Reference no: EM133395908

Question: Human rights bodies together with the global media watchdogs have in the past week criticized the Indian authorities' income tax survey operations being carried out at the BBC's offices located in Mumbai and New Delhi. According to the human rights and global media watchdogs, the action by the authorities is meant to cause intimidation at the same time being a blatant effort to frustrate freedom of the press and expression (Global Watchdogs, 2023). According to the income tax officials, their action came as a result of suspected tax evasion cases. In response to the accusations, BBC said that it is fully cooperating with the authorities hoping that there will be a resolution soon enough to allow them to continue with their normal operations.

For a long time, Indian authorities have been known to use tax evasion investigations as a pretext for targeting news outlets that are seen to criticize the government. In this case, the tax evasion case came after the news outlet publicized a story about the Prime minister and a damning documentary on corruption in the Indian government (Global Watchdogs, 2023). This incident can be described as a negative externality as the result in this condition is where the social cost of consuming the services offered by the BBC is more than the private benefit.

Reflection

Externalities take place in an economy where the production or consumption of a particular good or service makes an impact on the third party which at the same time is not directly related to the production or consumption of the product. In regards to externalities, nearly all of them are considered to be technical externalities. These technical externalities are known to have an impact on the production and consumption opportunities of third parties that are unrelated. In this case, the interference by the Indian government in the freedom of expression by the BBC network affects the relaying of information to the world as the tax sensors blocked them from releasing a documentary. This denies the world an opportunity to get to know what is going on in the Indian government.