Freedom's Midnight Dissent in Exile in Modi's India

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THIS BOOK transports you into the dark belly of the Indian media. It shows how the Modi regime has come to wield a total control over the media. It goes deep into the 'liberal cleansing' of the media. It shows how the regime uses the tamed media as an ideological militia to intoxicate the masses with disinformation and destroy its critics. What are the invisible, manipulative and fear-instilling ways the regime has used to stifle dissent? The book throws a chilling light on its insidious ways through lucid, sharp and trenchant essays of some of India's finest senior and young journalists who blend experience with insight to depict the shrinking of space for free speech and the risks to the survival of democracy it entails.

The Modi regime today wields near-total control over the media. Much of the mainstream journalism is transformed into ventriloquism. Like all democratic dictators, Modi knows the sap for his political immortality comes from the tree of mass support. The tree stands as long as the mass support lasts. Mass support comes from mass adulation. Mass adulation comes from the image of the leader as a hero-vanquisher of enemies, conqueror of the world, who is also an angel, a selfless bringer of happiness to all. And there is no better instrument than the media to keep embellishing the angelic hero's celestial image.

Unlike Indira Gandhi's Emergency regime, the Modi regime has imposed no censorship on the media. Every report or comment in the media does not have to be submitted to a censor officer before publication or broadcast as had to be done during the twenty-one months of the Emergency. Yet, the regime wields similar influence invisibly. The media carries only the praise of the angelic hero and the castigation of his critics.