The garment manufacturing industry has garnered a reputation for being an exploitative industry. Nonetheless, the Indian government is planning to train 500 million of the country’s rural poor to fill factory jobs in the country’s ever increasing manufacturing sector. Most of this work has been contracted out to private companies who profit from training factory staff.

Filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s latest film, Jungle Sisters, follows her own sister, Orlanda, as she attempts to improve the working conditions of young rural factory-workers from within the system. The documentary was screened at the Frontline Club on Friday 17 July 2015, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.

Chloe Ruthven

The film, Ruthven told the Frontline Club, was not intended to be an exposé of the working conditions in Indian garment factories.

“I’m interested in exploring aspects of the West or my heritage… I’m not interested as a white Londoner to go and make films about Indian people, there are enough Indian filmmakers and there are enough people who can do that,” she said.

However the film still showed, with unfettered access, many exploitative practices of the Indian garment industry, including the unlawful detention of workers by the factory bosses and sweatshop conditions.

“I did feel it was quite exciting to have something that could potentially be used against these corporations,” said Ruthven. “But then it’s my sister’s job on the line.”

Ruthven followed the journey that many young rural women in India take to become a factory worker.

“Everywhere we went there were these recruiting organisations going into [rural] villages,” Ruthven said. As part of a government-funded initiative, private companies recruit and train mostly young women from impoverished rural parts of India and place them in jobs at garment factories.

Chloe Ruthven

“There would be very, very quiet villages and suddenly you’d have three different Jeeps all with loudspeakers from different organisations trying to get the young people into the training centres, into the cities. And it’s all government funded,” she said.

Many of these companies do not make any money unless the women they train stay in their city factory job for at least six months.

Ruthven’s sister Orlanda was in the employment of one of these organisations, and one of Ruthven’s main concerns was that Orlanda, despite her good intentions, was complicit in the exploitation of the workers.

“If you are only accepting payment after six months then what are you doing to keep these girls in? If they’re unhappy what are you going to do about it?,” said Ruthven. “[Are you] going to lose your money? Of course not. They’re a small organisation that needs to keep it. So, you know, the whole thing was so dark.”

Coming to terms with her sister’s role in this industry was an important theme through both Ruthven’s film and her conversation with the Frontline Club audience.

“There’s such a cultural difference between what I was finding really difficult to see and badgering [Orlanda] about, which I did do quite a lot, and what she would get quite upset about,” she said.

The film explored the nuances of the industry that were apparent to Orlanda, but not obvious to Ruthven as an outsider. It would not be enough to simply film and expose evidence of the mistreatment. Instead Orlanda needed to think about the bigger picture, and that often meant taking things slow.

“I would say to Orlanda, ‘Well look we’ve got it, it’s bonded labour, let’s take it straight to the factory.’ And her line was ‘No, because I’d get booted out within seconds and nothing will change. So I need to find a way of sticking with this so I can shift things, I can get their freedoms […] If we can persuade this particular factory, that’s the second biggest factory in India and then we can work with other factories’.”

Chloe Ruthven

Patriarchy and culture played as much a part in the exploitation of female workers as the drive for profits. During one particular scene, Ruthven spoke to a security guard responsible for enforcing a curfew on the female factory workers. The guard explained his desire to protect the women from the real dangers of the city.

“When you hear the security man talking about [the women] as his daughters,” Ruthven said, “in one way part of me is horrified, and part of me quite loves him for it.” This patriarchy is a self-perpetuating problem that, in the film, Orlanda attempts to address.

Another grey area that Ruthven explores in her film is the potential for liberation that factory work can bring to rural women. “When you see two bright, really gorgeous girls like Bhanu and Bhutu [two of the films main protagonists], I wanted more than anything for them to get the hell out of the village,” said Ruthven.

“I found Bhutu’s mother really irritatingly oppressive… I just wanted [Bhutu] to have the same opportunities that young Indian boys would have.”

Ruthven was unsure as to whether the growth of the manufacturing sector in India will prove to be a liberating force for young rural women. “It’s an ongoing fight that [Orlanda] has with her bosses.”

However, Ruthven also wanted to bring the problem home with her film. “I only make work to show [in the UK]. I mean in a way I feel that my beef is with what we do, and with what I do.”

This form of exploitation does not just exist in the garment industry, Ruthven explained. “Every aspect of our life is like this, so either we’re throwing out the whole thing or we’re partaking in it,” she said.

Chloe Ruthven

“Local news providers were absolutely useless in getting information out. There was more nonsense and speculation on the motive and the reason for the blasts than real facts. Television did work, but it was useless information that was being transmitted.”

Living here in the UK, itâ€s obviously difficult for me to comment onIndian media coverage of the event, but I did track the BBCâ€s coverage.
This was not deemed to be a significant story in the great scheme of world events on Friday by many news organisations. (Although a similar and more deadly attack on Ahmedabad on Saturday did mean there was some additional attention over the weekend).

The BBC website paid little attention to the story and the online article was only updated twice during the day. This meant that for several hours the website suggested that all the bombs had been detonated ‘within a span of fifteen minutes†when it had quickly become apparent that the bomb blasts took place over a longer period of time.
The story had no eyewitness accounts and was only furnished with some basic details from the police. An updated story on the website included a quote from the government but still had no reaction from anybody on the ground.
Another online article was published the day after informing us that an eighth unexploded bomb had been found by the police.
The BBC World Service did regularly report on Bangalore throughout the afternoon. Chris Morris was covering the story from New Delhi and at one stage we heard from a local journalist in Bangalore.
Twitter, though, in the capable hands of Mukund Mohan, was still providing more detailed coverage than the BBC.
Conclusion
Twitter will not always be useful when reporting news. Itâ€s worth remembering that these blasts occurred in Indiaâ€s IT capital where the likelihood of somebody being aware of Twitter and how to use it was high. This wonâ€t be the case for every story and in many parts of the world the lack of an IT infrastructure precludes the use of such tools to do reporting.
But this news event shows that where Twitter is being used by people like Mukund Mohan, journalists would be foolish to ignore it. After all, Mohan didnâ€t merely use Twitter to break the news, he used it to report breaking news.

“Mukund [Mohan] is an ambulance chaser, it is a very small event, twitter hypes hysteria should be your blogpost, live from bangalore. [It] hypes hysteria and spreads rumors, almost as well as the cellphone network …”

This twitterer, though, had singled out the wrong person. Mohanâ€s updates were moderate in tone, factual, and generally avoided speculation. He was also trying to provide a way for friends and relatives to find out if loved ones were safe. As he said in a comment on my blog:

“The fact still is that twitter was the easiest way to keep people (many of my friends are in the Silicon Valley and they have close family in Bangalore) updated.
Having been in that situation before I know how nerve wracking it is to get any information from any source on whether people you know back home are safe.
It served that purpose. I am happy about that.”

However, some of the tweets which talked about the blast didnâ€t provide any new information and were rather unhelpful:

“Bangalore blasts count goes up to 9. What in the gods name is going on!”

(The second sentence of this tweet rather undermined any confidence I had in the first!) This and similar tweets might have a tendency to cause unnecessary panic.
But another twitterer, scorpfromhell, pointed out that whatever was said on Twitter, it was never going to cause anxiety on the ground in Bangalore. He said that using the social media tool remains a very niche activity in India:

‘It has solely been used as a means of communicating among the twiterrati of Bangalore and has not at all contributed to any hysteriaâ€.

The problem of hype and hysteria in the representation of news events maybe a consideration when more people use and have access to Twitter or similar modes of communication. I felt that in this instance it was possible to get an accurate picture of the scale of what was happening, but that’s not to say it might not be an issue in the future.
This was not a major world news story by journalism’s old news values. But this is a new era for journalism and this was important news for those who were involved. In a time when there is limitless space on the World Wide Web, why shouldn’t such events be reported to a wider global audience?
Tomorrow – final post in the series: Twitter vs the mainstream media.

Prompted by some interesting comments, this is the first post in a series looking at how reporting on Twitter compares with more traditional methods of journalism. Click on the numerals for parts II, III, and IV.

As he tracked the blasts in Bangalore, The Director of Digital Insights for Edelman, Steve Rubel, wrote, ‘the media have the Bangalore story but Twitter was first’. Time and again Twitter is proving that it is the place to be to monitor breaking news. The first tweet about the bomb blasts appeared on the web at 8.48am GMT, minutes before other media picked them up. But the tool is also proving that it can provide exceptionally quick access to eyewitness accounts and online reportage.

Mukund Mohan was at a friend’s house on M.G. Road in Bangalore when he received a phone call from his cousin. His cousin told him that there had been some blasts close to the office where he was working the previous day. Rather than stay away, Mohan decided to travel roughly two miles to the scene. He’s still not entirely sure why he took this course of action, but said he was ‘more curious than anything’. He used Twitter to post updates about the blasts on the web. Other Twitterers quickly identified Mohan as the man to follow because of the quality of the information he was providing and his proximity to the unravelling news event. The ‘facts’ of the blasts evolved during the day and Mohan’s updates reflect the uncertainty of what is happening in any breaking news situation. The number of dead and injured, and the number and locations of the bombings were regularly being amended. Some might argue that it’s pointless trying to use Mohan’s updates to report the event given that they were likely to change, but as new facts came to light, official police sources also gave out contradictory information. This was regularly reported by the mainstream media. In a reflective post on his blog Mohan discusses five difficulties of being an ‘on-the-scene’ reporter:

1. Separating fact from fiction & opinion 2. Determining what to report from all the information available or what’s “newsworthy” 3. Understanding who to listen to 4. Putting the story together so it makes sense 5. Giving information that’s timely versus repeating it as it comes.

Mohan describes how he tried to overcome different versions of events from the police; work out who were the best people to speak to; understand what the main storyline was; and handle information that he felt he could not verify.

Mohan was nevertheless reporting the information he had to hand as best as he could and he says his experience has given him a newfound respect for the job of television reporters. Was Mohan’s reporting any different from an anchor speaking live to a reporter on a 24-news channel (apart from having the advantage of not being stuck in front of a video camera)? Were his attempts to report information any less valid than other reporters who were trying to make sense of events? Perhaps training or experience might have helped Mohan, but just how much would it have done so?

Let’s not forget that rolling coverage of the London bombings in July 2005 on the BBC and Sky initially reported a power failure on the underground rather than a series of suicide attacks.

Coming Tomorrow: I will consider the issue of verifying the reliability of material available on Twitter. Photo: Kindly provided by Mukund Mohan himself.

mukund Bomb Blasts in Bangalore – 4 locations, details to follow #Bloreblast about 3 hours ago from web

mukund 5 blasts in bangalore – 2 in central bangalore, others in suburbs about 2 hours ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts were low impact – 3 people dead, 6 total blasts about 2 hours ago from web

mukund 7 bomb blasts: 120 pm – 235 in Bangalore: Madiwala, Mysore Road, Audogodi, Koramangala, Vittal Mallya Road, Nayandanahalli and Richmond Road about 1 hour ago from web

mukund Local chief minister calls for an emergency meeting at 5 pm local time for all cabinet ministers about 1 hour ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – Gelatin sticks are normally used to blast rocks in quarries and can be procured legally for industrial purposes. about 1 hour ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts had timer devices which had the equivalent capacity of 2-3 hand grenades about 1 hour ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – explosives were kept in scrap yards – so they could cause maximum damage – explosives were gelatin sticsk about 1 hour ago from web

mukund #bangalorebomb Rains in Bangalore not aiding blast investigation says police 42 minutes ago from web

mukund #bangalorebomb cell phone networks are not working. SMS is working, try that instead 38 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – the blasts created more panic than real damage says the police commissioner – tell that to the people injured 30 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – police commissioner – people took the blasts in their stride & are very resilient, there are 3 reporters here with me 27 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – Gopal Hosur is the Joint Cmmr or police at our location near VM road – says investigation results will be ready in 2 hrs 24 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – summary, 2 people dead and 15 injured 20 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts – summary: 7 blasts, 5 locations from 120 pm to 245 pm 21 minutes ago from web

mukund Bangalore blasts more damage to the injured was caused from the nails and bits of flying debris than the bomb itself 14 minutes ago from web

mukund: Bangalore blasts – things are back to normal at 5 of the 7 areas of the blast – traffic’s moving slowly but people are going about their job

mukund: Bangalore blasts – summary Most people in Bangalore are okay. 2 people died and 6 are injured in 7 blasts in the city

mukund: Bangalore blasts – Police claim again that there were 10 blasts planned and 8 bombs went off

mukund: @Jillfoster: summary 2 people died and 6 injured in 8 bomb blasts in Bangalore, small gelatin bombs were used

Mukund also found time to get a blog post up about the blasts.
This demonstrates how the facts in a breaking news situation are constantly being updated, changed and re-evaluated. Sceptics might wonder about the value of reporting these ‘facts’, before they have been confirmed.
But this is no different from the 24 hour news channels coverage of live news and many of the breaking news articles that appear on the web. That’s why I thought it would be worth putting up part of the initial BBC article (at 1.30pm UK time) as well which now also appears to be factually inaccurate:

Seven bombs have hit the southern Indian city of Bangalore in a span of 15 minutes, police say.
One woman was killed and several people injured. Police say bombs were detonated with timing devices.

Update 1: You can also use Twitter Local to track tweeters in Bangalore.
Update 2 (a): Some tweeters reckon Twitter hypes news events like this one. I received these tweets from gregorylent who is also in Bangalore. He thinks my blogpost has the wrong title:

“dan, mukund is an ambulance chaser, it is a very small event, twitter hypes hysteria should be your blogpost, live from bangalore. [It] hypes hysteria and spreads rumors, almost as well as the cellphone network…”

So how does it compare in importance to other world news according to the BBC? Well, the BBC World Service reported the bombings as the last item in their 3 minute bulletin at 3pm UK time. The website article still hasn’t been updated at 3.20pm, and the story isn’t a main feature on the BBC World website.
Update 2(b)
Other twitterers felt the bombings deserved attention.
scorpfromhell: “As a person who was saved by less than 10 mins in today’s blasts in Bangalore, it was a scare, real and fortunately at a time with low traffic. All who are belittling today’s bomb blasts in Bangalore – would it have been more worthy of your sympathies had there been more casualties?”
The BBC website says it was updated at 3.12pm – may have been some delay between the time imprint on the article and the article going live. The first paragraph now reads:

“Seven bombs have hit the southern Indian city of Bangalore within minutes of each other, police say.
One woman was killed and several people injured. Police say bombs were detonated with timing devices.”

Incidentally, I thought it would be useful to say give you the top stories at 3pm. The top story on the World Service at the same time was about the possibility of a million Somalis going without cereal rations in August if a ship carrying supplies from South Africa cannot find an escort to stop attacks from pirates.
On the website, the lead story has been about the Qantas aircraft which had a hole ripped in it. It landed safely in the Philippines.
Update 3: Steve Rubel is the Director of Insights for Edelman Digital. He says the ‘media have the Bangalore story but Twitter was first’.