 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Could you talk a bit maybe about how the right wing has evolved also? We know that since 2014 it's been in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a lot of experts have pointed out that a lot of the atrocities that were committed during the emergency, a lot of the very problematic aspects of government that were displayed during that period of time can be seen again now. For instance, the all-out attack on critics of the government, the influencing of the media, the weakening of the federal structure, all this can be seen even now. So could you talk a bit about also how the right wing from that point from the 70s is now emerging to what it is today? Well, you know, the political emergence of the right as a phenomena is not limited to India. It's happening in different countries in the world. So I think that's a much larger trend which perhaps we should not make it specific to India itself. If you talk about the emergency and what were the actions that were taken which are similar today, you're right that, you know, the various instruments, the various ways that the critics are being sought to be silenced. I will not agree they have been silenced or sought to be silenced, have various legal backing. Those laws unfortunately came under bipartisan support earlier the Congress government as well as this government both have strengthened those kinds of laws and one of them is the one which allows a lot enormous amount of powers to the state investigative agency under the guise of investigating threats to the national security. So these are the lawful activities prevention act and the instrument that has been created national investigative agency has got enormous powers and there are separate courts which have been created for that purpose very much similar to what are called the FISA courts in the United States for example. So all of these so-called anti-terrorist acts can be misused of course and we know that and they are misused in different ways in different countries and we are no exception to that. The part that I think is important is that this is always true. It has never not been true that there are no laws of the statute books which cannot be used against the people they all always were even very very innocuous sounding laws to draconian anti-sedition acts. All of these clauses which are almost the remnants of the British colonial rule exist in our books. How is it that those instruments are not used or when they are used there is a lot of criticism and there's a lot of resistance and the judiciary then gives a favorable verdict after a long drawn out legal battle. Those are the instruments by which we have been able to keep these kind of powers at the check and I think the erosion of that is the essential issue that comes up and we have seen this erosion gradually taking place with the 2014 elections that Modi won and came with an explicit promise to have a strong government and the strong government meant that it will take action against all resistances of this kind and which it has slowly built up. But I think the watermark has been this last victory and then the COVID-19 epidemic which has consolidated this power because he had managed to break the resistance of the Supreme Court and how or why that happened to the different story and having weakened the Supreme Court then of course the right wing forces got to get enormously strengthened if they are in power and this is something which happens in different countries as well so nothing which is exceptional here. So I think this is the part of it and if we see also the loss of legitimacy of other forces which have been there the democratic forces the weakening of the left which all of it has helped to generate more power to this particular right wing formation that we have so the fact that other political movements have weakened I think is also very much we have to be objective about it we have to accept that has also helped the consolidation of the right wing forces so the question still remains why is it that more than 70 years after India has become independent why is it that these forces of today gathered so much strength particularly when they played virtually no role during the independence movement or the anti-colonial anti-british empire movement why is it that today they have suddenly become strong is a question that we have to ask ourselves as well. And Prabir finally as a media professional yourself what like you already mentioned one of the key aspects of the emergency was the with some exceptions of course the very poor performance of the media there was almost a complete bowing down to government dictates which were very formally issued and like you said there was strong censorship today India at one level has a very vibrant media the amount of money that is invested in it is huge there are a huge number of channels online portals but at the same time we also see the production of a huge amount a considerable amount of right wing content or fake news and even tv channels for instance running on maybe the fox news model endorsing a very strong government line and even running a campaign against its critics so how do you see the shifting and the change of the media scenario today that is not as you know the media has always been pro big capital and one of the reasons why Indian media has been prone to supporting a certain kind of agenda is also because it is as you said sitting on a lot of money or it depends on the health of capital for its business model after all what does the media run on it runs on advertisements where do they come from they come from big capital so big friendly to big capital in the sign qua non of commercial big media so this is essentially the way media really functions and that's why what's called the neoliberal agenda has always been strongly supported by all sections of the media liberal or right so this is one part of the story the second part of the story as you have said is that there is a section of media today which out of fear connives or collaborates with the government but also a very strong troll media which brings some digital platforms to what you're calling as the fox news model which wants to go to war with Pakistan in the morning in the afternoon with China and war and the prime time launches a complete attack on minorities as well as on the opposition so they do not speak to power they speak power to truth so that's the basically the the functioning of this kind of media they are on the fringe of troll media which is outright lies fake news and abusive campaigns and the quote unquote legitimate media they're really on the border line of that like fox news is I think there's a poll taken once in the united states and it found that if you don't look at any media you're better informed than if for a fox news viewer so that that's the kind of media that you get also with in India republic tv which is really the fox news model you talked about but there is not one fox news model there are a number of them in India and they really are not averse to manufacturing news so that's the other part of it that exists but so this this is one part of it but there also has been digital platforms have come up and I think we are going to see soon different ways of trying to regulate them on the name of regulation really try to control them harass them in different ways and make them throw the line so I think this is the new model that we'll probably see in the coming years but what we do see now the resistance is coming from smaller more dispersed media groups which are not conventional media they are small platforms getting a certain amount of support from the people so there is a certain amount of money that they have but because they're not into printing or into dishes of the sky so they don't have to hire satellites so they're they are able therefore to do a certain number of certain kind of news which are more critical of the government and at least therefore act as a kind of what shall we say leash on the kind of narrative that can be promoted and I've always argued that these platforms are not going to be an alternate media as some people think they will be what they can do is to break news to show so that you cannot completely keep certain kinds of news out so it allows that news to leak into media because it will start appearing in different places that different kinds of people will pick it up and social media then amplifies it so reality cannot be covered up for too long and I think that is the problem that this government and all authoritarian governments have how do you control the people's voices and social media and digital platforms today being one of that but don't forget the emergency none of this existed but people knew what was happening and in spite of the fact Mrs. Gandhi controlled the media completely even up to the day the elections were being held the point is she lost extremely you know badly so it shows that the people's media that means people's communication will always exist and that even if you take away all the formal channels of communication it doesn't mean that you can take away people's voices resistance completely just because you control the media I think that's a mistake that people make they they people in power believe they can create a new reality and people will not wake up to the real world out there and they will believe what they've been told from the various screens in their houses or from the newspaper thank you so much for being for talking to us