India's ranking on Press Freedom Index
Soft-spoken, incorruptible, an eminent economist, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a good man. But under his Congress/United Progressive Alliance government, India has sunk to a new low on the Press Freedom Index. India ranks 131st out of 179 countries on the 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders. India was not ranked so low when the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Indian prime minister.
Vajpayee was prime minister from 19 March 1988 till 19 May 2004. The Reporters Without Borders website shows Press Freedom Index rankings back till 2002. Though India dropped from 80th to 128th in 2003, it rose to 120th in 2004 when India went to the polls. The Congress-UPA alliance won the election and Manmohan Singh succeeded Vajpayee as prime minister on 19 May 2004. And ever since India has ranked low on the Press Freedom Index.
The Congress is professedly secular and the Bharatya Janata Party a Hindu nationalist organization. But the Congress/UPA government wants curbs on freedom of expression. A court in New Delhi last month asked 21 social networking sites to remove all “anti-social” and “anti-religious” content by February 6.
“Like China, we too can block such websites”, Justice Suresh Kait of Delhi High Court warned. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others were advised to create a mechanism to remove “offensive and objectionable” content from their services. Now Twitter has just such a mechanism.
On Friday, Twitter announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis. It’s a victory for countries like China and India which block or threaten to block websites carrying “objectionable” content. Twitter seems to be giving in to countries with restrictions on freedom of expression to expand its global business.
On its blog, Twitter said it could “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”.
But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide.
Reporters Without Borders says in its 2011-2012 report:
In India (131st), journalists were exposed to violence stemming from the persistent conflicts in the states of Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir. The threat from mafia groups operating in the main cities of the country also contributed to self-censorship. However, the authorities were no better. In May, they unveiled the “Information Technology Rules 2011,” which have dangerous implications for online freedom of expression. Foreign reporters saw their visa requests turned down or were pressured to provide positive coverage.
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That fits the trend ! With cases like this Cartoonist Satish Arya forced to remove cartoon expect a further slide in 2012 !