IN India, bizarre developments have become so normalised that they no longer shock people as they once did. This is striking, given that after the adoption of our Republican Constitution, Article 19 was alive and vibrant, safeguarding the citizen’s right to freedom of expression. India’s Constitution was celebrated worldwide for enshrining citizens’ rights, earning the country the epithet of the world’s largest democracy. But that is no longer the case today. The assumption of office by the RSS-spearheaded BJP government has brought about a paradigm shift – particularly in the media landscape.
The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting recently sent notices to two media houses and several YouTube channels, ordering the takedown of 138 videos and 83 Instagram posts. Scandalously, these included critical references to the Adani Group. The order cited a September 6 ruling of the North West Delhi District Court, which passed an ex-parte order in a defamation case filed by Adani Enterprises. The government acted with unusual alacrity – rarely seen in cases concerning human rights violations.
The District Court did not blink before passing an ex-parte order without even hearing the journalists and websites penalised for their work. Meanwhile, the quasi-judicial Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) dragged its feet on pursuing serious charges of capital market violations. Those charges, which demanded swift investigation, only gained traction after the Hindenburg report exposed the Adani Group’s alleged wrongdoing. Yet, SEBI has since declared that the Adanis did no wrong.
Among those served with takedown notices were Newslaundry, The Wire, and journalists Ravish Kumar, Ajit Anjum, Dhruv Rathee, Akash Banerjee (Deshbhakt), and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. That Modi’s close ally Gautam Adani would invoke defamation to obscure his companies’ misdemeanors is hardly surprising. This is how the corporate-communal nexus operates. Yet, all the affected media entities and individuals have firmly defended their work, rejecting the charge that their reporting was unresearched or baseless.
To understand this fully, one must look at the background of India’s media transformation. December 30, 2022, was a turning point when Adani took near-complete control of NDTV, exploiting a takeover clause linked to a loan deal. Even earlier, a 2019 report showed Reliance already controlled 72 media channels nationwide, proudly advertising its “omni-channel presence.” Such concentration of corporate control – and its corresponding power to shape narratives – has spelled the death of diversity and editorial independence in Indian media.
India is now the world’s largest media market. There are more than 140,000 registered newspapers and periodicals, including over 22,000 dailies, published in 189 languages and dialects. The country has more than 900 television channels –350 of them devoted to news, broadcasting 24x7. There are also more than 850 FM radio stations, though only All India Radio is permitted to broadcast news. The lightning-fast expansion of broadband access has triggered an explosion of digital news outlets. While many belong to legacy media groups, the number of digital-only platforms continues to grow, spurred by India’s over 820 million active internet users.
It is against this rapidly changing media environment that one must understand the arbitrariness of the district court’s ex-parte order and the I&B Ministry’s hasty implementation of it. For some time now, the government has shown its determination to tighten control over digital and social media content. Despite the dominance of corporate-owned media, the reach, credibility, and persistence of independent outlets have been unsettling for the government and its corporate cronies.
This is why, notwithstanding the overwhelming presence of Reliance Industries, the Adani Group, Bennett Coleman, and Living Media – many of which are on an acquisition spree – independent voices remain under constant attack. Foreign investment has further reshaped India’s mediascape, embedding global influence into its structures. Cross-media ownership has become the norm, resulting in intricate webs of control that weaken diversity and editorial independence. These shifts have gone hand in hand with attacks on press freedom, as in 2019, when the editor of the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar was forced to resign after publishing a series of reports critical of the Adani Group.
These are dark times, marked by neo-fascist traits, where news, truth, and reason are placed on the chopping block. Why else would Meredith Copit Levien, CEO of The New York Times, declare that the company “will not be cowed” by Donald Trump’s USD 15 billion lawsuit – denouncing it as part of his “anti-press playbook”? Tellingly, Levien noted that Trump is following in the footsteps of his friend Modi’s India. Globally too, repression of the press has taken violent turns. In Gaza, the Zionist forces of Netanyahu’s IDF have deliberately targeted media workers; 270 journalists have already been killed in this ongoing settler-colonial project to suppress truth.
We have come a long way since 1988, when Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s pathbreaking Manufacturing Consent first outlined the propaganda model that would dominate modern media as an ideological tool to control minds and consciousness. Today, their warnings resonate with chilling clarity. The silencing of dissent, the concentration of ownership, and the attacks on independent journalism in India expose the deep anxiety and desperation of both the government and its corporate partners. Resisting this tide, as independent journalists continue to do, remains our only path forward.
(September 24, 2025)
