LIVE TV
Odisha
By Sandeep Sahu
Suddenly, the worst fears about the Modi government are threatening to come true. The one-day ban on NDTV India, the Hindi channel from the NDTV stable, on November 9 imposed by the NDA government on the ground that it had revealed ‘strategically sensitive’ details during its coverage of the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base in January this year should worry all freedom loving people in the country. Though periodic attempts have been made by all governments, including the UPA government that preceded it, to arm-twist individual media houses for unflattering coverage, never since the dreadful days of the Emergency has freedom of expression, that cornerstone of democracy, looked in greater peril.
It is a pity that a large section of the educated mass (the uneducated or the semi-educated, in any case, hardly have the time for such things) is actually backing the Union government on this ill-advised move calling it ‘just desserts’ for the channel that has consistently taken a critical stand on the government. One doesn’t have to be a fan of NDTV to oppose this ban. It should be opposed by everyone in the media – and the people at large – because of what it portends. Those rejoicing at NDTV’s discomfiture now don’t realize that it could be their turn next. If they don’t stand up for NDTV today, they may well find that there is no one standing up for them when their turn comes, as it inevitably must. What we need is the kind of media solidarity that forced a determined Rajiv Gandhi, backed by a steamrolling majority of 410 MPs in the Lok Sabha, to back off from his move to push through a ‘Defamation Bill’ in the wake of the Bofors revelations in the second half of the 1980s.
Those backing the government on the issue know not that an attempt to ‘punish’ an inconvenient media house is the first step towards muzzling of the media as a whole. And from muzzling the press to muzzling public opinion at large is but a small step. An ‘inconvenient’ media, after all, is the bedrock of democracy. As Rajkamal Jha, The Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express put it so eloquently during his thanksgiving speech at the Ramnath Goenka Awards ceremony on Wednesday evening, criticism of the government is a ‘badge of honour’ that the media should wear proudly.
Though it is irrelevant in the larger context of freedom of expression, let us examine the merits of the case against NDTV India. It is a supreme irony that a government that facilitated the visit of a team of Pakistani security personnel (that almost certainly included a few ISI men) to the Pathankot airbase has charged the channel with revealing ‘sensitive’ information about the ammunition stockpile at the base? As senior journalist TS Sudhir argues so forcefully in an article in Firstpost today; “Does the ministry want us to believe that the terrorists did not do their basic homework before choosing such a critical target? Instead, they were tuned into NDTV India to know from its reporter what is inside an airbase and where is what? Does it mean that Pakistan undertook this high-risk operation banking entirely on an Indian channel to tell where the MIGs are parked? It is preposterous that this kind of argument is even finding takers.”
Whether in banning NDTV India or in detaining Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and others who went to meet family members of Ram Kishen Grewal , the Army veteran who committed suicide, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Wednesday and – worse still – trying to justify it, the NDA government is displaying the same authoritarian tendencies that led Indira Gandhi to impose Emergency in June, 1975. This has to be opposed tooth and nail by everyone who has a stake in preserving our hard-earned democracy because we cannot afford a second Emergency, declared or undeclared.
