Press freedom index puts focus on newsrooms telling India’s hardest stories

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 7, 2026

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/05/07/press-freedom-index-puts-focus-on-newsrooms-telling-indias-hardest-stories

Every year we are informed that India is sinking lower on the World Press Freedom Index put together by Reporters Without Borders. India now stands at 157 out of 180 countries. “So what?” says the government. “We know,” say journalists who have felt the brunt of this decline.

It is worth considering though what “press freedom” means for those engaged in the media – print, broadcast and digital – and especially the journalists who work outside the formal economy of the media as independent journalists.

Press freedom is dependent on many things, including laws made by the government. But protection under law is not enough, even in a democracy as we have experienced in India during the Emergency when all pretence of press freedom was abandoned in the name of national security. Even today, especially in the last decade, the same trope of national security is used to imprison journalists or to bring in curbs that in effect curtail the right of journalists to information.  

In fact, this is precisely what the RSF report highlights, the impact of the November 2025 rules the government published for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023). “This new legal framework”, the report states, “directly undermines the fundamentals of journalism by restricting access to, processing of, and publication of certain types of information that could be of interest to the public, starting with administrative documents, public archives, and all other information that could implicate public officials or institutions entrusted with a mission of general interest”.

Apart from such direct intervention by the government that undercuts the very concept of a free media, we also see how this is further emasculated when a powerful executive teams up with private money power.

In India, big money and the executive have been known to come together to suppress reporting on issues that would be uncomfortable to both for decades. This trend consolidated post 1991 and liberalisation when the media, then mostly print media, became commercialised and news was redefined as something that would sell the “product”. That is when we saw the amplification of some and the erasure of others from the news pages. The rich, the politically powerful, celebrities were “news”; the poor, the working classes, the people living on the peripheries were not worth featuring.

That trend has now become an almost accepted feature where, as I argued in an earlier column, the dominant narrative suggested by the government is echoed uncritically by the media (barring a few exceptions). The economically powerful owners go along with this either because their politics matches that of the ruling party or because they are aware of the cost of not doing so given the extent to which the Modi government has weaponised the use of agencies to deal with any opposition.

In sum, India’s declining status on the World Press Freedom Index is no surprise.

Yet, we must consider who pays the price for this decline in media freedom. 

The brunt of the decline noted by the RSF is felt by those journalists working outside the frame of mainstream media. In fact, if there is journalism being done the way it should in a democracy, where your camera or your pen seeks out the voiceless, where you report irrespective of whose toes you tread on – big business or big government – because you believe it is a story that must be told, it is the growing tribe of independent journalists in India who are doing this.

They are not backed by any union or association that will come to their aid if they are arrested, bullied, attacked physically or virtually. In fact, even the big publications that they write for often back off when these journalists get embroiled in a court case initiated by a functionary of the ruling party. 

Despite this, it is encouraging that scores of independent journalists are not giving up. They continue to report and expose both business and government, and often both. To give just one example, the story of the environmentally devastating projects being planned in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been reported mainly by independent journalists for years (read here and here). They finally got noticed by the mainstream, albeit momentarily, when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi happened to visit the islands recently.

The other barometer of press freedom is what the media chooses to downplay or even ignore and why.

Coincidentally, World Press Freedom Day is two days after May 1, universally celebrated as International Workers’ Day, marking the struggle of workers for an 8-hour workday. I doubt if many people, especially the younger generation, are even aware of this struggle and its significance.  

But the coincidence also reminds us of the absence of reporting on trade unions, those that have survived despite liberalisation and the dominant contract system that most workers are compelled to accept. These workers are not invisible. They are everywhere, building our infrastructure, constructing private buildings, running the gig economy, working in farms. And then there are those who are virtually invisible, the men and women who work in the homes of the better off Indians at shockingly low pay.

These Indians make it past the barrier of what is considered newsworthy only when they organise, protest, clash with the police, get beaten up and are jailed as the recent protests in Noida highlighted. Though these protests were covered by print, much of the reporting was done by small independent platforms on social media.  Such as this where a worker tells a reporter, “We put our children to sleep hungry. We hold them to our chests and sing lullabies, so that they don’t remember their hunger.” 

We heard women and men speak about the shocking conditions at their places of work; not just how little they were paid (less than the minimum wage) but the mockery of the annual “increment” that they received. They spoke of how their pay was cut if they fell sick or had to travel for an emergency. And that after years of working in a factory, or as construction labour, there was no compensation if the factory closed or the contract work ended (read here). 

We also heard from domestic workers who are unorganised and who are in no position to demand higher wages as there are always people available to work for less. Such is the level of desperation. But to hear the stories of the women who speak of employers who haven’t given them a raise, who cut their wages if they absent themselves from work because of ill health or family emergencies, reminds us that this is India 2026, where those who labour still struggle for a living wage. 

Finding meaningful reporting on the working class is like searching for a needle in a haystack these days. Yet, there was a time, when major newspapers like The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express had a labour reporter, someone whose job it was to report on the conditions of the working classes. That position disappeared around the time that news was redefined as anything that will attract eyeballs.

As a result, our so-called “free” media in India is dedicated only to reporting on those with economic and political heft while the bulk of this country remains outside the definition of “news”.  

It is significant that the RSF report zeroes in on the changes made by the Modi government to digital laws that will restrict reporting by the independent journalists who are telling stories that mainstream will not report. Perhaps we should see this as a sign of hope, that despite what appears to be their limited reach, the combined presence of so many feisty independent journalists has made a powerful government uncomfortable. 

The bigger story in Kashmir is the media’s silence on action against its own

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 23, 2026

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/01/23/the-bigger-story-in-kashmir-is-the-medias-silence-on-action-against-its-own

The job of a journalist, in any part of India, is to observe, investigate, verify and report. But if you do precisely that in Kashmir, you are in big trouble. That is what journalists associated with major English language newspapers – Indian Express, Hindustan Times and The Hindu – found out recently.

They have now experienced what journalists not attached to such prominent media houses have been through since August 2019 when the Modi government abrogated Article 370 and converted the state of Jammu and Kashmir into a union territory. With that change came control and coercion of the local press that included arrests, closing offices of publications like Kashmir Times, shutting the Press Club in Srinagar, and daily harassment of journalists and photographers.

You would think that now that this routine has touched mainstream print media, it would make for front page news. It did not. 

 

Bashaarat Masood, Assistant Editor with Indian Express who has been reporting for the paper since 2006 was first summoned on January 14 for this report that appeared on January 13.  The story was billed as an exclusive.  

Masood reported that the J&K police were conducting a survey of all mosques in Kashmir collecting information about the personnel in these mosques like imams and muezzins, members of their managing committee and their charitable wings. He followed this up with another report that quoted people who were concerned about these actions of the police, which they said had never happened before. Both stories are straight-forward reportage.  Yet, for reasons not made clear to Masood when he was summoned, they caught the attention of the police.

The response from his newspaper should have been immediate, the very next day. However, it took Indian Express a week before it ran a front-page story about what their own correspondent had been subjected to by the police, including being asked to sign a bond under Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, to prevent “breach of peace” or anything that could disturb “public tranquillity”. A day before the belated Indian Express story, the Wire had already filed a report. 

Also, although the correspondent of Hindustan Times, Ashiq Hussain had also been summoned, his paper buried the report on an inside page on January 21. As if to compensate for this lapse, the paper published an editorial the next day saying the police had crossed a “red line”.  The editors of the paper should be aware that this line had been crossed a long time back.

Altogether four journalists, including Peerzada Ashiq from The Hindu, have been summoned for reporting on what in all respects is a routine story. 

Why should we be shocked or concerned that finally the daily harassment faced by so many Kashmiri journalists has now reached these well-known bylines?

Because, as I have argued in previous columns, what happens in Kashmir is a litmus test for what could happen anywhere in India. If a government does not respect the right of journalists in one part of the country to report without constantly watching their backs, what is to stop it from doing the same elsewhere?  

Furthermore, asking journalists to sign a bond under a provision of the law that anticipates that what you write might disturb “public tranquillity” is particularly dangerous and runs counter to any concept of freedom of expression. If such a precedent is set in Kashmir, it will give police the right anywhere in India to use this provision to stop journalists from doing their work.  

The message from these recent developments in Kashmir is that even what we in the media consider routine reporting can be unacceptable to the current dispensation. As a Kashmiri journalist told Scroll, “If there is no tolerance for even this kind of journalism, then what is the future of journalism here?”

Indeed, that is a question that all journalists and media houses, not just those based in Kashmir, should be asking.

Also, after these developments in Kashmir, will media houses ask their correspondents there, and elsewhere, to tread carefully, or will they encourage them to continue to report as journalists are supposed to do? 

While content even vaguely critical of the government is becoming scarce in most mainstream print media, although occasionally an in-depth report on an issue will pop up, this virtual flattening of the media undermines its credibility. Why should readers/viewers believe anything that is reported when most people with access to the internet have their own channels of information? Some of these peddle fake news but there are an equal number that provide coverage of issues that the mainstream ignores. 

As an illustration, here’s a story that the media in Maharashtra should have covered and used it to question the government when it insists that India is forging ahead as a growing economy. Hidden from view, because the media does not pay attention to the dark invisible corners of perpetually deprived areas in India, are stories like this one about the Melghat region in Maharashtra.

While reports on the region’s abundant wildlife in sanctuaries like the one in Tadoba make it to the news pages, the people who have lived in its forests do not. The Adivasi communities living in Melghat have suffered decades of neglect with patchy roads, poor health care facilities and abject poverty. 

Recently the Bombay High Court came down hard on the Maharashtra government in response to several writ petitions about the conditions in Melghat. It chastised the government for doing “too little” and said there should be “zero tolerance” of such neglect.

Those journalists who have covered Maharashtra since the 1980s are familiar with the Melghat story.  This has been a region of chronic developmental neglect that successive governments have addressed only when pushed.  The fact that in 2026 we are reading stories about Melghat that echo those reported four decades back is an indictment of India’s development story, as well as the indifference of its media.

According to this story in The Hindu, between April and October 2025, that is in six months, 97 children below six years died in the Melghat region either due to stillbirths or because the infants were low birth weight, born to severely malnourished women. In the same period, of the 4,437 pregnant women, 4,170 were anaemic. Let these facts sink in.  This is Maharashtra, one of the better off states in India.

Malnutrition and maternal deaths, in any part of India, rarely qualify as “breaking news”. But surely the detection of  “infiltrators” that the prime minister continues to mention at every opportunity, ought to find space in the news? It does not. 

By way of contrast, in the US, the actions of masked and fully armed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are top of the news. They are filmed pushing, shoving, chasing and even shooting down people presumed “illegal aliens” even before they have a chance to present their credentials. But in India, our equivalent of ICE, the police in a state like Assam have been literally pushing so-called “foreign nationals” into neighbouring Bangladesh and yet we read little about this in our newspapers.

Thanks to the consistent work of some independent journalists and platforms we get to read some stories about this. Stories like this worrying report by Rokibuz Zaman in Scroll about two men from Nagaon in Assam who were pushed into the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh not once but three times.

Hasan Ali, whose father was a “declared foreigner” and pushed out, told Scroll: “My country has declared my father a foreigner from Bangladesh. But Bangladesh has returned him twice. Taile amader desh kunda? Amader desh ase ki?” (Then, which is our country? Do we have any country at all?)

Who will answer Hasan Ali’s question? 

 

No guarantee of protection or change: What the stories of 3 journalists tell us this month

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 17, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/10/17/no-guarantee-of-protection-or-change-what-the-stories-of-3-journalists-tell-us-this-month

Journalism and journalists have made news this last fortnight.

The recognition by the Supreme Court of the work done by a journalist in exposing the way caste operates within our prison system is significant for several reasons. It underlines the importance of this kind of deep-dive socially relevant journalism, it illustrates the process that journalists must follow to ensure that their revelations make a difference, and it reminds us that unfortunately, ultimately one must often turn to the highest court even though the matter could have been settled outside the judicial system.

Sukanya Shantha wrote a revelatory article for The Wire in December 2020 that exposed how caste-based discrimination in allocation of work in Indian prisons is endorsed by official prison manuals. Shantha spoke to former prisoners and examined whether the problem was restricted to a few states. She found that it was virtually universal, in that all states in India followed this norm. Prisoners from marginalised castes were given work like sweeping, cleaning toilets and even sewers while the more privileged castes were assigned duties as cooks or in the office.  

The court ruled this unconstitutional and directed that it be removed from prison manuals. It also ruled that the caste of prisoners should not be recorded when they begin their incarceration, something that the petitioner had not asked for. It remains to be seen whether the spirit of the judgment will be followed in prisons or if jail authorities will find ways around it.

But to come back to the journalistic work of Shantha, her investigative story is the kind that requires time, work and investment. She was able to devote seven months to the story with the support of funding from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. The platform for which she writes, The Wire, would not have had the funds to support such journalism. 

However, well-endowed media houses do have the money to invest in such reporting but do not bother in the current mediascape that prevails in India. They hesitate either because they are playing a balancing game to ensure that the government stays off their backs, or for crass commercial reasons where there’s place only for news that sells their product. The conditions of poor, marginalised caste prisoners are obviously not a selling proposition.

Shantha’s story did not go entirely unnoticed. Within a few months of it appearing, the Jodhpur bench of the Rajasthan High Court took suo motucognisance of it and asked the state government to make the changes in its jail manual. A couple of other states, such as Goa, also did this quietly.  

While Shantha had hoped that some of the groups concerned with prison reforms might follow up by taking the matter to court, this did not happen. 

That is when she decided, in December last year, to file a petition in the Supreme Court. Fortunately for her, she had lawyers willing to fight the case pro bono. 

What this case, and the Supreme Court’s ruling illustrates is that doing a well-researched explosive investigative piece for an independent platform is not enough to lead to policy change. Perhaps, if one of the national newspapers had published her story, there would have been a quicker response. But that too is not guaranteed given the tone-deaf attitude of most governments to media reports on social and human rights issues, particularly when they touch on caste. 

In the 1980s, in the post Emergency period when the Indian media woke up to human rights issues, some of the journalists who broke these stories also followed up by petitioning the Supreme Court. For instance, in 1984, well-known journalist Neerja Chowdhury filed a case against the Madhya Pradesh government based on a series she did on bonded labour. 

While Sukanya Shantha is in the news for exposing caste-based discrimination in Indian prisons, another journalist was fleetingly in the news for something more superficial. Abhishek Upadhyay reports from Uttar Pradesh. An FIR was lodged against him by another journalist, Pankaj Kumar, for a post by Upadhyay on social media platform X alleging that the state government favoured people from a particular caste. 

On the surface, this seems a petty matter. But Upadhyay had to turn to the Supreme Court for relief. In its October 4 interim ruling (the case is still being heard), the court stated: 

“In democratic nations, freedom to express one’s views are respected… The rights of the journalists are protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. Merely because writings of a journalist are perceived as criticism of the government, criminal cases should not be slapped against the writer.”

This appears like stating the obvious. Yet, the very fact that the highest court in India has to reiterate this illustrates the constant hazards journalists face if they choose to criticise the powerful, even casually.  Even if nothing comes of such cases, the process itself is the punishment. The only way to escape this is to keep quiet, and not stir the waters. 

The third journalist in the news is senior assistant editor and Gujarat correspondent of The Hindu, based in Ahmedabad, Mahesh Langa. On October 8, he was remanded to 10 days in police custody for alleged involvement in a GST scam. Langa is a well-respected journalist who has filed stories on Gujarat that have exposed the hollowness of some of the state government’s claims. While this case is still unravelling, it was notable that Langa was picked up even though his name is not mentioned in the FIR. While several journalists organisations issued a statement saying that his 10-day remand was “judicial overreach”, his own paper was more cautious in its response. 

The reason for concern in Langa’s case is obvious. Given the past record of the BJP-led central government and its counterpart in Gujarat, journalists can be charged with crimes that have nothing to do with their work but can tie them down to a point that they cannot continue to work. 

What these three disparate stories tell us about the status of journalists in the media today is that you have to be persistent and committed to ensure that your exposés lead to change, that even casual criticism of the government in some states, like UP, can lead to legal tangles, and that even if you work for a leading national newspaper, you are not protected from the State if it wants to send a message.

A noisy Indian media ought not to distract us from the reality that journalists trying to do real journalism face every day. Their freedom to report without fear or favour extends only to the boundaries set by those in power. 

I end with a quote that relates to another country, the United States, but could well apply to us here.

In a newsletter sent out to subscribers of New York Times, investigative reporter Michael Schmidt quotes Ian Bassin, executive director of a nonprofit group called Protect Democracy. In the context of the attitude of former President Donald Trump, and currently a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, towards his opponents, Bassin told Schmidt: “The very definition of freedom is to be able to do those things without retribution or even just fear of retribution by the government…Once the government has made clear it can and will attempt to use the awesome power of the state to seek to punish you based on who you are, what you think, how you’ve exercised your rights or whether you’ve shown sufficient fealty to the leader, you are no longer truly free.” 

Window of hope, yet little changed in media accountability in Modi 3.0

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 19, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/09/19/window-of-hope-yet-little-changed-in-media-accountability-in-modi-30

Since June this year, when the general election results significantly reduced the strength of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, the optimists believed that a party dependent on its coalition partners, even if it continues to be led by Narendra Modi, would be different. That the visible authoritarian tendencies of the last decade under Modi would be tamed somewhat.

How wrong they were. After 100 days in power, there is little to indicate that there is any change in direction, even if there has been some backtracking in the face of opposition. Even if some laws, like the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, have been put on the backburner, there is little to suggest that the desire to control the media by this government has been set aside.

Still, these last months since June have given both the independent and mainstream media a window to pursue the kind of journalism that is so central to democracy, one that questions the powerful, that independently checks and assesses claims by those in power, and that seeks out the voices of the many who are otherwise never heard. While independent media continues to report as the media should, there is little visible change in mainstream media.

Take, for instance, the controversy over a private function at the residence of the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud. It was a Ganesh pooja. Families that follow this custom invite close family members and friends. They usually keep the idol only for a couple of days, or five to six days at most, before they submerge it. 

Questions were rightly raised, not just by the opposition but by members of the legal fraternity about the propriety of the head of the highest court inviting the head of the executive to such a private function.

While the national newspapers gave space to differing opinions about whether the CJI ought to have invited the Prime Minister, none, barring Deccan Herald, took an editorial stand. It pointed out that “such a controversy hurts the judiciary more than the executive and could certainly have been avoided. The judiciary should not only be independent and above the fray but also seen to be so”. A reasonably mild comment, but even this was missing from the other major English-language newspapers.

Indian Express gave space for two differing points of view on its editorial pages. Senior Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaising, in her article, asked “whether the CJI has been true to his oath of office”. Few speculated on why the Prime Minister had chosen to publicise the private event given his record of using every opportunity to be heard and seen in the media.

The criticism by the opposition did not go unnoticed. In response, the Prime Minister, as is his wont, twisted the issue and made it one of bigotry by the other side. Here is what he said, as reported in Hindustan Times:

“The Britishers followed the policy of divide and rule. They used to hate Ganesh Utsav. Ganesh Utsav is not just a festival of faith, but it played an important role in the freedom struggle. Dividing us in the name of castes was a weapon of the British. Bal Gangadhar Tilak used community celebrations to awaken the collective conscience of the country. Today, everyone participates in Ganesh Utsav without any discrimination. But its celebration has once again become a point of contention, much like it did during the British colonial era. Even today, the power-hungry people of India who are busy dividing and breaking society are having trouble with Ganesh Puja. You must have seen that the people of Congress and its ecosystem have been angry for the last few days because I participated in Ganpati Pooja.”

This ought to have been questioned by the media because Modi has cleverly confused two separate issues. The Ganesh festival is celebrated at home by many families. But during the Independence struggle, the concept of communities jointly and publicly celebrating it became a way to confront the British authorities. Today, this custom continues, and public Ganesh pandals are visited by common people and public figures, including politicians. There is nothing wrong with a prime minister and a judge visiting the same pandal. But when a prime minister visits the home of a judge, it suggests a closer relationship, one that crosses the line of propriety given the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive in a democracy. 

Perhaps the Indian media has now become so used to not questioning that it is unrealistic to expect a change even if the June results do provide a small window. The burden for such rigorous questioning continues to fall on the small independent digital platforms that, despite their tenuous finances, turn out incisive investigative stories. An excellent example is this one by Scroll on how Indian diplomacy and the growth of Gautam Adani’s investments in countries around the world have coincided.

The state of our media has not been pinned as a major concern by any political party, whether it is in power or in the opposition. Yet, it continues to draw attention outside India.

A recent reminder is an article by the publisher of the New York Times, AD Sulzberger, in what would be considered its rival newspaper, The Washington Post. 

In a guest essay headlined “How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America”, Sulzberger writes about one political leader outside his country in these words:

“His country is a democracy, so he can’t simply close newspapers or imprison journalists. Instead, he sets about undermining independent news organisations in subtler ways – using bureaucratic tools such as tax law, broadcast licensing and government contracting. Meanwhile, he rewards news outlets that toe the party line – shoring them up with state advertising revenue, tax exemptions and other government subsidies – and helps friendly business people buy up other weakened news outlets at cut rates to turn them into government mouthpieces.”

You would not be wrong if you surmised that he was referring to Narendra Modi. In fact, this is how he described Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary. However, later in the piece, he does mention Modi, as well as the recently defeated former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and draws parallels between these three men and how they have curbed the media but continue to claim that they are elected leaders in a democracy.

About India, Sulzberger writes:

“In India, Modi has so successfully subverted independent reporting – blocking reports on everything from mass protests against his economic policy to mistreatment of the country’s Muslim minority – that much of the mainstream press is now derided as “godi media,” generally translated as “lapdog media.” It is wrong to imagine that this is a problem for journalists alone. The repercussions of a weakened media reverberate throughout society, masking corruption, obscuring risks to public health and safety, restricting minority rights and distorting the electoral process. Democracy itself, though still intact – as gains by opposition parties in the recent Indian election underscored – is viewed as more tenuous and conditional”.

He also speculates on what would happen to press freedom if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States on November 5. The picture he paints is dire.

I have quoted from his piece at length as it is behind a paywall and might not be accessible to readers.

The gradual degradation of press freedom acts like an anaesthetic. It numbs us to a point where what would have once been unacceptable becomes the norm. Can we still turn the clock back? This is the challenge that the Indian media faces. 

The Guillotine or slow bleed?

 I wrote this for the newly launched website of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL)

Link: https://pucl.org/manage-writings/the-guillotine-or-slow-bleed/

The guillotine or a slow bleed? A sane person would choose neither. More so if they lived in a country that they believed was a democracy. Yet, in democratic India, the very concept of press freedom has faced both – a dramatic cessation and a gradual, though deliberate, suffocation. 

As we approach the 48^th anniversary of “The Emergency”, the state of emergency invoked by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on the night of June 25, 1975, we should reflect on the past, but also ask whether the lessons from that past have informed this country’s future trajectory.

In June 1975, freedom of the press was suspended. It suddenly did not exist anymore. We were told that if you wrote critically about the government, you could personally face arrest, as well as the closure of the publication for which you wrote. In those days, the media consisted only of print. A nascent television (Doordarshan), and radio (All India Radio) were entirely controlled by the government.

Editors and journalists were arrested, even before they had a chance to write a word. Publications closed, either out of choice because they did not wish to be censored or were compelled to do so because they had violated censorship laws or were rendered financially unviable.

Smaller publications, often gutsier and more willing to speak up than the larger ones, were the most vulnerable. They depended on “goodwill” advertising, which is not determined by circulation figures. They also received advertisements from public sector companies and banks. The latter were ordered not to advertise in these publications and the former, mostly private companies, were told that if they continued, they did so at their own risk. Most chose not to take the risk.

All this was then. When press freedom was virtually guillotined.

Today, press freedom is intact, apparently. But it has slowly bled since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi, won the majority in Parliament.  What remains can only be revived with a huge infusion of fresh blood.

The most dramatic change has taken place in television, a medium that reaches the maximum audience compared to other media in India.  Pre-2014, privately owned television channels were highly critical of the government of the day, at that time the United Progressive Alliance led by Dr Manmohan Singh.  Every mistake, imagined or otherwise, was amplified and discussed in detail.

Print media undertook investigations into corruption, exposed the shortcomings of government programmes, poked holes in government propaganda and highlighted human rights violations.

Post-2014, most mainstream television channels appeared to do a complete turnaround. Initially it was awe and praise for the ruling party and its leader. When Modi announced demonetisation overnight in 2016, there was barely a critical voice heard on these channels. They gave Modi the benefit of the doubt and allowed airtime for him to put forward his point of view. But only that viewpoint was heard. There was practically nothing about how millions of ordinary people suffered the consequences of this decision.

Till then, print media continued to provide space for critical comment and reporting. But even then, you could see that these spaces were shrinking.

By 2019, when the BJP returned with a much larger majority in Parliament, the change in the media was almost universal.  Television became an extension of the government’s propaganda machine.  It fuelled narratives, especially the Hindutva agenda of demonising Muslims, that the government and the ruling party wanted amplified. And it literally drowned out the few token voices that were willing to say something to the contrary.

Some of this was the consequence of owners of these channels being convinced that the BJP and Modi were the answer for India. And some from the pressures of business and the fear that falling foul of a powerful government would not serve their best interests.  Whatever the reasons, or a combination thereof, by 2019 the capitulation of mainstream TV, barring one channel, was almost complete. This was finally completed in December 2022, when that last, lonely, critical voice was muffled by a business ally of Modi taking it over. 

Print media does not have the reach of television.  Some spaces remain for critical writing and opinion. But they are shrinking by the day as these media houses become increasingly dependent on government advertising. Private advertisers must also be watching their backs, much as they did during the Emergency, by not being seen to support critical media.

The equivalent of the small publications that stood up and spoke out during the Emergency, are the digital news platforms. At the moment, these are virtually the only spaces where legitimate criticism of government policy and programmes, and of human rights violations, can be reported.  Their financial future is precarious given the government’s ability to pressure anyone supporting any form of dissent.

Yet, although the reach of these platforms is nowhere close to that of television, the current government is determined to restrict their reach even further.  This has come in the form of a proposed amendment to the IT rules that allows the government to set up a “Fact Checking Unit”. This body can decide that anything reported on a government programme is “fake”, “false” or “misleading” and compel any intermediary or social media platform to take it down.  Currently, this amendment is being challenged in court. But if it were to go through, it would be a virtual death blow for independent digital platforms that depend on social media to distribute their content.

Indira Gandhi had proclaimed that she invoked the emergency to “save democracy”. The Modi government believes that every draconian step it takes is saving, what it chooses to call the “mother of democracy”.

The intent is the same; only the methods differ. By learning from the past, this government has realised that it has no need to guillotine press freedom. It merely needs to bleed it slowly till the concept itself becomes lifeless.

 

Go to Kashmir to understand what life is like under an Emergency

 On the eve of the 48th anniversary of the Emergency, here's something I wrote for the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) website.

Link: https://nwmindia.org/features/nwmi-writes/the-emergency-writing-back-to-the-future/

Forty-eight years after Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on the night of June 25, 1975, people still ask: What was it like?

If today, in the year 2023, you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Emergency, go and spend some time in what was once the state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Not as a tourist, or a pilgrim, but as a citizen who wants to understand what life is like for people in that region.

Since August 5, 2019, when the rights provided to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 were taken away overnight, and a full-fledged state was reduced to a union territory, there is a virtual state of emergency in the region, especially in Kashmir.

Think about it.  Even as the central government led by Narendra Modi took this step, all political leaders who opposed the move were arrested.

The media, that has never had an easy run because of the presence of security forces, virtually fell silent. Internet was suspended making it impossible for journalists to file stories. They were questioned, intimidated, and detained.

Over time, what little remained of an independent media was snuffed out, while journalists who dared to question were charged under public safety and terror laws.

Four Kashmiri journalists are still in jail, and dozens more have had to either leave Kashmir or tread carefully as the sword of arrest or interrogation hangs over them all the time. Even leaving the country is not an option as several have found themselves on a no-fly list without prior intimation.

Many prominent Kashmiri journalists now write for international publications as their stories are rarely picked up by mainstream Indian media barring some independent digital news platforms.

Newspapers in Kashmir survive only if they toe the line as they are now entirely dependent on government advertising. Kashmir Times, the oldest English language paper founded by the veteran journalist Ved Bhasin and now run by his daughter Anuradha Bhasin, was forced to shut its Srinagar office when the lease was cancelled without explanation.

The Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar, an important meeting place for journalists, was also arbitrarily closed.

 

Kashmir Press Club. Photo by Quratulain Rehbar

A media policy was put in place in 2020 that would penalise any publication or journalist who reported what the government considered “misleading” or “false”. In other words, nothing critical of government policies or programmes could be reported.

How is any of this different from what happened in the days following the declaration of emergency in June 1975?

Then too, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. Most of them remained in jail for the entire period of the emergency.

The press soon fell silent as press censorship was imposed. Any publication violating censorship “guidelines”, which were frequently revised and updated, faced closure. No one could question the logic of these guidelines. You just had to follow them.

Even if journalists working for prominent newspapers wanted to report what they saw on the ground, they could not as their stories would not have been carried by their own publications. Their only option was to somehow sneak out the information they had collected so that it could be published in the international media.

A pall of fear that fell on the country after the first weeks of the declaration of emergency ensured that no dissent or political activity could take place. Such activity was compelled to go underground. Opponents of the Emergency, who had managed to evade arrest, had to devise ways to communicate without being detected.

For the 20 months that the Emergency lasted, people in one part of the country were unaware of what was happening in other parts. We only knew the full extent of the atrocities that were committed during the period when censorship was lifted, elections were held, and the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government was thrown out.

It will soon be four years since the abrogation of article 370. Have things changed in Kashmir?

Although some political leaders have been released, they have no role in the running of their former state because there is no legislative assembly. Normal political activity, such as public meetings and rallies are impossible to hold.  Political parties are compelled to reach out to their constituents in ways that will not attract the attention of the authorities, people who take direct orders from New Delhi.

And what about the media? Before August 5, 2019, many highly regarded Kashmiri journalists reported for mainstream media houses. Their stories included reports on human rights violations and the views of ordinary people about the situation.  They featured opposition politicians even if their views were unpalatable to those in power in New Delhi.

Today, there is a trickle of news from the region. What we read or watch are stories based on handouts by the security forces, and upbeat write-ups about tourism. It’s as if all the human rights abuses we read about in the past have disappeared.

So, even if a formal state of emergency has not been declared in Jammu and Kashmir, what people in the region have lived through in the last four years is not that different from the Emergency period of 1975-77.

What is more worrying is the absence of outrage in the rest of India about citizens in one part of this country being deprived of their basic democratic rights.

Authoritarianism finds fertile ground when the citizenry is immunised against violations of democratic rights, when people are willing to delude themselves that what happens in one region really cannot happen elsewhere, and when they swallow the propaganda that India remains the “mother of democracy”.

We need to recognise that what has happened in Kashmir is an experiment by this government to see how far they can go to deny citizens their basic rights. Why declare a formal emergency when you can manage without it?

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