Modi’s Godi – By Anita Joshua
A few years after Narendra Modi ascended to power, some Congress leaders from the Emergency era would privately quip that Indira Gandhi was naive to have invoked Article 352 of the Constitution in 1975; Modi had shown how dictatorial stranglehold could be achieved without declaring an Emergency.
This was particularly true of the media which – barring a few exceptions – fell in line rather early in the day. Worse, influential sections of the media became force multipliers of the State and the ruling party’s ecosystem, taking the lead in hyper-nationalist propaganda, diverting attention from real issues, and launching witch-hunts of whoever the government wanted put in the doghouse.
It’s probably a function of how dutifully it turns to the Establishment’s diktat that into the eighth year of Modi’s reign, much of the media continues to question the Opposition far more stringently than the government….
