Editor,
Anjan was my classmate in school. He expected a good result in the school’s final examination. But when the result came out, he did not find his roll number on the list of the students who passed the examination. He went missing. Later his body was found floating in a pond. Yes, he took his own life, but this was not the climax. When our marksheets reached our school, it was found that Anjan not only passed the examination but also did fairly well in it. This was my first encounter with death. Also, it was my first experience about how deadly false information could be.
Whenever I hear something about false information, his memory still haunts me. Both misinformation and disinformation are false information. While misinformation is incorrect information, disinformation is deliberately intended to mislead. They are as dangerous as murderers. Whereas misinformation can cause involuntary manslaughter, disinformation acts like voluntary manslaughter.
We will now move from 15-year-old Anjan to 32-year-old Azam, who lived in Hyderabad. He was an IT engineer and an employee of Accenture. He along with his three friends set out from Hyderabad to meet a relative and attend a function in Bidar, Karnataka, in July 2018. On their way back, they stopped for tea near a school at Murki village. When they saw children returning home from school, they offered them chocolates. Local residents took them for child lifters as rumours about child kidnapping had been circulating for months on social media. They started gathering at the spot. Sensing the danger, they got into the car and drove away. But by then some villagers clicked their photos, the image of their car and circulated them on WhatsApp groups. When they reached the next village, they found the road had been blocked. The villagers dragged them out and started beating them mercilessly. Azam died on the spot while his friends sustained critical injuries.
While commenting on Azam’s murder, Rema Rajeswari, a superintendent of police said, “India is already vulnerable due to religious and caste fault lines. When you add WhatsApp to the mix, things can easily spiral out of hand.” Pratik Sinha, the editor of Alt news, a fact-checking outlet, blames a lack of media literacy and government inaction for the spread of fake news.
What they said has been echoed in the 2024 Global Risk report which was released last month. It identified false information as the biggest concern for India. As per the report, the risk of disinformation in India is higher than many advanced as well as developing countries.
A dangerous piece of disinformation has been doing the rounds to damage the very fabric of Indian society. It is an apprehension that Muslims would outnumber Hindus in India as they have much higher birth rate than Hindus. The Pew Research Centre, Washington DC, published a study in June 2021, which was based on India’s census reports and the national family health survey. The study was conducted on the changes in religious composition of population, fertility rate, migration and conversions. It found that the religious composition of India’s population since Partisan has remained largely stable, with both Hindus and Muslims showing not only a marked decline but also a convergence in fertility rates.
The study says that religion is not the prime factor affecting fertility rates. It appears from the study that the difference in fertility rate lies in region and not in religion. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh showed a total fertility rate (TFR) of 3.4 and 2.7, respectively, in contrast to a TFR of 1.7 and 1.6 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, respectively. The fertility rate of Hindus has come down to 2.1 and that of Muslims has declined to 2.6.
Every citizen of India needs to highlight the truth whenever she or he confronts false information. This is absolutely necessary now to preserve our personal integrity as well as the integrity of our country.
Sujit De,
Kolkata