Pluto Press

Chapter Title: The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

Chapter Author(s): Siddharth Varadarajan

Book Title: Indian Democracy

Book Subtitle: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations
Book Editor(s): Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Anand Vaidya
Published by: Pluto Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctvdmwxfb.9

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Pluto Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Indian
Democracy

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 5
The State and/of the Media
in Modi’s India
Siddharth Varadarajan

Let us start with a fundamental question: why are we talking

about the state and/of the media in contemporary India at
this particular time? I ask this question because, based on my
experience of attending conferences or meetings over the last
15 to 20 years – events that have brought together a variety
of specialists on the politics, sociology and history of India –
very rarely has the media really figured as a topic of discussion.
Today, by contrast, there seems to be a perception among those
who study India that an element of our democracy that had
previously been taken for granted, namely the free and inde-
pendent nature of the media – all its aberrations and problems
notwithstanding – is under attack. This is, of course, also a
perception shared by many of us in the media: there is today
unprecedented pressure operating both from within and
without Indian media. These are unique times.
Superficially, of course, if one looks at numbers, it may seem
as if these are really the best of times for Indian media. There
are hundreds of newspapers, TV channels are experiencing
increasing viewership, and on the internet a new media website
or portal opens almost every week – not just in English or Hindi
but in different regional languages. The use of social media,

58

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

such as Facebook and Twitter, is exploding, and the access

of ordinary citizens to different forms of media has arguably
never been greater – nor have they ever had a greater ability
to engage with those who produce the news they consume. So
why, despite this statistical buoyancy, do we speak of the media
as being under pressure? And what, exactly, is the nature of
this pressure? Those are the fundamental questions we have to
grapple with.

The Right-wing and Private Media

Those who watch certain private television channels in India

will be familiar with how prominent news anchors represent
themselves as recapturing a kind of authentic media space from
what has been called the ‘Lutyens Media’. The term refers to the
mainstream media and trades on the idea that the mainstream
media is compromised by its attachments to the Congress
party and the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty. The new private media
actors present themselves as representing the genuine voice
of the people. As a result, an explicitly nationalist media has
begun to emerge. In many cases this has meant throwing all
normal journalistic or editorial guidelines to the wind and
making some warped idea of ‘India First’ the guiding principle
of journalism. It also means running down other media that
is critical of the government as representing Lutyens Media,
or being ‘anti-national’. In this sense, of course, journalist and
writer Arun Shourie is entirely right to describe Times Now
and Republic TV as ‘North Korean Media’ because of the way
in which they adulate the ‘Dear Leader’ – that is, Narendra
Modi – and treat his critics as both enemies of the nation and
enemies of the people.

59

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

In addition to this, right-wing media channels such as the

aforementioned Times Now and Republic TV have been busy
constructing a strong anti-Muslim narrative. Any issue or news
item that connects even peripherally to the project of vilifying
Muslims will occupy prime-time space on these channels. The
format is predictable. An angry anchor will fulminate after a
very tendentious news clip has been played. As a result, any
difference between views and news is erased from the outset.
This will be followed by studio commentators who have been
selected, supposedly, to represent different points of view.
However, the Muslim ‘leaders’ who are invited on air tend to
convey deeply obscurantist defences against the allegations
levelled at them by the news channels. The entire purpose of
such exercises seems to be to vilify Muslims. In other cases,
these media channels peddle stories that are entirely false. For
example, in the case of Najeeb Ahmed – the student activist
who went missing from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016
under mysterious circumstances – a story was planted in the
Times of India that the police had recovered Najeeb’s browsing
history, and that this revealed he had been doing internet
searches for ISIS.1 The story was completely fabricated – in
fact, the police itself was forced to deny the story. Times of India
in response published a tiny retraction, but did not pull the story
from its website. What is more, the same story was revived in
late 2017 when one of the news channels claimed that Najeeb
had actually gone to Syria. Despite the fact that there is no
basis for such claims, these stories throw up big debates about
how Indian Muslims are being seduced by ISIS. This happens
night after night on these news channels, both through what
they cover and through what they do not cover. We recognise
similar phenomena in ‘fake news debates’ from a variety of
contexts. However, in India it is not openly far-right media

60

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

pumping out fake news, nor is it obscure Bulgarian websites

that are routed through servers and then seen and shared by
people on Facebook. It is the ‘mainstream’ channels and the big
papers that are implicated in either fabricating news, in talking
up certain issues to create controversies where none ought to
exist, or in spinning stories in a way that is beneficial to the
ruling party. This is cause for grave concern.
In other words, a major section of the media is complicit in
driving media discourse in ways that the government would
want media discourse to be driven. Issues or topics that are
embarrassing to the government are consciously kept out of
the spotlight – for example when children die in a hospital
in Gorakhpur in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, or when farmers
are shot during protests in Mandsaur in BJP-ruled Madhya
Pradesh. Media content is being fashioned in a certain way,
and this is alarming. In addition, it is a key part of the reason
as to why we are questioning what is happening to the Indian
media. To understand why this is happening, we need to take a
step back and ask ourselves how the media in India is actually
structured today. More than this, we need to inquire about how
certain decisions are made and where the pressure to make such
decisions is coming from.

Government and the Freedom of the Press

Many people are curious as to why India performs so poorly

on the World Press Freedom Index. One answer has to do
with very real physical threats to members of the press. For
example, within the span of just two months in 2017, journal-
ists Gauri Lankesh and Shantanu Bhowmick were both killed.
After Gauri Lankesh was assassinated, a BJP member of the
Assembly from Karnataka even went so far as to say that had

61

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

Lankesh not been critical of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

(RSS), she might have been alive today. It is clear, of course,
that whoever targeted her did so because they did not approve
of what she was writing, and because she was a very prominent
personality in the politics and society of Karnataka. The second
example, of Shantanu Bhowmick, is equally disturbing. Here
is a journalist who was covering a political rally by a group
towards whom the BJP is sympathetic – and members of that
group proceeded to kill him on the job. So, at one end of the
spectrum, there are physical threats and even assassinations.
But there are also many other forms of pressure that journalists
face in India today.
If we were to start by looking at official forms of pressure, it
is important to note the misuse by the government of inves-
tigating agencies of the state. The raid on the offices of the
news channel NDTV, which the Modi regime believes has
been critical of it, and on the homes of its promoters by the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the summer of 2017
is an example of this. The raid was based on extremely flimsy
evidence, namely a private complaint that had been filed years
ago against the promoters of the channel. Incredibly enough,
the CBI picked up the case and raided the promoters’ homes.
The point of this, of course, was to send a very clear signal, not
just to NDTV and its Chairperson Prannoy Roy, but to any
other media organisation that failed to report events exactly
the way the government wanted. NDTV has been a consistent
target, but it is not the only example of government harassment
of this kind. And whereas harassment has been seen under
other governments, journalists have complained that the
current regime has made it very clear that it will not shy away
from using investigating agencies, income tax authorities and
various other bodies as a way of putting pressure on the media.

62

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

In addition to this, there are the officially sanctioned trolls

operating on social media, and this is something entirely new.
Today, when an ‘anti-government’ news item is trending on
social media, the ruling party mobilises an army of people
– often affiliated to its IT cells – to attack and undermine jour-
nalists. Indeed, recently there was an exposé by Alt News, an
Indian website dedicated to exposing fake news, that showed
how Ravish Kumar, a leading news anchor and journalist for
NDTV, was targeted by a person directly linked to the BJP in
Gujarat – a person who is followed by the Prime Minister on
Twitter, and also followed closely by the BJP party president
Amit Shah.2 We also know, of course, that several people who
celebrated the murder of Gauri Lankesh on social media are
being followed by Narendra Modi on Twitter. Despite the Prime
Minister not being responsible for what these people say and
do online, it is nevertheless extraordinary that a head of state in
a democratic country would follow such Twitter handles. It also
sends a signal that the trolling of journalists and media person-
alities is sanctioned from the very top of the political pyramid.
In addition, criminal defamation is used to lean on journalists
and muzzle the media. Police agencies across the country also
misuse the IT Act to crack down on people who voice political
dissent on social media – for example, when two women in
Mumbai were arrested for posting on Facebook that people in
Mumbai were being forced to mourn Bal Thackeray’s death.
For now, the media has been spared such harassment, but there
is little doubt that the law could easily be used to target digital
media platforms in the future.
Finally, advertising is being used by the government as a way
of penalising media outlets. For example, the Kashmir Times
has been denied official advertising for the past ten to fifteen
years due to the fact that they report human rights violations in

63

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

the region.3 These kinds of punitive measures are a major blow

to newspapers that subsist on advertising by the government.
Whereas it might not affect national newspapers like the Times
of India or The Hindu, starving state-level newspapers of public
advertising is a way of making them financially unviable.

Business Models and Self-censorship

If we move away from official forms of pressure, there is the

increasing use of strategic lawsuits against the media. At The
Wire, which I co-founded, we experienced this when we ran
a story on the business ventures of how Jay Shah – the son
of BJP President Amit Shah. Jay Shah immediately took us
to court, alleging criminal defamation. The Supreme Court is
now considering our petition to quash these charges, but we
know that these kinds of lawsuits can have a deeply negative
impact on the media. Consider, for example, how Paranjoy
Guha Thakurta, editor of the prominent magazine Economic
and Political Weekly, was forced to step down from his position
after the Adani business house, a major corporate entity in
India, threatened to implement court proceedings for an exposé
implicating the corporation in tax evasion.4
However, when we are discussing the kind of pressure exerted
by private persons and companies, it is important to recognise
that this pressure is not merely external – it is essentially
generated from within the media organisations themselves.
Understanding this is key to analysing the current position
and future trajectory of the Indian media. The recent sacking
of the editor of the Hindustan Times, Bobby Ghosh, is a case
in point. Ghosh was initially brought to India in 2016 with a
lot of fanfare in order to head the Hindustan Times, but was
abruptly asked to go by the owner of the newspaper, Shobhana

64

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

Bhartiya. As The Wire later revealed, the decision to ask him

to leave came shortly after a meeting Bhartiya had with the
Prime Minister,5 and we know from our sources that Hindustan
Times’ coverage of hate crimes and hate speech in India, as well
as Ghosh’s US citizenship, were brought up as issues in this
meeting. Shobhana Bhartiya towed the line and the newspaper
got rid of him. Furthermore, several stories have been pulled by
the Times of India recently.6 For example, a story from Rajasthan
that showed the Prime Minister’s insurance scheme for farmers
in a bad light was taken down from the newspaper’s website.
What is it that makes big media houses – the Times of India is
the largest circulating English paper in the world! – so vulner-
able that they choose to act in these ways? And why are large
media houses like Dainik Jagran, which ran an illegal opinion
poll in favour of the BJP during the state elections in Uttar
Pradesh, so keen on currying favour with the government?7
In my view, the answers to these questions can be found in
the business model that Indian media houses are currently
pursuing. In a nutshell, it is a model based on the premise of
not wanting to charge readers or viewers for the news that they
consume. It therefore becomes necessary to generate revenue in
other ways – first and foremost through advertising. Advertis-
ing has, in fact, escalated enormously as a source of revenue for
newspapers: in the 1950s, it made up some 50 to 55 per cent
of newspaper revenue; today it runs, for some newspapers, as
high as 95 per cent. This obviously has an impact on coverage
because it gives advertisers a disproportionate say in what news
stories are featured and how these stories are presented. This
trend will, of course, be greatly amplified as people increas-
ingly consume news through the internet and on their mobile
phones. Internet and mobile phone advertising simply does
not generate enough revenue to sustain the big media houses.

65

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

Newspapers and television channels therefore have to get

involved in businesses outside of the media in order to sustain
themselves. To pretend that this does not affect coverage is to
live in a fool’s paradise. This is even more so because, as soon as
Indian media companies develop secondary or tertiary business
interests, they become more vulnerable to government pressure.
For example, one of the reasons why the Times of India group is
vulnerable is the fact they have a large project in Uttar Pradesh
called Bennett University – a private university to be built on
land that has been given them by the Uttar Pradesh government.
The previous government gave the land, but several clearances
still have to be granted before the project can go ahead. There
is a concern, therefore, that the current Chief Minister of Uttar
Pradesh – Yogi Adityanath of the BJP – might use this to
put pressure on the company if he is displeased with it in any
way. The secondary and tertiary interests media houses have
developed leave them open to a form of pressure that govern-
ments can exert without being seen to be leaning directly on a
media house. The more exposed you are as a media company in
terms of other interests, the greater the likelihood that you are
going to face pressure, or at least be vulnerable to it.

Indian Media in Comparative Perspective

Let me now return more directly to the question that I started

with: why is there so much pressure on Indian media houses
today? I believe this question is best answered if we contrast
the Indian scenario with another context in which an author-
itarian populist has ascended to the very pinnacle of political
power – namely the US. I make this suggestion because all
of the phenomena I have discussed – private ownership,
dependence on advertising and so on – also exist in the US

66

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

to a greater or lesser degree. Even so, the US media has been

far more aggressive and independent in covering the Trump
administration than the Indian media has been in relation to
the Modi regime. I want to offer three suggestions as to why
this is so.
First, if one looks at Trump versus Modi in terms of the wider
national political economy, the US corporate sector is very much
divided in its attitude to the current president. If there is indeed
any consensual position in the corporate sector, it is that Trump
is bad news. Indeed, even if that is not the consensual position,
a major section of US industry has nevertheless reacted very
negatively to the Trump administration and its policies. As I
see it, this creates space – a kind of comfort zone, if you will –
for big media to echo those concerns. However, in India, there
was near consensus among all the big corporations that Modi
was good news for the Indian economy. There was a clear and
decisive shift from the Congress to the BJP among big Indian
corporations between 2012 and 2014. This was in no small part
motivated by corporate discontent with progressive rights-based
legislation to protect land rights and secure employment in the
Indian countryside by the Congress-led United Progressive
Alliance, which held power in India from 2004 to 2014. As a
result, by 2014 more or less every single major media group was
complicit in the BJP’s campaign – in fact, Modi’s masterstroke
was to successfully use the media to erase the idea that he was
merely twiddling his thumbs while genocide was happening
in his state in 2002. After all, one can hardly think of a worse
example of maladministration than a Chief Minister who –
in the most charitable of interpretations – sits complacently
while more than a thousand people are killed on his watch. But
through the media this horrendous example of bad administra-

67

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

tion was swept under the rug and replaced by the eulogies of ‘the
Gujarat model’. The entire media was complicit in this because
of the underlying consensus among Indian big business that
the United Progressive Alliance had to go. Massive corporate
support made it possible for the BJP to conduct an unprec-
edented campaign, which conservatively cost some US$100
million.8 This backing enabled Modi to travel some 300,000
kilometres between September 2013 and May 2014, holding a
daily average of four to five meetings during March and April
2014. Evidently, it also enabled the BJP’s extensive advertising
campaign. Hence, although there might be irritation in some
sectors about certain policy decisions – demonetisation, for
example – Indian capital (at least of 2017) was still sold on the
idea that Modi is the best solution for the Indian economy. This
acts as a dampener for the plurality of views in the Indian media
and certainly for the appetite of media companies to run certain
kinds of stories and have certain kinds of debate.
Second, state institutions in the US have evolved with a fair
degree of autonomy and integrity over 200 years. This means
that today it is much more difficult for the Trump administra-
tion to simply push a certain agenda or policy, without facing
some degree of institutional resistance. There are lots of areas
where he is facing pushback – for example, the prohibition on
people entering the US from certain Muslim-majority coun-
tries. In fact, the first point of pushback to this policy came
from within the State Department itself. The fact that they were
overruled is another matter altogether. In India, by contrast, the
Ministry of External Affairs uploaded an e-book to its website
celebrating the RSS ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya. This was
unprecedented: an unsigned book which states that that BJP is
the only alternative for India, and in which India is equated with

68

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

Hindu-ness. When The Wire contacted retired Indian Foreign

Service officers to comment on this, very few were willing to
speak out. There is a lack of institutional autonomy which facil-
itates the authoritarianism of the Modi regime, and affects the
functioning of Indian investigative agencies. It is very unlikely,
for example, that the CBI would refuse to go after NDTV or
other independent-minded media houses if they are instructed
to do so by the powers-that-be in Delhi. In other words, in
India it is hardly surprising that there has not been the kind
of pushback against government initiatives as seen against the
Muslim travel ban in the US – and if there is an attempt at
this, the response often comes in the form of punitive actions.
For example, when Justice Shakhdar of the Delhi High Court
declared that the government’s attempt to stop Greenpeace
activist Priya Pillai from going to Britain was illegal, he was
quickly transferred to another posting. The fact that the execu-
tive is able to manipulate state institutions is another factor that
makes it more likely the media will choose to go along with the
programme of the ruling party rather than challenge it.
Finally – and being an Indian journalist, it does not make
me happy to say this – it is my belief that the level of insti-
tutional integrity within media organisations is very low. The
sense of professionalism; the degree to which people take pride
in journalism as a craft; the extent to which journalists are
actually willing to stand up to dubious instructions from an
owner or an editor – all of these are in decline. For example,
I recall a scenario a few years ago in which a number of jour-
nalists were invited to celebrate Diwali with Narendra Modi.
Modi is a politician who does his best to avoid taking questions
from the media. Certainly, he will not put himself in a position
where a journalist will have the chance to throw an unscripted

69

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Indian Democracy

question at him. As can be seen from his regular Mann ki Baat

TV broadcasts, Modi addresses the people and the nation in
a monological and not dialogical mode. However, instead of
using the Diwali celebration as an opportunity to at least try
and pepper him with questions, the journalists spent their time
taking selfies with Modi.
In addition, one is hard pressed to find a full-fledged editor
in any Indian media organisation today – and by full-fledged
editor I mean somebody who is responsible for and takes pride
in making principled decisions about what gets covered, how it
will get covered, and what kind of resources will be devoted to
covering it. In my opinion, these differences in institutional and
professional integrity also separate US journalism from con-
temporary Indian journalism.

Conclusion

In combination, the three factors I have outlined above illustrate

the particularities of the Indian scenario. They also suggest that
despite comparable political developments in India and the US
and the concomitant rise of authoritarian populist leaders, we
are likely to see much less of a challenge put up by the Indian
media. In fact, this analysis is also what prompted the creation
of The Wire as an online portal. There were no significant entry
barriers, meaning we could be up and running with virtually
no investment, and as such it becomes much more difficult for
anybody to clamp down on the coverage that such a portal can
offer. Therefore, it is possible that digital and social media are
the avenues through which an independent and critical Indian
media will find an amplified voice in the coming months and
years. As of now, however, given the underlying configuration
of the political economy and perhaps especially the nature of

70

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The State and/of the Media in Modi’s India

the business model, the outlook is not at all optimistic as far as

the big media outlets are concerned.

Further Reading

Chaturvedi, Swati (2016): I am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of

the BJP’s Digital Army, Delhi: Juggernaut Publications.
Liang, Lawrence (2015): ‘Censorship and the Politics of
Micro-Fascism’, Television and New Media 16/4: 388–93.
Rajagopal, Arvind (ed.) (2009): The Indian Public Sphere:
Readings in Media History, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rajagopal, Arvind (2016): ‘Indian Media in Global Context’,
History Compass 14/4: 140–51.
Saeed, Saima (2016): Screening the Public Sphere: Media and
Democracy in India, London: Routledge.

71

This content downloaded from

3.6.55.203 on Sun, 24 May 2020 14:19:24 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms