1st Emmy nomination for Indian news documentary could do wonders for journalism

The nomination of an Indian news documentary to the same platform opens up big possibilities for Indian journalists, who spend long periods researching stories on society and crime.

Indian entry in Documentary Emmy Awards: The Trap

The film, titled ‘The Trap’, is an investigation into a scam whose impact and scale largely went unnoticed. The documentary shows that predatory lending practices of loan apps forced borrowers into crime and suicide and put a number on the deaths for the first time: 60 till last year, when the documentary was first screened.

The suicides and deaths had made headlines from places across the country and award-winning investigative reporter Poonam Agarwal brought it to the BBC World Services’ investigative documentary unit, India Eye. Ankur Jain, the series producer for India Eye, teamed Agarwal with award-winning filmmaker and photographer Ronny Sen and a crew of Indian journalists and technicians.

The result is a detailed investigation that maps the operations of a seemingly dubious loan app company and traces it back to its Chinese-origin owner. The film is an engaging mix of a victim-sensitive story, liberally peppered with undercover footage and interviews that explain the depth of this scam. The narrative moves at an incremental pace and takes it to a nail-biting climax of tracking down the wrongdoers.

Since the release of the film, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other Central authorities have cracked down on such companies and set guidelines. The English version of the film has been seen more than 3.5 million times on BBC’s official YouTube channel since its release in November 2023. It has also been translated to other languages including Hindi.

Making of Emmy-nominated documentary 'The Trap'

In telling the story, Sen uses a visual narrative that is a first for Indian news documentaries. The film avoids, perhaps deliberately, fixating on the commonly used tropes of poverty and rope-trick charmers that are used to represent India. Instead, Sen’s eye presents Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and other places in a realist tone.

Sen, whose debut feature film ‘Cat Sticks’ won a Grand Jury award at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, is elated about the Emmy nomination.

‘It is even more exciting that a full-length investigative documentary that has been made in India is available to the public for free viewing in multiple vernacular languages on YouTube,’ he said.

The secret filming shows how the loan apps outsourced the dirty work to ‘call centres’ in India that threatened to shame defaulting borrowers to their family and friends.

‘Call centres operate surreptitiously in urban cities, relocate frequently and can shut shop overnight if they feel any sort of threat,’ says Poonam Agarwal. ‘They were not easy to find and an insider, Rohan, who went undercover in call centres, helped us in locating them. Such call centres are mushrooming in both metros and tier 2-3 cities.’

The undercover team, Agarwal says, spent more than two months filming secretly at a call centre to expose how these crime syndicates operate based on three S's: Scam, Shame and Suicide.

Borrowers applied for the loans through downloaded third-party apps which take control of the borrowers’ phone. The company can then use its app to relay messages to everyone in the borrower’s phone book. They send morphed, nude or pornographic images as well as humiliating text messages to friends, colleagues and family members of the defaulting borrowers.

‘Investigative documentaries have a wider reach because of their visual impact. People prefer to watch rather than read. "The Trap" captured how call-centres humiliate and harass people. This has a greater impact than text pieces,’ says Agrawal.

Several celebrities had also endorsed the loan apps for a fee without checking into the credentials and operating practices of these financial products.

Leg-up for Indian media

A number of Indian documentary features have been nominated to the Academy Awards (or Oscars), especially ‘shorts’. Kartiki Gonsalves’ short documentary 'The Elephant Whisperers' won an Oscar in 2024 in the documentary short film category. Shaunak Sen’s 'All That Breathes' was nominated for the 2022 Academy Awards in the documentary feature category, which is a rarity. Awards and nominations only cover a fraction of the great documentary work that is made in India, but they do help provide greater reach.

News documentaries are different from features and feature shorts. It is an up and coming format in India that could work well for Indian journalism. Audiences are moving to OTT and social-media platforms for content and the relevance of television and newspapers is dwindling with slashed budgets.

The appetite for longform visual content is growing and traditional media houses are moving to making news documentaries. India Today and ABP have both made verticals for documentary production. (Network18, of which Moneycontrol is a part, competes with both media houses in some categories.)

BBC World Service started its India Eye unit after some success with its ‘Africa Eye’. As yet, their focus seems to be on crime investigations where there is a huge gap in India. What works for The Trap is the great research that seems to have gone into the film. Such films require huge investments, but the reward is the huge viewership by Indian audiences, which are left wanting for investigative stories.

Moneycontrol is a part of the Network18 group. Network18 is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.