In its second tenure the UPA Government has time and again tried to flex its muscles in containing media freedom. In India, media freedom flows from Article 19 (2) of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and expression to every citizen albeit with reasonable limits. With the advent of the social media and its power to mobilise public opinion, particularly against governments in power, some in the UPA fear that India too may have its Arab Springs uprising which the state might not be able to contain. In a sense, social media is an unregulated, unedited news media which constantly churns out news from every part of the country. Citizens are today better linked to each other than ever before. There are media savvy citizens out there in Bodoland who are constantly updating news of the hunger strike by the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) and their supporters, to press their demand for a separate state. The health condition of Pramod Boro the ABSU President is known to all supporters of satyagraha across the country. Such is the power of social media that the conventional print media finds it difficult to keep up with the speed of the citizen to uplink his/her status on Facebook.
Perhaps it is on this account that the Maharashtra police booked a couple of young women for posting their angst on Facebook against the closure of the entire state when Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray passed away. The UPA too used its power to book people for sedition on flimsy grounds. India is now ranked a miserable 140th out of 179 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Index, falling nine places from what it did in 2012. It’s strange but true that Afghanistan and Qatar have a freer press largely because India has been putting pressure on Google and Facebook to screen internet content and remove items that might be deemed disparaging or inflammatory. Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Manish Tewari has recently stated that a press law defining the qualifications required for media persons and their ambit of operation is required in this country. These are subtle attempts at regulating the media and its functions under the guise of making the profession more ‘professional.’ While media persons should not allow such diktat from the powers that be, it is in the fitness of things that we introspect on our own functioning and draw up a code of conduct for ourselves. The time is now.