Will publishing these “excess deaths” lead to the hounding of the media outlet that reports the anomaly? The Modi Government, if you haven’t noticed, is behaving rather strangely these days. Maybe it’s the abnormal number of Covid-19 deaths which the media aren’t supposed to report, but which certain media nevertheless reported.

Like Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, published from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, which dared to. DB did a series of stories on the Covid dead of Uttar Pradesh. DB deputed 17 reporters to span the length of the Ganga, from Varanasi in UP to Buxar in Bihar, to get a count of the floating dead, and shallow graves.

Bad news for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The state is up for elections in 2022 and DB was out to measure a coffin to bury the Yogi Government in! Not done. It didn’t go down well with the Modi/Yogi governments.

Even less with the Income Tax Department. Sports and I&B Minister Anurag Thakur said the IT Department has a heartbeat of its own. That it’s beyond the control of the Modi Government! “You want to know why the IT raids on Dainik Bhaskar, ask the IT Department, not me or the government,” Thakur told skeptical reporters.

Some said the IT Department’s DB raids were triggered by DB’s carpet-coverage of UP’s handling of Covid-19. That’ll be missing the woods for the tree. Pegasus and alleged government snooping on scores of India’s citizenry also contributed.

The DB also did the unthinkable. It went back in time to resurrect the claim that Modi-Shah allegedly ordered surveillance on a “woman of interest” in 2013. DB posted a snippet on its website. Only to pull it down within a couple of hours.

The snippet sank without a trace. But the damage was done. It buttressed the unspoken claim that Modi-Shah has a “history of snooping”, and old habits die hard. Only the “geography” and the targets had changed.

Let’s not beat around the bush. The overwhelming majority of India’s media are frustrated, helpless at bringing the Modi Government to book. Modi and Shah have most of them sewed up. The mainstream electronics media in particular. Top TV anchors blindly echo Modi & Shah. For them Pegasus is peanuts. And mentioning snooping and 2013 in one breath is taboo.

The water’s above their heads. And if the media does not pick up the gauntlet now, they might as well throw in the towel. The other day, the Press club of India held a ‘Pegasus’ meeting. Very few journalists turned up. Partly because of ‘Covid fear’. Partly because of the ‘Modi-Shah fear’.

They say IT sleuths raided 32 DB establishments across destinations. Some put the number at 40. The DB Group is known to be friendly with the Congress, which nominated one of its top editors to the Rajya Sabha. But it’s only recently that DB started targeting the Modi Government. Otherwise, DB was no different from Dainik Jagaran.

The feeling among media houses is if “today it’s Dainik Bhaskar, tomorrow it could be any of them”. But for the message to sink in will take time. The IT raids did not yield a “cash cache”. They were to harass and put the fear of ‘Big Brother’ on dissent. Recent events have put the Modi Government on the back-foot.

But the political Opposition is weak, beyond repair. Civil society turns on the screws off and on, that’s all. And Modi-Shah has a stranglehold on the Council of Ministers. There’s not a squeak from any of the ministers, even those with a conscience. India is today an authoritarian duopoly, with a bunch of embarrassingly quiescent media.

Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, the Modi Government’s ‘phone-a-friend’, says Amnesty International’s involvement in the Pegasus Project makes the investigation suspect, including the global media consortium’s links with nonprofit ‘Forbidden Stories’.

Goswami forgets that it’s not the Modi Government alone, other authoritarian regimes are also in the unholy mix. Human rights activists and the “rogue” daughter of a GCC sheikh were among those pegged to be tracked and hacked by the winged horse. The DB Group might be guilty or not guilty, but the timing of the IT raids is indicative of the Modi Government’s intentions, and state of mind. Does the Modi Government ‘fear’ the media? (IPA Service)