Modi’s curbs on press freedom undermining India’s democracy: NYT
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Islamabad: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s actions to suppress press freedom are undermining India’s status as “the world’s largest democracy”, resulting in “a shrill Hindu nationalism in news reports that echoes the government line,” according to an influential American newspaper.
“When populist leaders invoke emergency laws to block dissent, democracy is in peril,” The New York Times Editorial Board said in its opinion piece yesterday. Noting that the misuse of their powers to intimidate, censor, silence or punish independent news media is an alarming hallmark of populist and authoritarian leaders, the newspaper’s editorial board said that Prime Minister Modi has fallen “squarely into this camp”.
“Since Mr Modi took office in 2014, journalists have increasingly risked their careers, and their lives, to report what the government doesn’t want them to,” the Times said.
India ranks 11th in the “global impunity index” of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a tally of reporters whose deaths remain unsolved, and in the annual press freedom index published by the organisation Reporters Without Borders, India fell to 150 in 2022, its lowest-ever rank out of 180 countries, it was pointed out. The United States is 42; Russia is just below India at 155.
“As a result, self-censorship has spread, along with a shrill Hindu nationalism in news reports that echoes the government line,” the Times added. The newspaper’s editorial board said, “The latest manifestation of the government intolerance for critical reporting was its invocation of emergency laws last month to block a BBC documentary titled ‘The Modi Question’. The documentary revived damning questions about Mr Modi’s role, when he led the government of the Indian state of Gujarat, in a horrific episode of violence in 2002, in which more than 1,000 people — most of them Muslims — were slaughtered over several weeks.”
Published in The Daily National Courier, February, 15 2023
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