Narendra Modi’s BJP has partly accomplished this through a charm offensive aimed at the wealthy families that own most media houses in the country. Where leveraging commercial connections to influence editorial policy has not been successful, the party’s Hindu nationalist keyboard warriors have subjected journalists to online abuse and vitriol, and journalists have been subject to widespread judicial and police harassment. Journalists reporting on issues where the BJP government has actively sought to cover up its excesses such as in Kashmir and the failure of its Covid-19 response have found themselves targeted through arbitrary detention and violence. Media houses have been happy to tow the BJP’s party line, since so many of them rely on government advertising contracts to stay on air or in print.
Adani’s takeover of NDTV is a disquieting sign that the India of the future will not only be less tolerant, but will have fewer mainstream voices willing to criticize the government’s noxious ideological beliefs and the violence that they espouse.
Declining press freedom in India orchestrated by Narendra Modi’s BJP has also coincided with rising concentration of media ownership. As a consequence, India now ranks 150th out of the 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index maintained by the Paris based Reporters without Borders, having slipped 10 places in 2022.
The popularity of Modi’s BJP despite its reputation as a quasi-authoritarian party, allied to a narrative of violent Hindu nationalism, relies on promising and delivering economic growth. Nowhere has this economic prosperity narrative been more compelling than in the rise of Gautam Adani, a coal baron whose businesses have rapidly developed and diversified under the BJP’s rule. His current $130 billion net worth makes him the third richest person in the world, and the meteoric increases in his wealth are seen as a consequence of his allegiance to the BJP and Narendra Modi. Adani is seen as the government’s favored “business partner,” whose proximity to the BJP has allegedly allowed him preferential access to both domestic and international business opportunities, in the energy sector especially. It is no surprise that Adani’s recent acquisition of NDTV, one of India’s last independent news organizations, raises its fair share of eyebrows.
Founded in 1988 and run by Prannoy and Radhika Roy since, NDTV has had a sterling reputation for its fierce reporting and unabashed criticism of governments – BJP and Congress alike. Since the acquisition by Adani, who now owns 60% of the news channel, Prannoy and Radhika have resigned from NDTV, along with popular broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar. The wave of resignations at NDTV could mean a warmer relationship between the Modi government and what was India’s last independently owned TV channel. Since Adani’s businesses – power generation, logistics and ports – all rely on access to government contracts and approvals, critics fear that the NDTV that was once considered a bastion of fierce criticism to the BJP will also go the way of its peers in the broadcast journalism space in India, and relinquish its editorial independence.
What is worrying about the creeping influence of the BJP in the Indian media landscape over the last decade is the ease with which TV channels and print publications are willing to parrot and regurgitate the party’s Hindu nationalist ideology. Adherents of Hindutva as it is called, have organized and stirred up all manner of violence against Muslims and other minorities in India. With more and more media organizations in thrall to the ruling party, it is going to become much harder for dissenting voices to air criticism of the government without being subject to intimidation. That does not bode well – for the health of India’s democracy or the well-being of its minorities.
Adani’s takeover of NDTV is a disquieting sign that the India of the future will not only be less tolerant, but will have fewer mainstream voices willing to criticize the government’s noxious ideological beliefs and the violence that they espouse.