Nissim Mannathukkaren: Modi government and the muzzling of the Indian media
The more
damaging development has been the role of the mainstream media in the face of
the government attempts to muzzle it.
Under democracy,
individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded — M. K. Gandhi
Generally, the death
of a judge, in what seem to be mysterious circumstances, while presiding over a
case against the second most powerful person in the country, and the closest
associate of the head of the government, would be make prime-time television in
a democracy. Similarly, the allegations of corruption against the family of the
same person would have garnered media attention. But recent events in India
prove otherwise.
On November 20, and
21, the Indian publication The Caravan broke
a story of the death of 48-year old Justice B. H. Loya, involved in
the case (of alleged extra-judicial killing) against the president of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling party. This was after a purported
attempt to bribe him by the Chief Justice of a High Court, for a favorable
verdict in the case, with an amount of Rs. 100 crore ($ 15.3 million). The
report contained testimonies of the family of the judge.
Despite the explosive
nature of the story and its potentially unprecedented implications for Indian
democracy (in independent India’s history, to my knowledge, there is no
instance of a judge being assassinated) there
was a stunned silence in the mainstream and big media, especially, the
English-language television channels that have a disproportionate influence in
the setting of the political agenda. As one media commentator put
it, “it seems that two deaths need to be investigated: that of Judge Loya,
and that of the Indian media.”
After a week, while
a couple
of big media outlets reported
on the story (and which contradicted the Caravan report),
they seemed to throw up more questions than answers. Any
conclusion about the death of the judge, especially when the family has raised
serious questions, cannot be derived from media investigations and reports. It
can only be settled by a high-level judicial probe which should also consider
the bribery allegation. Not only is that not forthcoming, there is no demand
for it from the media or the political firmament which is also curiously
silent.
Almost as a trailer
for the judge story, in October, the Indian news website, The Wire, broke
the story of how the business turnover of a company owned by Jay Amit
Shah increased by 16, 000 times in the year following the election of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi. Jay Amit Shah is the son of Amit Shah. The story began
trending on twitter and social media. It naturally raised question marks about
the fairytale surge in Mr. Shah’s business revenues as well as loans
(seemingly, without adequate collateral), the abrupt shutting down of the business
(that too just before the controversial
demonetization
of high-valued Indian currency notes) due to losses in the same year
as the galloping revenues, another of Mr. Shah’s businesses involved in stock
trading getting a loan from a public-sector undertaking to set up a wind energy
plant, etc… read more:
