'Paid News' Is Rotting India's Democracy: Choudhury

In a first in India's electoral history, a sitting legislator, Umlesh Yadav, was disqualified from office last week by the Election Commission of India for providing a false account of the expenditures incurred on her election campaign.

At first glance, the disqualification didn't appear to be of great consequence: it applied not to a member of Parliament but rather to a lawmaker in a state legislative assembly; the politician in question belonged to a minor political party; she was disqualified on what appeared to be an accounting technicality; and she had only four months left of her tenure in any case. But the precedent set by the Election Commission's decision had enormous implications for India's rambunctious and rule-bending electoral politics, where the stakes are so high and money flows so freely that politicians (many of whom own or control media outlets themselves) have succeeded in buying out sections of the fourth estate at elections, guaranteeing masses of propaganda that are published in newspapers as reporting.