Incentives for sycophants from the UP government
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For the success and continuous performance of any government, it is essential to have a public relations exercise to make people aware of its functioning and to give publicity to its activities. To fulfil these requirements, it is customary for all states to have information and public relations departments, as does the Union Government with its own Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Governments spend billions from the public exchequer on these groups, who work overtime to conduct pro-government propaganda and counter anti-government propaganda. In more recent times, in addition to such large advertisements, there has been a trend of planting news through mainstream audio-visual, online, and print media using coaxing and threats. It was after Narendra Modi took office in 2014 that the phrase ‘godi media’ (embedded media) gained currency, and the credibility of media news came under a shadow of doubt to this extent. The Union Government and the governments of various states are carrying out repression against the media and media workers who do not fall in line to sing the praises of the government. As a result, India's rating in the World Media Index is falling every year. With people beginning to rely on social media for news, information, and advertisements apart from formal media, social media platforms are also coming under increasing surveillance and control. There are also cases where social media companies delete posts and accounts as per government directives.
Meanwhile, the Yogi Adityanath government has approved a new digital media policy in Uttar Pradesh, where media activity is in a critical condition. Under the new policy, legal action will be taken against those who post abusive, obscene, or anti-national content. At the same time, those who make videos and posts praising the activities and projects of the government will be given liberal cash rewards. Those who have YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts with between 1 lakh and 10 lakh followers will be appointed as government eulogists. It has been decided to pay up to eight lakh rupees per month, depending on the number of people who see and respond to the content they post.
It is not difficult to read the motive of this policy of Yogi, who jailed Keralite journalist Siddique Kappan, who went to report on the family of a Dalit woman who was raped and murdered in Hathras, under the National Security Act. It was during the same chief minister's regime that a young journalist named Subham Mani Tripathi from Kanpur was killed for reporting on illegal sand mining, ABP News reporter Sulabh Srivastava who broke news against the liquor mafia in Pratapgarh was killed, and Ajit Ojha, Digvijay Singh, and Manoj Gupta, who reported the leak of the question papers of class 12, were arrested and jailed.
On the one hand, the role played by social media users in the electoral verdict made by the people of UP in the last general election, which rejected the narratives of the pro-government communal forces despite spreading false stories through WhatsApp, is indisputable. They used YouTube videos to demolish all the lies spread by the Sangh Parivar in North India about Kerala, which the big media hesitated to touch for fear of burning their fingers. The brutality of the illegal bulldozing of minorities was exposed across the country via YouTube and Instagram. Even if the Noida channels hide all the breakdowns, unemployment, and denial of opportunities faced by Uttar Pradesh under Yogi, who came to power with the promise of bringing the state's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to one trillion, popular journalists are sure to lay them bare fearlessly and mercilessly. Therefore, now the government is determined to stop all this and, if possible, pay to silence dissent before the next election. BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi has claimed that the UP government has set a model for its digital media policy – which is true. Governments in other states are likely to follow this example soon to hide their ineptitude and to tame those outside their favour. This move, which makes free and honest social media content impossible, needs to be questioned in every sense before that.