Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Is India joining the ranks of North Korea, China, and Russia when it comes to the freedom of the media? India’s rank in the World Press Freedom Index as well as many other similar indices has been declining rapidly in the recent years. The cover story of the December issue of The Caravan magazine, one of the few remaining independent journals in the country, is about how Mukesh Ambani has become the media manager of Narendra Modi. Ambani’s Reliance bought News 18 in July 2014. The year is significant. Modi had just come to power in Delhi. Eventually News 18 bought off many TV channels and journals. The Caravan informs us that using these media Modi is doing exactly what Kim Jong Un has been doing in North Korea, Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China. The first major casualty, when the government takes control of the mass media, is Suppression of free speech and dissent . The Caravan reveals how scores of journalists who refused to propagate what the government wanted the...

India Today to Narendra Modi : What about creation of jobs? Narendra Modi : As for creation of jobs, it has been the topmost priority of my government. All our efforts have been geared to this task. The above question-answer is from India Today ’s latest edition, which is an out and out eulogy to Narendra Modi who is given the Newsmaker of the Year Award by the weekly. Now let’s look at a news item from India Today ’s website: A Romanian flight carrying 276 Indian passengers landed in Mumbai early on Tuesday after being grounded in France four days ago over suspected human trafficking . It was not human trafficking. It was a whole airplane of people leaving India illegally but voluntarily to find jobs in the USA or Canada or any country better than Modi’s India. Ironically, most of these ‘illegal’ jobseekers are from Modi’s own Gujarat which he claims in the India Today interview as the state made ideal by him. “When I became chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, the size of i...