EPW row: Don't muzzle the media
The Economic and Political Weekly is highly regarded as an international journal publishing articles of various shades of social sciences. The EPW has been popular with readers and contributors in India and abroad for close to 70 years now. Even during the Emergency in the 1970s, the EPW editorials and articles served as a clarion voice supporting democratic values and liberal and progressive tendencies throughout the world.
However, recently veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, was "forced" to stepped down as the editor of the illustrious EPW, reportedly over two articles on the alleged nexus between the Adani Group and the Narendra Modi government.
Many of us have over the decades been a bit casual in our responsibilities to the media, including the impact of authoritarian intervention in the press. While the electronic media is subject to more pressure since it is a more powerful medium, even the print, including academic journals, is liable to corporate intervention.
In recent times, the attempts to influence, if not control the press have increased, sometimes to unimaginable levels. For example, how many economic scams involving influential corporate groups are strictly examined by the press or electronic media? This is said to be the age of the media. But how many news stories (and not fake news), including surveys of schemes such as MGNREGA, are analysed and propagated?
Corporates throughout the post-Independence period have been wary of the media, especially where journalists or academics are involved in researching sensitive areas of corporate activity. This has diminished in the globalisation and neoliberal phases of capitalism initiated by former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
Singh, more of an academic, did not, unlike some of his predecessors, try to build up links with particular corporate groups or what were earlier termed “business houses” to indicate family-based conglomerates such as the Tatas, Birlas, Mahindras, etc.
According to the Report of the Industrial Licensing Policy Inquiry Committee, the concentration of economic power had operated in favour of the large industrial houses or monopolies, in the 1956-1966 period. This, in effect meant that big businesses, including foreign groups had increased their capital much quicker than the public (state) sector.
The Industrial Licensing Policy Inquiry Committee (ILPIC) was set up by the Union government in 1969, to examine the industrial policy licensing system, which referred to “licences” that permitted an industrialist the right to manufacture a product, as well as separate licences to put a limit on production.
Of course, the first thing that Manmohan Singh did in 1991 was to abolish all controls on domestic and foreign capital. This was also a death blow to the public sector. But since few academics and others had studied the Indian industrial policy, the neoliberal policy piloted by the former PM was rammed through. It is not coincidental, that poverty also rose.
The story thereafter is more or less the same.
The public sector was sold cheap. This has continued with the Modi government which is now preparing the sale of Air India. The implicit assumption is that public sector entities cannot be profitable. But in the latest case also no one explains why the airlines became steadily sick, why valuable artefacts were stolen and not recovered.
With industrial controls gone yet with a powerful socio-economic party in rule, the media is also muted. For example, efforts on exposing black money have diminished. While Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif and his family are facing the courts over black money stashed away illegally in foreign banks, including those in Panama, in neighbouring India, the term “Panama Papers” is virtually unmentioned. Public control may be unwieldy, but private control is often corrupt.
As far as the Adanis and PM Modi is concerned, it is well-known in academic and business circles, that some 400 Indian capitalists have stashed untaxed proceeds in banks in the Panama area as brought out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Various political dignitaries including the former PM of Iceland, PM Nawaz Sharif’s family and a prominent figure in Russia have been under investigation, and the Iceland’s PM has resigned. Sharif’s family is facing court action. On the other hand, the fact that hundreds of Indian capitalists are being shielded in this matter by the government of India by suppressing the media, is a very dangerous phenomenon.
To weaken the media and the editors may be considered tantamount to turning a blind eye to the loot. There is a pattern here (based on other media episodes). The basic rule is that no mediaperson should step on the toes of influential people as that may cause the latter to harass the media. This is despite the fundamental right under Article 19 (Freedom of Speech and Expression). Article 19 is, however, considerably weakened not only by media houses themselves, but also by big corporates and influential politicians.
If the media is not truly "free", how could the civil society be expected to express itself?