Ministry of utmost silliness: MHA's border gaffe is hardly unexpected

 We live in a time when the loud cacophony of social media drowns everything out. And in this cacophony, a massive chunk belongs to misinformation, propaganda and what we have now come to call “fake news”. Fake news can be dangerous, especially when it comes to politics. But it can be more dangerous still, when it is the government spreading it.

The Union ministry of home affairs published in its 324-page annual report a photo – that was captioned “If you see the work done by the Modi government on Indian border, you’ll be proud and highly appreciative – of the floodlight-lit Spain-Morocco border, which was originally taken in 2006 by a Spanish photographer, Javier Moyano.

Yes, the home ministry used a picture of two different country’s borders and claimed it as India's border with Pakistan. This faux pas (or perhaps it was deliberate misinformation) was pointed out by Alt News.

Shortly after the exposé, officials in MHA reportedly admitted to this “mistake” and the home ministry ordered an internal investigation into the matter. The Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi reportedly said that the ministry would apologise if there is a mistake. According to a report on Firtspost, sources from the ministry said the home ministry officials were trying to find out from where the picture was sourced, adding that it could have been from the Border Security Force (BSF).

Home Ministry orders internal investigation into using picture of Spain-Morocco border to show Indian border floodlighting, in annual report pic.twitter.com/zNvwBnaljn

— ANI (@ANI_news) June 14, 2017

The home ministry's annual report, which has been out in the public for almost three months now, will be difficult to call back. Oddly enough, however, this is not the first instance this photo has been used to represent the Indo-Pak border.

Right-wing propaganda websites that are known to propagate fake news have been using this lie for some time now. The Fearless Indian, in an article this month had used this exact same photograph to praise the government for a floodlit 647km-long border that would prevent terrorism and the infiltration of immigrants into Indian Territory.

Funnily enough, a mainstream news website had used this photo as well, way back in 2016. Daily Bhaskar, in an article dated October 3, 2016, titled “With 1.5 Lakh Lights Illuminating it, This Is How India's Border with Pakistan Looks like in the Night and from Space”, used this photo to praise the government’s actions as well. The article reads, “India shares a 2900 kilometre long border with Pakistan which consists of 150,000 flood lights.”

Well, so much for news sources being reliable.

Funnily enough, as pointed out by Alt News, the India-Pakistan border was, in fact, nearly fully floodlit in 2013. Additionally, by the end of 2013, 1763km out of the 2840km of the India-Bangladesh border (62 per cent) was floodlit. In its tenure, the Modi sarkar lit 647km of India’s international borders, around 45km of which was that of the India-Pakistan border and the rest was the India-Bangladesh border. At present, close to 496km of the sanctioned length of India-Bangladesh border remains unlit.

So, why was a false photograph used?

Either reason is disturbing.

First: the government is ignorant of its own achievements and those of the previous governments. It does not have concrete data. It does not have photographs. It has to Google things, that it should know and it clicks the first link it comes across.

Second: The government, much like Trump, follows a certain number of “media” organisations, the ones that only sings its praises and parrots whatever it says. And much like Trump, the government regurgitates that very information it consumes from this faulty news base.

This is definitely not the first time a government agency or a working BJP politician has tried to pass of photographs from questionable sources as authentic evidence. And it won’t be the last. Recently, the Press Information Bureau copy-pasted a Mint report that was rather critical of the government’s three-year run, and passed it off as a report on the government’s three-year-run. Last year PIB had shared an image on its Twitter account that showed Narendra Modi looking at a clearly photoshopped view of the flooded streets of Chennai from an aircraft window.

If this is the state of how information is dispensed by a government, that has in its three-year-reign, completely sidelined the mainstream media, how are we to trust it?