Within 24 hours, two major global digital platforms have reported taking action against foreign actors attempting to vitiate the Indian general elections. In the first such case, OpenAI, which operates the popular generative AI platform ChatGPT, reported having taken action against private actors operating out of Israel who were attempting to use the AI platform deceptively to vitiate the Indian elections with content favouring the Congress party.
Around the same time, Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reported having taken action against entities operating out of China that were propagating anti-India and pro-Khalistani content to influence the Sikh populace abroad.
These simultaneous reports by OpenAI and Meta are but the tip of the iceberg on the deliberate and concerted manner in which tools of disinformation have been employed not only to delegitimise the Indian general elections but also to foment disaffection against the Narendra Modi-led BJP government.
These attempts to disinform are not merely isolated incidents of stray actors acting independently. They are very much a part of the broader continuum of barely concealed global activism that has found its way into the reportage and commentary across multiple global media outlets. A detailed compilation of these articles reveals a pattern of provocative headlines that seek to create a narrative of democracy in India being in danger. With frequent use of phrases such as “democratic backsliding” and “shrinking of free speech,” these articles have also attempted to craft a narrative of anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia in the context of the Indian elections.
This pattern of reporting and commentary across multiple global media outlets is not a new phenomenon. A compilation of articles in the run-up to the 2019 Indian general elections reveals a similar pattern of behaviour on their part. Delving deeper into this phenomenon, a research paper published in the October-December 2021 quarterly edition of the Communicator, a peer-reviewed Journal, of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications (IIMC) provides insights. The paper titled “An Analysis of Global Media Coverage of Events in India”, prepared by public broadcaster Prasar Bharti, sampled 500 India-related articles published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, and The Guardian.
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Glaring contradictions
This overarching narrative of democracy in India being in danger, alongside the narrative of “shrinking freedom of speech,” needs deeper examination. These twin narratives draw data points from the ‘indices of democracy and freedom of speech’ published by mostly Europe-based non-governmental entities. Paradoxically, the methodology in use by these indices is largely opaque while relying on subjective assessments of unknown country experts.
Glaring contradictions underlying the ranking of India raise serious questions about both their motive and their objectivity. For example, Mexico, with the highest number of murders of electoral candidates, is ranked higher than India on the Democracy Index. Similarly, Mexico is also ranked higher than India on the Press Freedom Index despite having the highest number of journalists killed, higher than even the war zones of Syria and Ukraine. Ironically, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), which published the Press Freedom Rankings, had its own reporter detained and deported by Hong Kong, despite ranking Hong Kong higher than India in press freedom.
The narrative around the shrinking of “freedom of speech” flies in the face of hard facts over the past decade that saw greater competitiveness in the media sector across both broadcasting and digital media. The public broadcaster-run DD FreeDish DTH is a fine example of the manner in which the playing field has been levelled in broadcasting, with a base of more than 50 million households with more than 20 private news channels competing with the public broadcaster to serve news free-to-air. Free-to-air broadcasting, propelled by the state-run platform, has also levelled the playing field in entertainment, with upstart channels being able to best MNC-run incumbents. A similar levelling of the playing field in the digital media landscape has enabled a plurality of independent content creators to command viewership in the millions outside of mainstream media. This levelling of the digital playing field owes largely to the cheapest mobile data rates in India, resulting in the highest amount of average gigabytes of data being consumed every month by Indians, mostly for video content.
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A successful Indian democracy
Why then, one may ask, are these apparently false narratives being advanced across global media outlets and big-tech social media platforms despite the factual reality of India?
The answer to this question perhaps lies in these two implications that arise from a successful democratic electoral exercise in India. As the first and only billion-people democracy in the world, a successful Indian election not only confers an overwhelming mandate, unprecedented on a global scale, to the next Prime Minister but it also repudiates the Chinese model.
Much of the narrative underlying the one-party non-democratic authoritarianism in China is that electoral democracy is messy, anarchic, and unviable at a scale of a billion, thus requiring the Chinese citizenry to forgo personal freedoms to achieve economic growth and social development. Imagine the kind of message that goes to the Chinese people from India, which can not only make democracy work at the scale of a billion but can also deliver economic development, soon to be the world’s third-largest economy, next only to China. A successful democratic India on the path of development by 2047 would be a repudiation of everything China stands for. Further, a successful democratic India under the leadership of Narendra Modi would also be a repudiation of the Western model of liberal democracy, with Bharat charting its own independent path rooted in its cultural values.
As the 2024 general elections come to an end, the challenge for India would be to stare down these concerted attempts at disinformation and deliberate efforts to foment disaffection, for the success of Indian democracy under Narendra Modi’s leadership threatens both Chinese authoritarianism and Western liberalism alike.
Shashi Shekhar Vempati is former CEO of Prasar Bharati, India’s govt-owned public broadcaster. He tweets @shashidigital. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
China is China and India is India. Why do we have to compare ourselves with other countries? Nor do we have to take lessons from the West about liberal values. India has one of the freest cultures in the world. In fact, its very freedom is used by the Muslims to defeat the very idea of its freedom. It is about time the liberal Hindu values are brought to the forefront forcefully and Islam is given a firm push-back . Do not say such push-back is authoritarianism. Otherwise we will end up with a HAMAS in our midst.