INDIA’S POLITICAL ECONOMY AND

DEVELOPMENT
THE ROLE OF CENTRAL GOVERNEMNT IN
REGUALTING MEDIA: A CONTEMPORARY PICTURE

INTERNAL ASSESSMENT

Submitted By:
Renuka Mishra
III Year, Div: D [18010125340]
 INDIA’S POLITICAL ECONOMY AND DEVELOPMENT

“Freedom of press is a precious privilege which no country can forego”

-Mahatma Gandhi

THE ROLE OF MEDIA AND THE INDIAN CONSTITUION

Media plays a pivotal role in a democracy. It acts as a watchdog of the ruling government by
simultaneously providing a means for the public at large to be informed of the various
developments taking place in the society. The importance of media can be deduced from the
very fact that it is deemed as the fourth pillar of democracy. The sector has constantly been
growing and expanding its reach with currently more than 17,000 newspapers, 100,000
magazines and over 180 news channels along with various news websites. The same has had
giant strides with the coming of social media making people have easier and enhanced access
to events around the globe. India being the world’s largest democracy has seen the role of the
media in covering various regional, national and international events. It has facilitated the
dissemination of information to every nook and corner of the nation by simultaneously
drawing attention of the masses to segments of the society who may not be able to adequately
represent their interests.

In India, the freedom of press has been recognized and provided the stature of the
Fundamental Right under the Article 19 of the Indian Constitution through the combined
reading of the freedom of speech and expression along with the freedom of practising trade
and profession. The right however is not absolute but can be exercised subject to certain
reasonable restrictions as provided under Article 19(2). These restrictions have been placed to
ensure that the freedom of press is not exercised in a manner detrimental to the interest of the
fellow citizens or in a manner which creates an impediment to the sovereignty and integrity
of the nation. These restrictions however are not clearly defined thus making it subjective to
interpretation and leaving room for ambiguity. The wide reach of media across all parts of the
nation, makes it a pivotal instrument in making and manipulating the perception of all the
segments of the society. Thus, tweaking the role of the media from an unbiased reporter to
that of a manipulator and twister of information through the hands of those exercising power.

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The ambit of the present article is restricted to news Media including in its ambit newspapers,
news channels and radios. The author attempts to elucidate with examples how the
functioning of the media is influenced by the ruling party and the interplay between the two.

REGULATION OF THE FUNCTIONING OF MEDIA

Owing to the large impact of the media on the society, it has historically been used by the
influential segments of the society to portray information in a manner beneficial for them.
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book, Manufacturing Consent, 1988 described
in detail how the media has been used in furtherance of the propaganda model by the
government and the large cooperates. The inequality of wealth and power in the society
allows room for the information to be “filtered” in a manner to be able to marginalize dissent
along with facilitating the government along with the dominant elites to put across the
information in a manner convenient for them. This phenomenon leads to manipulation of
masses as they are made to think or perceive things or events in a manner which furthers the
goals of the dominant elites and might not necessarily be beneficial for the masses
themselves. The process is so gradual that the media believes that they are adhering to the
ethical standards of conduct of their profession and are “objectively” portraying the news.
The propaganda model holds goods even today where we see the media toeing the lines of the
ruling government.

LEGAL REGIME GOVERNING THE MEDIA

The Indian Press though largely self-regulated but is governed by a combination of Laws
which provide for regulations pertaining to the infrastructure, operational aspects and content
production. The statutory body regulating the media, The Press Council of India was
established in the year 1978 by the Press Council of India Act with an objective of
maintaining quality standards for the news agencies of India. The News Broadcasting
Standards Authority is a self-regulatory body which issues guidelines to be followed by the
news agencies. However, the standards being more in the nature of guidelines are not strictly
enforceable. The advent of Social Media has played a crucial role in this sector, however the

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same remains unregulated mostly apart from the general laws like the IT Act and the IPC.
The media regulations do not govern the news in the domain of social media.

The existing regulatory mechanism provides excessive power to the Central Government to
exercise control over the media. The appointments and removals of the regulatory authorities
are largely done by the Central Government giving them incessant power to control their day
to day function, rule making and decision making. The Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting (hereinafter referred to as “MIB”) formulates policies and regulations which
are to be adhered by the news media. The permits of newspapers, television news agencies
and radios are also provided by the MIB itself. MIB is also enshrined with the role of
ensuring compliance with the legal regime along with the power to monitor content
broadcasted on news channels and radio.

IMPACT OF THE CENTRALIZED LEGAL REGIME

These vast scales powers from permission, regulation to enforcement, lies with the MIB
which is an organ of the Central Government provides them an overarching control over the
media of the entire nation. This centralised power without adequate checks or redressal
mechanism leaves room for vast amount of arbitrary decision making and corrupt practices
being prevalent in this sector. The ruling party at the centre have been frequently involved in
controlling the media and the content produced by it, to cater to the end goals and objectives
of the ruling party and not necessarily the interest and welfare of the Nation. This power has
also been used to divert attention from pertinent issues, discredit political oppositions and
manipulation of the masses.

Indira Gandhi’s declaration of emergency due to her fear of the incessant criticism followed
with the acquiring of full control over the press depicts how the ruling parties at the Centre
have always exercised full control over the nation’s press and have time and again invoked
their power in order to further their greed of power. During this period, Indira Gandhi had
banned the reporting of national and international news. It also brought along expulsion of
foreign reporters and the cancellation of license of India reporters especially from the capital
region. The period saw widespread oppression of dissenting voices and opinion which
clearly goes against the notion of a democratic government. This was further followed by
most newspapers providing a flattering image of the Gandhi family which was rewarded by
the government through the granting of advertisements to those agencies.

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A significant factor that indirectly provides the Central Government the control over the news
media is through the allocation of government advertising. These advertisements are a major
source of revenue to the news agencies as the actual cost incurred by these agencies is much
more than what the consumers actually pay, thus the advertisements cater to bridge the gap
and provide revenue to the agencies. The excessive political involvement in Media is also
evident from the vast scale advertisements taken up by the ruling party who is the biggest
advertisers in the past years, second only to Netflix. The government advertisements form a
major source of revenue of these agencies (see figure below for specific data), thus making
them inevitably forced to toe the lines of the ruling party at the Centre to be able to granted
these advertisements and thereby the mechanism of sustenance.

As seen during the Indira Gandhi regime, these government advertisements are used as a
means by the ruling party to “reward or punish” the news agencies. The trend continues even
in the modern India. The Narendra Modi regime also saw the freezing of all advertisement
revenues towards the publishers of Times of India, The Hindu and the Telegraph, three of the
significant newspapers. This has come after these three published articles which were not
favourable to the government. The publishing houses have acknowledged that the
advertisement revenue allocated to them reduce significantly on not publishing articles which
are in line with the government’s ideology and goals.

The media has seen significant decrease in constructive criticism along with any such attempt
being met with excessive repercussions. The newspapers and media channels also failed to

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hold the government accountable due to being overtly controlled by them. The Modi
government failed to keep even a single press conference in its entire tenure. The only public
appearances of the Prime Minister involve his monologues on various platforms, through
various mediums with no one being in a position to question him. This has led to loss of
credibility of Media sources and loss of trust of the masses. The government went to the
extent of manipulating the calculation of the country’s growth data as was alleged by various
economists and the same was also the central point of concern of a letter written by over 100
economists of being politically motivated, but the same was not discussed by the media.

The sorriest state of affairs prevails in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which has over the
past years has seen non-availability of access to Internet. The political changes which have
recently occurred from the Constitutional amendment brought to the Article 35 A and the long
history of ongoing violence in the State has not been adequately reported. The entire nation
stands cut-off from the realities that have been prevailing in the state especially during and
after the amendment. This in a way also violates the freedom of speech and expression of the
residents of the State has they have never been provided with the opportunity to raise their
voices either in support or against the brought amendments which significantly impacts their
lives. This is a clear violation of the long drawn democratic principles of the country. The
media of the State ahs always been subjugated through use of economic sanctions or even at
times explicit bans.

The safety of journalists in India is also in an alarming state as they have frequently subjected
to harassments and even threats. The report by the Press Council of India, reported the
murder of 80 journalists during the time period of 1990-2015. The murder of Gauri Lankesh
who was a highly efficient journalist also raises concerns regarding the safety of the freedom
of press. The reporting done by various news papers and news channels is subjected to the
provisions of the Indian Penal Code. The provision of defamation, sedition, hate speech has
frequently been used to harass news agencies to refrain them from publishing anything
against the dominant political parties and the elites including various corporates. This has
come along with “anti-national” being equated to anti-government which clearly was the
intention of the Constitutional framers.

The Essar group sued the Caravan in the year 2015, for a defamation suit worth USD 40
million for an article published in the Caravan. Instances like this pose as deterrents to
smaller media houses who refrain from getting involved in long drawn legal disputes. A

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similar approach has also been taken by numerous politicians filing incessant defamation
suits in event of the publication or broadcast of any news going contrary to them. These suits
create impediments in the path of free and fair journalism. The big corporates which are
allied to the ruling party also enjoy certain privileges in news broadcasting. A similar
instance can be seen in the shushing up of the Reliance pricing issue which was not even
discussed in the media despite of being a very crucial event.

Another outcome of this governmental control over the media is the selective outrage by the
news agencies. The media agencies are made to forego and sometimes cover up the acts of
the ruling government and hype up the wrongs of the opposition and demean them. This has
been depicted in the non-reporting of monetary scandals, and the massive Rath yatras.
Another irony on behalf of media can be seen wherein they fail to question one of the oldest
national party on their regime but hound a newly made political party for their contribution
even in a period of a month. Media houses have resorted to endlessly discuss or debate on
topics like Bollywood and other trivial issues in order to not attract attention to the ones
which are actually relevant.

The past few months have seen how the news channels were involved in endless debates on
the suicide of an actor and on the contrary no attention was given to the deaths of numerous
migrants or the effectiveness of the centre’s policy for the welfare of the migrants. None of
the news channels found it worthy enough to discuss the causes of the falling GDP or plans
of the government to make good the loss. The fact that the Central Government is unable to
pay back the State GST dues could not make to prime-time debates of any news channels
who were busy discussing “leaked WhatsApp chats” of celebrities.

The exercise of control over the media has been subjected to a vast amount of misuse.
Numerous licenses have been cancelled without justifiable reasons. As has been recorded by
the NewYork Times, a news channel was shut down by the MIB just because they had aired
the atrocities done by the close allies of the ruling government. The government had
explicitly told news agencies to spread “inspiring and positive stories of the government’s
efforts” during the pandemic-imposed lockdown.

The news channel NDTV which incessantly reported the Godhara Riots have now been
accused of money laundering and are being made to suffer severe hardships. It has further
been noted by the Bloomberg, that the BJP’s IT cell has been involved in sending incessant
threats to various female journalists. The Right to Information Act, 2005 has been recognized

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as a crucial part of the freedom of speech and expression. It provides citizens with access to
information from various governmental authorities. The Act initially provided for an
independent body appointed by the Election Commission to preside over the authorities. The
Act has now been amended to make the appoints and salary of the authorities to be under the
Central Government and not the Election Commission. This goes contrary to the purpose of
enactment of the RTI Act as the same is no longer independent and thus its powers are
subjugated to the Central Government. The proposed rules by the central government which
prohibit government officials form criticising the Government on social media platforms
further threatens the freedom of speech and expression and thereby the democratic regime of
our Nation.

The media also cannot be deemed to be very righteous and free form political affiliations as
majority of the news agencies have explicit or implied political affiliations which is evident
in their journalism as well. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information
Technology, in its 47th report cited instances of news agencies publishing articles in return of
monetary favours. A similar concern has been raised by the Securities and Exchange Board
of India as the paid advertisements and “private treaties” influence the market value of
shares. The stark shift in the role of media from its actual role has acted as a mockery on the
democratic values of the nation. This has also seen a downfall in the India’s ranking in the
World’s press freedom index from 80th out of 139 position to 140th out of 180 which was
even below the ranks secured by Afghanistan, Myanmar and South Sudan.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The aforementioned analysis depicts the stark realities of freedom of media and thereby
freedom of speech and expression that is prevalent in the Nation. Though, the same has been
provided with the status of a Fundamental Right, the realities fail to conform to the notion of
the freedom as envisioned by the Constitutional framers. The excessive greed for power and
money has led to the media houses being rendered as a mere skeleton structure working to
propagate the propaganda of the ruling government. Any attempt to retaliate against the

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misuse of power is only met by severe repercussions by those in power. Additionally, the
profit-making objectives of media has added to the already deteriorating state of the sector.
The importance of a free and fair media cannot be spoken of enough and thus, the present
situation ardently requires measures to be taken in order to ensure that the press functions
freely and effectively caters its objectives.

Certain humble suggestions of the author are as follows:

 The regulation of Media should not be excessively centralized. The independence of

the media being a crucial factor in its functioning requires an independent regulatory
authority who does not have any political affiliations or personal motives to satisfy.
The independent body should be motivated to ensure independent and effective
functioning of the media.
 Media bodies should not be subjected to excessive control and should rather be
regulated to ensure that there are not digressing from their objectives. Excessive
control of any regulatory authority can hamper the functioning of the media. Thus,
they should be regulated in a manner that helps them to carry on their objectives
without any impediments.
 The current trend of political affiliations of media channels should be done away
with. In a democracy, media functions as watchdogs of the ruling government and this
role can be hampered due to the political affiliations which the nation cannot afford.
 Journalists should be provided with certain amount of security so that they cannot be
subjected to threats. This will facilitate the free functioning of the press.
 The regulatory regime governing the media should be clearly laid down and defined
without leaving any scope of misuse of power by the authorities. Any digression from
the media ethics should be strictly penalized.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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