By: Rajini KG
August 1 2023
Video of man helping others cross a flooded road in Colombia falsely shared as clip from India
Share Article:
Twitter/@Jayati1609
Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The video was captured in September 2022, when heavy rains caused water logging in the city of Barranquilla in Colombia.
Claim ID 6655732f
Context
On July 27, renowned development economist Jayati Ghosh— who teaches at the University of Massachusetts and is a member of two high-level advisory boards of the United Nations—shared a video on Twitter (now called X) showing a man ferrying people on a small cart across a waterlogged road. Ghosh insinuated in her post that the video was captured in India. Her claim surfaced within days of torrential rains causing flood-like situations in several parts of the country, especially in north India.
Shared with the caption, "So much of "New India" with its old inequality in this video: collapsing infrastructure devastated by climate change, human ingenuity grasping any income-earning opportunity in a jobless economic context, barefoot worker serving the middle class...," the video had garnered over 749,300 views and 740 likes at the time of publishing. The archive of the post can be found here.
However, the video is not from India.
In fact
Through a reverse image search, we found that the video dates back to 2022 and is from Colombia. Pulzo, a Colombian news website, had published a report on the viral video on September 15, 2022. According to Pulzo, the viral video of a man helping people to cross a flooded road was recorded in the city of Barranquilla. The man reportedly charged every passenger 500 bars for ferrying them. Heavy rains had caused flooding in many cities of Colombia, including Barranquilla, the report said.
RCN Radio, one of Colombia's prime radio networks, also reported that the video was first posted by the Twitter account 'Antiuribista' (@I'mAntiUribist) on September 14, 2022. The RCN Radio report relayed similar information published by Pulzo. It also mentioned that the man in the video was helping people around the Calle 70 road in Barranquilla.
A report by the Indian daily The Indian Express published on September 18, 2022, also carried screenshots from the viral video. Titled "Colombian man's ingenuity to help people cross flooded roads goes viral," the report also stated that the video was reportedly taken in Barranquilla in Colombia.
Logically Facts also geolocated the spot mentioned in the reports on Google Maps. We spotted the same blue-colored building and the word 'Pony' — written on a red poster, seen at the 0:06 timestamp in the now-viral video — on Google Maps. This establishes that the video was recorded taken in Barranquilla, Colombia.
The verdict
The viral video claimed to show "New India" was taken at least ten months ago in Colombia. We mark the claim false, as the video is unrelated to India.