here is an explainer from Indian Express and another global explainer from Guardian. The author of this piece wrote an explainer on its impact on taxation here in NewsLaundry in April when Panama Papers exposé started. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, the global body of 34 rich countries drafting the global taxation regulation held high-powered meetings, re-looked at loopholes and in India, an enquiry committee was set up, helmed by the then Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan to look into Indian names and links.

Demonetisation was the perfect time and reason for the media to demand a status update from the government on the action taken on Panama Papers’ exposé. They were actually more relevant to tackling corruption and cracking down on black money than notebandi. But the deafening silence on Panama Papers during the 50 days of notebandi could only be matched by the silence that prevailed during the original expose in April when Indian Express put out the names. The digital media space could have done more too, asked harder questions, asked for status update and done explainers.

To give credit where it is due, NDTV India did shows revisiting Panama Papers with one of the core investigators, Indian Express’s Vaidyanathan Iyer.

Speaking of past investigations, remember HSBC?

Another ICIJ project with Indian Express as a key collaborator, this one revealed more than 100,000 accounts in the private banking arm of HSBC in Geneva (hence the name Swiss Leaks) with clients spread over 203 countries. Money was laundered to the tune of more than 102 billion USD, from Mexican drug lords to gangsters to prominent politicians and industrialists. This happened in February 2015, very much during the tenure of the current government. Unlike the Panama Papers, HSBC money laundering exposé actually did kick up a political storm in India because it featured prominent names like the Ambani brothers, the Ruia brothers, Naresh Goyal and politicians like Annu Tandon and Narayan Rane. HSBC was fined heavily in America and other countries, but what happened to the 1195 names from India? Your guess is as good as mine.

Again, demonetisation would have been a good opportunity to remind the nation that this scam existed and its players were yet to be punished.

Ajay Devgn as brand ambassador of cashless transactions?

Adverts put out by the Indian Banks Association are all over TV channels and can be watched here. Considering he is named in Panama Papers, the biggest data leak on corruption and tax evasion, making Ajay Devgn the face of cashless transactions was an outstanding bit of irony. Was it that hard to find an untainted name to be the face of cashless from our 1.2 billion strong citizenry?

Let’s talk about non-privacy

The month of October 2016 saw 3.2 million cards being compromised in India and crores stolen online.  November and December saw twitter handles of Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress and prominent journalists being hacked. We were also told our ATM machines run on a Windows version that is almost archaeological (and not maintained by Microsoft any more). Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, on a separate matter on Aadhaar, has already told Supreme Court, back in July that Indians do not have a fundamental right to data privacy. So our data is not protected by the State, our security systems are not robust enough to safeguard our data, yet we will be forced into a digital economy which necessitates we put financial data online, on digital platforms. The term Kafkaesque pales in front of such absurd torment! Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama has written a brilliant  piece on the expense and dangers of going cashless, but where are the big media prime time debates on this subject?

There’s no connection between cashless, m-banking and corruption

Even if the PM was insisting there was a connection between cashlessness and corruption, why did the media not notice that there is no correlation? In fact, Kenya, where over 75 per cent transactions are via mobile banking, is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and Vodafone-enabled m-Pesa’s impact on corruption reduction is insignificant and inconclusive as this paper from Lund University finds. Considering the cost, the service charges, the low speed/no speed broadband services, India deserves better explainers and more in depth analyses and rebuttals. Add to it, the complete lack of safety, Qualcomm, the largest mobile chip manufacturer has stated it here and Quint has exposed the vulnerable PAYTM wallet here. The industry body Assocham and consulting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers have also exposed the risks with mobile banking, much before the tragic farce of notebandi in 2015, here.

Alas with most TV channels being flush with sponsorships from mobile wallet companies like PAYTM, Mobikwik, those dispassionate stories on mobile banking are not happening anytime soon!

Who’s funding political parties?

The bell weather of corruption, influence peddling and turning democracy into oligarchy, is non-transparency in the funding of political parties and campaign finance. Demonetisation was the perfect storm to give these issues wall to wall coverage. But barring few and random episodes, the topic has been let off. The Prime Minister’s New Year Eve speech was also an opportunity to rake up the matter, especially since he mentioned simultaneous elections, but maintained a confusing silence on political parties’ funding. Add to it the reality that the current government, which is subjecting us to demonetisation, has also amended Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) rules to give its own party and Congress a clean chit. These are essential issues which should have consumed primetime programming in TV.

Our Orwellian existence has truly arrived when satirists and comedians ask harder questions than the over-present media, which is what happened over the course of our demonetisation days. These 50 days inspired a mini-cottage industry (as Scroll puts it aptly) of satire. Comedy group All India Bakchod did ask the question on political parties’ funding. And the ridiculously talented Varun Grover’s demonetisation burn is here. Social media and messaging platforms like Whatsapp were ablaze with memes and videos that poked vicious fun at the ‘minor inconveniences’ suffered by citizens and the general impracticality of the scheme.

When satirists offer a more informed and insightful look at current affairs than journalists, it’s time for media to pull up its socks.  

 The author can be reached at biraj_swain@hotmail.com