New Delhi, May 25 -- When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Oslo recently, it was not an Indian reporter who put him on the spot. It was a Norwegian journalist. The question itself was direct and unremarkable by western democratic standards: why does the Indian prime minister so rarely take unscripted questions from the press?

In another era, the episode might have passed as a minor diplomatic awkwardness. Instead, it landed with unusual force because it captured a larger truth about contemporary India. The country still conducts noisy elections, produces relentless political spectacle, and celebrates itself as the world's largest democracy. Yet public accountability, especially where the press is concerned, has become strangely fragi...