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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a public rally ahead of West Bengal state elections in Calcutta, India, on March 7, 2021.

Bikas Das/The Associated Press

As Indias COVID-19 infections mount in a crushing second wave with more than 19 million cases and counting, there is a growing clamour against media coverage criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modis handling of the pandemic.

In the last week, several reports and editorials published abroad have laid much of the blame for the surge in India on the governments failure to curb political rallies and mass religious gatherings last month. The press has also questioned why authorities were slow to prepare for the second wave despite a national panel warning of a fresh wave.

Searing images of mass cremations and burning funeral pyres spilling into parking areas as bodies pile up have drawn the worlds attention to the severity of the crisis. In India, too, newspapers have been critical of the national and state governments mismanagement, and there is rising resentment from the public and opposition parties on social media.

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A flurry of recent directives from the government seeks to rein in the narrative that members of the ruling party and their supporters see as an attack on its public image. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reportedly told Indian ambassadors and high commissioners posted around the globe that the one-sided narrative in international media should be countered, according to The Indian Express.

Last week, the Indian high commission in Australia sent a scathing rejoinder to the newspaper The Australian for republishing an article headlined Modi leads India into viral apocalypse, calling it baseless and slanderous.

Back in India, the government issued an emergency order to Twitter to take down more than 50 tweets, including those posted by people from media, opposition party members and filmmakers. A few days later, Facebook temporarily removed posts with the hashtag #ResignModi. An open letter issued by mental-health experts called for restraint from the media in covering the crisis. We are not saying the facts should not be reported. We are saying that hysteria and panic-inducing coverage should be avoided, the letter said.

Media watchers said the effort to weed out critical voices covering the pandemic ties in with the growing curbs on media and digital freedom in India over the past few years. India ranked 142 in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, down from 140 in 2019. It has also been called one of the worlds most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their job properly by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The co-ordinated hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who dare to speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva followers are terrifying and include calls for the journalists concerned to be murdered, said RSFs statement, referring to the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. The campaigns are particularly violent when the targets are women, the statement added.

The government has denied claims of curbs and blamed the low ranking on a Western bias. In reference to the ranking, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Prakash Javadekar, tweeted: We will expose, sooner than later, those surveys that tend to portray bad picture about Freedom of Press in India.

According to news reports, the government has been mulling setting up its own democracy and press freedom rankings. Meanwhile, the U.S. 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices highlighted a huge number of internet shutdowns in different places across the country 106 in 2019 and 76 times as of Dec. 21, 2020, with the longest shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir when its special status was revoked and the government feared a backlash and unrest. That information blackout was deemed illegal by the Supreme Court.

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The COVID-19 crisis, in many ways, has pushed an overwhelming amount of reporting and visual evidence onto digital platforms in real time, not just from journalists.

Social media is the most powerful platform that citizens have right now. We have been seeing Twitter and WhatsApp become a helpline for people in distress. With the collapse of governance, this kind of people-to-people communication is important and thats what the government is trying to crack down on, said senior journalist Geeta Seshu of the Free Speech Collective, which tracks violations of free speech and protects the right to dissent in India.

In a recent study, Arrest and Detention of Journalists in India 2010-20, Ms. Seshu noted a sharp rise in criminal cases lodged against journalists, with a majority of cases in Bhartiya Janata Party-ruled states. In the past decade, 154 journalists in India were arrested, detained or interrogated, with more than 40 per cent of these instances in 2020. Nine foreign journalists faced deportation or interrogation, or were denied entry into the country. It has contributed to the deterioration in the climate for free speech in India, Ms. Seshu said.

In another study, titled Getting Away with Murder, Ms. Seshu found that journalists, many from small towns working with regional media, paid with their lives for investigative reports on illegal activities. Others were intimidated using violent means. Journalists have been fired upon, blinded by pellet guns, forced to drink liquor laced with urine or urinated upon, kicked, beaten and chased. They have had petrol bombs thrown at their homes and the fuel pipes of their bikes cut, she noted.

Prashant Kanojia is one of them. The former journalist has had several legal cases and complaints filed against him and been to prison twice, spending 80 days in jail last year until he got bail in October. He said he has been targeted for writing articles critical of the political leadership in Uttar Pradesh.

Mr. Kanojia, who comes from a Dalit low caste background, says he has a fair number of followers on social media and talks about issues faced by his community.

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The government is afraid that I will provoke them to protest, even though I am not capable of doing that, he told The Globe and Mail. The surprising bit is that the police havent pursued my case after that there hasnt been a single hearing. That shows they have nothing substantial against me and they know the cases wont hold up in court.

During the pandemic, Mr. Modis government has clamped down on news reports that it claims were fake and created panic, calling them seditious and a criminal offence under the Disaster Management Act. It also sought to control media coverage that strayed from official statements.

Last year, the government pushed the Supreme Court to control the coverage of the pandemic. The court said it would not interfere with the free discussion about the pandemic, but direct the media to refer to and publish the official version about the developments.

So far, the digital news media has been freer than the more regulated TV and print news, both dependent on government advertising. An explosion of news sites managed to make a mark in the last four to five years, Ms. Seshu said. But in February, the government laid down a framework to regulate digital media, too.

Mr. Kanojia said his experience has disillusioned him about the profession.

Journalism was always a passion; it never felt like a job. But looking at the current situation its hard to survive. There are few organizations that allow you to write what you want and I dont find myself to be the right fit anywhere, he said.

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He said that is why he moved toward politics, as a member of a party that seeks to uphold constitutional rights.

Journalists shouldnt be seen as a threat but treated as part of the ecosystem, he said.

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As COVID-19 devastates India, Modis government tries to control the narrative - The Globe and Mail

At least six people have been killed in post-election violence in India's West Bengal state, police officials said on Wednesday, after a regional group beat Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party in a bitterly fought contest.

The regional Trinamool Congress (TMC) retained control of the populous eastern state in results declared on Sunday, with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging as the main opposition there for the first time. read more

A senior West Bengal police official said the violence had been particularly intense in at least six districts scattered across the state, with homes of some 100 political workers from both sides attacked and vandalised.

"In Cooch Behar district in North Bengal there have been at least 25 separate clashes between TMC and BJP workers ever since the results were declared," the official said, declining to be identified as he is not authorised to speak to media.

Both parties said their workers were being targeted by rivals.

"Our party workers are being hounded out in the rural belts and houses have been torched," said Shisir Bajoria of the BJP, which staged a sit-in protest at its headquarters in the state's capital city, Kolkata.

Subrata Mukherjee, a senior TMC leader, told Reuters that at least two of the party's workers had been killed in recent days. "It was the TMC workers who were on the receiving end," Mukherjee said.

West Bengal has a history of political violence, including flare-ups after elections. After the last general election in 2019, which Modi won convincingly, at least 15 people were killed in clashes.

India's National Human Rights Commission said on Tuesday it would send an investigation team to the state.

TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who was sworn in as West Bengal's chief minister for the third time on Wednesday, said there had been sporadic violence, and blamed the BJP for it.

"I am for peace," Banerjee told reporters. "I will appeal to all sides to contain violence."

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Post-election violence kills six in eastern India - Reuters India

Patrick Whitesell and Ari Emanuel lead the successful IPO.

Eighteen months after tepid interest killed off a planned initial stock offering for Endeavor, CEO Ari Emanuel has completed a $511 million IPO that values the company at $10.3 billion and the shares he controls with partner Patrick Whitesell at $864 million.

The two Hollywood agents rang the opening bell at the NYSE Thursday to kick off the first day of trading for the company that owns the William Morris Endeavor talent agency, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the Miss Universe Competition.

Its a big paydayand a moment of redemptionfor Emanuel, one of Hollywoods hardest-charging agents, who has transformed the boutique talent agency he founded in 1995 into a media company in its own right. He and executive chairman Whitesell, Endeavors two most senior executives, hold as much as 17% voting control of the company and share an economic interest in shares valued at $864 million, based on the IPO stock price of $24. Todays regulatory filings do not spell out their individual holdings, though Emanuel appears to have a slightly larger stake in the company.

A spokesperson for Endeavor declined to comment.

Over the course of two decades, Endeavor merged with one of Hollywoods oldest talent agencies, the William Morris Agency, acquired the sports management firm IMG, began investing in events, such as New York Fashion Week and Frieze London art fair, as well as sports leagues, such as the UFC and the Professional Bull Riders organization. All of these moves took the firm beyond the fickle world of talent representation, which is, in the words of one Hollywood observer, one bad lunch with a movie star away from a wrecking ball.

This plunge into new corners of the entertainment world helped diversify Endeavors revenue, with its direct ownership of sports properties accounting for 20% of the companys proceeds and events accounting for a whopping 43% in 2019. Its traditional representation business brought in 36% of revenue.

Endeavor built upon its relationships with talent to begin functioning like a traditional Hollywood studio, financing and producing entertainment content. It has bankrolled or sold more than 200 projects, including La La Land, Just Mercy and Hamilton.

Emanuel is looking for the stock offering to fuel Endeavors growth and bolster its position in an entertainment world now dominated by tech giants Netflix, Amazon and Apple. As part of the IPO, Endeavor will acquire the remaining 44% stake in the UFC that it doesnt currently own. Together with the public stock offering, Endeavor sold $1.8 billion in stock in a private placement.

Endeavor seemed primed for takeoff in the fall of 2019 when the stock sale was shelved, after the anemic Wall Street debut of indoor cycling darling Peloton and WeWorks decision to delay its offering. That derailed one of the biggest deals in Emanuel and Whitesells deal-making careers, one that would have been worth at least $1.5 billion for the duo.

Things grew bleaker as the pandemic crippled Hollywood, and Endeavor responded by laying off 350 employees last spring. Emanuel stopped drawing a salary in what amounted to a symbolic gesture (he received $14.14 million in compensation in 2020 that included a bonus for his leadership through the Covid-19 epidemic). Endeavor ended 2020 with a net loss of $625.3 million on revenue of $3.5 billion.

Its possible that Emanuel and Whitesell have more extensive holdings in Endeavor that have yet to be publicly disclosed in regulatory filings. Emanuel is also eligible to receive as much as $28 million in stock if or when Endeavors valuation tops $7.5 billion, and another $14 million for hitting certain market value thresholds.

Originally posted here:
Endeavor Lands Elusive IPO, With Emanuel And Whitesell Controlling Nearly $1 Billion In Shares - Forbes

Q. Adult vaccinations are starting on May 1 along the lines you demanded, but states say they cannot start as they do not have the vaccines. What is your view? Did you seek the expansion of vaccinations too early? UK will start adult vaccines from June?

Ans. First, the government set a target of vaccinating 300 million by August. This is the above 45 age category. They managed to fully vaccinate not even 2 percent of the total population. With mounting pressure of the government not vaccinating enough, they added another 600 million to the list, by starting vaccinations for the 18+ group from May 1. But where are the vaccines? Why did the Modi Government abandon the people between age groups of 18 to 44 years by refusing to take responsibility for their vaccination? Why is there a discriminatory policy on the pricing of vaccines? Why should there be five different prices for the same vaccine? What is the strategy beyond two companies? How can that suffice for almost 1 billion people? We need 2 billion doses. Now, they are scrambling for vaccines. The numbers just dont add up.

Q. You have said the liberalised Vaccine policy is discriminatory. Vaccine makers have reduced prices for states. Your comments?

Ans. This is the story of discount sale, where you mark up the price, and then make a show of reducing it. It is a complete eyewash. Why should states pay more than the Centre to buy vaccines? Why should the states be left to fend for themselves? Why should there be a difference in price for vaccines for the Centre, the States and the private hospitals? Why should the price of vaccine even for the two companies be different? Why the discrepancy? After all, even when States pay for the vaccination of those between the age groups of 18 to 44 years, it is taxpayers money.

Q. The government has not invoked compulsory licensing for vaccines despite repeated calls by the Congress?

Ans. Dr. Manmohan Singh asked for compulsory licensing in his letter to the Prime Minister. The Congress President has repeated it several times now. Other countries have done this. The USA ramped up its vaccine production using their Defense Production Act. We have to do whatever it takes, within our laws, to ramp up the domestic production of vaccines here. We have the domestic manufacturing base. We can manufacture for both India and the world. All the industry needs is licenses and raw materials. It should have been done months ago.

Q. The Congress party has said it is willing to work together with the Centre in the fight against Coronavirus. How will you make it accountable then?

Ans. Congress Party has said from day one that it is willing to work with the government in the fight against Coronavirus and for a year now, even in just the last few days, the Congress President has repeated this position very clearly. We have been consistently giving suggestions on all possible forums.

Forget taking them seriously, the government has not even meaningfully acknowledged these suggestions. I see no contradiction in working together with the government in times of unprecedented crisis while at the same time holding it accountable for its decisions. The problem arises when the government doesnt believe in consultation, in carrying everyone along, in tapping expertise it lacks. This government seems to think that acknowledging help is needed is a sign of weakness. The hubris and pettiness of this government is unbelievable.

Q. The Madras High Court has held the Election Commission responsible for the Covid situation. Your views?

Ans. The Court was echoing a widely held view. In the past 7 years, like so many other institutions, the Election Commission of India has also crumbled. The Court has said what it believes, I dont want to make any further comment. Let your readers judge for themselves.

Our Institutions are a warning system- they give us feedback and information on how to respond to crisis but our institutions have been completely destroyed and taken over.

The press, judiciary, election commission, bureaucracy - none of them have played their role of guardian/watch dog. This means India today is like a ship in a storm, sailing without any information.

Corona is just part of the problem - the real problem is that India now doesnt have the capacity to respond to any major crisis because of what has been done to its systems over the last 6 years.

Q. There have been demands within for internal elections and a new Congress president? Are you ready to lead again in such times, especially when there are demands from various quarters within for you to lead?

Ans. I have always favoured internal organisational elections within the Congress and these will be conducted in time. It is for the party workers to decide as to who should lead the party. I will do whatever the party wants me to do. But right now the focus is on controlling the pandemic, saving lives, and alleviating Indias widespread suffering and pain. There will be time for everything else in due course.

PTI

Read more:
India today is like a ship in a storm with no information, says Rahul Gandhi - National Herald

The leftist Democratic Socialists of America, which helped congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected in 2018, looks to be a big political player again in New York Citys 2021 municipal elections.

The group has not yet endorsed anyone for mayor the top prize in New Yorks June 22 Democratic primaries. But all 51 city council seats are up for grabs this year, and the DSA has members running for six of them including Queens public defender Tiffany Cabn and Brooklyn tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth.

With two state senators and five representatives out of 213 lawmakers, the New York State Legislature already has the countrys largest DSA legislative caucus. These Democrats share a leftist platform that includes guaranteeing housing as a human right and ending mass incarceration

The DSA has upended local politics in this Democratic stronghold, and its wins extend well beyond New York into Virginia, Nevada and beyond. How did socialism jump from the fringes of American politics into its very center?

The DSAs roots trace back to the Socialist Party of America, which was formed in New York in 1901 to promote such issues as establishing an eight-hour workday and public ownership of utilities like water and electricity.

Writer Upton Sinclair, Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were prominent early members. But many early American socialists were Jews and Eastern European immigrants groups that were considered well outside mainstream white society at the time.

My research as a historian of American socialists finds that early 20th-century socialists found electoral success by running candidates who represented the economic and racial diversity of their communities and championed the issues that mattered to working-class, immigrant constituencies.

In 1918 the heyday of New Yorks socialist caucus, when socialists held 10 of 121 seats in the State House socialist politicians were teachers, settlement house lawyers and union leaders. They proposed New Yorks first birth control bill, allowing advocates to give women educational pamphlets about contraception, and put forward programs to create old-age insurance and rent control.

The Socialist Party began losing members to the growing Communist Party in the 1930s. By the mid-20th century, it had responded to Americans growing anticommunism with a rightward turn. In 1972, party leaders actually renamed the party the Social Democrats, USA because so many people associated the word socialist with Americas great antagonist, the Soviet Union.

Disillusioned, the activist and Marxist professor Michael Harrington left the organization and in 1973 formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which later merged with another leftist group, the New American Movement, to form the Democratic Socialists of America.

Unlike the Socialist Party of America, which was a registered political party and ran candidates on its own ticket, the DSA is a political group. Harrington wanted to create the left wing of the possible within the Democratic Party.

For four decades, DSA members have mostly run in Democratic primaries, attempting to push the party leftward on the Iraq War and NAFTA, for example while endorsing Democratic presidential nominees from Walter Mondale to Barack Obama.

It had some early local successes. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, DSA members were elected to city councils nationwide and won mayoral races in liberal college towns like Berkeley, California; Ithaca, New York; and Burlington, Vermont, where the openly socialist politician Bernie Sanders was mayor from 1981 to 1989.

In 2016, Sanders ran for president. His campaign, coupled with Donald Trumps subsequent victory, created a surge in DSA membership among young voters. The groups median age dropped from 68 in 2013 to 33 by 2017. The DSA now claims over 90,000 dues-paying members, up from 6,000 in 2015.

The DSAs electoral strategies also changed after 2016, partly due to the influx of new members and partly in frustration with mainstream Democratic candidates.

In Democratic primaries across the country, DSA candidates ran to replace older, centrist, white incumbents with young leftists who promised to fight for Medicare for all and to hold elected officials accountable.

It was a winning strategy for the Trump era. Since 2016, DSA-backed candidates have won district attorney races from Philadelphia to Travis County, Texas, and hold four seats in Congress. Forty DSA members sit in 21 state legislatures. DSA members hold five of Chicagos 50 city council seats.

The professional backgrounds of todays DSA legislators resemble those of their forebears. New York State Sen. Jabari Brisport, elected in 2020, was a teacher and tenant organizer. New York State Rep. Phara Souffrant Forrest was previously a tenant organizer and nurse.

The DSAs legislative proposals rent control, free college and reproductive rights are classic socialist issues, updated for the 21st century. The Democratic Party has now embraced many of these proposals, but moderates like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have not.

As in the past, the DSA tends to back candidates from marginalized groups whether African American, Caribbean, South American or South Asian who reflect the racial makeup of the neighborhoods they represent.

The DSAs growing political profile has caused tensions within the Democratic Party.

Shortly after DSA-backed candidates in March 2021 swept all five leadership positions in the Nevada Democratic Party, many longtime party staffers quit rather than work under the new leftist leadership. But first, according to the Nevada Independent and other local newspapers, the Democratic staffers transferred US$450,000 from the DSA-controlled Nevada Democratic Party coffers into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is controlled by the National Democratic Party.

Some DSA policies that diverge sharply from the Democratic party line such as its support for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel for its militarized occupation of the Palestinian territories draw fierce criticism from other Democrats.

The DSA has also been accused of having a race problem. Despite running primarily candidates of color, the organizations leadership is largely white and male. Some DSA members say the group silences the concerns and voices of people of color.

After new groups arose within the DSA to recruit more Black leaders, the DSAs national committee announced in February 2021 that it would start an initiative to better attract, mentor and retain people of color.

In the 20th century, American socialism cracked under the weight of infighting and social change. Can the modern DSA survive its 21st-century challenges?

Its next test is in New York City on June 22.

This story has been corrected to accurately reflect Bernie Sanders political identification. Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist and is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, but is not a member of the group.

Original post:
How 'socialism' stopped being a dirty word for some voters and started winning elections across America - The Conversation US