What rank should a country where ministers speak of “ neutralising ” journalists who ask questions and where press persons are regularly at...
What rank should a country where ministers speak of “neutralising” journalists who ask questions and where press persons are regularly attacked and charged with crimes for doing their jobs earn on an index measuring freedom of the press?
Higher than the 142 out of 180 India received on the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, according to a government-appointed panel that blames “western bias” for the country’s poor performance. The panel’s report, in fact, reveals that the Indian ambassador to France held a meeting with representatives of Reporters Without Borders complaining about the ranking and insisting that “Indian culture has a tradition of acceptance and tolerance of differences, that are beyond the scale present in any other part of the world.”
From its handling of the Gross Domestic Product numbers to its suppressing of unemployment data, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has often been accused of focusing on managing headlines – rather than altering the underlying reality.
The panel’s report appears to channel the same sentiments, focusing on trying to change India’s ranking on the index rather than actually attempting to improve conditions on the ground for journalists, according to reputed journalist P Sainath, who was one of the members of the Index Monitoring Cell set up by the Ministry of...
