THE NEW GOVERNMENT
The BJP government led by Narendra Modi won 282 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. They made great use of social media to influence people in this election. They fought the election on the pretext of ending corruption, reducing fuel prices, etc. while an agenda of turning a secular India into a complete saffron nation was on the cards. The hatred and bigotry against Muslims and Christians had already begun at the ground level. The Hindutva sanghs operating under the shadow of the party suddenly became the focus of attention. The rise of Bajrang Dal, RSS, and VHP after this election is tremendous as well as frightening. The tactics used by the members of these Sanghs were spreading fake news on social media, creating a communal divide, and Hindu khatre main hai. The BJP IT cell was activated to troll and threaten people who speak against the party. If you don’t know what IT cell is, well it is basically people in Hindutva groups on social media who get an everyday task of posting something related to praising Hindutva, trolling/threatening someone, communalism, etc.
INTOLERANCE
The growing intolerance among the masses is a sign of threat to the freedom of speech. Comedian Munawar Faruqui was arrested for a joke that he didn’t crack, while he got bail after spending a month in prison, four others who were arrested along with him (Sadakat Khan, Edwin Anthony, Prakhar Vyas, and Nalin Yadav) are still in jail for no fault of theirs. Comedians in India get legal notices because they do jokes which are not in favor of the government. Suppressing voices of people who are outspoken and giving XYZ security to those who spread communal hatred. This government is so intolerant that when Rihanna and Climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted on the Human Rights violation of shutting down the internet, the whole External Affairs ministry came up with a campaign of #IndiaAgainstPropoganda and #IndiaTogether.
And of course like money can buy you awards and MLA’s, the party bought cricketers and actors to tweet about this and expand their campaign.
MEDIA CONTROL
Look at the mainstream media right now, expect one or two no other news channels gives you news, they instead serve you with hate and propaganda, ask questions to the opposition parties, favor each and every opinion of our supreme leader, term his speech, decisions, laws as historic and have obnoxious, stupid and ineffective debates where everyone just screams. Take the latest examples; the migrant crisis, covid — 19 related information, jobs loss, fucked up economy, implications of unplanned lockdown, advanced facility to the health workers. All these were major issues plaguing our country but the government wasn’t questioned by the media at all. Instead, we were told to have faith in the Prime Minister, we were told to bang thalis. The Prime Minister didn’t care about the migrants/workers/laborers, the government didn’t have any data about how many migrants lost their lives and how many jobs were lost. The economy was sidelined, no one knew what is happening or going to happen. People worked for free thinking that once if everything is back to normal we would have our salaries. But the media didn’t speak about it even ONCE! To make matters worse the media a mockery of someone’s death, conducted a media trial on the woman he loved and gave unnecessary importance to a questionable Bollywood actress.
In conclusion, all this is not the end of a flawed Democracy but the beginning of a powerful Dictatorship.