P. Raman 
Throughout the buildup to G20, the Narendra Modi regime had repeatedly used the catchphrases ‘mother of democracy’ and ‘vishwaguru’.
The term ‘mother of democracy’ appears to have been coined as a counter to India’s rapid slide on the global democracy index.
‘Vishwaguru’ pushes the theme that Modi is a world leader whose arrival can no longer be ignored.
The G20 presidency is rotational and it happened to be India’s turn last year to host the summit. Yashwant Sinha has recalled that when he chaired the G20 in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s term, the then prime minister had not turned it into an occasion for cult building. But the present government’s entire focus at G20, with its logo of a globe resting on a lotus, was to project India as a vigorous democracy and Modi as its only leader. So, why has the BJP manifesto now suddenly replaced ‘Vishwaguru’ with ‘Vishwabandhu’?
Several western governments have of late voiced concern over developments in India. The US, for instance, has commented on communal tension, religious freedom and the arrests of political workers:
- The US state department in its annual human rights assessment found “significant” abuses in Manipur;
- It also expressed concern over communal violence in Gurugram;
- The US Commission on International Religious Freedom flagged ‘declining religious freedom’ in India and appealed to the Modi government to free 37 individuals across multiple faiths jailed for the ‘peaceful exercise of their freedom of religion or belief’.
- State department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US was closely following Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest and was aware of the freezing of the Congress party’s bank accounts, and that it encouraged fair, transparent and timely legal processes for each of these issues.
- A state department official called upon India to uphold its human rights obligations.
President Joe Biden not attending the Republic Day parade as chief guest, the postponement of the Quad summit, and NSA Jake Sullivan’s cancellation of his India visits have been seen by some as signals of US disapproval. The latest uncharitable commentt: Biden’s reference to India as ‘xenophobic’.
Even at the G20 summit in New Delhi, a resolution was adopted calling for religious freedom and freedom of peaceful assembly and deploring all acts of religious hatred.
Faced with criticism, the Modi regime’s first instinct has been to dismiss all of this as Western propaganda and try to limit its impact on domestic politics.
Television channels and the print media have readily cooperated, bringing out carefully edited versions of reports that reflect poorly on the government. Very often, the godi media has waited for the official reaction before reporting. This has resulted in curious situations where the mainstream media has uniformly led such stories with the official denial of the criticism before coming to the criticism itself and dismissing it in a couple of truncated sentences.
This age-old blackout model used in the ‘iron curtain’ days of the Cold War was recently deployed when Germany and the US commented on Kejriwal’s arrest.
Envoys were summoned to the external affairs ministry and handed a formal protest against ‘interference’ in India’s internal affairs. Simultaneously, the government launched a vigorous diplomatic offensive against what it described as ‘disinformation’.
One tool, borrowed from the US, has been to use trade and arms purchases as levers of diplomacy. This has been a partial success. France, India’s defence collaborator, and the Gulf countries have remained more or less silent.
External affairs minister S. Jaishankar has explained in foreign capitals how democracy is flourishing in India, and Indian embassies have been pressed into service to counter the ‘Western propaganda’.
The Modi regime’s discomfort with foreign criticism is understandable. In the early days, the domestic media had highlighted such criticism. But within his first three years in office, he was able to largely shut out negative news from the mainstream media. The sam, dam, dand, bhed though have failed to silence the outside critics.
The BBC faced tax raids and FDI interrogation, and has hived off its newsroom in India as a separate company.
Emily Schmall of the New York Times has said she was among foreign correspondents who would be invited to ‘tea’ with the government, and then “one minister or another minister would start berating us”. At one of these sessions, the “minister of information” printed out some of the stories written by the gathered correspondents and read the headlines aloud, “seemingly at random, with some sarcasm in his tone”, she told a conference in the US recently. At least 13 journalists have been booked under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, with nine of them Muslims in Kashmir, she added. “To be clear,” she said, “journalism is under threat in India.”
Last year, information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur accused the New York Times of lying after it published a piece on freedom of press in Kashmir. His reaction was in line with the government’s practice of rejecting negative reports as false.
Lancet, a medical journal, had questioned the accuracy and transparency of Indian healthcare data. The government rubbished it. A Harvard study found that 6.7 million children in India are undernourished. The government called it fake news.
To assail the IMF for its lower GDP prediction, it deputed former chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramaniam who said the IMF’s estimates were consistently inaccurate.
Unhappy with India’s ratings, incumbent CEA Anantha Nageswaran has questioned Fitch, Moody’s and S&P ratings metrics.
Union minister Rajiv Chandrasekhar has described as ‘half facts’ a Washington Post report that India had asked Apple to ‘soften’ its hacking alert.
But the barrage of unpleasant news continues:
- Global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said India’s ranking in the World Freedom Index in 2024 is 159 out of 176 countries. In 2022, it ranked 150.
- In the Global Hunger Index 2023, India was placed at 111 out of 125 countries and had the highest rate of child wasting at 18.7 per cent. The year before, India’s ranking was 107 out of 121 countries.
- In the Global Slavery Index for 2023, India tops the list of G20 countries, followed by China, Russia, Indonesia and the US.
- Youth unemployment in India stood at 23.22 per cent in 2022, higher than Pakistan (11.3 per cent), Bangladesh (12.9 per cent), China (13.2 per cent) and Bhutan (14.4 per cent), World Bank data revealed.
- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and 10 other international rights groups have said UAPA and financial regulations are being misused to silence journalists, human rights activists and critics of the government.
- ILO’s employment report revealed that youth made up 82 per cent of India’s unemployed population in 2022.
Whatever slack they cut Modi in his fist seven or eight years in power, the world’s media has now begun to monitor and critique human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva.
As the bad news continues to pile up, the Modi regime has decided it is not enough to deny it. The solution: if India is falling in global rankings, it must come up with its own. If the foreign media is publishing uncomfortable reports, pro-government voices must make themselves heard. An all-out mobilisation is on.
To counter Freedom House, V-Dem and the Economic Intelligence Unit, the government-run Niti Ayog has now hired the Modi-friendly Observer Research Foundation to make India’s own democracy index. The Adani group has said it is setting up a new think-tank. And parivar-friendly academic groups, intellectuals, lawyers and even retired judges are being encouraged to issue statements and contribute individual articles to the media.
The PMO is coordinating the response in the media, both print and digital. Vishwabandhu clearly feels he has nothing to lose but his world.