Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s actions to suppress press freedom are undermining India’s status as “the world’s largest democracy”, resulting in “a shrill Hindu nationalism in news reports that echoes the government line,” according to an influential American newspaper.
“When populist leaders invoke emergency laws to block dissent, democracy is in peril,” The New York Times Editorial Board said in its opinion piece on Monday.
Noting that the misuse of their powers to intimidate, censor, silence or punish independent news media is an alarming hallmark of populist and authoritarian leaders, the newspaper’s editorial board said that Prime Minister Modi has fallen “squarely into this camp”. “Since Mr Modi took office in 2014, journalists have increasingly risked their careers, and their lives, to report what the government doesn’t want them to,” the Times said.
India ranks 11th in the “global impunity index” of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a tally of reporters whose deaths remain unsolved, and in the annual press freedom index published.APP
