Media in a dystopia

Image from The Hindu

Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World shows how a utopian vision of an inferior leader can create a dystopia. An all-powerful state which controls the behaviours and actions of its people in order to preserve its own stability and power ends up becoming a terrible dystopia. Technology is used and misused by the government to exercise its absolute powers over the citizens who are apparently happy. They fail to understand that they are nothing more than puppets dangling from strings stretched by their government. They live without dignity, morals, values and emotions.

History is divided as After Ford (AF) and Before Ford in that dystopia. Similarly in India today, history is being divided as After Modi and Before Modi. India won’t ever be the same anymore. Furthermore, India is divided right now into people who are with Modi or against him. So is the case with the media too.

The number of people questioning Modi and his politics is dwindling as more and more such people have been persecuted in various ways. Some have their offices raided by the Enforcement Directorate or Income Tax officials. Some have cases fabricated against them. Some have even been killed.

Most media houses in India seem to be either singing alleluia to Modi or avoiding reporting anything against him. A few still dare to question him.  A few months ago, an editorial in the Afternoon wrote that the “mainstream media houses are hell-bent on proving (that) Modi is the only appropriate Prime Minister of India and (that) there is no other choice.”

The Indian State under Modi’s leadership has gone far out of the way to use all sorts of propaganda machinery to project Modi as the Messiah of the country. A lot of money is spent on the process. A lot of the media has been bought up for the purpose. Those who refused to sell out themselves are being intimidated in various ways.

In Huxley’s dystopia, “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” In Modi’s India, the conditioning is going on, and it is almost universal in the country.  Like in Huxley’s Brave New World, in contemporary India too, “Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” In the end, as Huxley wrote, people “will lay their freedom at (the government’s) feet and say, ‘make us your slaves but feed us’.”

Unfortunately, much of the Indian media too has already been enslaved. There is little hope left for the nation except that dystopias don’t have longevity.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 293: #News