India’s press freedom in acute distress despite promises of democracy
By Akshita Kumari –
While India enjoys its status as the world’s largest democracy, Indian authorities are increasingly misusing an anti-terrorism law, financial regulations, and other legislations to attack journalists and online critics for their critical appraisal of government policies and practices.
Since 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has nabbed at least 15 journalists under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). According to data collected by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 36 journalists have been imprisoned in India within the same timeframe. During the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule, this figure stood at eight.
Little wonder why India ranks 159 out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, a dramatic decline in press freedom for the world’s most populated nation, highlighting ongoing challenges in the media landscape.
“The cracks in the democratic house are almost clear in every space, and perhaps more so in the fourth pillar of the free press. But never has the case for truth been more necessary. Never has it been more important for collective solutions at all levels of society to create safeguards for media,” said Jane Worthington, IFJ’s Asia-Pacific director.
Indian mainstream news media, because of its sheer size, has the power to influence a large section of society and is deemed to represent generally accepted beliefs and opinions. The term ‘mainstream news media’ refers to newspaper and television news channels in English and Hindi that have large audiences, larger revenue, social media presence, and popular news anchors with primetime shows.
With legacy or mainstream media throughout India, alarmingly over-dependent on government or corporate revenue, independent voices continue to move over to digital platforms to push unbiased reporting. Some tenacious journalists strive to keep professionalism alive, either solo or in small media ventures by carving out a space despite financial difficulties, stringent government surveillance, and harassment.
The future of media, therefore, remains more critical than ever. With disinformation and dissent under attack, billions of voters in more than 50 countries will go to polls this year making momentous choices, the result of which will prove consequential for years to come.
Interestingly, these challenges are not limited to any specific group of journalists but are pervasive across the profession. However, with polls indicating a victory for Modi in the 2024 elections – extending his 10-year rule for another five years – experts warn that the Modi administration may further victimize independent media and journalists after the elections.
RIGHTS VIOLATION
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) recorded a total of 232 media rights violations last year, which included targeted killings of eight journalists and media practitioners.
In October 2023, police officials arrested Prabir Purkayastha, founder of an independent news site, NewsClick, for its critical stance toward the government, alleging that the news media accepted money to publish pro-China materials. Purkayastha’s arrest under UAPA, reportedly involved raids across Newsclick employees’ homes and workplaces, placing a target on all individuals who were associated with the site.
However, the Supreme Court ordered his release on 15 May, stating that his arrest by the Delhi Police was “invalid in the eyes of the law,” since proper procedure was not followed.
In February 2023, a similar raid targeted BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, accusing it of evading taxes, three weeks after the broadcaster aired a documentary titled “The Modi Question,” which spoke about Modi’s politics in 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. The documentary was later banned by the government from airing in India, claiming it is “false propaganda”.
Soon after Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, Network 18 was acquired by Mukesh Ambani, widely believed to be one of Modi’s billionaire allies. In December 2022, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani took nearly full control of NDTV broadcast and digital news media in a hostile takeover.
According to Amnesty International, Indian authorities are increasingly cracking down on civil societies, harassing and bringing politically motivated restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly. (Amnesty International was forced to halt its work and shut its India operations in 2020 after the government froze its bank accounts in an act of reprisal for the organization’s work on human rights).
SILENCING THE MESSENGER
The UAPA is used against journalists who seek to investigate and report on a range of issues, criminalising their work and stigmatizing them as “terrorists”, as well as intimidating the profession at large. The persecution of journalists grew by more than four times during Modi’s rule.
Recently, a journalist Raghav Trivedi who works with the digital media outlet Molitics was beaten up and locked in a room allegedly by BJP workers while covering Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh over a “clip” about women being paid to attend the rally.
In another instance, Punjab independent journalist Rajinder Singh Taggar was arrested in April this year in an alleged extortion case. Taggar’s aide Satnam Daun reportedly said that the arrest was made to harass Taggar for speaking against political scams.
Likewise, Alt News cofounder, Mohammad Zubair (fact-checker) was arrested by the Delhi police in June 2023, claiming that a 2018 tweet by the fact-checker “hurt religious sentiments”. In July, fresh charges of criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence, and foreign funding were added to the case.
Jharkhand reporter Rupesh Kumar Singh has been in jail since 2022, on allegations of being a prominent leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). His work was about human rights violations and persecution of tribal communities.
An independent journalist, Gautam Navlakha, has been in custody since 2020 and was placed under house arrest in 2022. He was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court on May 14, 2024. He was accused along with Anand Teltumbde, and nine others, of being responsible for the Bhima Koregaon violence and having links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
In 2022, Ismat Ara was among 20 Muslim women journalists whose pictures and personal information were posted for a virtual “auction” by an online app called Bulli Bai, a derogatory term to describe Muslim women. Ara filed a police complaint which led to the arrest of the app’s makers.
In October 2020, Siddique Kappan, a journalist from South India’s Kerala was arrested on his way to cover a story of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, who was allegedly raped by four upper-caste Thakur men. He was released on bail in February 2023, after over two years of arrest.
In January, the government proposed new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which opened up digital media to discretionary powers of the government, including censorship.
In the world’s biggest democracy, journalists are being targeted for their reportage and commentary on important issues and the democratic rights of citizens. India had the highest number of internet shutdowns with 106 incidents in the country, 86 were in Jammu and Kashmir, which lasted 552 days. It recounts the restrictions and challenges faced by Kashmiri journalists as they were denied access to information, and local journalists were unable to gather, verify, or disseminate news.
The CPJ’s India representative Kunal Majumder said, “The fraternity itself has to take the responsibility of care towards their reporters and be mindful of them in implementing a lot of preventive measures, which unfortunately at this point is completely missing out of Indian newsrooms. But, once you start putting these preventive mechanisms, the number of journalists being protected will definitely go up.”
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Edited by: Pradipta Mukherjee