By Patricia Mukhim
Life in The Shillong Times went topsy-turvy on Saturday Aug 23 when four staff members earlier tested Covid positive and the rest who were direct and indirect contacts had to undertake their tests. It took over 10-12 hours for the staff who lined up at Polo Ground before their samples were taken for the test. Waiting for the results was another ordeal. Then the RT-PCR test had to be done too and another long wait for the results. Meanwhile the Shillong Times office was declared a containment zone. Those who inspected the work space and premises reported that it is congested and “unhygienic.”
It may be mentioned that as the oldest newspaper of the State spanning 75 years, those who run this newspaper have repeatedly applied for land in the Industrial Area to construct a more modern office and upscale the machinery but that was never granted. One wonders why! Between Sunday and Wednesday, The Shillong Times could not be published. It’s the only newspaper in the whole Covid infected world that became victim to the virus.
To say that The Shillong Times is the oldest English Language daily of the State is not “glory seeking,” as some would like to allude to. And nor is this establishment seeking special favours from any quarters. We are only questioning why an ‘essential service’ listed by the Union Government, of which the media is one, was barred from coming up with its publication for four days because it was treated as an inessential item in Meghalaya and the premises suddenly shuttered even before alternative arrangements for printing etc could be made.
Why the media is important was succinctly brought out by The New York Times columnist, Charles Blow in his article, “Defending Free Press.” He says, “Expression and the Right to Publish is a human right. Media is not the enemy of the people – the enemy of the people is ignorance, obliviousness to truth, ignoring it or having incredulity about it.” But guess who the real enemies of the media are. They are people who hold power and want to exercise it arbitrarily. And there are many such in Meghalaya with its several layers of governance.
On Monday last, the Deputy Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Prestone Tynsong while addressing the media said that some local Dorbar Shnong do not allow their members to enter the village if they have moved from their district to another, for any number of reasons but mainly for purposes of health and economic reasons. Tynsong said that this is not acceptable since inter-district movement is no longer restricted. But paranoia about Covid has turned the traditional institutions into strident upholders of Covid protocols according to their vagaries. Naturally this has put many at a disadvantage but they are also powerless to fight these subjective and capricious diktats. In every case the Block Development Officer has to rush to clear the air and allow the residents of the village to re-enter it.
Although the Health Department has clearly laid down protocols and so too the District Administration but many who head these institutions in the villages are either not informed enough to understand the dimensions of the pandemic and that not everyone who visits Shillong, the state capital with the highest number of cases, will necessarily come back with the virus. But Covid seems to have turned people paranoid. And while one can understand the behaviour of the Dorbar Shnong in the interior villages of the State, how does one explain uninformed yet authoritative behaviour from a Dorbar in the city? To cite an example, the members of the Dorbar under whose jurisdiction, The Shillong Times is located had barred entry of the publisher and anyone else much before the official containment orders from the District Magistrate was made public which was late on Saturday night.
The chronological order of the Covid related event in The Shillong Times is something like this. A machine section helper was detected positive in a particular day. The section’s entire staff was sent for a random test immediately. Although nobody was declared positive, they were instructed to remain under quarantine. We sought clarification and expert advice from top health officials, who considering the essential nature of print media, advised that if the workers had no difficulty they could perform their duties by adhering to health protocols.
When another machine man tested positive two days later by a subsequent test, it was 10-30 pm, Friday 21 August. Considering that a good number of colleagues were at work at that time, it was decided to quickly move him out of the campus so that the rest of the staff was not exposed. It was then that the management circulated a WhatsApp message to the entire ST staff to go for a random test next morning to “make doubly sure” that nobody else had been infected.
The following day, 71 persons were sent up for tests and on the same night the administration in a swift action declared lockdown of the entire building but not before the Dorbar volunteers had barred entry into the building much before the administrative orders. Meanwhile, after the lockdown of our establishment, we provided food and lodging to those who were unwilling to go back home pending test results.
In other states several media personnel have been tested Covid positive but none of the TV news studious and newspaper offices were asked to shut down. As far as I am aware none of the media offices were declared containment zones. Hence it would appear that in every state Covid protocols work differently.
That this happened when the newspaper is observing its 75th anniversary is a satire on Covid. Having taken all due precautions such as disinfecting the premises thoroughly, what is it that pushed the district administration to take the harsh decision to lockdown the place for three full days, thereby preventing the newspaper from bringing out its publication for four days.
The irony is also that Covid19 has reduced the media to channels for government to pass its information to the public. We are not sure if critiquing anything related to the handling of Covid19 would land us in trouble under one of the two stringent laws that have been invoked to counter Covid – namely the colonial Epidemic Act which has just been tweaked to suit the times but still does not look at the Indian condition and certainly does not take into account the need to safeguard the migrant workers after the declaration of a lockdown. The second is the Disaster Management Act which empowers the Government to come down heavily on so-called Covid protocol violators – a term that is as subjective as it is imperious.
Last week Police Bazar in downtown Shillong was cavalierly shut down merely because some hawkers did not wear masks and some members of the public were roaming around without masks. The shop-owners all followed strict protocols. So why were the shop-owners punished just because the people walking or hawking outside violated protocols. The violators could have been fined. But to close an entire shopping area is a crazy idea but all justifiable under the pretext of combating Covid.
One wonders how long this rule of terror will continue and if democracy itself will finally come under the axe because of Covid. Considering the allegations that the virus was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by the Chinese, it is possible that the virus aims at shaking the very pillars of democracy. With so many conspiracy theories floating around every single day, who really knows what the truth is. But Covid has certainly empowered the bureaucracy like never before.