When Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels abroad, he does so aboard Air India One – a taxpayer-funded Boeing 777-300ER fleet that cost Rs 8,400 crore and comes with a press briefing room. 

The public still pays for the plane, but the press briefings have disappeared. 

Since 2014, no Indian journalists have travelled with the prime minister on his foreign visits, ending a decades-old democratic convention that allowed reporters to question officials, gather independent information and report beyond the government’s official narrative. 

It was a deliberate decision to close the plane’s door to foreign affairs reporters. In an interview with Smita Prakash, the PM’s former principal secretary Nripendra Misra recalled presenting Modi with a list of journalists who were expected to accompany him on his first foreign visit, as was the convention. According to Misra, Modi questioned why reporters needed to travel on the PM’s aircraft at all. Told that ending the practice could sour relations with the press, Modi remained unconvinced. He argued that news organisations were free to send their own “monarchs”. The instruction, Misra recalled, was clear: no journalists would travel with him. Since then, Modi has undertaken more than 180 foreign visits.

Over these years, access to India’s foreign-policy machinery has been replaced by its management, first-hand reporting by relayed information, and the coverage of diplomacy by coverage of spectacle. To map that shift, and to understand the impact on accountability and foreign policy itself, Newslandry spoke to several journalists who have worked the beat from the Vajpayee years to the present.

What a seat on the plane meant