For decades, dominant Western media conglomerates, especially the BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian and Reuters, have indulged in promoting anti-Bharat narratives clashing with the strategic and economic interests of our rising nation. As the world’s most populous country, it is time we establish a robust international media ecosystem to project our strategic interests, challenge biased reportage and voice the alternative perspective of the Global South.
Western media coverage of Bharat reflects a clear divide marked by the year 2014. Prior to Narendra Modi assuming office, international narratives centered on our backwardness and poverty, corruption scandals, and sluggish economic growth under the fragmented, weak, and pliable Congress-led regimes, followed by an era of instability under different coalition governments. This pattern of political instability traced back to 1977, when the post-Emergency Janata Party experiment ushered in decades of weak central authority and frequently rotating Prime Ministers, playing musical chairs. This propaganda compromised Bharat’s geopolitical standing, leaving Western outlets free to project a narrative our vulnerability without significant pushback.
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power, Western media coverage grew noticeably more intense and adversarial. This shift coincided with a period of national renewal, driven by political stability, robust economic growth, targeted welfare for the middle and lower-middle classes, and a resurgence of Bharat’s cultural heritage. However, as the nation’s global footprint expanded, international criticism sharpened, attacking PM Modi personally as his stature grew as a key leader of the Global South.
Barely a few months into his first term, the U.S.-based Time magazine featured Modi on its 2015 cover with a skeptical headline, “Can Modi Deliver?” By 2019, its tone hardened sharply, featuring him alongside a controversial story that branded him India’s “Divider-in-Chief.” All other media houses followed and attacked PM Modi, describing him as a divisive, nationalist, and a risky leader with editorials warning that global democracy dies under him. These negative articles far outnumbered the entire decade of UPA-era coverage on scams like 2G, coal allocation, and the Commonwealth Games.
Bharat’s expanding global influence under PM Modi drew intense backlash from Western media. They increasingly utilised our home-grown local, left-leaning writers backed by deep-state interests to construct narratives challenging the nation’s rise. Positioned as bridge figures, these writers leverage international platforms to provide feed on anti-Bharat narratives to the think tanks and policy elites of the West as propaganda material. Key themes in their columns included democratic backsliding, curbing press freedom, authoritarianism, Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim communal violence, institutional erosion, minority persecution, and farmers’ and students’ unrest.
Today, as Bharat asserts its dominance against Western and Chinese influence through a potent mix of scale, talent, and strategic policy, attacks from international outlets and local commentators have intensified. These reports frequently underplay our key advances, spanning digital public infrastructure such as UPI and ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce), defense exports, cost-effective space missions, and expanding semiconductor and clean-tech industries. Though we have both state-run and private international media like DD India, AIR World Service, and WION, our progress is barely reached the international audience due to its structural weakness compared to its size, economic weight, bias, and geopolitical ambitions. To counter the onslaught of the Western and Chinese media supported by our home-grown leftist writers, we need to have a robust international media ecosystem to tell our side of the story. A 6-step buildup is suggested.
- i) Build a credible, independent‑sounding global ecosystem by strengthening or creating a multilingual global platform headquartered in Bharat, with bureaus in US, Europe, Africa, West Asia, Indo-Pacific and Latin America. This platform should have an editorial firewall under direct government control to ensure trust. It should be state-funded but independently governed. The focus should be on geopolitics, development, tech, culture from Bharat’s perspective. Credibility is the key.
- ii) Establish a global monitoring and response cell to track false or skewed stories and give timely, fact-based rebuttals. Shifts the battle from “shouting matches” to documented, verifiable corrections.
iii) Leverage the diaspora, academics, and friendly foreign voices by engaging them as a first-response network. Provide them with accurate briefings, data packs, and storytelling toolkits and encourage diaspora journalists, academics, and content creators to counter misinformation locally in their own media ecosystems. Invite international journalists to Bharat on curated trips focused on development, diversity, and Bharat’s knowledge systems. Establish Bharat Chairs and study centres in major foreign universities to produce research that informs global discourse.
- iv) Out‑compete left-leaning platforms on quality by encouraging independent, fact‑based, nationalist‑leaning news portals, YouTube channels, podcasts and OTT platforms. This is not to “shutting down” certain voices, it should be more about changing the balance of credibility, volume, and reach in the global information space.
- v) Improve Bharat’s own media literacy and narrative resilience by teaching critical consumption of Western media. Instead of only reacting to “anti‑Bharat” stories, proactively push stories on development, innovation, federal diversity, social mobility, culture, and strategic autonomy. Content in regional languages that can be translated and exported.
- vi) Avoid counter‑productive measures by any censorship, credential cancellations, or overt pressure on foreign media. This can be seen as authoritarian. Don’t attempt to label all critical domestic outlets as “anti‑national”. The goal should be to raise the quality and reach of pro‑Bharat narratives, not to silence all criticism
Final word: I truly believe that the ultimate benchmark of a democracy is the freedom of its media. By this standard, Bharat stands as a leading global democracy, guaranteeing complete freedom to its print, digital, electronic, and social media platforms. In fact, this independence is so expansive that certain elements extensively exploit it, pushing divisive and anti-national narratives for commercial gain. We must remain vigilant against such internal instruments under foreign influence. Today, the Western definition of a free press has degraded into freedom to buy newspapers, buy and bribe writers to manufacture public opinion for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. But remember, Lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories of the Western world’s voices are not free speech. They are fraud and propaganda.
