SYED KHALIQUE AHMED
NEW DELHI, APR 26
With rise in number of deaths apparently owing to second Covid wave, the obituary ads in Gujarati language newspapers is witnessing a sharp increase in the last 10 days while the number of commercial ads has come down significantly.
If one goes through the print as well as online editions of prominent Gujarati dailies, one will find that four to six full pages in all the newspapers with total printed 16-18 pages are carrying obit ads only.
This means that 40 per cent of the spaces in all the newspapers are occupied with advertisements related to death.
For instance, April 25 Rajkot edition of Sandesh newspaper-a leading Gujarati newspaper having multiple editions-carried obituary ads of 180 deaths running into six pages, out of total of 16 printed pages of the Sunday edition of the paper.
Similarly, Ahmedabad edition of the same newspaper carried obituary ads on two full pages and each of Surat and Vadodara editions carried three pages of obit ads in their April 25 edition.
In fact, the same was the situation in the newspaper’s April 26 editions.
The position regarding obit ads in other newspapers-Gujarat Samachar and Divya Bhaskar– is the same. The proportion of obit ads in these newspapers have increased in the last two weeks. Gujarat’s most popular Gujarati language evening news portal-Akilanews.com-has also was carrying two pages of obit news almost on a daily basis for the last fortnight.
The number of obit ads even in Gujarat Today, a multi-edition Gujarati language daily run by a Muslim-owned trust, has also gone up in the last one week. Its editor Alamdar Bukhari said that his newspaper was having only one or two ‘besna’ (obit) ads earlier but the number of such ads has gone up several fold even in his newspaper for the last few days.
Is this sharp increase in the number of deaths in the state, which is reflected owing to obit ads, due to Corona? There is no mechanism to verify because media persons are not given the death figures by the local administration on a daily basis.
Reporters collect death figures from ‘shamshan’ or crematoria in their cities and towns as also graveyards for publication in their newspapers. It is the relatives of the deceased who provide information if the deaths are due to Covid, based on hospital discharge papers or some other reasons.
The state government has set up a ‘death audit committee’ in each district which meets once or twice a month that officially releases Covid-related death figures after studying the medical records of the deceased persons.
Former chief editor of Sandesh and a well-known columnist Devendra Patel, when asked, said, “I had never seen so many ‘besna’ (obit ads) in newspapers in Gujarat in 50 years of my journalistic career. Earlier, ‘besna’ ads occupied hardly one fourth or maximum half of a page.”
“But the obit ads are filling five to six pages of each and every Gujarati language dailies in the state for the last one fortnight and this is very surprising,” he said.
Asked if it was due to increase in death rate due to surge in Covid, Patel said that it was very difficult to say that these deaths were linked to coronavirus. “But it is a fact that the number of obit ads have increased several-fold in the last one fortnight coinciding with the Covid wave in the state,” Patel stated.
Hemant Vyas, bureau chief of Vadodara edition of Gujarat Samachar, another multi-edition Gujarati language daily, alleges that the state government is hiding the figure of deaths due to Covid in the state. He says that the figures published by newspapers or doled out by television channels are not those provided by government departments but collected by reporters directly from crematoriums and graveyards. “As journalists have their own limitations in reaching out to people to collect such information, the actual number of deaths may be many times higher,” says Vyas. He says many journalists and photographers working for leading newspapers and TV channels have also died due to corona in the last 10 days. Among the journalists having succumbed to corona in Gujarat include Shailesh Raval (photographer of India Today), Gujarat Samachar photographer Bharat Pathak and former Indian Express chief reporter Yogesh Sharma. Sharma was publishing Chaupal, a highly popular Hindi weekly from Ahmedabad for the last over 20 years. According to media persons, these journalists died due to lack of oxygen.
With new situation developing, people have also invented new things. The relatives of the deceased are also inserting a phrase “telephonic besnu” (condolences on phone) in the obit ad in bold letters, asking relatives and friends to offer condolences, ‘shok’ or ‘taziyat’ over phone only and not to come in person due to “specific situation”. Obit ads are carrying mobile phone numbers as also the date and timings during which they can call to pay their condolences.
Vadodara-based activist Suyog Mule said that people all over Gujarat have given up physical condolence gatherings every since the second Covid wave hit the state.
(Syed Khalique Ahmed is the Chief Editor of indiatomorrow.net)
