In a democracy, the primary accountability of respecting institutions, citizens’ liberty and constitutional guarantees lies with the ruling party. But, would it have been a fraction as easy as it is now, if the Congress had just 100 seats in the Lok Sabha? Or the UPA about 130-150?Īlso Read: Fallacy of too much democracy: No economic freedoms can thrive without political freedoms
I am now walking into that minefield with this question: We can keep complaining about the undermining of institutions, misuse of the ‘agencies’, sectarian and socially discriminatory laws, use of provisions like sedition as if it was a parking ticket, rail-roading of legislations through Parliament, even a GoM activity like this one on the media. Even while it has continued to decline, sleep-walk, and lose the plot week after week. Hello, is this the main responsibility of a free press, attacking not the government but the opposition?įor months now, I have been so fearful of drawing this, the underdog’s fire, that I haven’t written much critical of, or even vaguely negative about, the Congress party or Rahul Gandhi. Damned if you call out the government, but also cursed if you question the opposition. But, today, a commentator faces double trouble. Plus, there is always the option of taking a bleach-bath and painting yourselves in “friendlier” colours. Which, you might again say, is a part of our lives. Just that, lately, these hazard levels have risen several notches higher.
It is always hazardous questioning a government, irrespective of the party in power. So, thank you very much, count your blessings. If you were an incorrigible optimist like me, you’d even say, wonderful, we journalists are so important, half the Cabinet is obsessing over us during a pandemic and a near-war. Whether that would imply visits by the CBI, ED or any other such agency, you don’t expect any document to say so. If you read the ‘leaked’ document that is supposedly the report produced by the GoM here, it would actually hold out no particular threats, except probably the prospect of being colour-coded, and with the “wrong” colours. This is exactly when the Galwan clash (15 June) had created a war-like situation with China, tens of thousands of migrants were walking back home, and India’s coronavirus graph was going up, like a hockey stick. Media has obviously risen so high in the government’s threat perceptions that, even in the second half of June, a group of nine important ministers (GoM) was holding a flurry of meetings on how to counter this terrible menace. Much debate this week has been over whether journalists can risk saying something the Modi government doesn’t like.
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