By Ranjona Banerji
A sure sign of a thriving democracy is when captive government agencies, and a ruling political party in democracies most hallowed institution do not allow any criticism of its main donor.
The other sign is when the bulk of the mainstream, legacy, television, bought-and-sold, spineless media does not protest this one more travesty in a long line of such travesties.
Moitra is not the first to feel the wrath of the government for questioning the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP presumably hopes that sustained attacks on all questioners will silence them.
For India’s media of course, given the unparalleled growth of democracy and press freedom in the past nine years, the bigger issues are: why has the Trinamool Party – of which Moitra is a member – not supported her, what does Mamata Banerjee think and so on. Not that these questions are not important. They definitely are.
But there are other questions: Why does the BJP want expulsion for the rest of Moitra’s Lok Sabha term when nothing has been proved yet? Why have the accusers not been questioned? Why has the expulsion decision been made before the inquiry is over? Questions like these, if you find them in media at all, are shot over the shoulders of opposition party members.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cash-for-query-row-oppostion-dissents-against-ethics-panel-report-on-mahua-moitra-hasty-will-set-dangerous-precedent-9020962/
https://scroll.in/latest/1058925/ethics-panel-adopted-500-page-report-against-mahua-moitra-without-discussion-says-bsp-mp
Because India is the mother of democracy, unruly, unparliamentary, violent acts by members of the BJP earn them little or no punishment, not from the BJP, not from the media, not from Parliament.
It does not matter what you are accused of – sexual assaults on women, rape, murder, rioting – it is all acceptable in a democracy. What is not acceptable is questioning one corporate in particular, and perhaps a couple of others.
The case against Mahua Moitra has not been proved. But that does not matter. In a democracy, someone can say that a particular remark made by so-and-so non-BJP politician upset me and my clan. The politician can be stripped of his Parliamentary status and threatened with jail. Occasionally undemocratic miracles happen and this democratic ploy is stymied by the judiciary. Who knows if Mahua Moitra will be that lucky?
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It is really amusing for a democracy when some of the media is owned by the all-powerful corporate group. Then the writing is on the wall for journalists who take on the all-powerful corporate group. The only possible amusement is when another much older all-powerful corporate group owns some of its own media and has the courage to take on the first all-powerful corporate group.
The careful balance that is needed in this exemplar of democracy is explained succinctly here by R Rajagopal, former editor of the Telegraph and current editor-in-large for the group. He makes a comparison to another much-admired democracy where brown shirts were all the rage, much like brown shorts/long trousers are in our democracy. But let me not steal his thunder.
Trigger warning: much of what he writes is about the sort of journalist who has no place in the genetic structure of a democracy, whether mother, father, grandparent and so on:
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/a-brown-stain-journalism-in-the-age-of-jail/cid/1978913
This investigation by the Washington Post is another example of how proper democracies deal with free speech and social media: cut it down, in simple words:
https://archive.ph/fMrNH#selection-769.161-775.118
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You may think I am biased against the Indian media and its glorious glorification of those who have made our democracy the mother of others.
Therefore I present The Onion, the only news site, even if it is not a news site which I currently trust to report fairly on Israel’s assaults on Gaza after Hamas’s terrorist strike on October 7 (in case you accuse me of being unbalanced). The Onion is part of a legacy democracy:
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. Her views here are personal. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays.