By Ranjona Banerji
The Government of India has very thin skin when it comes to criticism, as we in the media know. This includes the larger government toady “let’s keep on Modi’s good side so our business prospers, and we gain individual benefits” media and the tiny “let’s try and do journalism” media. We must ignore occasional comments on the importance of dissent in a democracy from some person on high or some faff from our Chief Economic Bahi Khata Advisor on how we mustn’t care about what the West says, as Krishnamurthy Subrahmanian wrote in the Times of India yesterday.
Because a few days before that, the Ministry of External Affairs got very gussa with the British High Commissioner because the British Parliament, a sovereign body over whom the high commissioner has no control, dared to discussed India’s farmers protests. So we care but don’t care but mustn’t care and shouldn’t care and do care and so on.
I digress.
The Government of India’s new rules to control digital media and entertainment were challenged by a new platform to represent the needs of digital publications, called Digipub. The petition said that the Government of India’s new Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 are unconstitutional. The court issued notice to the Centre on the new rules of February 25, stating they are “arbitrary, vague, disproportionate and unreasonable” restrictions on the digital media, and stayed any “coercive action” against digital platforms.
https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/kerala-high-court-new-it-rules-orders-no-coercive-action-issues-notice-on-livelaws-plea-170983
https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/03/10/digital-media-rules-will-make-it-impossible-for-small-outlets-to-function-live-law-petitions-kerala-hc
As this was happening, the perfidy of the traditional media was on full display. Prakash Javadekar, minister for cutting trees and controlling the media, tweeted that he was overjoyed to meet the “Digital News Publishers Association” who were “welcomed” the new media guidelines and made a few suggestions.
This “digital” association is made up of: India Today, Dainik Bhaskar, NDTV, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Times of India, Amar Ujala, Dainik Jagran, Eenadu and Malayalam Manorama.
In case I need to spell it out, rather than stand in solidarity with digital media platforms, these mainstream media houses, whose basic business is in newspapers and television, rushed to the Union minister to cosy up even further with the Modi Government and “welcome” the new attempt to control freedom of expression.
You may legitimately ask, why should one expect anything different?
And I cannot argue with that.
Except to say that when times for the media are as bad as they are now, in terms of both the jackhammer of government control and falling revenues thanks to both the Covid-19 pandemic and government inefficiency, a little solidarity and a push for more journalism rather than less, may have been a better long-term strategy.
Yes, I know we’re talking about the selfie media and the terrible consequences this has had for Indian democracy. The Swedish Institute Varieties of Democracy has tagged India as an “electoral autocracy”. The report said: India “largely followed the typical pattern for countries in the ‘Third Wave’ over the past 10 years: a gradual deterioration where freedom of the media, academia, and civil society were curtailed first and to the greatest extent”.
https://scroll.in/latest/989199/india-has-turned-into-an-electoral-autocracy-claims-sweden-based-institute-report
This follows years of falling on the Press Freedom Index and the US think tank Freedom House recently dubbing India a “partly free” democracy since Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre.
In this light, a subservient media is the biggest let down for the people of India and Indian democracy.
Cue in a shrugging emoji because…
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal