What was the media narrative about GST (Goods & Service Tax) during UPA rule when GST was being discussed as a possibility and how is it now when NDA government at the Centre has achieved the historical milestone of its implementation? To know this, we did searches with key words like ‘GST India’, ‘GST Congress’, ‘GST BJP’, ‘GST slab’ and went through news and opinions between the period 2009 and June 2018.

Between 2009 and 2014, the dominant narrative that had prevailed in media was in these lines: GST for the whole nation is an important step which the Centre is ready to take, but the resistance from states – they had concerns and did not trust the UPA government to resolve them – is the main hurdle in GST implementation. The fact that the opposing states had no opposition to GST per se but had concerns that needed to be addressed was given very little headline space.

Contrasting this with NDA timeline, news and opinions explaining how GST implementation is hurting some particular sector kept appearing.