The Government That Rarely Retreats, Until It Has To

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There is a familiar image of the Narendra Modi government: decisive, muscular and unafraid to take difficult decisions. It is an image carefully cultivated since 2014. India, the argument goes, had suffered for decades from coalition compulsions, hesitant prime ministers and governments that consulted everybody until they succeeded in doing nothing. The Modi era promised the opposite: a government that would decide first and explain later, preferably in a televised address.

There is, of course, something to be said for decisiveness. A government elected with a mandate cannot govern by perpetual seminar. But the record of the past twelve years raises an uncomfortable question: what happens when decisiveness becomes a substitute for consultation?

The answer, increasingly, has been a curious cycle. Announce a transformative reform. Present opposition as obstructionism. Assure the nation that the government knows what it is doing. Discover that farmers, allies, industry, parliamentary committees, courts or voters have inconvenient opinions. Then retreat, modify, postpone or quietly allow the proposal to disappear into the great Indian filing cabinet of unfinished reforms.

The Modi government has certainly not reversed everything controversial. Nor should every policy modification be described as a humiliating climbdown. But several important episodes reveal a distinctive pattern: **the government is often willing to listen, provided the listening begins only after the shouting becomes impossible to ignore.**

The Land Bill: The First Warning the Government Ignored

The first major retreat came remarkably early.

In 2015, the government sought to amend the 2013 land acquisition law, principally by relaxing consent and social-impact assessment requirements for certain categories of projects. The government argued that infrastructure, defence and industrial development were being strangled by procedural obstacles. Its critics saw something more ominous: the dilution of protections for farmers and landowners.

The government issued and reissued ordinances, apparently convinced that parliamentary resistance could be overcome by administrative persistence. But the politics proved more stubborn than the ordinance route. Opposition parties mobilised, farmer organisations objected and even voices within the broader ideological ecosystem expressed reservations.

Eventually, Prime Minister Modi announced that the ordinance would not be renewed.

It was an instructive moment. The government had not suddenly discovered that land acquisition was a sensitive issue in a predominantly rural democracy. That fact had existed for rather longer than the Ministry of Rural Development. What it discovered was the political cost of learning that lesson too late.

The land bill episode established a pattern that would become familiar: consultation after confrontation is a far more expensive form of governance than consultation before legislation.

The Farm Laws: When the State Blinked

If the land bill was the first warning, the repeal of the three farm laws in 2021 was the defining reversal of the Modi era.

The government presented the laws as historic agricultural reforms. They promised greater marketing freedom, private investment and new contractual opportunities. Yet the manner of their introduction, through ordinances followed by hurried parliamentary passage, created precisely the suspicion that accompanies reforms delivered with a bulldozer.

The farmers' agitation that followed was extraordinary in its duration, discipline and political significance. For nearly a year, thousands of farmers remained mobilised at Delhi's borders. The government initially appeared convinced that it could outlast them. It held negotiations, offered amendments and repeatedly insisted that the laws were beneficial.

But the protesters were asking for repeal, not a government-sponsored editing session.

On 19 November 2021, Prime Minister Modi announced that the three laws would be repealed. Parliament subsequently enacted the repeal.

This was not merely a policy adjustment. It was an acknowledgement that a government with a formidable parliamentary majority had failed to build sufficient social legitimacy for one of its most ambitious reform packages. The episode demonstrated something fundamental about democracy: a majority in Parliament is powerful, but it is not a substitute for consent in society.

Data Protection: Withdrawal as Legislative Recycling

The original Personal Data Protection Bill represents a different kind of retreat.

Introduced after extensive discussion of privacy and data governance, the bill went through parliamentary scrutiny and attracted substantial criticism and suggested changes. In August 2022, the government withdrew it, arguing that a more comprehensive legal framework was required. A revised Digital Personal Data Protection Act eventually emerged in 2023.

This case is less dramatic than the farm laws and should not be treated as identical. Governments are entitled to withdraw flawed legislation and introduce better versions. Indeed, that is what parliamentary scrutiny is supposed to achieve.

But the episode nevertheless exposed a recurring weakness in the government's legislative style. Grand bills are sometimes introduced as near-finished products and subjected to meaningful reconsideration only after committees and stakeholders point out the holes. The parliamentary process becomes the quality-control department for policies that should have been better tested before launch.

Lateral Entry: Social Justice Arrives After the Advertisement

The withdrawal of the UPSC's 2024 lateral-entry recruitment advertisement offered an especially sharp illustration of political reflex.

The government sought to recruit professionals into senior and middle levels of the bureaucracy. Lateral entry itself was not a new or inherently unreasonable idea. Modern governments often require specialised expertise that traditional recruitment systems may not always provide.

The controversy concerned reservation.

After opposition parties and, significantly, NDA allies raised objections that the recruitment process bypassed established reservation principles, the government moved rapidly. The UPSC withdrew the advertisement.

The speed of the reversal was almost impressive. It suggested that the government had suddenly discovered social justice between issuing the advertisement and reading the newspapers.

The real question was not whether lateral entry was desirable. It was why a government that routinely presents itself as deeply attentive to social representation had apparently failed to settle the reservation issue before advertising the posts.

Indexation: The Budget Proposal That Met the Property Owner

Budget proposals are usually presented as products of careful economic calculation, preferably accompanied by charts that make taxation look like a public service.

In 2024, the government proposed changes to the taxation of long-term capital gains on property, removing indexation benefits while lowering the tax rate. The measure generated significant concern among property owners and others who argued that inflation-adjusted gains were being treated unfairly.

The government subsequently modified the proposal, allowing certain taxpayers to choose between the older system with indexation and the newer lower-rate regime.

This was not a revolution or a surrender. It was, however, another example of policy discovering the real world after the Finance Minister had finished reading the Budget speech.

The Laptop Import U-Turn: Make in India Meets Global Supply Chains

The 2023 restrictions on imports of laptops, tablets and certain other IT hardware provided another lesson in the dangers of sudden policymaking.

The government announced a licensing requirement with little warning, generating immediate alarm among technology companies and industry bodies. The deadline was subsequently pushed back and the policy was modified into a different import-management framework.

The objective of encouraging domestic manufacturing was understandable. The execution was less so.

Global supply chains are not light switches. One cannot announce industrial self-reliance on Thursday and expect the world's electronics manufacturers to rearrange their factories by Monday morning.

The later modifications reflected a practical recognition that industrial policy requires preparation, capacity and consultation, rather than merely patriotic enthusiasm and a notification number.

CAA and the NRC: Delay as a Political Strategy

The Citizenship Amendment Act presents a more complicated case. It was not repealed. The government ultimately notified its rules in March 2024, more than four years after the law was passed.

Therefore, it would be inaccurate to describe the CAA as a formal reversal.

But delay itself can be politically meaningful. The prolonged gap between legislation and implementation reflected the extraordinary controversy surrounding the measure and the nationwide protests that followed its passage.

The proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens followed a similar political trajectory. Although no nationwide exercise was formally notified, the rhetoric surrounding it was subsequently softened and the proposal effectively receded from immediate political action.

This is the art of the non-reversal reversal: do not abandon the idea, merely place it in a sufficiently quiet room until the political temperature falls.

Agnipath: The Latest and Most Significant Modification

The most recent example deserves particular attention because it occurred only days ago.

When the Agnipath scheme was introduced in 2022, its central feature was a four-year engagement, with approximately 25 per cent of Agniveers eligible for subsequent regular service based on merit and organisational requirements. The remaining 75 per cent were expected to leave after four years.

On 4 November 2026, the Union Cabinet approved a significant new pathway. The remaining 75 per cent of Agniveers may receive a further two-year engagement based on willingness and eligibility. After that period, they are to be offered a pathway to enrolment as regular soldiers, subject to willingness and selection criteria. The government insists that the core scheme continues and describes the change as a refinement based on four years of experience.

That is technically defensible. But politically, it is difficult to ignore the scale of the change.

A scheme originally designed around four-year service and limited regular absorption has now created a route through which the cohort originally expected to exit can remain for two additional years and subsequently seek regular enrolment. Calling this a mere adjustment is rather like calling the demolition of a wall an improvement in ventilation.

The change does not constitute the complete withdrawal of Agnipath. New recruits still enter under the scheme's basic structure. Yet it represents a substantial concession to one of the scheme's central criticisms: the insecurity created by the prospect of three-quarters of recruits leaving military service after only four years.

The government has every right to improve a policy after experience. Indeed, that is preferable to defending a defective policy merely to protect political prestige. But the question remains: if four years of experience revealed the need for such a major modification, how complete was the original assessment before the scheme was imposed?

The Larger Pattern: Power Listens to Pressure More Easily Than Argument

There is an important distinction here. The Modi government has also undertaken a deliberate programme of repealing obsolete and colonial-era laws. That should not be confused with reversing its own policies. Clearing dead legislation from the statute book is administrative housekeeping; withdrawing one's freshly launched flagship reform is a rather different activity.

Nor should every change be treated as evidence of failure. Sensible governments revise policies. The problem arises when revision follows a predictable sequence of insufficient consultation, aggressive defence, mounting protest and belated accommodation.

The government's strongest reforms have often been those where political preparation accompanied policy change. Its weakest moments have frequently occurred when a large majority created the illusion that legislation itself was the same thing as consensus.

The deeper irony is that the government has often portrayed itself as uniquely decisive while repeatedly demonstrating the limitations of decision-making insulated from serious dissent. A government does not become weak because it consults farmers before rewriting agricultural laws, industry before disrupting imports, or affected communities before altering recruitment systems.

On the contrary, consultation is how a strong government avoids the embarrassment of discovering, after months of protest, that the people outside the conference room were not merely background noise.

The Modi government's record since 2014 is therefore not a story of constant U-turns. Major reversals remain relatively uncommon. It is a more interesting story than that.

It is the story of a powerful government that usually moves in a straight line, often at considerable speed, until Indian democracy places something immovable in its path: a mass movement, an election, a coalition ally, an agitated social constituency, a parliamentary committee or the inconvenient persistence of public opinion.

Then the government demonstrates another, less advertised talent.

It knows how to reverse. It simply prefers to call the manoeuvre a course correction.

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The Government and the Media: Who Is Holding Whom Accountable?

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There is an old question that every democracy must answer: Who watches the government?

The obvious answer is the media.

But in India, the question has become slightly more complicated.

Who watches the media when the media is busy watching the government watching the media?

Confused? You should be.

Because the relationship between the Indian news media and the government has always been something of a complicated marriage. There have been periods of love, periods of conflict, periods of silent treatment and, occasionally, periods when one partner has simply locked the other in a room and confiscated the telephone.

Since Independence, every Indian government has publicly professed its commitment to a free press. And, to be fair, most governments have tolerated criticism to varying degrees.

But governments, like human beings, have a fascinating relationship with criticism.

They believe passionately in freedom of expression, especially when someone else is expressing agreement.

The moment criticism begins, freedom of expression suddenly develops certain complications. National interest enters the room. Public order arrives shortly afterwards. Security concerns are summoned. Someone discovers an obscure regulation. And before you know it, the critic is being asked a question that has become increasingly fashionable in democracies everywhere:

“Why are you saying this now?”

Well, perhaps because journalism is supposed to say things.

That brings us to the long and complicated story of the Indian media and political power.

The Microphone Belonged to the Government

When India became independent in 1947, it inherited not only the institutions of British India but also many of its habits of administration.

The press had a proud history. Newspapers had played an important role in the freedom movement. Editors had gone to prison. Publications had been banned. Journalism, at least in its idealised memory, had fought authority.

But broadcasting was a different matter.

All India Radio was under government control. And for decades, that was perfectly normal in the Indian system.

Radio was not merely entertainment. In a vast country with low literacy and enormous linguistic diversity, it was a powerful instrument of communication. It could educate. It could inform. It could promote national integration.

And, of course, it could tell the nation what the government thought was important.

Now, none of this was necessarily sinister. A newly independent country needed communication infrastructure. The government had legitimate developmental objectives.

But there is a fundamental problem when the government owns the loudest microphone in the country.

Sooner or later, the microphone begins to sound suspiciously like the person holding it.

For decades, private radio was effectively kept away from news broadcasting. Even when private FM radio eventually arrived, entertainment was welcome. Music was welcome. Cheerful banter was welcome.

But news?

Ah, news was a more serious matter.

Apparently, a country could survive a thousand radio stations playing film songs, but allowing too many independent voices to tell listeners what was happening was a risk best approached with caution.

This was the essential contradiction of Indian broadcasting. The airwaves belonged to the public in theory, but for much of independent India's history, the government had a remarkably strong claim on the keys to the studio.

Newspapers Had Freedom. With an Asterisk.

The print media enjoyed considerably greater freedom.

The Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a), and the courts recognised that freedom of the press flowed from this constitutional guarantee.

But there was one important detail.

Freedom was not absolute.

There were reasonable restrictions. There were laws. There were regulations. There were security concerns.

And there was always the government.

Governments could not simply dictate every newspaper headline in normal times. But they possessed other forms of influence. Licensing and regulatory powers mattered. Government advertising mattered. Legal action mattered.

A newspaper might be constitutionally free to criticise the government.

The more practical question was whether the newspaper could afford to do so indefinitely.

This does not mean that the Indian press was a collection of frightened institutions. Far from it. Indian newspapers produced some of the finest and most fearless journalism in the country.

But freedom of the press has always existed alongside a rather uncomfortable reality:

The state does not have to own a newspaper to influence its environment.

And then, in 1975, the government decided that influencing the environment was simply too time-consuming.

It was much easier to control the weather.

The Emergency: When Democracy Put Journalism on Mute

The Emergency of 1975 to 1977 remains the darkest chapter in the history of independent Indian journalism.

On the night of 25 June 1975, democracy did not disappear with a dramatic explosion.

It was more bureaucratic than that.

The lights went out at newspaper offices. Censorship orders arrived. Editors discovered that publishing the news had become a government-approved activity.

The Press Council was abolished.

Major news agencies were merged into Samachar.

Journalists were detained.

Pre-censorship became a reality.

And the government-controlled broadcasters, All India Radio and Doordarshan, became instruments through which the official version of India could be delivered directly to Indian homes.

The popular nickname for AIR during that period was “All Indira Radio.”

It was a cruel joke.

But like many cruel jokes, it survived because it contained a recognisable truth.

The Emergency demonstrated something every democracy should remember: freedom can disappear much faster than institutions expect.

A newspaper that had spent decades fighting colonial rule could discover overnight that its greatest challenge was no longer finding a good story.

It was getting permission to print one.

To its credit, sections of the Indian press resisted. *The Indian Express* and *The Statesman*, among others, became associated with acts of defiance against censorship.

But the Emergency also exposed another uncomfortable truth.

Not everyone needs to be forced into submission.

Some people volunteer.

And that is perhaps the most important lesson of the Emergency. Censorship is not always imposed with a policeman standing in the newsroom.

Sometimes an editor looks at the political atmosphere, looks at the commercial interests of the organisation, looks at the possible consequences and decides that courage is an unnecessary luxury.

Democracy Returned. Dependence Did Not Disappear.

When the Emergency ended in 1977, formal censorship was lifted and the press regained its freedom.

India had survived a profound democratic crisis.

But surviving a crisis does not automatically solve the structural problems that created the vulnerability.

The question of autonomous broadcasting returned. Committees had already recommended that public broadcasting should be independent of the government.

The idea was straightforward.

A public broadcaster should belong to the public.

This should not have been a revolutionary concept.

Unfortunately, in India, separating a government institution from government influence has often been rather like separating milk from tea after you have stirred it.

The Prasar Bharati Act was passed in 1990, but the corporation became operational only in 1997.

Even then, the larger question remained unresolved.

Can a broadcaster truly be editorially independent if its institutional structure, funding and important appointments remain closely connected to the state?

The answer is not always simple.

Public broadcasting does not have to become anti-government broadcasting in order to be independent. Nor should it.

A public broadcaster has every right to report government achievements.

The problem begins when government achievements become the only achievements worth reporting.

Then Came Liberalisation and the Great Indian Noise Machine

The 1990s changed everything.

Economic liberalisation and satellite television broke the old broadcasting monopoly.

Suddenly, Doordarshan was no longer the only window through which millions of Indians saw the world.

Private channels arrived.

Cable television exploded.

CNN's coverage of the Gulf War demonstrated that news could travel across borders and enter living rooms without asking the Indian government for permission.

And then came the great Indian television revolution.

Zee.

Star.

And eventually a multitude of 24-hour news channels.

For the first time, political leaders faced a media environment they did not directly control.

This was unquestionably a democratic advance.

But India soon discovered that freedom from a government monopoly did not automatically produce perfect journalism.

It produced competition.

And competition produced something else.

Ratings.

The viewer became king.

And the advertiser became the king's financial adviser.

The result was a new kind of pressure.

The government was no longer the only powerful institution capable of influencing news.

Corporations entered the picture. Large media conglomerates expanded. Political interests developed media connections.

And television discovered that outrage was excellent for business.

A complicated policy debate could be boring.

But six people shouting simultaneously about whether the nation was in danger?

That was prime-time entertainment.

From Censorship to the More Sophisticated Art of Influence

This brings us to the India of today.

Is the Indian media free?

The honest answer is: yes, but the word “free” requires several footnotes.

India has thousands of publications, television channels and digital platforms. Journalists investigate governments. Newspapers publish criticism. Opposition leaders appear on television. Social media produces more political commentary before breakfast than an entire generation could have imagined in 1947.

So it would be historically inaccurate to claim that India is living through a permanent Emergency.

But it would be equally naïve to pretend that political power has lost its interest in influencing the media.

Governments have many tools.

Advertising.

Regulation.

Investigations.

Legal action.

Access.

Licensing.

And, perhaps most importantly, the ability to create an atmosphere in which certain kinds of journalism become expensive, difficult or inconvenient.

This is the great difference between old-fashioned censorship and modern influence.

The old censor put a red line through your article.

The modern system may simply make you wonder whether writing the article is worth the trouble.

That is far more subtle.

And subtlety has one great advantage.

Nobody has to admit that censorship exists.

But Let Us Not Pretend the Media Is Always the Victim

There is another side to this story, and the media must not escape scrutiny merely because governments are powerful.

Not every editorial decision is made under political pressure.

Sometimes it is made because sensationalism sells.

Sometimes because ideology is good for ratings.

Sometimes because owners have political preferences.

And sometimes because shouting is easier than reporting.

A journalist can be silenced by the government.

But journalism can also be weakened by the journalist's own institution.

A television channel that spends every evening conducting political gladiator contests may be completely free from government censorship.

That does not necessarily mean it is performing a public service.

A newspaper can criticise one political party with remarkable courage while treating another with extraordinary tenderness.

That is not always independence.

Sometimes it is simply partisanship wearing a press card.

The greatest danger to journalism is not merely that the government might control it.

The greater danger is that journalism might become so politically polarised that it stops recognising independence as an objective.

So, Who Is Holding Whom Accountable?

This is where we return to our original question.

Who watches the government?

The media.

Who watches the media?

The public, competing media institutions, independent journalism and, ideally, professional ethics.

But there is one principle that must remain non-negotiable.

The government of the day cannot be the ultimate editor of the national conversation.

A government deserves fair reporting.

It deserves credit when it succeeds.

It deserves the opportunity to explain its policies.

But it does not deserve immunity from criticism.

And the media has an equally important responsibility.

It must not become the permanent opposition merely because opposition is fashionable.

Nor should it become the permanent public relations department of whoever happens to occupy the government offices.

The media's job is not to love the government.

The media's job is not to hate the government.

The media's job is to ask questions.

Including the questions that nobody in power particularly wants to answer.

The Final Word

India has travelled a remarkable distance since 1947.

We moved from a government monopoly over broadcasting to hundreds of television channels and an enormous digital universe.

We survived the Emergency, the most direct assault on press freedom in our democratic history.

We liberalised broadcasting.

We created new institutions.

We opened the airwaves.

But the struggle for a genuinely independent media is not over.

It may never be over.

Because every generation discovers its own version of the same old temptation.

Those in power want favourable coverage.

Those seeking power want sympathetic coverage.

Corporations want useful coverage.

Political parties want loyal coverage.

And journalists, inconveniently, are supposed to want the truth.

That is why a free media will always have an uneasy relationship with power.

And perhaps that is exactly how it should be.

A comfortable media is often a compromised media.

A comfortable government may simply be a government that is not being asked enough questions.

Democracy does not need a media that screams at every government.

It does not need a media that applauds every government either.

It needs something much more difficult to create.

A media that can praise without becoming a cheerleader.

A media that can criticise without becoming a political party.

And above all, a media that remembers one simple fact: The microphone does not belong to the government. It does not belong to the corporation. It does not belong to the political party. In a democracy, it ultimately belongs to the citizen.

And if the citizen cannot hear the truth because the government is speaking too loudly, the corporations are paying for the programme, and the television anchors are shouting over everyone else...

Then perhaps it is time for all of us to stop shouting.

And start listening.

Because the day a democracy no longer has the courage to ask questions is not the day journalism fails.

It is the day democracy begins to lose its voice.

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