Violation of freedom of the press

I have pleasure in commending to you this painstakingly detailed monograph prepared by Associate Research Professor Usha Loghani. She has dealt with all the complaints adjudicated by the First Press Council of India 1966-1974 and the Second Press Council 1979-1984 (June). Ms Loghani has focussed on four arenas of stress: pressurisation and ha rassment of newspaper persons, accreditation and freedom, advertisement as a mechanism of control and influence over the press, and residual areas of press freedom not conveniently classifiable under neat categories. At the end of annotated description, the author has tried to distil major principles enunciated by the Press Council.

Even a casual browsing of this short monograph would convince you how fragile and brittle is the freedom of the press in India. The Press Council proceedings reflect more thoroughly than those before the Sup reme and the High Courts the hazards to the free press.

Of course, India is not unique, among the Third World nations parti cularly, in deploying power and even force in stilling the claims to accoun tability of public power. Nor is India unique in her inability, towards the end of the fourth decade of her independence, in ensuring the full accountability of the power of the free press. The Press Council of India is, unenviably, confronted by the need thus to protect the freedom of the press against all insidious erosion and to ensure that Indian journalism retains the best characteristics of a learned and self-regulating profession. While everything that is done by a human agency could almost always be done better, and here the sky is the limit, a reading of this anthology should persuade you that the Press Council has played this crucial role quite admirably so far. Nothing in what follows, by way of constructive critique, is intended to detract from this overall appreciation.