Journalists under threat: What do I feel?
Journalists are under threat in today’s India. There is no doubt that the present political dispensation is unlikely to show mercy to dissent and being a very well organized political force are willing to play a long ideological game in order to suppress dissent. This is nothing unusual. Cadre based political formations are always good at this. Our communist friends were so good at this that in the then red fortress of West Bengal everybody was a communist if they were to survive particularly in government institutions. Their front organisations had massive membership numbers and it was difficult to find a dissenting voice. The present right wing dispensation has a similar approach. They are handicapped because their dominance in the political spectrum in India is not as pronounced as the Communists had in West Bengal, but they are using the usual mix of strong arm tactics as well as carrots to impose their worldview on the Indian public. Journalists are particularly at risk a