Because no one have correct numbers to be frank. Media sometimes does act responsibly can be one of other reasons as well.

But as people pointing here, Indian govt surely not controlling all media outlets. They does manage couple though.

No, arrests and convictions for spreading "misinformation" and "fake news" are very brutal in India currently (at least for those who aren't on the government's side).

The doctors in my family all openly say that the real numbers are at least bigger by a factor of 10.

This is varying a lot by state according to doctors I am connected to. UP and Gujarat are definitely fudging deaths by 5-10x, Karnataka seems to be more or less in line with reported deaths.

My (Indian) wife says that the media just print the good things their party does because if they printed dirt about their opponents, those people would print dirt about them.

If the any of the "independent media" does this, they get censored for spreading "false covid information". It's painted as a conspiracy theory almost immediately.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It leads to flamewars, which are tedious and nasty.

Instead, you can add solid information in a neutral way; or it's always ok not to post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've done this repeatedly in recent months. That's not cool; please don't—regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, on the underlying issues.

Not a single day goes without seeing critical piece appearing in one of the listed sites:

https://www.ndtv.com https://scroll.in https://thewire.in

All of the foreign sites which are often very critical of the government like Aljazeera and BBC are also freely available. Note that scroll and wire are very left oriented and highly critical of the govt. So you need to balance the news with other medias. Even well established news papers like thehindu.com (leftist, run by leftist student leader N.Ram) and hindustantimes.com (run by opposition party) are also very popular and critical of the govt.

Even without government control, indian media is generally hesistant to publish (or delay the publication) large scale news that could create public panic. The news on mismanagement will start to come in few months once these things settle down.

During the initial weeks of first wave , the media was more supportive of the government lockdown. Later when they realised that all was under control, media started bringing out the lockdown as a blunder.