Modi’s three-year balance sheet

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes his third year in office on Friday, going by official statistics, the economy is doing well and the stock market is at an all-time high.

Preparations to publicise the government’s achievements began last month with Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu writing to each ministerial colleagues to furnish data about five major achievements of his or her department to be included in a booklet to be published this week.

Earlier Naidu had asked ministers and top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders to communicate to the people the positive changes brought about by the Modi government. Be ready with facts and figures to propagate the government’s achievements in a big way, he told them.

Three party men with experience in mainstream journalism were assigned specific tasks. Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar was asked to prepare a note on the outcome of Modi’s foreign tours. Swapan Dasgupta and Chandan Mitra, both nominated members of the Rajya Sabha, were urged to collect material to counter criticism of the government on such grounds as poor record in employment generation and threats to freedom of expression.

Typical of the claims resulting from the planned publicity drive is Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitaraman’s assertion that the government took about 7,000 measures – big, small, medium and nano – to promote ease of doing business. She said the measures included fixing timeline for clearance of applications, de-licensing manufacture of many defence products and introducing e-biz project.

The changing global scenario had made India an attractive destination for foreign investors even before Modi came on the scene. He went all out to create an investor-friendly atmosphere and can claim credit for the rise of foreign direct investment to a record level. But India still hovers around the 130th place among 190 countries in the World Bank’s 2017 Ease of Doing Business report.

The other issues proposed to he highlighted include control of inflation, reduction in corruption and initiatives in areas such as road building, rural electrification and cooking gas distribution which, the government believes, have helped improve the quality of life of people. But critics have raised questions about some of the claims.

In an open letter to Modi, Sadhavi Khosla, a social activist, who identified herself as one among the 31 per cent who had voted for the BJP believing in his promise of achhe din (good days), pointed out that food inflation remains unchecked.

Experts have voiced doubts about the methods employed by the government to project an optimistic picture of the economy. Some of them have accused it of fudging figures and tinkering with the methodology of calculating the gross domestic product and the inflation rate.

Six months after Modi demonetised high-value currency notes, the government and the central bank are unable or unwilling to state clearly the motives behind the step and the actual achievements. Claims that demonetisation put an end to cross-border terrorism and unrest in Kashmir valley stand exposed as hogwash.

Detractors have dug out Modi’s old tweets and video clips of his campaign speeches to prove he has not lived up to his promises. But there is nothing to indicate that his personal popularity has been dented. At the moment no opposition party, including the Congress, has a leader who can be an effective foil to him.

But the Hindutva brigade on whose shoulders Modi rode to victory is turning out to be a liability. With hard-core Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) leaders in power in states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the rank and file felt emboldened to take the law into their hands and let loose a reign of terror on minorities and Dalits raising specious issues. At least 15 persons have been lynched in the name of cow protection or meat eating.

There are signs of a backlash, which Modi cannot afford to ignore. Dalits from different states converged on Delhi last week to protest against the atrocities on the members of the community at Saharanpur in UP. There are also threats of mass conversion to Islam.

A section of Modi’s supporters who style themselves as the ‘liberal right’ are peeved that he is unable to get the BJP governments in the states to rein in the fringe elements. If he is not able to retain the loyalty of this section, he may lose his image as a Man of Development and stand exposed as the chief of rustic elements who want to drag the country back to the feudal past. 

Bid to tame free media

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Modi government last week ordered a Hindi news channel to cease transmission for 24 hours this week for contravening the year-old broadcast guidelines on live coverage of terror attacks. 

The unprecedented action has the making of a surgical strike calculated to tame sections of the media which have been reluctant to go the whole hog with the government and its Hindutva supporters who constantly invoke national sentiments for partisan purposes. 

The channel which has been handed down the punishment is NDTV India, a Hindi channel belonging to the oldest and arguably the most professional of the private national networks. The cause of action, ostensibly, is a report it telecast during the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air force base in January.

According to the government, an inter-ministerial committee found that in a near-live telecast on January 4 NDTV India “revealed strategically sensitive details.” Its report had said, “Two terrorists are still alive and they are next to an ammunition depot, And the jawans who are under fire are concerned that if the militants make it to the ammunition depot it will be even harder to neutralise them.”

This information was given to the media earlier by security officials themselves, and other channels and newspapers too had reported it. However, NDTV India was singled out for punitive action.

The inter-ministerial committee rejected the channel’s contention that other media too had carried similar reports on the specious ground that it had mentioned the exact location of the terrorists with regard to the ammunition depot.

As Information Minister, the task of defending the action against the channel fell on M Venkaiah Naidu, who has an infinite capacity to confuse issues in the guise of clarifying them.

Within 24 hours of the government order against the channel, the Editors Guild of India condemned the action, describing it as reminiscent of the Emergency of 1975. Naidu dubbed it a belated response and an afterthought.

He said that during 2005-2014 the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had directed various channels on 21 different occasions to suspend telecasts for periods ranging from one day to two months. The comparison was odious for they were penalised not for airing any news reports but for showing obscene or violent movies.

There could be no UPA precedent for the Modi government’s action since the rule relating to live telecast of anti-terrorist operations did not exist in its time. It was brought in by the present regime last year through an amendment to the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995.

The entire opposition and the entire media barring the government’s partisan supporters raised their voice against the action against NDTV India. That, however, didn’t prevent Venkaiah Naidu from claiming that the people were broadly with the government on this issue.

India is perhaps the only country which does not have a law to regulate the working of the electronic media. After it came to light that the live telecasts of the 2008 Mumbai attack had provided the terrorists’ handlers in Pakistan with valuable inputs on real time basis, there was general agreement in the country on the need for a law to curb irresponsible competition-driven coverage. At that stage, two groups of channel owners set up separate bodies of their own to look into complaints against their coverage. This was done to forestall the creation of a regulatory mechanism by the government. 

The self-regulation experiments have been a failure. The arbitrary and ham-handed manner in which the government has acted against NDTV India reveals the dangers inherent in vesting the regulatory power in the government. 

The action against NDTV India has come more than 10 months after the indicted report. Viewed in the context of calls by ministers to journalists to put national interest above freedom of expression, it can be seen as a not-so-subtle attempt to send a message to all media.

The attempt to juxtapose national interest with freedom of expression is mischievous as there is actually no conflict between them. The government’s discomfort arises from the conflict between its own political interest and exercise of freedom by the citizens and the media.

On Saturday, in a bid to ward off criticism that NDTV India has been singled out for punishment, the government announced that a regional channel of Assam has also been asked to go off the air for 24 hours --for revealing the name of a minor who had been tortured.

On Monday, following a protest meeting by journalists in New Delhi and the filing of a petition by NDTV in the Supreme Court challenging the order, the government put it on hold pending a review of the decision.

A mechanism is needed to regulate the working of channels. It is not a task that can be left to politicians and bureaucrats. A credible statutory mechanism with due representation for media professionals is needed.  -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 8, 2016.