Ramaswami: Countering the Infodemic There is an important point to be noted. In India – as in many other countries – supporters of ruling right-wing regimes have been at the forefront of spreading fake news, misinformation and propaganda. WhatsApp, that reportedly has 400 million users in India, has taken the lead in this regard in the country. Despite claims to the contrary, no serious effort has been made to curb the powers of the digital monopolies to influence public opinion by spreading disinformation. The BJP and its supporters have, more than others, been able to use platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook to its advantage. (See the book co-authored by this writer with Cyril Sam titled “The Real Face of Facebook in India: How Social Media have become a Propaganda Weapon and Disseminator of Disinformation and Falsehood,” self-published in April 2019.) Across the world, the pandemic has contributed to journalists critical of the establishment being harassed, intimidated, jailed (there are over 250 of them) and killed because governments are implementing sweeping restrictions under the guise of combating misinformation and fake news. Joel Simon, executive director, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review on March 25: “There’s a growing acceptance of the false view that the dramatic measures (to curb the working of the media) required may come at the expense of civil liberties and democratic rights… Amid efforts to beat back a global pandemic of a kind unseen in more than a century, and to prop up a global economy on the brink of depression, it’s hard to focus on long-term consequences. But we must be mindful that when we get to the other side of the pandemic, we may be left with a narrative, being written by China, that government control over information was essential to combating the crisis. That would be a devastating blow to the global information system, one that could endure even as the memories of the terrible pandemic we are currently facing slowly fade.” To return to the question raised in the beginning of this article, as to whether India has moved towards the situation that prevailed in the country in the mid-1970s, during the Emergency when Indira Gandhi’s government muzzled the press. The answer is unfortunately an unequivocal “yes.” But, this is a different kind of an Emergency. Modi does not acknowledge mistakes, leave alone repent for them like Indira Gandhi did four decades ago. A notable example: demonetisation. During the Emergency, only a few publications, such as The Indian Express, The Statesman and Himmat opposed the government of the day. The Express published a blank space on its editorial pages in protest. As I was finishing this article on Wednesday, April 1, I learned that the Express has announced a salary-cut for many of its staffers. After Indira Gandhi’s electoral defeat in March 1977, Lal Krishna Advani, the Information & Broadcasting Minister in Morarji Desai’s government was asked why so many editors had so meekly capitulated before the Emergency regime. Today’s nonagenarian “angry old man” of the Bharatiya Janata Party then famously responded: “When they were asked to bend, they crawled.” From June 1975 till January 1977, almost the entire press in India was slavish in its praise for the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Today Prime Minister Modi has no reason to worry in the least. The country’s media barons are bending without even being asked to crawl. Forget about holding truth to power or playing the role of adversaries or antagonists to those in power and authority. Most of the representatives of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ in India are little different from those who work in advertising agencies or public relations firms. These are indeed difficult times for what remains of the independent media in India and there is a distinct possibility that the situation would worsen in the time to come. What has happened in The Indian Express may just be a beginning. THE WRITER IS AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST. THE VIEWS ARE PERSONAL.