Prime ministerial broadcasts are meant to signal major tipping points in the life of a country: information on the imminent onset of demonetisation, for instance, or a four-hour notice for the pandemic lock down came to us via the televised address timed to catch newspaper and television deadlines. But this time, on September 21, Prime Minister Modi struck a very different register. The intention here was to spread festive cheer to all classes of people: his government’s GST reforms he said will usher in achche din – good days – for sure. If his counterpart in the US urged all Americans to “drill, baby, drill,” we were being told, “spend, baby, spend,” because the Modi government is inaugurating a ‘GST Bachat Utsav’ (festival of GST savings) just in time for the Navratri festivities (and of course the Bihar election). Sure enough, the air is thick with advertisements promising a consumer nirvana in 10 minutes.What is forgotten in all this fake celebration and faux hope, is the fact that we are living through what could be termed as the most unequal of times in the history of post-independent India, comparable only to the days of colonial rule. If the Election Commission of India has made a serious attempt to shrink the size of those eligible to vote, striking at the very heart of universal franchise, and seriously attempting to revive the colonial idea of limited, selected franchise; we are witnessing in parallel the untrammeled right of oligarchies to plunder common resources and drain the wealth of the larger community. The Mercedes Benz Hurun India Wealth Report has just informed us that today India has 8,71,700 millionaire households, which is a staggering 90% increase since 2021, at the height of the pandemic, when wealth creation at the expense of the seriously impoverished and ill had reached its apogee. But this process of aggregation of the wealth of the richest has carried on since then. The Report points out that over the last year alone the number of millionaire households increased by 10%.While car companies like Mercedes Benz could be dreaming of the prospect of selling more cars in India, let’s understand how such wealth is being created through the syncing of policy making and corporate power.One of the most recent acquisitions of Adani Power was the capture of 1,020 verdant acres belonging to the farmers of Pirpainti block in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district, where a 2,400 MW coal-based thermal power plant is slated to come up on the basis of a 25-year lease being given – you may not believe it but it is true – at the rate of Rs 1 per acre per year (‘Adani Power Receives 1,020 Acres For Lease In Bihar’s Bhagalpur – At Rs 1 Per Acre Per Year, The Wire, September 21). A courageous local journalist even held up a rupee as he reported on this deal.When policies are crafted that lead to hectare upon hectare of virgin forest being stripped bare for the coal that lies under its soil, destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands; when the raw power of government is deployed to protect and further the interests of a few favoured corporates, the question arises who will stop this politico-corporate capture of common resources? Who will stop it at a time when the executive’s power keeps expanding (often with controlled electoral exercises) and the Judiciary’s agency keeps diminishing (often with hand-picked judicial appointments)? The answer cannot be clearer: Nobody. It is this complete lack of accountability, this endless free pass, this perpetual public approval that further the oligarchs’ dreams of endless acquisition. This is where media control comes in: imprison the messenger and the message is yours. This is being done in one of two ways: One, through direct ownership, a pattern already been well-established in that ultimate home of plutocracy: the US, the wealthiest person in the world owns X. The second wealthiest, Larry Ellison, owns Paramount/CBS, and could soon have TikTok in his pocket. Then there is Jeff Bezos, with his Washington Post and Twitch; and Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook and Instagram (from a Bernie Sanders post).In India our biggest corporates have become, over time, our largest media owners. One of India’s most significant media acquisitions took place within months of Narendra Modi becoming prime minister in 2014. Mukesh Ambani’s acquisition of the Network 18 Group was intriguing: years of extending credit to the Network 18 Group paid off when it fell effortlessly into the Ambani kitty along with the major channels it owned like CNN News 18 and CNBC-TV18, for a sum of Rs 4,000 crore. If Ambani can emerge a media czar, would his fellow Gujarati, Gautam Adani, be far behind? Adani’s capture of NDTV was a job immaculately achieved with invisible and powerful enablers working behind the scenes. Here too debt and threats to the owners of NDTV got neatly converted into outright ownership. During those solemn days of acquisition in late 2022, Adani made a public vow: “editorial independence in NDTV will be credible…with a lakshman rekha between the management and editorial.” Famous last words. To see how this pledge fared, just go through the NDTV Profit’s coverage over the last few days, where every occasion in which its chief spoke publicly was lovingly carried to its cyber audience. The SEBI’s recent “clean chit” to Adani over US short seller Hindenburg Research critique of the company’s financial dealings, had NDTV rush to quote the effusive words of a Supreme Court lawyer’, Jai Anant Dehadrai, who saw it as the “best quality clean chit”, anyone can get. Sure, that lakshman rekha between the management and editorial is holding!Yet despite the great odds, despite the overwhelming disproportion in terms of power and resources, there still exist within this country journalists who do not compromise on the quality of their investigations, even if it involves the reputation of some of the country’s richest. So the biggest beneficiaries of the plutocrat’s urge to control the narrative is a flourishing tribe of extremely well-paid actors in law. Money-making machines in their own way, they specialize in a range of services, from criminal defence and defamation to prosecution for the state.Over the last few weeks we have been witness to the stunning abilities of this tribe to hobble the serious media scrutiny. If the favourite son of the a favoured industrialist has a yen for keeping endangered wild animals within the periphery of his father’s oil refinery in Jamnagar, despite rumours of trafficking and violations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, that yen will be protected with all the resources at his father’s command. So first, a Special Investigation Team is set up, under a retired Supreme Court judge with a formidable reputation for credibility, which considers a case involving 78,000 animals, 110 global suppliers, etc, etc, within a fortnight. It may please be noted that there was no credible wildlife expert on that team. With the report before it in a sealed cover, the Supreme Court proceeded to deliver a judgement that takes the clean chit to its logical end: “In terms of the recommendations contained in the summary and having regard to the exhaustive investigation conducted by the SIT, the complaints/petitions including newspaper reports, articles, catalogues as mentioned in Schedule A to the summary stand duly investigated and closed. No further complaint or proceedings based upon such same set of allegations shall be entertained before any judicial statutory or administrative forum so as to secure finality, obviate repetitive inquiries and investigation on issues concluded by the SIT.” Gavel bangs on the table. Case closed..coffined in fact for all time to come and pesky reporters had better mind their business if they know what’s good for them.For Adani, bringing the hammer on the heads of journalists has been all about a simple procedure of filing defamation notices, which he has been doing systematically over the last decade. But the month of September saw this trend reach a new high: In the first week of the month, Adani Enterprises brought an ex parte injunction against not one, but nine journalists and platforms, banning them from putting out in the public domain any content regarding the corporate that is “unverified and defamatory”. This amounted to 140 videos and innumerable Insta posts and since it was ex parte, it meant that the journalists involved were not given a chance to present their case, even as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) revealed its hand by promptly issuing takedown notices. If it were not for the courts, this operation would have achieved unqualified success. For the moment, stay orders have held the MIB’s hand.Across the world the defamation law is being either read down or ended. The United States does not recognise criminal defamation at the federal level. The United Kingdom has abolished criminal libel 16 years ago while South Africa did the same in 2023; in Australia it is regarded a civil offence, not a criminal one. In India, however, it can be both a civil and criminal offence. It is in that context that we need to go back to the recent remarks made by a Supreme Court judge. Justice M.M. Sundresh stated clearly that he believed the time had come for defamation to be decriminalised. His statement assumes importance precisely because it comes at a time when the law is being increasingly weaponised to intimidate both individuals and institutions, including media establishments like The Wire. In fact the justice made this observation while hearing a petition filed by the Foundation for Independent Journalism which runs The Wire, to quash a criminal defamation case brought against it by former JNU professor, Amita Singh.§Kimmel has returned…and so must KamraAuthoritarian leaders, whether in India or in the USA, love nothing more than to crush dissenters. US President Donald Trump publicly exulted over the deplatforming of Jimmy Kimmel, gloating that he got fired from Disney Plus and ABC’s Hulu because of “bad ratings more than anyone else.” Today the US president is angry that his tormentor is back and has promised to go after ABC for allowing this to happen. But the fact is that Trump hadn’t reckoned with the power of the public. As Susan Campbell, a media professor told Reuters, “consumers were exercising their own First Amendment rights and ending their subscriptions to the company’s streaming services.” The move to take Kimmel off the air waves was roundly criticised by a range of experts who saw it for what it was: an infringement on Kimmel’s right to free speech under the First Amendment of the US constitution. Once news of Kimmel’s suspension spread, large numbers of US citizens got online to cancel their subscriptions to Disney Plus and ABC’s Hulu. The campaign caught on: soon even stars were cancelling their subscriptions and being very public about it. Film unions put out petitions and publicly berated the broadcasters. All this outrage translated into dollars – within a short span Disney lost an estimated $4.99 billion in stock value.Money talked and how! Before long the censorious broadcasters were in “serious conversations” with Kimmel, and in a matter of days it was announced that he would be back on air from Tuesday, September 23, as indeed he was. There he was on screen with a very straight face telling his adoring audience who greeted him with a standing ovation that he had over the last few days often been asked whether there were any conditions for his return. He said there was one, and that he was okay with it. “They wanted me to read out the following statement and I have agreed to do so…,” he said, and then proceeded to pull out a slip of paper from his pocket, reading it out aloud with the very same deadpan expression: “To reactivate your Disney and Hulu account, open the Disney Plus app on your Smart TV or TV connected device…” The audience burst out laughing on hearing this. But Kimmel also struck a serious note: He made the point that if they go after comedians today, they will go after journalists tomorrow: “The show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”By the same token, Kunal Kamra’s show is not important, but it is important that Indians get to live in a country that allows them to watch a show like his. After all, what is the famed guarantee of freedom of speech and expression doing in our Constitution, if we don’t have that right? Today we have one of our most celebrated comedians living in virtual exile because some egotistical leaders in Maharashtra cannot stand his capacity to get under their skin through his humour. If Kimmel can come back, so must Kamra. The Indian courts should protect his right to free speech, as indeed the Indian public.§Readers write in…Accessing the Wire-2Some weeks ago, Wire reader Vidyadhar Gadgil, wrote a mail, ‘Accessing the Wire’ (August 30), on the difficulties of opening the Wire website. He did some important research into this concern and discovered that the website does not load if one is using a BSNL broadband connection and this could indicate that BSNL is doing the (probably illegal) blocking. With other ISPs there was no problem reported, and the website worked fine. Since then other readers of the Wire have highlighted the same problem:Sunil N.M.: “For the last 2-3 months, your portal is not accessible on my laptop at my home while I’m getting it on my mobile phone. But it is found accessible in both laptop and mobile when I’m away from home. I was thinking of contacting you on this for some time. Today I understood the reason for this strange phenomenon. At my home, I’m have a BSNL wifi while I have Airtel wifi on my mobile. Right now, I’m at a place where Railnet wifi is being used where the portal is easily accessible. (Hope it stays that way!)”Shabeen S: “I am also using BSNL internet and the Wire website does not load.”§Why does India lag behind in moving towards cage-free eggs?Varuna Verma, Project Manager, Corporate Engagement, writes in:“I am reaching out on behalf of People for Animals, an animal welfare organisation working to improve the lives of farmed animals in India. We would like to propose an opinion piece for your publication on the urgent need for global corporations to meet their cage-free egg commitments in India. September 22 marks 100 days until the December 31 deadline that global giants like Marriott, Sodexo, Hyatt, and Grupo Bimbo have set for their global cage-free egg commitments, to end battery cages for hens. “Yet while these companies boast cage-free supply chains in Europe and North America, progress in India and the Global South is abysmal. The next 100 days will decide whether they honour their commitment or enter 2026 exposed as companies that talk sustainability but fail to deliver. We would be grateful if the Wire carries a piece on the subject to mark the 100-day countdown.”§Fifty years on, little has changedVeteran journalist Sumanta Banerjee recalls an earlier era, and comments how little things have changed:“Congratulations on your exposure of Big Media’s deliberate black out of Rahul Gandhi’s important press conference of August 7 (‘The Last Week Has Shown Us What New-Age Censorship Looks Like’, August 17). But this is nothing new. The Big Media are mainly owned by big industrial houses which are tied to powerful political interests and parties. This influences their reportage and editorials.“The tragic aspect is that this is a pattern that has continued for decades, despite the efforts of honest journalists to report facts. As a mark of protest against this trend of curbing press freedom by newspaper owners, I wrote a book in 1973 entitled, ‘India’s Monopoly Press. A Mirror of Distortion’, for the Indian Federation of Working Journalists. In it, I made a content analysis of newspapers reports and editorials carried by some mainstream dailies, exposing their biases in favour of the businesses that owned them. The Indian Express was owned by the Goenkas; the Times of India, by the Sahu-Jains; the Hindustan Times by the Birlas and the Statesman, where I worked, by as wide assortment of industrial houses, including Tata Sons.“It is really sad that things haven’t changed since then despite half a century having gone by. In fact they have only got worse. But we will have to carry on our struggle. We are after all kalam-ka-sipahis, warriors with pens as our weapons.”Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in.