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Sometimes we look at the way things are and we think that's the only way they can be.
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Maybe we look at the lines on a map and they seem to tell us something real about the world
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until we realise that we are looking at a map from 200 years ago and there are different
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Sometimes we look at a person who is 25 years old and we make judgements about that person
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and assume that what they are is all they will ever be.
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And then we look at them 25 years later and they are someone else.
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These fixed ways of looking at the world happens a lot in industries, in organisations and
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it happened in the world of Indian media.
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Once upon a time everyone who ran our big media houses knew each other, moved in the
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same circles, looked the same, looked at the world the same way.
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Their gaze was limited but everyone was so used to that way of looking that there seemed
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to be no other way to see the world.
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It may have stayed that way forever or changed at a glacial pace but then the internet came
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around and technology empowered people everywhere.
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And today we realise how limited that gaze was.
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Big media based out of Delhi looked at the world the way a privileged North Indian man
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would and that point of view misses everything important about this country.
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But thankfully as India is changing so is our media.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Dhania Rajendran, founder and editor of the News Minute.
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Dhania grew up in Palakkad in Kerala, not a place that has produced too many media superstars.
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She got into journalism a couple of decades ago and spent a few years in Times Now where
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she rose to be bureau chief for all of South India.
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Working in what she now describes as a toxic newsroom, she grew frustrated by the homogenous
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gaze of her editors in Delhi.
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It was a gaze centred around North India.
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Stories from the South were not given importance.
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She would not only have to produce great stories, she would also have to market them to her
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bosses to convince them that these were worth carrying.
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Another gaze that was a problem was the male gaze.
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Even in an industry that had many women reporters, every story was looked at from a male point
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When Dhania eventually struck out on her own, she decided to fight these gazes to build
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diverse newsrooms with people of different genders, castes and class backgrounds.
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She walked the talk in building the News Minute, which, in my opinion, does some of the finest
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journalism in this country.
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They break stories no one else goes near.
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And they look at stories through a variety of different lenses.
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Dhania was kind enough to open up to me about her journey so far and her thoughts on Indian
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media, but before we get to the conversation, I want to make an appeal.
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If you agree with me that this kind of brave journalism is what India needs, then support
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it not just with words, but with actions.
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Head on over to the newsminute.com slash support us.
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The link will be in the show notes and help them out with whatever monetary contribution
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All of us who crave good journalism, let us not take it for granted.
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It exists despite the odds, and it needs us to keep existing.
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And I'm sure you'll agree with me about what a great cause the News Minute is after you
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hear my conversation with Dhania.
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But first, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Do you want to read more?
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I've put in a lot of work in recent years in building a reading habit.
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This means that I read more books, but I also read more long-form articles and essays.
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There's a world of knowledge available through the internet.
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But the problem we all face is, how do we navigate this knowledge?
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How do we know what to read?
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How do we put the right incentives in place?
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Well, I discovered one way.
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A couple of friends of mine run this awesome company called CTQ Compounds that CTQ Compounds
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dot com, which aims to help people up-level themselves by reading more.
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A few months ago, I signed up for one of their programs called The Daily Reader.
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Every day for six months, they sent me a long-form article to read.
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The subjects covered went from machine learning to mythology to mental models and marmalade.
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This helped me build a habit of reading.
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At the end of every day, I understood the world a little better than I did before.
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So if you want to build your reading habit, head on over to CTQ Compounds and check out
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New batches start every month.
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They also have a great program called Future Stack, which helps you stay up-to-date with
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Future Stack batches start every Saturday.
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Also check out their social capital compound, which helps you master social media.
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What's more, you get a discount of a whopping 2,500 rupees, 2,500 if you use the discount
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So head on over to CTQCompounds at CTQCompounds.com and use the code unseen.
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Dhania, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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It's a pleasure being here.
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Yeah, I got to tell all my listeners that I'm recording in this Bangalore studio, which
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is on the second floor, and Dhania has a broken foot and was kind enough to actually come
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here with the broken foot.
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So I'm very grateful for that, though it would seem from the body of your work that you're
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deeply committed to everything you take up.
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So at one level, also not surprised.
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So how did your foot break?
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So this is the first fracture I've got in my life.
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I am a cat person, I mean, I'm a pet person.
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So I have two cats at home and there are stray cats which come sleep and go off.
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So one stray cat fought with my house cat and I ran behind them and I hit something.
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I don't know what, I can't remember properly, but my toe fractured.
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And so I've been like this for three weeks.
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The first time actually I'm stepping out, other than to see the doctor.
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So let's kind of start at the beginning and tell me where you grew up, where were you
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born, where did you grow up, what were your young years like?
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So I'm from Palakkad in Kerala.
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I mean, at those times it was called Palghat and then it was changed to Palakkad.
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I did my schooling and college in Palakkad itself.
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I studied in a convent school called Karnike Madha Convent and I studied in a government
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school called Government Victoria.
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I have had a very active life in Palakkad in the sense that I know a lot of people say
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that they were rebellious in their childhood.
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I'm not saying it just for being fashionable.
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I actually was and in the convent that I studied from the nuns to the teachers to everybody,
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they were really, I think they molded me to a large extent, of course, other than my parents
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and my friends, but my teachers and my nuns and the ones who ran the school and then college
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So I don't know if you know much about how the education system is in Kerala, but in
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a convent it's much more disciplined, you know, you have classes properly.
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The reason why I'm saying is if it's a government school, there could be a hartaal, there could
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be a strike which the students call and then there won't be class that day.
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So nothing like that happens in a convent.
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We go every day to school, we go in the school bus, come back, but it was really amazing
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because in Kerala, you have this very vibrant system of extracurricular activities.
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For example, from your childhood, you will have a school level competition, then sub-district
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and district and state.
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So it's like an entire year is charted for you just for your extracurricular activities.
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So in that, I was into elocution, theater, all kinds of things.
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Like I was into Sanskrit speech because it's easy to get points for that.
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Nobody can speak five minutes in Sanskrit continuously.
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I could manage to speak Jibberish in Sanskrit for five minutes.
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So I used to win that and Sanskrit drama, lots of things, it was fun.
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And I think by the end of school, which is 8th, 9th and 10th, I was into science.
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I keep changing my interest.
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So I was a young scientist of India, there's a competition which happens where Professor
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Yashpal Sharma used to be one of the mentors.
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So I was one of those young scientists of India and in Palakkad, a small town, like
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if a kid does something, immediately you're on the Manorama or Mathri Bhoomi the next
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And my father is sort of pushy also.
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So every time people used to meet me and say, oh, you'll become a scientist.
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So I was like, absolutely no.
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If you expect me to do something, I will not do that.
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I did not tell my dad, I went to this Government Victoria College.
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My father wanted me to join another girls' college, which was more discipline-nice, not
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because it's a girls' college, but because it's more disciplined.
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But he was not against me going to the government college.
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I went there and I took the form and I filled commerce.
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So everybody thought I'll become a scientist.
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I definitely did not have the brains to become a scientist.
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I mean, you know, in school and you go for a competition and you win it, you can't equate
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that to actually becoming a scientist.
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So I know my capability and I know people are expecting too much out of me.
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So I'm like, screwed, I'm not going to become a scientist or I'm not even going to try.
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So I went into commerce.
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And five years in college was very different from the school because here is a college
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which is highly political, like every second day there'll be a strike, they will shut
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So the first one year I observed everything and then I got into student politics and the
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next four years were really like, it changed my life a lot also, like how I perceive things,
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how a leader should be, the kind of resistance that you face.
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For example, when you study in a convent school and there are like 10 smart kids, you give
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everything off to them easily, right?
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There's a competition, you immediately say, okay, you go for dance, you go for elocution.
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There is not really any democracy there.
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But when you come to a college and there are kids from all sections of society and especially
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the SFI was very powerful, there's a lot of resistance.
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They don't want your English speaking convent kids to just come over, come and take over
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So I faced that resistance also.
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At that point of time, I didn't appreciate the resistance.
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But now when I think back, I understand where they came from.
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But at that time, no, they were my arch enemies.
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And so it was quite fun, college and school, and I think that shaped me to a large extent.
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Did that resistance also then force you to work harder, to not, you know, take your own
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skills for granted, so to say, but actually work harder at whatever you did, I'm guessing
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the extracurricular activities or whatever.
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So in my case, okay, I was smart in school, right?
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I won all these competitions.
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I was, you know, there is this thing called children's prime minister, which they have
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in every district of Kerala.
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So one student wins the elocution, they become Jawaharlal Nehru and they're dressed up like
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Jawaharlal Nehru and there's an open jeep in which they're taken through the town.
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And we have to just salute like Jawaharlal Nehru, all the school students will stand
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When I do this, everybody thinks, oh my God, she can do everything.
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I know exactly that my skill is only this much.
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People may want me to, at one point I thought I'll become an MBA.
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The second I saw the textbooks of XLRI and the, what is it, for the entrance exam, I
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was like, absolutely no, I will not pass this exam.
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Most of my friends took science.
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They all went for this coaching classes, which are terrible.
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They have to stay there.
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They have to study 20 hours, I think.
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I cannot be a doctor or an engineer anyways.
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And science was no, no for me.
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So I think from my childhood, I knew what I was capable of.
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And so I would only push myself in that direction.
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I've never tried things which I am skeptical about.
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Like if I think I can't do an MBA, I will not waste even five minutes trying to study.
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So I was very clear about what I can do.
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People can have a hundred perceptions about me.
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Like even today, when I'm running the news minute, everybody asks me, why don't you
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Like, why don't you do a show like Shekhar Gupta does of like cut the clutter and explain?
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Because I don't know most things.
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I may have an opinion, but I don't think that opinion is good enough.
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And I don't want to be thrusting that on other people.
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That's the reason why I don't do it.
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So I am very clear on what I can do and what I cannot do, which has helped me quite a bit.
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But there are times I wonder, maybe I should have taken a chance with an MBA and led a
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very peaceful life in some MNC, making a lot of money and not worrying about social media
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But generally, I think most of how I grew up and what I ended up becoming is also because
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my parents, though they were from Palakkad, they were not conservative at all.
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I would not come back home till eight, nine in the night when I had a bike, because we'll
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have a lot of events in college school, but my brother doesn't come back by six, six thirty.
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My father will be worried.
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If I don't come back, they will not be worried because they know that I can take care of
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And I had a boyfriend, imagine in Palakkad, who used to come home.
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Nobody would blink and they would not ask me.
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But if other girls did the same thing, everybody would be shocked and they'd be like, how are
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My parents had no such issues.
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So that way, they also helped me become, you know, grow up in a certain way without any
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Therefore, that helped.
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But politics in college was was also a life altering situation, I would say.
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See, when I say politics, I do not understand an SFI or a KSU as an ABVP for the political
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Like I did not know the BJP intricately or the Congress or the communists.
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When I enter college, I know a lot of seniors who are with the KSU, which is the Kerala
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So my immediate inclination is to go with them.
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And then by next year, I have made friends in SFI and ABVP also.
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So I'm completely confused as to what to do.
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But in those five years, by the end, by the end, by the time I finished college, I decided
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that this is a party I don't like.
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I don't like the way these people behave.
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I appreciate the way the other one behaves.
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But by the end of it, I contested as an independent.
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I mean, I have contested three elections.
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One I was unanimous candidate of all three parties.
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The next one, I was a candidate of two parties and not SFI because by then we had split.
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By the fifth year, I got tired of all three and I stood alone.
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They all had candidates against me.
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So for me, it has been a very, the college has been a learning experience as to, you
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know, when you are in a situation where there is a lot of conflict, people have different
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opinions, do you have to go with the flow simply because you believed in that one gang
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So I mean, I had enough friends with me who told me that, no, just whatever you believe
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in, if you don't agree with them, you don't have to go with them.
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Even if you don't win an election, it doesn't matter.
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But don't have to stand with someone who you don't want to stand with.
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So that kind of resilience and that kind of thinking, I think a lot of friends and my
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family and everybody around me did help.
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So I'm studying in Kerala when I then went to Tamil Nadu and I went to Karnataka.
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I feel like students are deprived here of quite a lot of things, especially no campus
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Even Kerala doesn't have campus politics now.
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And even extracurricular activities is looked down beyond a point.
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Like my son is in fifth standard and there is so much of tension in the WhatsApp group
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among parents as to, oh my God, they're coming back from school at 3.15, when will they prepare
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So my son had a big lecture for me and my husband yesterday saying, what kind of parents
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You don't even know when my exam is.
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I mean, it's not like a board exam.
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As long as you have your foundation right, it's okay.
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But he's really angry with us.
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But I feel like if he had studied in Kerala, at least the time that I did, he would have
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got so many more opportunities to do different, different things.
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I feel like many other states, maybe my judgment is wrong, but in the 1980s when I studied
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in 1990s, I felt that Kerala gave much more opportunity for people to grow in many different
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ways or at least the places I studied in.
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And what attracted you to campus politics?
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So generally, I'm a violent person in the sense that I can, I'm very vocal.
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And if I see something in front of me, I have to give my opinion.
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Therefore, if something is happening in the college and a college union has to decide,
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I realize that that's where the power lies of deciding something, right?
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So I have to be a part of that.
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So my thoughts, very violent also sometimes.
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And I mean, I can tell you there's one election where we used to carry these pocket knives
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with us because there would be violence, there would be actual physical violence.
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So it was also an adult rush throughout the college thing, but mainly because I realized
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it's the union that decides in a college, even the smallest things like, do you want
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this construction to happen here?
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Do you want this course to come here?
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Do you want this teacher?
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So everything the union had to say.
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And therefore, I felt like I had to be part of the union, which is one reason why I was
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Like I said, I did not identify with the political party or thought at that time, but I did know
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that I want to have a say in what happens in my college.
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And to be part of the union then was very important.
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And I'm sure other people would also be in campus politics because of the urge that we
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care about the things around us, we want to be part of the change, right?
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But that urge dissipates at some level, the higher up you go in terms of politics, like
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at the national level, I would say that most citizens are kind of apathetic.
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And one reason for that might well be that power is so centralized and you don't really
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see a connection between your involvement and anything changing and all of that.
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And the ways in which you are trying to make a difference today are not political ways,
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but they are all these other ways, which are perhaps even more important.
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Where do you think that disconnect happens, that in the context of a college and what's
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going on there, you are a concerned citizen, as it were, of the college, but then you come
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out and at some level there is that disconnect where you are like, I don't identify with
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There is no point my getting into this game and I'm going to do other stuff.
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Is there a point where the disconnect happens or is it simply that here you've done your
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college and you're getting on with life and people just move on?
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See, for me, like I said, by the end of my college years, my fifth year in college, when
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I stood for the chairman post for elections, I did not identify with any party by then.
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I did not want to stand in their panels, but I still wanted to be part of the union.
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And I wanted to be the chairperson of the college.
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I didn't want to exit that college without becoming its chairperson.
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So that's a risk I took at that time.
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And I did win the election.
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But I think towards the end of my college, I was watching NDTV.
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I cannot remember whether NDTV was a singular platform at that time or it was OnStar.
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They used to have this show.
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So Deva Gowda had stepped down as prime minister.
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My memory is very vague, but I remember Rajdeep Sardesai and I don't know if it was Barkha
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or Arnab Goswami, but they were having this really passionate debate about Deva Gowda
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stepping down and why again we'll have an election.
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They were discussing about taxpayers' money going down the drain.
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And then I thought, this is actually a job I can do.
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I mean, they're talking for other people and maybe this is something I should do.
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It's actually the first time I started looking up at journalism and I decided that, okay,
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maybe this is the course I want to look at, not an MBA or anything like that.
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But I get your question that a lot of people, when they are in campus politics, they want
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Like a lot of my friends in college, they were part of campus politics because they
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felt as strongly as me.
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And you know, when I use the word violently, I mean that there are a lot of people who
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want change, but they don't do anything or they are unable to do something because to
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be in that particular campus where everybody is very vocal and, you know, they can even
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You need to have some sort of that courage in you or rather that to be foolish.
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My dad used to think I was foolish, not courageous because I was in trouble all the time.
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And those people who are much more spunkier than me or much more dedicated than me in
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Now I see a lot of them have just become your everyday citizens and they're not bothered
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about things that happen around them.
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And I feel that at every stage they could have done something, at least use their social
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media accounts and nothing else, you know, to speak about things around them.
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I find it baffling that people can have a certain character while growing up and it
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just disappears that you are very, you are citizens who are really bothered about what
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happens within your campus itself as students because you are invested in that campus, right?
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You want things to change.
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You want things to happen in a certain way.
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But when you go to a larger canvas, which is the world around you, your workplace, you
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don't have an opinion anymore that you are just happy to be part of the flow, which does
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surprise me, baffle me.
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But I think around eight, 10 years ago, I stopped worrying about it.
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I used to think that we should change people, we should make everyone more reactive.
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But now I think maybe they are all in a safer place.
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Everybody doesn't have to be reactive in this world.
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People can live in their small, happy shells.
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Like my brother, for example, he studied in the same college as me, when this podcast
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comes out, he's not going to forgive me for this, but he's one year younger to me.
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And in college, he did not want anybody to know that I am his sister because, you know,
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he always thought that I would get beaten up.
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Therefore, because they can't beat up a girl, they may as well as beat up her brother.
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So he didn't want anyone to know that we are siblings, and he will run after college.
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But he who did not want to have any involvement is now a changed person in the sense that
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he has a thought process about what happens.
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So I've seen both sides, I feel, people who are involved in things, and then suddenly
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they don't want to know anything happening around the world, and others who were not
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like that, but now are more invested in what is happening around them.
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So I think people change a lot from what they were in their campuses, only very few people
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And if your brother is listening to this boss, your logic was perfectly sound because, you
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know, that's what they would do, right?
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I wish he was beaten up once or twice, but it never actually happened.
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Yeah, did you ever beat up?
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And did you ever use your knife?
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Or did you ever feel like you might use it?
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It was just, I mean, it's not like we're ever going to end up using that knife, but we would
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be told by the seniors that you should bring knife in case something happens.
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There was one instance when this boy was beaten up and they used a boot and smashed his face.
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So you can imagine, right in the campus, when all this happens, there's so much of chatter
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and tension and excitement and everything.
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So college life was something like, for many people they may think, why just go study and
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I actually can't remember what I studied.
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I just know debit what comes in and credit what goes out.
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That's all I can remember.
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But rest of who I am, those five years did shape me.
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Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of amazed you chose commerce because people either do science
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or they do arts because they can just chill and, you know, but commerce is just to me
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And it was very, especially learning for the exam.
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I don't even know why people, I mean, I'm sorry to everybody who loves commerce, who's
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And also it was a waste for me, right?
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I'm not even using the skill of anything that I learned.
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I now wish I'd done arts or English, but I just didn't want to do science.
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And a lot of people I like were already in the commerce stream.
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So I thought, okay, let's go join commerce.
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You know, one of the things that strikes me about, you know, what you've been speaking
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about for the last few minutes is how different you are from both me and most of my guests
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who've come on the show.
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Because in my case, of course, I was not involved in politics at all.
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But I remember that I wasn't fully shaped then in any way, I had no clarity about what
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I had vague ideas, I will write books, I will do this.
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But I was also struck by what I think is a uniform anxiety, especially among the young
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when they start going to college, which is the anxiety of what other people think of
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You're always trying to project yourself in this way or that way or be super cool.
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And you know, if I ever carried a knife, the only reason I would do it is so that I seem
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cool, not because I might have to actually use it, the horror.
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And it seems that you had way more clarity, at least in terms of what you don't want to
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I don't want to do science or I don't want to go to these bloody coaching classes.
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You had tremendous clarity and you had a sense of what you're doing.
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And I guess even your parents are right when they let you stay out till 9.30 or whatever
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while your poor brother has to rush back at 6.30.
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Let's not define him as poor brother.
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But yes, please continue.
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So a lot of this clarity, I can see in terms of what you don't want to do.
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You're very clear about what you don't want to do and you don't, you won't do that.
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But was that anxiety there in other ways?
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And was this clarity also there in terms of what am I going to go ahead and do?
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Like what was your self-image like?
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Like before that NDTV moment, I guess I was 97 if Devagadu had just stepped down.
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Before that moment, what would have been your sort of conception of where you're going and
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what you want to do and so on and so forth?
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So I've actually never worried about what I will become.
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When people used to ask me what will you become, I, in fact, I don't even remember anyone really
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asking me what do you want to become.
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People just assumed I'll become a lot of things.
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There was one point of time when everybody used to tell me you should become an IAS officer.
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You should become an IPS officer.
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This is all I would hear.
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Go for civil service exam.
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And one point of time, I thought, okay, maybe I should do that.
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And I bought my father, whenever I want to become something, my father will say, okay,
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And he goes and buys all these Reader's Digest and the Malayalam Manorama yearbook.
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And I used to read all that.
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And I'm like, okay, fine.
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This is a decent job where I can also be rebellious, I feel like, okay, I'm going to make the decision
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for an entire district.
#
That's a cool job is what I'm thinking in my head.
#
Then there is a collector in Palakkad.
#
His name is Ajay Kumar.
#
He's now in a very big, I think he's now in a central deployment.
#
He was in a good posting.
#
I don't exactly know where he's now.
#
He called me to his office because I used to be this Jawaharlal Nehru and I used to see
#
him all the time for different events.
#
So he knew me and people used to tell him that Danya will become an IAS officer.
#
So he called me and asked me, why do you want to become an IAS officer?
#
I said, because I will change stuff and I can do all this.
#
So he sat me down and said, I don't think you are cut out to become an IAS officer because
#
you will have to listen to a lot of people, including politicians, including the people
#
in the government who may not even know as much as you, but you have to very carefully
#
It is not a job where you just come and like an elephant, you smash everything and walk.
#
I mean, these are not exact words he used, but he basically told me that civil services
#
is something you should be very careful about.
#
You won't be able to do what you want.
#
You are, you have to follow a lot of other people.
#
That one conversation and I decided I am not going to become an IAS or IPS officer.
#
So that is taken off from my mind, right?
#
Because I cannot be in a job where somebody is constantly telling me what I should do
#
that is struck from my dist.
#
So have you seen these Chitrahar type programs?
#
So Asian it used to have this song program, one to ten top songs during Onam holidays.
#
So I used to anchor some of those.
#
I mean, I don't, I can't even imagine me doing that.
#
Like I'll wear these pattu pavada clothes and I'll be looking at the camera and saying
#
in really hard Malayalam.
#
Somebody would have written it.
#
I will just look at the screen and say that inna di di like that.
#
So I knew I was good on TV.
#
And then I saw this NDTV thing and I'm like, I want to talk on behalf of people.
#
So journalism may be my thing.
#
Then I went and searched for my, for a college.
#
So my father has four sisters of which two of them were very involved in my life right
#
They used to buy me books.
#
Their names were Sushila and Vijaya.
#
They used to buy me books.
#
In fact, Vijaya used to tell me that you should speak to the mirror.
#
Like if you want to speak good English, look at the mirror and speak because in Kerala
#
we don't converse in English, right?
#
People speak in Malayalam.
#
So she said, if you want to do good in elocution, you have to speak to the mirror.
#
So she trained me to do that.
#
They would both buy me books.
#
So they looked up all these colleges and told me there's an Asian College of Journalism
#
I went and applied and somehow I got, I mean, I didn't do well in the entrance exam.
#
By the way, in the entrance exam, I actually did quite badly, but they still called me
#
And when they called me for the interview, Shashi Kumar sir asked me, why did you write
#
that wrong, that answer?
#
And I still couldn't remember the correct answer.
#
It was a French president's name.
#
I forget it now, in the 2002, whatever his name was.
#
Now I'm forgetting this.
#
So he told me, you didn't know the French president's name.
#
I said, boss, I'm never going to report on France, right?
#
So I didn't think that was important, that's everything I wrote.
#
So why are you, I don't know why we should focus on the French president.
#
Then he said, he definitely didn't like me, I think, but I reminded him immediately that
#
once upon a time he had given me a prize, I won a bike once and he had given the prize
#
So I said, sir, do you remember, I was at that event and you gave me a bike.
#
I think just because I went on talking, they gave me the admission, not because I did well
#
in the entrance exam, but ACG was also good.
#
It was a fun experience learning television and all that.
#
So I knew I want to do TV and I want to do journalism, but whether I would have become
#
good at it, whether I would have excelled at it, I have never worried about it.
#
So me, I'm not a planner, like I can't plan the next three months, the next six months.
#
I'm a very daily person.
#
Even when I run the news minute, one of the big problems which people in my organization
#
have against me is that I am not a planner.
#
So now they plan and I'm supposed to follow, which is a good thing because I don't want
#
to waste my, I'm very like, even if my career didn't take off or I didn't do well, I don't
#
think I would have been very worried.
#
I would do something else.
#
So many people sort of stumble into the things they do by a mixture of circumstances, this
#
happened, that happened, I cannot get here.
#
And it seems to me that even if you kind of took this winding road and landed up there,
#
you still nevertheless seem totally suited for it in the sense that you've got initiative,
#
I'm guessing that when it comes to chasing stories and following something, you have
#
So do you feel that this is the thing that you were suited for, that you actually fell
#
into something that matched the person that you are?
#
I mean, I can't imagine myself doing some other job.
#
I would be very bored if I was doing any other job because more than anything else, I interact
#
I don't understand where, if I was in an office cabin and I had to look at the, look at documents,
#
I'm sure I'm doing work which changes the world.
#
But for me, it's important that I meet different kinds of people, that I interact with different
#
If not, then it just stifles me.
#
I feel there's no purpose.
#
Therefore, yes, this job very well does suit me.
#
If I didn't do this, maybe I would be in TV in some other way.
#
Maybe I would have been filmmaking, but I'm not very artistic.
#
Therefore, I would have sucked at it.
#
I would be there in some position or the other.
#
What you just said about meeting people is also very interesting because another of the
#
themes that I keep addressing on my show is about sort of the difference between the abstract
#
and the concrete, that abstract notions like nationalism and purity and blah, blah, blah,
#
and they're notions that really divide us and a lot of the negativity comes from there
#
and it's really easy to sit on Twitter and be just completely toxic and it's all abstract.
#
But when you go out and actually meet people, then those abstractions go away because you're
#
encountering people in the concrete.
#
You're actually meeting people from all kinds of different backgrounds and you're making
#
friends and all of that.
#
So it becomes kind of hard to carry that toxicity everywhere and I think one thing that we've
#
been doing kind of more and more in this digital age, which I think is a massive net positive
#
in terms of how technology has empowered individuals and people like you and me as well.
#
But one sort of negative drawback of that is that we don't engage enough with real people.
#
We don't actually sit down and have real conversations with them anymore where we're just chilling
#
with them, there's no agenda, there's nothing functional to do, those quiet moments have
#
gone out of our life and so on and so forth.
#
And you are out among the people all the time and while it's hard to pinpoint if that is
#
a factor or whatever, do you feel that that sets you apart from other people who maybe
#
There are so many ivory tower opinion writers will be sitting in their living room somewhere
#
writing opinion pieces about something that's happening somewhere, but they've never actually
#
So, while your whole scene is that I'm going to go there, I'm going to talk to people,
#
I'm going to try to kind of understand that.
#
So, is that something that you see around you, quite apart from the fact that you like
#
to meet people, but that meeting people is good, it changes you, it makes you different.
#
Of course, I mean, I don't look down upon people who write opinions, they are welcoming,
#
they are welcome to write their opinions, but I feel people should not think that that
#
opinion is what really matters or that is what is happening on the ground.
#
I feel people, those who write opinion pieces should understand that perhaps what they write
#
is not reflective of what is happening on the ground, it's just what they think, what
#
I differentiate myself from that, like today morning, there is a story of a rape survivor,
#
she's alleged rape in a college.
#
I have a reporter who's doing the story, but I still would message that survivor to just
#
say that, look, we are here, if you need anything, you can support us.
#
So for me, that human communication is very, very important, if it's a story, even if
#
you're going to tell somebody's story, not tell someone's story, to interact with different
#
kinds of people, because everybody's problem is not the same.
#
Even when you talk about people who are angry on Twitter and who talk about communalism
#
and bigotry and all that, you walk into a street where there are, let's say, a lot of
#
Muslims living and you have seen a riot a few days ago, they're not going to be reacting
#
the exact same way that you want them to react.
#
They have different concerns in life.
#
They want their children to go to school safely the next day, they want their shop to open.
#
For them, it's not about immediately defeating someone in the next election, which may be
#
what you're thinking, that's their immediate agenda.
#
That's not, their immediate agenda is just getting back to their lives.
#
So everywhere you go and you meet people, you understand that their needs, what they
#
want is very different from what you think they want.
#
Even the hijab story, which we have been covering for so many weeks, there are so many people
#
who write to us, even from the Muslim community itself, saying that we are against this, we
#
So there are so many opinions, right?
#
So how do you condense all that opinion to write into an opinion piece?
#
I think I'm someone who cannot do that.
#
Like I said in the beginning, cut the clutter is not my game, because first I feel that
#
it's too much onus on one human being to just have an opinion about everything under the
#
sun and the second is if I'm going to give my opinion, I also have to be open to criticism.
#
And that's like another whole cycle of anger and outrage and people are like, why did you
#
Why did you not say that?
#
I would rather not do it, just do ground reporting, help my reporters and that's about it.
#
But I think in India, we have to understand that 15 years ago, if we just had news which
#
is looking at side A, side B, side C and putting it out together, we cannot afford to do that
#
If side A is right, side B is toxic, then you have to call side B, right?
#
So the way we report has changed and for that also, you need to interact with people more.
#
See the pandemic has changed journalism quite a bit in India and two years is a long time.
#
A lot of people who are joining organizations now are not stepping out of their houses.
#
They are sitting somewhere, they're making phone calls and they're talking to people.
#
There is only this much that a person will tell you if you call them over a phone call.
#
If they know you, they've heard of you, maybe they will open up.
#
But it's still not comparable to you actually going and meeting them and understanding them.
#
Maybe you will not use most of it for your story, but it's very important for you as
#
a journalist to understand perspectives.
#
So that way for me, when you talk about abstract and concrete, abstract never works.
#
I said I can only process daily stuff.
#
But for many others, maybe like I have people in my team who can actually understand something
#
happening on the ground and they can write strong opinion pieces.
#
But the person who reads it also should know that this is not the only one opinion that
#
Read more, understand more.
#
You know, I think just thinking aloud, you know, if cut the clutter is kind of one kind
#
of thing that you need, you also need that.
#
But there is also embrace the clutter, which seems to be more what reporters need to do,
#
that actually go out there and engage with the complexity of the world.
#
And I think even people who do opinion pieces, I have written a fair bit of opinion in my
#
time, at least have to have the humility to realize that there is a real world out there.
#
You always have to be open to kind of engaging with it.
#
Like Abhinandan, when we did our episode together, he told me this interesting story of something
#
he realized when he was in the Northeast, where they went to this village, which was
#
And they asked the people that, what do you want the government to do for you?
#
And those guys said, we want them to build a cinema hall.
#
And I've been and the logic is fantastic, because Abhinandan and gang are like really
#
surprised and they're like, but you know, you would want roads, you wouldn't want things
#
with positive externalities, more toilets, and these guys are no, we need entertainment
#
We go to nearby cities for that.
#
People die in car accidents.
#
That death rate is high.
#
Just give us something in the village.
#
And that's something somebody who embraces the clutter, a reporter like you will find
#
But somebody sitting in Delhi and doing an opinion piece will have absolutely no idea.
#
So Amit, I'm saying the people who write opinion pieces, like I said, I don't look down upon
#
Yeah, I don't judge them either.
#
I watch Cut the Clutter all the time.
#
But my point is, I'm not suited for that job.
#
And yes, the problem with what Abhinandan said is that nowadays, if a reporter is being
#
sent to the Northeast and the village says that I want a cinema hall and I'm not bothered
#
about your positive developments or voting for or against a party, and the reporter says,
#
look, boss, in that village, they want a cinema hall.
#
That's their biggest problem.
#
The editor may say no, but I want those three quotes from you where they are saying that
#
I'm against the BJP, for the BJP, I'm for the Congress, I'm against the Congress.
#
So this is another problem which we are imposing on people who work with us.
#
And I also have done that.
#
I'm not saying I haven't.
#
There are many times reporters have gone to the field, found something else, and I'll
#
be like, no, you have to find the other thing.
#
Because in my mind, I've made that up, right?
#
I've made that angle in my mind and I've also figured out the headline.
#
So I want a story constructed around it.
#
But I do actively tell myself that that's not how it is.
#
You have been a ground reporter.
#
You cannot be imposing your thoughts on a ground reporter.
#
So that's a reminder I give myself all the time.
#
But I think when we become very desk-driven, when the desk takes a lot of calls and the
#
reporter sees something very different on the ground, we still want them to write according
#
That's something we all have to stop.
#
Whether it's a hijab issue, whatever issue you're covering, the Sabarimala issue.
#
You have made up your mind, right?
#
We should stop doing that.
#
And as I read more stories, I feel like reporters are also trying to fill in that image which
#
Or sometimes they don't even tell you the reality.
#
They feel something has happened on the ground which is not exactly correct.
#
But they feel they have to write in a certain way that only then the audience will appreciate
#
them or that echo chamber will feel happy that they have been validated.
#
So we all have to move out of those echo chambers.
#
You know, take me through more of your sort of journalism journey.
#
You're at ACJ and you've kind of done journalism.
#
And I'm curious also about how people form their conceptions about what journalism is.
#
Because I kind of grew up in the 80s, started working in the mid 90s, I'm probably three
#
or four years older than you, I'm guessing.
#
Everyone who kind of got into journalism then, I mean, I didn't, but many of my peers did,
#
that was just the age before journalism schools, right?
#
That is also the age before the internet.
#
So you're not exposed to global journalism.
#
You're not exposed to books on journalism.
#
You're not exposed to different views of how journalism should be conducted.
#
And there's no one training you.
#
So you're pretty much learning on the job.
#
And many of India's media houses at the time, if not all, don't really have any kind of
#
induction scene going on where you're taught the values of the game, you're taught the
#
craft in a systematic way.
#
None of that really happens.
#
Which is why for a lot of people, it becomes like a functional thing.
#
You're not getting meta and thinking about it one step ahead in terms of what are my
#
What am I really trying to do?
#
What does a journalist do?
#
You know, and all of those things.
#
So what was that process for you like of forming a view or what is this thing called journalism?
#
Because initially when we noticed journalism, we noticed, oh, there's an article in a page
#
and someone went out and reported or oh, there's this TV show happening and an anchor is cutting
#
to a reporter and the reporter has spoken to two people.
#
And that's a bare bones of it.
#
But there's obviously so much else behind that, including that whole value system.
#
So how did your thinking about journalism kind of evolve through the years?
#
So from the first part of my story, you must have thought that I'm very clear on what I
#
Okay, then I end up in this journalism school, I pass out and I freaking have no clue what
#
to do after this because I don't know how to be a journalist.
#
It's very cool to think I am a journalist and I've got a job.
#
So my first job was with this Malayalam channel called India Vision.
#
It was actually the first 24 hour news channel that Kerala got and Shashi Kumar was a part
#
So he made a few of us join it, three or four of us.
#
And they told me you go to the Delhi Bureau and I am in charge of the Delhi Bureau for
#
a new channel and along with me is one woman camera person and another reporter who is
#
I'm supposed to look after the Delhi Bureau of the channel and I have no freaking clue
#
I just land up in Delhi and they've given us a house and said, this is your office,
#
come house, you do whatever you want.
#
So we're staying there, we're working there.
#
My first story I will never forget.
#
It was a nurse who got raped, she was a Malayali nurse.
#
And in that hospital, the ward boy had raped her and he gouged her eye out.
#
When she woke up in the morning after the rape, she realized that her eye was just like
#
falling off and they had to remove it.
#
So it was the first story I reached the hospital and all the Malayali reporters realized I
#
am this Malayali woman journalist.
#
And they were all too, I mean, you know, as a man sometimes it's difficult to speak to
#
survivors or survivors' families.
#
So they sent me inside to talk to the victim and the family.
#
That was my first story.
#
But after that, I never, I mean, I kept in touch with that story for a long time.
#
This was a very famous case where it went to the court and the court said, why don't
#
And the woman just lost in the court and asked the judge why, why should I marry him?
#
But I have not been able to find her.
#
I've been looking for her for many years, but I've never been able to find her after
#
So this was my first story, but my later career in India Vision in Delhi was not at all like
#
this because in Delhi, it was set two o'clock.
#
I mean, I can't remember the timings, but 2 p.m. you go to CPM office, 3 p.m. you go
#
to BJP office, 4 p.m. you go to Congress office, you cover all day press meets, come
#
back and you cut your packages.
#
And so I knew lunch I will eat in BJP office, evening snack I will get in, very less salary.
#
So evening snack I will get in Congress office.
#
And my life went on like that.
#
I had nothing much to do.
#
If some big crime happens or I mean, what would a Kerala audience do with a crime in
#
But if something important happens, I would be sent.
#
I went to Rajasthan to cover elections.
#
I have no clue what I'm doing.
#
I interviewed so many politicians without understanding the basics because I'm not reading
#
I'm not watching anything.
#
I'm just being sent to places saying go interview people and I will just thrust my mic and ask
#
three nonsensical questions and they will answer.
#
I'm like, yeah, I got my exclusive.
#
And by the end of my stay in Delhi, it was the 2004 elections.
#
And I still remember watching Anubha Bosle, Nidhi Razdan, Pallavi Ghosh and all outside
#
There was this one meeting.
#
The NCP and the Congress decide to come together.
#
So Sharath Pawar and Sonia Gandhi and everybody's in the meeting and I have no clue what is happening.
#
I'm just waiting for the press meet because when the press meet happens, I will know.
#
I'm getting calls from my channel saying NDTV is breaking that Sharath Pawar and Sonia Gandhi
#
or whatever, they have decided to come together.
#
I don't know how the press meet is going, has not started.
#
Even then I don't know how to build a source.
#
Eight months I've been there.
#
I don't have a single source in the NCP or the Congress.
#
People sitting next to me have got their seniors, they've got sources and they've been getting
#
SMS from inside the meeting and I'm like, that's how you build source.
#
It's not enough that you cover a press meet.
#
Anyway, I got tired of the entire Delhi business because you can't do anything in Delhi.
#
You just have to go like a cowherd.
#
The cowherd goes to BJP office, everybody goes there together.
#
It was just too irritating, too robotic.
#
So I said, that's a screw Delhi, I'm going to go away from Delhi and I went to Chennai
#
and I didn't have a job and I had my loan to pay, so I definitely had to get a job immediately.
#
I walked into the New Indian Express office and I said, I need a job.
#
They said, we don't have vacancy now.
#
I said, no, but I really need, you look at my resume, I worked in Delhi and actually
#
They said, okay, join next week and I joined the New Indian Express and first they put
#
me in the features team.
#
I was so bad at it, so bad at it that the features team head, his name was Joy.
#
He went and told the reporting team that after one or two weeks, he said, you take her on
#
reporting, she may be good in reporting.
#
Then I went to the reporting team.
#
I don't know what to do.
#
And T N Gopalan was the head of reporting and D Suresh Kumar, Jayaraj, lot of good journalists
#
T N Gopalan also threatened me, saying that you don't know anything, I'll take you back
#
Features is actually a very good department to be in, but those times we used to think
#
that, oh my God, writing about pop culture, no, I just want to be where Jayalalitha and
#
Karnanidhi are and all.
#
And I said, sir, give me one chance, I will do it.
#
So he said, okay, you go to the assembly.
#
And I went with this, with another senior reporter, I went to the assembly with him
#
and Jayalalitha is the chief minister then.
#
So I'm sitting in the assembly and I can't stop talking.
#
I'm so excited that Jayalalitha is there and you know, this assembly is going on.
#
So I'm like person sitting next to me, I'm continuously whispering.
#
And then Jayalalitha just looks sideways and then she can see me speak, talking and continuously
#
Then after sometimes she writes a chit and I don't know anything.
#
So I'm just sitting quietly.
#
I go back to office and I'm called by the resident editor into the office and bureau
#
chief and everybody's standing and they said, Jayalalitha asked, who is that girl who's
#
talking so much in the assembly?
#
You cannot go back to the assembly.
#
My assembly coverage was cut and I was put back into health.
#
I was first a crime reporter, two days I survived.
#
I went to the commissioner's office and I was so put off by, you know, all these crime
#
reporters sitting there and they're just taking down notes and I'm like, I don't want to do
#
I'll do health reporting.
#
And I was clueless in that also for a long time.
#
But there's this person called Pushpa Narayan, she's a health editor of Times of India now.
#
She was getting transferred to Bangalore.
#
She sat down with me and she taught me how to write, how to write a lead, how to make
#
Like you said, the organization did not have time.
#
Both the organizations never had any time.
#
Just because, okay, I was like, I've interviewed Gehlot in Rajasthan and I was only one Malayalam
#
Not just, not because I knew anything about Gehlot or Rajasthan politics.
#
I was just, I could push my way through and get anybody's interview.
#
That was my only skill till then.
#
But Pushpa told me, this is not how you do it.
#
It's not enough that you're just a pushy person.
#
You have to get your story.
#
And she taught me how to write a story, how to get a source and many other journalists
#
But by then I got tired of print also.
#
I'm like, this is not my cup of tea.
#
I have to go back to TV.
#
And that's how I ended up joining Times now.
#
So we have finally reached the point where you are Arnab's colleague.
#
So what was Times now like?
#
Like did you have a clearer idea of what do you want to do there?
#
What kind of stories do you want to cover?
#
Did you have a better idea of that once you're there?
#
See I had made up my mind that I will join IBM because Rajdeep Sardesai is someone I
#
really wanted to work with.
#
And when I left this India Vision, I messaged him.
#
He said, I have also left NDTV.
#
So sorry, you are to ask NDTV.
#
Then when I left Internet Express, he said, I mean, he doesn't know me anything, but
#
he just would reply to messages very politely.
#
Then I'm like, I made up my mind.
#
I'm joining Rajdeep Sardesai's Chen 19 because he is starting a new channel.
#
So I've got an interview with Arnab Goswami on Monday.
#
The very next day I have an interview in Delhi with Rajdeep Sardesai.
#
I'm like, I have to go for the Times now interview because somebody has set it up for me.
#
They'll offer me a job.
#
I'm never thinking I'll not get a job.
#
I'll say no and I'll go to IBM and there I will get the job.
#
I go for this interview and I did not know much about Arnab Goswami, except that I've
#
seen him on TV, but I didn't realize what a forceful personality he is.
#
So he asked me, do you know Tamil?
#
I mean, I didn't know Tamil and I mean, I was pretty sure if he's going to make me read
#
something in Tamil, I can make up and he anyway can't read Tamil, right?
#
And then he gave me the job immediately and he said, you have to join from tomorrow.
#
I said, but sir, I can't join.
#
I don't even have clothes.
#
I've just come for one day.
#
He said, no, I'll give you an allowance of 10,000 rupees.
#
You please go buy clothes.
#
You have to stay here for one month.
#
Your trading will start from tomorrow.
#
I'm like, I don't know if I should.
#
He said, no, that's it.
#
And he was so forceful.
#
I did not know how to say no.
#
And he, they gave me the money.
#
I went and bought clothes.
#
That's how my career in Times now starts.
#
Initially, you know, in TV, when you're the junior reporter in a bureau, they'll make
#
you do all kinds of rubbish.
#
Ornup shows the night, get two Vox pops is my job.
#
So Ornup is doing some show.
#
I'm just on the road asking people for opinions or Ornup is doing this one big story.
#
So you go get five or not even Ornup, it'll be somebody else in the organization.
#
They're doing some big story in Delhi.
#
Some politics is happening.
#
So you go get two or three politicians.
#
So at that point of time, there were very few TV reporters.
#
There was NDTV, then IBM started, then us and headlines today.
#
So imagine I come from a time when the other reporters would not even share numbers of
#
Their Kanimoli's number, Dayanath Imaran's number.
#
People would not give me.
#
They'll say it's a personal number.
#
They don't like to give personal numbers to everyone.
#
So it was as if it was, it is bloody somebody's number.
#
So I realized that I can end my entire life.
#
I can spend just getting Vox pops and costing Amaran or a Kanimoli and getting their bites
#
without ever knowing them without building a source.
#
And I realized I have to do something else and I planned it.
#
I thought, okay, I will do some investigations because anyway, they're not going to let
#
me do politics and I don't want to do anything else.
#
So I planned a few investigations and it actually clicked quite well for times.
#
Now it became CBI investigation and all that stuff.
#
So they also started taking me more seriously.
#
This happened within two or three months.
#
But the reason I said this Kanimoli, Dayanath Imaran thing is that that was how journalism
#
It was very access based.
#
You have access to a person.
#
And, and people would block access for everyone else.
#
So one decision I took in the beginning itself is that if I get a number, I will give it
#
I mean, unless it's a, it's a survivor in a sexual violence who doesn't want me to give
#
or someone says I don't want my number to be given, if it's a politician who's supposed
#
to talk to every channel, their number will be there with everyone.
#
I mean, I wanted to make sure that Chennai, where I work, did not have the same access
#
journalism which Delhi followed.
#
And Delhi, I think, still follows it.
#
You are, you are a good journalist if you have access to people.
#
And a lot of it is cut off because people don't share numbers.
#
They will not tell you sources.
#
They will not share anything, which I think is very problematic.
#
So anyway, that's how times now started.
#
I did investigations, it went off well.
#
Then thankfully, my bureau chief left the bureau and I was made the bureau chief.
#
I grew along with the channel and soon I was shifted to Bangalore, where I was made in
#
charge of all the four southern bureaus.
#
There was no Telangana at that time, it was just Unified Andhra Pradesh.
#
So I was in charge of all the four bureaus.
#
It was a good experience and it was a bad experience.
#
But by the end of eight years, I worked eight years in Times Now, I was done with TV.
#
So why was it a good experience and why was it a bad experience?
#
You really want me to talk about Times Now in detail and all numbers?
#
No, I want you to, I mean, it's you, right, we're talking about you.
#
So it was a good experience because in the beginning, here they actually taught me.
#
They told me what they want.
#
I may not have agreed with most of the things they wanted me to do, but at least there was
#
a system in place where there were a lot of seniors, like they are all doing well in different
#
Maharukin Nair, Deepthi, Rahul, so many people were there.
#
They were very indulgent.
#
They would tell me, Tamanna, Rupali, a lot of seniors in Times Now, they were very indulgent.
#
They will tell me, get this, get this.
#
This is how you get your elements.
#
So it was sorted for me, my bureau chief Vivek, he heads News 18's southern channels now.
#
So they all allowed me to experiment and they were very encouraging that can you imagine
#
in Times Now, I have done a one and a half week show on adoptions, illegal adoptions
#
That's something you can't imagine a national channel doing anymore, but Ornamb has sat
#
on NewsR and for one and a half weeks, he's discussed only this, illegal adoptions.
#
So at that point of time, it was a platform where if you could bring a story and if you
#
could sell your story, now it's not enough that you bring a good story.
#
You should know how to sell it.
#
You're like a marketing person.
#
The story should be good and the way you sell it should be so good that Ornamb is like,
#
So it is always your goal is that your story is either in the 8 p.m. show or the 9 p.m.
#
Otherwise, it's just something which disappears in every bulletin.
#
So that way, it was good.
#
There were a chunk of reporters, like around 10 or 12 of us, who Ornamb allowed to grow
#
along with the organization and it was a learning process.
#
But I think in a few years time, not only the fact that the newsroom was very toxic,
#
that was right from the beginning, it was toxic.
#
But for me personally, it was not a problem because I was not sitting in Delhi or Bombay.
#
I was not inside the newsroom.
#
I was far away and it sort of also helped because I had some access to Jayalalitha.
#
Now that is an access which I can't give to everybody because it's not like I can just
#
pick up my phone and call her, but there was some access I had.
#
So that also gave me some cushioning in times now.
#
People knew, okay, we can get Jayalalitha's interview is very big in TV at that time.
#
Even M. Karnanidhi for that matter, but he was much more democratic that way.
#
He would talk to everybody.
#
He would come out and just give bites.
#
Jayalalitha would never do it.
#
But after a point of time, I realized that the same issue which I described some time
#
back that even if I think of a story in a certain way, I've gone to the ground and
#
found something, the channel has decided that this is the story, this is the angle I'm taking.
#
Now if my source on the ground is saying, no, this is not true also, it doesn't matter
#
They are still going to do the angle in the other way.
#
And this became a constant conflict.
#
Like I've covered scams, big national scams, like the Isro Devas scam or so many other
#
things and I realized that most of what we're projecting is actually not true.
#
And even when I say that this is not true, boss, we shouldn't be doing this.
#
We are just making victims of people who are actually not done anything wrong.
#
Nobody would understand because the channel has decided this is my headline today.
#
The reporter only has to fill the gap.
#
And soon everybody in the channel started behaving like that.
#
So it just got too much for me beyond a point.
#
So one, you have a toxic newsroom.
#
Second, you are just filling the gap of the headline.
#
They have decided this is it and that's the angle you take.
#
And third is, this marketing of a story is so much more difficult for a person sitting
#
Now if I am in Delhi or Bombay, even like a small pillar falling somewhere is a story
#
or Bal Thackeray sneezes, it's a story.
#
At the same time, I tell them this big event has happened in Chennai.
#
Unless it is Jayalalitha or Karunanidhi, imagine Karnataka and all, they would not cover at
#
Till B.S. Yadurappa and his mining scam came, there was hardly any coverage.
#
So to market your story continuously, convince people sitting in a Delhi and Bombay desk,
#
And when I became the South India bureau chief, I am also responsible for so many others who
#
work with me and they are also asking me, why is my story not taken?
#
I remember the specific instant when my colleague Ram, he is with me in the news minute now.
#
He was 21 years old then, I think, very bubbly, very passionate.
#
He said, I want to do a story on Naxals.
#
And he's a Tamil Nadu reporter, but I still tell Arnab, I said, boss, he has some source,
#
let him go to Mangalore.
#
He wants to do a story from Mangalore on the Naxals there.
#
He goes there, he spends two or three days with the Naxals and he comes back and he's
#
So he's got these papers.
#
The second I saw the paper, I knew the story is not going.
#
The reason why is because the accounts are very simple.
#
They're writing grocery, some 5000 bucks, or they're writing some chapati, dosa or clothes
#
It's very simple accounts that they're maintaining.
#
Now, times now till then has built up this great image of Naxals as terrorists.
#
We were asked to call Naxals as terrorist Naxals.
#
And I know people have quit the channel because they disagreed to call them terrorist Naxals.
#
So the moment Ram brings his story, I understand the story is not going because it goes against
#
that channel's assertion that there is Chinese fund, there is Pakistani fund, they are flush
#
with funds and they have AK-47.
#
I'm not contesting that Naxal movements have not got funds from other places, but the story
#
goes against the grain of what you have argued till today.
#
This boy is so upset for days.
#
How am I going to convince him that it's fine, move on to your next story?
#
Because it's a daily job.
#
You just keep on moving.
#
So at one point of time, it got very tiring for me.
#
I did not want to do it anymore.
#
I specifically remember there was violence in the Madras High Court, violence to the
#
scale that I had not seen till then inside a court.
#
There is Lathi charge, there is stone throwing, a police station is burnt inside, judges are
#
And I'm the first television reporter who reached there.
#
And my camera person has been hit by a stone.
#
And I've got really great visuals of hundreds of policemen on one side, hundreds of lawyers
#
on the other side, and they're just charging at each other.
#
And I'm telling them, take the damn visual.
#
And they're like, no, something has happened in Bombay.
#
I'm like, just cut live to me.
#
Then nobody's cutting live.
#
Finally, I called all of them and said, why am I doing this job?
#
It's the biggest visual story.
#
Then he said, see, at least he was someone who could recognize it.
#
But on a daily basis to argue for a story like this is very tiring and it's demotivating.
#
And I always felt that any South Indian story, I had to market five times more than somebody
#
sitting in Kashmir because time is not a Kashmir obsession and somebody sitting in Delhi or
#
For me, the decision to really leave TV came because of Savita Halappana was dead in Ireland.
#
She was a nurse who hailed from Karnataka and no, I can't remember if she was a nurse,
#
but she was from Karnataka and she was working in Ireland.
#
And she had a very unsafe pregnancy, but Ireland would not allow abortions.
#
And she had to go through the childbirth and she died.
#
Of course, many, many years later, Ireland has got a law now which allows abortion only
#
because of Savita Halappana was dead and what happened then.
#
So we had the story with us.
#
We were the first people to get Savita Halappana was, you know, parents in Belgaum and her
#
I had all my elements ready, but Bala Thackeray was in hospital and the story wouldn't go
#
and Bala Thackeray didn't die the next day, the next day.
#
And I said, see, he didn't die.
#
He's still in the hospital.
#
Why can't you carry the story?
#
And they decide to carry the story and Bala Thackeray dies.
#
And then this whole cycle of Bala Thackeray's funeral procession, this, that, and I thought
#
that, you know, you could have given 20 minutes for Savita Halappana.
#
And it was an important story to be told.
#
You don't have to have 24 hours coverage of Bala Thackeray dying is also very important.
#
I'm not saying it is not, but you don't have to dedicate yourself to do only that.
#
That was the time I decided I cannot do this anymore.
#
If I go for a new job, it will be in a place where I don't have to fight for my region.
#
I would rather join a Tamil channel or a Malayalam news channel, at least do my job properly.
#
I don't have to constantly fight for making my story heard.
#
So one of the trends that I've noticed and I've been thinking about more and more, and
#
the reason I've been thinking about it more and more is that once I noticed it, it seems
#
And that's basically the dissipation of the mainstream and the complete decentralization
#
in a number of industries.
#
One of them obviously is journalism because in the 90s, you have this big behemoth mainstream
#
media houses and you've got a consensus on the truth and everything is coming from there.
#
And in the way that you just described it, like what you're describing really seems to
#
be a really top down central thing that is happening.
#
You see the blindness of people with narrow visions and they're not really catering to
#
They've got their preconceptions and their stereotypes and therefore the stories they
#
want reported come out of there.
#
And if they don't conform with the real world, that's too bad for the real world.
#
But I just feel that in media, certainly the mainstream is dissipating the way we consume
#
stuff is coming everywhere from the edges and it's happening across a number of margins.
#
It's happening in music, for example, the East Street band's guitarist, Steve Van Zandt
#
spoken in an interview about how rock was mainstream for, you know, from Beatles and
#
Dylan turning electric to Nirvana.
#
And now there's no mainstream anymore.
#
Everything is all over the place.
#
You see that happening maybe with nation states, that nation states, you know, their control
#
is dissipating because individuals are empowered with technologies and so on.
#
Now, it strikes me that in the context of the news minute, I've even heard in previous
#
interviews where you've spoken about, you've referred to it or whoever was speaking to
#
you has referred to it as a niche.
#
And I don't actually think it's a niche.
#
I don't think it's a niche because I think what will happen over a period of time is
#
not that these big behemoths in the center will survive and they'll be just a whole bunch
#
of niches, which feels like a very condescending way of putting it.
#
I just think that news will get more and more decentralized, more and more local, where
#
you might have a channel for the South and then you might have a channel for Karnataka
#
and then you might have something for the Mysore area and, you know, different specific
#
ways of serving people and you kind of get more and more decentralized and therefore
#
the mainstream is irrelevant.
#
Is that something you've seen?
#
I mean, in a sense, it would appear that you almost became an accidental participant in
#
You didn't plan this, that this is a vision.
#
This is how it's going to evolve and obviously we'll talk about that journey a lot more about
#
the news minute journey.
#
But just at a broader level, you know, what are your thoughts on this?
#
Because I look at everything that the mainstream media serves us and what you've described
#
is true of any industry, right?
#
And this is also why big companies collapse so often when disruptors, you know, come up.
#
And what often then happens is that disruptors become big companies and they become, you
#
know, elephants which can't move and then other disruptors come.
#
But I'm not sure that will happen necessarily in, you know, the way things are kind of working
#
So what are your sort of thoughts on that?
#
So I think already there is decentralization of news.
#
There is no doubt about it.
#
For example, the news minute, we have decentralized news to a large extent and there are many
#
other examples like us, like there is news meter, which does only Hyderabad news.
#
There is the queue in Malayalam, which does only a true copy.
#
There are lots of people like that, right?
#
But I am someone in my head, I'm very clear.
#
I will not disregard or write off the mainstream media because there's certain utility to it
#
considering our government sits in Delhi and they monitor the mainstream media most, right?
#
So which is the reason why the mainstream media has the responsibility of reporting
#
things from across the country simply because they are the messengers to the government,
#
to people in the bureaucracy in Delhi.
#
I see no other utility for national media as they call it.
#
I don't see any importance of a story on any of the national channels unless the government
#
If it's a story where only the state government has to know about it, the people have to know
#
about it, I won't even bother.
#
Like there are many times I send stories to national editors saying, please pick it up.
#
Reason being, I think that, okay, the news minute has done it.
#
Maybe a Deccan Chronicle has done it or somebody here has done it.
#
Maybe someone from Delhi should do it because that's when the government listens, right?
#
So only for utility purpose, I still think the mainstream media should exist.
#
If our government and bureaucracy starts looking at all states and all media separately, then
#
We don't even need a national media, right?
#
Now, the other problem here is that this decentralization that we talk is also very concentrated in
#
certain states and they don't have the resources to cover everything.
#
For example, I run the news minute.
#
I have reporters in five states.
#
Two reporters per state.
#
Can I write every story?
#
I am also mainly city centric because when an event of news happens, I send people outside
#
the city and we are actually better off than a lot of other people who don't even have
#
So the decentralization also is not happening properly simply because lack of resources
#
and nobody wants to put money in news.
#
The other problem is even this decentralization of news, which has happened with the crop
#
of digital sites coming, like The Wire, The Quint, Scroll, The News Minute and all that
#
You are catering to an audience who reads English, speaks in English, understands English.
#
That is not a large section of India.
#
What is the decentralization of news in Tamil or Malayalam or Telugu?
#
I know only about the five states here.
#
I know there is independent media to some extent in Kerala, but even that is not very
#
The reach is not very good.
#
Tamil, there is hardly anything, Telugu, no, absolutely no, Karnataka, very few sites.
#
So this decentralization is also very English specific.
#
It has not happened in a large way in other languages.
#
So even if the word niche perhaps is looking is a bit condescending, as you said, the point
#
is we have not even built those niches.
#
We have not built, we have not been successful.
#
If News Minute started in 2014, at that time, a lot of websites started.
#
I mean, we are just six months before our scroll started, six months after us, The Wire
#
But beyond that, what have we seen?
#
Like I head Digipub, an association of digital media organizations, we have 90 members.
#
I have not heard of at least 16 that.
#
And I am in the industry.
#
And when I look at those websites, I know that they are just SEO based and they put
#
Other than that, we have a few new ones recently, like Article 14, which are doing very specific,
#
So in a huge country like India, if you want to decentralize news also, we need more people
#
to come and support these organizations.
#
We need more organizations to come up.
#
It's only why did a lot of Dalit thinkers, for example, start Vellivada and so many other
#
websites, because there was no platform was giving their voice as it is needed to be given,
#
which is why they started it.
#
They started different things.
#
But I'm saying at some point of time, we will need all these voices to come together also
#
and become one powerful voice, which the government cannot ignore them, which even people sitting
#
in Delhi will know this is happening.
#
So decentralization, I feel, is a very small exercise till now.
#
It's not happened to a large extent.
#
It has to happen more and more.
#
Maybe then will it mean anything?
#
I mean, we have seen the kind of resistance which only 10 or 15 sites can put up to a
#
new story, which is evolving.
#
We understand the perspective that they can bring to the table.
#
Imagine if that's a huge exercise and there are people in various languages contributing
#
How much it will change the landscape of our country?
#
So I want to double click on a bunch of things here.
#
And the first of them that I find very interesting is that you spoke about how the mainstream
#
media is relevant only because people in Delhi will then listen to your politicians or people
#
in power and so on and so forth.
#
And I've always sort of thought of journalism as a whole purpose is that you're catering
#
And of course you speak truth to power and of course you afflict the comfortable and
#
But essentially your audience is the people at large and you're giving them what knowledge,
#
perspectives, news, first draft of history, all of that.
#
I never thought of one purpose of journalism as being actually speaking to the government
#
in power so they make a difference.
#
And I would actually have thought that if that worked, it would work if you go to the
#
And then if there is a bottom of expression, then you know the people in power will actually
#
Why will they change something just because a journalist is after something?
#
But obviously I'm wrong because you've said that that's how it works out.
#
So can you give me examples?
#
When I say national media, I mean the TV media.
#
I'm not talking about newspapers at all.
#
But can you give me an example of how coverage by mainstream media of something, especially
#
if it's in the South, has actually changed anything at the level of someone in government
#
paying attention and doing something about it?
#
Everything, for example, there's a flood coverage, right?
#
And there is continuous coverage of a flood on a national TV channel.
#
The point is someone sitting in Delhi is going to think, okay, at least for perception basis,
#
We have to ensure that this many NDRF people or votes are given.
#
They would do it otherwise also, but they may do a little bit more because there is
#
sustained coverage, right?
#
For example, when the Sri Lankan war was going on, at that time, there was a lot of focus
#
on the Sri Lankan war and what the Tamil parties were saying.
#
And a lot of things which happened in that process were reactions from the government.
#
And if M. Karunanidhi, sitting on Marina Beach and doing that whole half-day protest that
#
he did was not covered a lot by all the national channels, the government can still try to
#
But all cameras are focused on him, right?
#
Other than the fact that he is sitting there, that is important.
#
The fact that the media coverage is adding to it.
#
So in many ways, Delhi channels covering a certain thing adds value to it.
#
I'm not talking about the Indian Express or the Hindustan Times or newspapers at all.
#
They do their job much more properly.
#
They tell their stories.
#
TV channels have stopped doing that long back.
#
So I'm not looking at them in that way at all to tell the story of the person.
#
I'm only looking at utility.
#
If a story is told, will the government react to it?
#
If they carry the story, for example, there is a ship which has been captured by the Houthi
#
There are seven Indians on it.
#
We don't even know who the seventh Indian is.
#
We know about six Indians.
#
Newspapers have written about it.
#
We have written about it.
#
We have written a very detailed copy on how there is absolutely no word.
#
And this is a problem between Saudi Arabia and the rebels.
#
And Indians are just caught in between because it was a Saudi Arabian ship which apparently
#
had arms and ammunition, which the crew did not know about.
#
But Saudi is saying it did not have arms and ammunition.
#
It is only hospital equipment.
#
And the rebels have planted the arms and ammunition.
#
We don't know who is saying the truth, whether it's Saudi or the rebels.
#
My simple point Amit is today, let's say if a national channel like Times Now decides
#
to take it up and three days they run a campaign saying, let's do something for the Indians
#
who are caught by these rebels, the government may do something just for eyeballs.
#
They can force them to do.
#
They have the capability to do it.
#
They stopped telling people stories long ago.
#
But if they do, they can make the government listen.
#
And one of the things that points to what you're saying is that then governance is seriously
#
broken if a government to act on a matter that is important, you actually need the media
#
to bring it to their attention and all these extraneous sort of considerations to begin
#
My next question is that, you know, I keep meeting people who keep praising the work
#
that people like you do or scroll do or news laundry does and so on and so forth, right?
#
I have felt and obviously I would be biased because I would be meeting to you know, listening
#
to people who would share similar values to mine.
#
But I have felt and in the evolution of my podcast, I have certainly felt that there
#
are people who crave depth.
#
There are people who definitely would crave the kind of reportage that you do.
#
And there isn't enough of it out there.
#
My good friend Prem Panicker once described what the media does as going a mile wide and
#
And maybe they have to because of the imperatives of the day, whether it is, you know, they've
#
paid huge license fees and they're too dependent on advertising.
#
So you go for the lowest common denominator and so on and so forth.
#
And therefore people crave depth.
#
I see this with the five hour conversations I have, for example, where typically five
#
years ago, I would have assumed no one has five hours.
#
Everybody has a short attention span, blah, blah, blah.
#
But no, the engagement is off the charts.
#
Similarly, I see the love that people have for the kind of work that you guys do.
#
And by you guys, I mean the news minute and the handful of others and we hardly need to
#
So my question is that what sense do you get of the hunger that there is?
#
Because what I have seen happening in the creator economy worldwide over the last, in
#
a sense, I'll include you in the creator economy.
#
And if you want me to double click on that, I can.
#
But I'd include you in that.
#
And what I've seen happening over the last decade or so in the creator economy is that
#
there is a lag between the hunger and the monetization of that.
#
But that lag is always sooner or later covered.
#
So there might be, you know, that there was this phase where creators began to connect
#
directly with audiences, but couldn't monetize it yet.
#
So you'd have to go through, you know, via means like advertisers or sponsors.
#
But then there came a moment where they actually began to monetize it and it actually kind
#
of began to make sense.
#
Like I recorded with Aakar Patel two or three days ago, though that episode might come out
#
And he was talking about how back in the day in some of the places that he worked, Big
#
Media House would have three, four hundred or thousand, I forget what it is, but it's
#
a big number, reporters in each state, right?
#
And his point was that if you look at the financial models today, it's not feasible
#
for anyone to actually put money into that kind of reportage.
#
And that would certainly apply more to, you know, young startups like all of you.
#
So what is your sense of that hunger?
#
Like at some point, you know, how the future will evolve, we don't know.
#
But what is that sense of that hunger and the appreciation that you get?
#
Because my sense is that your absolute numbers may not be mind blowingly massive, but of
#
the numbers that you do have, the engagement would be far greater.
#
The loyalty would be far greater.
#
That personal connect would be far greater.
#
I mean, that's another thing I noticed.
#
I was, you know, looking at your Instagram and I think one of the things that really
#
works for you, like when you put up that eight, eight image thing on the income tax rates
#
and all that, and there is that sense of for everyone who reads your site, there is that
#
sense of personal engagement that these people are part of my sort of part of my world.
#
They're doing it for me.
#
Whereas with mainstream media, with big media, it's just a complete disconnect.
#
You know, even people, even fans of Arnab, as you pronounce it in such a charming way,
#
even, you know, fans of Arnab who might support him and, you know, they'll do jingoism with
#
him, won't feel that personal connect with him that if he sneezes one day, they'll be
#
like, shit, does he have a cold?
#
I'm just thinking of Arnab sneezing and having a cold, but see, I think this is a dilemma
#
First what you said, the financial models, the revenue models, we have been around for
#
News Laundry has been around for 10 years.
#
It's the, I think, longest running site, but it was started by someone like Madhu Trehan
#
and Abhinandan who both have had experience running something.
#
I was just a mid-level, mid-career journalist who did not want back to go back to TV.
#
So all of us are figuring out our revenue models.
#
I think, for example, the YR or the Alt News, which are non-profit, they have better revenue
#
models because people can donate to them.
#
The News Laundry, for example, is a very loyal set of readers who contribute.
#
We are a little bit different because we also cover news, therefore to make people pay for
#
I mean, whenever I keep putting, saying, become a member, I feel a lot of people believe that
#
immediately some hundreds of people are joining and thousands of people are members.
#
It's very difficult to move membership forward.
#
It happens when there is a big story, you get like 40, 50 people signing in, but otherwise
#
people are not thinking back and deciding, I want to just give 1,200 rupees to the news
#
They don't because they think this news is free.
#
Why should I pay for it?
#
The problem is if I stop the news minute tomorrow, if News Laundry is no longer there, if the
#
Quinn stops, are you going to feel that void there?
#
As a news consumer, do you think the news minute is important in your city, in your
#
state to tell those stories?
#
And you should think of a scenario where the news minute is not there.
#
And if it continues like this, the news minute may not actually be there.
#
So which is why the readers have to step in.
#
Now, that's the model which all of us are working with, where the reader feels the necessity
#
and reader supports the organization.
#
But that is also scalable only to a certain extent, right?
#
It's not scalable to an extent where from a 40% organization, I can become 80 and I
#
can have reporters in all two tire cities.
#
I can have investigative reporters, somebody looks only at courts, et cetera, beats.
#
These are all sacrifices we make.
#
We don't have beat reporters.
#
We don't have reporters in second tire cities because we don't have the strength for it.
#
So can readers paying bridge that gap?
#
So then what have we all realized that, look, we can only make this much money.
#
With that, we can simply support our organization.
#
Let's just be very powerful in the stories we write.
#
But I fear that in the last two or three years, though we all have become better in storytelling,
#
we are telling very important stories, we are still catering to the same crowd again
#
Now there are two reasons why one, we are all English websites, we are writing in English.
#
Our videos are in English.
#
It is catering to the same crowd.
#
Now, of course, wire and others have Hindi, so they reach out to another crowd.
#
But for a South Indian here, we are a very English website, right?
#
So one, you have to start in languages.
#
Now all the websites I talked about are liberal, progressive, they have a certain take on issues.
#
They talk for environment, for climate change, et cetera.
#
They passionately believe in different, different things in democracy.
#
But if you really want to make a change, one, you have to scale.
#
By scale, I mean, you don't have to do many different things.
#
I don't want to become an NDTV where recipes are there.
#
Something happened in Japan, some girl sang beautifully, that story is also there.
#
In China, somebody fell in a pothole, that story is also there.
#
Because that's just traffic.
#
I never want to be like that.
#
Even if I have a lot of money, I don't want to be like that.
#
I want to be the news minute.
#
If I have two reporters now, I want to have six reporters in a state.
#
But I also want to scale in the sense that I want to reach more audiences.
#
Now the problem in digital is also that you have to invest a little bit of money to even
#
You have to invest in your SEO.
#
At one point of time, all of us were spending so much money on Facebook.
#
Thankfully, that has stopped.
#
I mean, imagine on Facebook for your post to be read, you have to boost it.
#
Otherwise, Facebook will not show on their algorithm.
#
Now we are like, screw this, we are not going to do this.
#
We don't want people to read like that.
#
If it is organically doing well, it can, but I can tell you Amit, the number of stories
#
which should be read by three lakh, four lakh, five lakh people because of the fact is important.
#
It's only read by 10,000 people.
#
Because Google algorithm has something called Showcase now where they have signed contracts
#
with all these big media houses in India and Facebook literally does not show anything
#
The small sites are suffering more and more.
#
So we are actually becoming smaller and smaller when it comes to our readership, right?
#
Because none of us will write about somebody's divorce and what is happening in that, or
#
we will not stoop to writing about like what the Times of India does, five bikinis, somebody
#
We are not scaling in that way at all, but technology is stopping us to one extent.
#
Money is stopping us to the other, to another extent.
#
So what I want in my vision is money either from the readers or, you know, there are people
#
who have money in India who realize that we need a vibrant democracy.
#
We have to invest in media or 10 years later, we can twiddle our thumbs and say, Oh my God,
#
we didn't do anything about it.
#
So either they put in money in the media and we have to break away from this English dominance
#
We have to start in languages or this entire exercise means nothing.
#
If you're going to be only catering to the English reading audiences, you're not touching
#
So for me as an entrepreneur, I mean, I classify myself as an entrepreneur only in very few
#
I'm classifying myself for this answer.
#
I feel all of us have to become scalable.
#
I do know that when we discuss business plans, everybody in my office and others tell me,
#
You need to have loyal readers.
#
But I also want more people to read it because I think what we write is important.
#
And for that scalability, unfortunately, you need either money or you just need the algorithms
#
to work for you, right?
#
And third thing is languages, which is my dream forever, but it's never been happening.
#
So I want to double click on each of these big themes.
#
And the first one is that what they're essentially saying is that sure, there might be people
#
who have the hunger for such news and sure, they might even be willing to pay for it,
#
but how do we reach them?
#
And the constraint is their money.
#
And there also, I feel like that there is a natural dilemma.
#
There is a trade-off because the more you try to scale, the more you compromise.
#
And the question then comes is where do you draw the line?
#
You can, of course, just do a thousand stories about children falling into wells and all
#
kinds of nonsense and get some numbers, but where do you draw the line?
#
And I imagine for every news organization like yours, then that way to draw the line,
#
the answer to that would come from some core values or core beliefs that you have some
#
clear idea of yourself that this is what we are.
#
We wanted to get to all the readers who might value this.
#
And what are we willing to do to get there?
#
Like how does one then reconcile this because you're right that there is no point staying
#
in a small idealistic space with a handful of reporters where the good work is not reaching
#
the people who would appreciate the good work and fund more of it.
#
But at the same time, what do you have to do to get there?
#
I mean, you know, that's like you've obviously been living this process for the last few
#
If I had figured that out, then I will be having news minute in many languages.
#
So technically I've not figured it out.
#
But see, when I say I want the things to reach more people, it's not only because I want
#
them to become a loyal reader or I want them to pay for news.
#
The hijab row, for example, I keep going back to it because that's the most current thing
#
If you see the kind of coverage in Canada media, especially in Canada television, you
#
The kind of things that say they will put ISIS behind the girls.
#
The five girls in the hijab are shown and they will have headlines saying, does ISIS
#
have a hand in the hijab row?
#
What proof do you have to say any of this?
#
That is the kind of messaging going to the larger population.
#
The news minute is read by, let's say, one story we do, like we had this fantastic story
#
by my colleague Prajwal and then my another colleague, Pooja Prasanna.
#
They both wrote about how the Safran Shal protest was not an organic thing.
#
It was very well organized, right?
#
It was viral for a lot of people.
#
But in absolute numbers, maybe 50,000 people would have read the story, right?
#
If it was really viral and Google algorithm had picked up, maybe that number would have
#
gone to one or one and a half lakhs.
#
But I'm saying the stories we're saying are important.
#
It doesn't matter if people eventually pay for it or I don't care about that.
#
But I think to counter the narratives which are being spread by a lot of toxic mainstream
#
media, it is very important that we become scalable.
#
But unfortunately, technology and lack of resource is pulling us down and it is continuously
#
happening that we have a lot of meetings and discussions.
#
I mean, I speak to Abhinandan, I speak to a lot of people on a weekly basis or whatever.
#
There is no perfect solution to this.
#
All of us are becoming more and more.
#
I think we're just like in our own cocoons where, okay, I have loyal readers of the news
#
I will keep catering to them.
#
The news laundry is loved by this many people.
#
I'll grow that number slowly.
#
But I'm not thinking like that.
#
I'm saying more people should read the news laundry.
#
More people should know the news minute or the wire.
#
It should not be the same people, right?
#
Because there are people out there who are ready to read new viewpoints, accept new viewpoints
#
and understand the world better.
#
See, I don't want to classify everybody as black and white saying, or, you know, you're
#
a sanghi or a non-sanghi or this or that.
#
No, there are a lot of people who don't actually have a good idea of what's happening.
#
And if they are told that, look, ISIS is not behind the hijab, bro.
#
There is nothing like that.
#
The Kannada channels are lying to you.
#
If somebody tells them that, they are the intelligence to accept that argument.
#
But we are not reaching them because we don't have the resources to reach them or the algorithms
#
So what is my solution?
#
My solution is scaling up in different ways.
#
See, I tell everyone to, for example, I know that, for example, Alt News asks for donations,
#
FIRE asks for donations, News Laundry says subscribe, we say become a member.
#
I'm telling all those readers, think of a world where this organization does not exist.
#
Then you decide if you want to give money to the organization.
#
Close your eyes for two seconds and like you, somebody tells you, right, do you really want
#
Can you imagine a life with this boyfriend?
#
So same way, close your eyes and think for a moment.
#
Do I want a scenario in the media where the news minute is not there or where News Laundry
#
is Manisha's nuisance show is not there?
#
Would that be a huge void for you?
#
If you feel so, then support that organization.
#
That's the only way that we have figured out now, but I'm really hoping that there will
#
Unfortunately, the nature of the medium is such that, you know, in TV you can have a
#
great distributor like Sun, for example, in Tamil Nadu used to control distribution at
#
Nobody would write a story against, nobody would do a story against the Marans because
#
they would be cut off on television network long back.
#
I'm not talking about now.
#
I don't know if they've actually cut channels.
#
They have at times, but it's not in a large scale.
#
But you can still build a very powerful distribution system.
#
It may have the worst of content.
#
Your newspaper has practically no story, but if you have good distribution system, you
#
can still ensure that it reaches people, whether they buy the product, the newspaper has to
#
With the TV channel, that's not a problem.
#
But unfortunately, digital doesn't work like that.
#
Our distribution is through Google, is through Facebook, and a little bit of organic stuff
#
through people who will come or who want to read a certain thing.
#
So when we are so dependent on those people, I mean, we are all trying not to be dependent
#
anymore, but I feel like we are going to come full circle again when we realize that we
#
If you want to speak to a larger number of people, if you want to reach a larger crowd
#
in India, a bigger population, but unfortunately, those companies, I mean, it's not their responsibility,
#
To ensure that we are read by a lot of people.
#
It's not their burden and they're not bothered about it.
#
Therefore, video is another way out.
#
Yeah, I mean, I'll just write video down because that's another thing we'll then double click
#
I love those stories by Prajwal and Pooja on the hijab controversy and even the discussion
#
I think you had with them on Twitter Live or whatever that is.
#
My way of thinking about the glass half full, you painted a very dismal picture, and my
#
glass half full look at it would be that, sure, maybe your absolute numbers are not
#
as much as all of those people who are asking, is ISIS behind these girls and all of that.
#
But the point is that that kind of news, I think, is spread very thin.
#
They might reach a lot of people, spread very thin, people probably look at it as some kind
#
Sure, it is part of that constant brainwashing and all that, but the engagement is not so
#
Whereas I think with the kind of work that you do and the kind of reporting that your
#
incredible reporters do, that I think that the engagement is deeper.
#
It's not so thin, it's thicker, the engagement is deeper.
#
And secondly, the other way I would look at it is that, yes, and we'll speak of languages
#
And this is obviously a bug that even I feel that English speaking elites would be listening
#
But even then, you know, the hope is that some of these elites who are consuming this
#
content because, you know, they are self-selected in terms of their people who engage deeply
#
with the world, care about the world.
#
You hope they'll be running the country in 30 years from now.
#
You know, some 16 year old girl watching the news minute could be Prime Minister of India
#
You know, I see the glass half full in that way that we are all playing the long game
#
You know, you don't know what will happen tomorrow, but we're kind of playing the long
#
You know, I want to also underscore like that's a beautiful question that if News Minute didn't
#
exist or XYZ didn't exist, what would the world be like?
#
And that is a scene component.
#
You know, there are probably organizations which don't exist to begin with, because the
#
space for them was never created, because that willingness to pay, that willingness
#
to actually go out there and do it wasn't there.
#
And what I see in the creator economy in the rest of the world is that that willingness
#
to pay came after a lag, that firstly audiences came, then the engagement came, and then eventually
#
the engagement converted to a willingness to pay.
#
So perhaps I'm not known for being optimistic, so this is unlike me.
#
But I would just hope that, you know, the kind of early experiments, Red News Laundry
#
with the subscription, you guys with your membership and Alt News and Wire have carried
#
out are just the other start that eventually that willingness to pay will come.
#
You know, I'm a very optimistic person.
#
I just answered your question as to what is the future.
#
I am confused, but I'm not someone who's willing to give up or I'm not going to think
#
that this is going to make me do less work or anything like that.
#
I have a vision that it should reach more people and I'm frustrated that it is not.
#
And that's not just my story, it is everybody's story, right?
#
So therefore, how do you engage in other ways?
#
So you have a problem in front of you.
#
I am not looking at the problem as a dead end.
#
I'm not getting enough members.
#
No billionaire in India thinks it's important to put money into media.
#
Five years later, you are under, you know, some government is going to shut your company
#
or do something to you.
#
Don't expect there's going to be a democratic voice out there because you never held a democratic
#
So I'm very clear about all that.
#
Now all the problems are there.
#
I'm always looking at my solution.
#
So my solution is, okay, I will focus on certain things and I will ensure that what you said
#
that those people are very engaged.
#
They get depth out of reading the news minute.
#
They understand issues better.
#
I make them more educated in the process.
#
So that's the way I look at it now.
#
There's no the scalability is in my dream vision.
#
But if it doesn't happen, it doesn't matter.
#
I continue the same way.
#
And then I now think videos are another way to really reach out to people because it's
#
a bit more democratic space than your algorithm of text stories.
#
So we are going to do that more.
#
We are going to be in the video space more in languages.
#
How much ever our resources help us, we are going to be there.
#
So everyone is devising their own ways.
#
But sometimes it does get frustrating thinking, why is there not suddenly like this boom and
#
you know, we can start more, we can experiment more.
#
And I'm just flush with money.
#
And I'm like, I want to start Malayalam now.
#
I want to start a Tamil channel.
#
I mean, it is frustrating at times, but most of the times, like I said, we are keeping
#
on finding solutions and the conversations that all of us have started are very, very
#
Like, for example, I remember this story with scroll did on, I think in Jharkhand, there
#
were some so many thousands of sedition cases against people.
#
These are very important stories, right?
#
Nobody else would tell those stories and it doesn't matter even if 50,000 people don't
#
There are some stories which are for posterity.
#
It is there because it has to be there.
#
I have no doubts about that.
#
But I also feel when a news event is happening and people are being brainwashed, think in
#
a certain way, that other narrative also has to reach a lot more people, which is my only
#
I'm not saying that every story has to be read by one lakh people, two lakh people,
#
In my thoughts, that never comes.
#
I mean, I don't even give my analytics to my staff members.
#
They don't know who's reading what.
#
But sometimes I feel that I wish we had more.
#
Yeah, I totally get that.
#
Let's talk about languages in video and let's kind of talk about languages first.
#
And what I want to ask you, and this is something I have no idea of at all.
#
So what I want to ask you is, what is the existing ecosystem for language journalism
#
I imagine that if there is already some kind of rich ecosystem, rich, perhaps not in terms
#
of quality of content, but just numbers of people reporting in the languages, then from
#
that independent voices might emerge, like the same way you got disillusioned with Times
#
Now and ended up setting up News Minute.
#
Somebody in some big language mainstream media house might say that, hey, let me start something.
#
I'll go on YouTube and do something or I'll start a WhatsApp news service or whatever.
#
But is that ecosystem there to begin with?
#
It is very less limited to certain states, like for example, Kerala has some of the more
#
They have Duel News, The Q, True Copy, Southlife because it keeps coming and going, Aazhi Mukham,
#
But is it reached that great?
#
And I know that most of them are really struggling, but they also have a vision that they want
#
They want to speak a certain language.
#
They're fighting it out every day.
#
But that's not the same in Tamil or Telugu or Kannada.
#
In fact, I was in an event a few days ago where Jayarani, she's one of the most vocal,
#
most passionate woman journalist in Tamil Nadu who has been around for a long time.
#
And she was saying that there is no progressive space in Tamil Nadu, no progressive media
#
in Tamil Nadu where she can actually write.
#
And half her stuff gets translated and it's on the wire or sometimes in the News Minute.
#
She's saying, where is the progressive space?
#
Now, see, when we talk about news media and coverage, we should not restrict only to politics.
#
Let's say about women, about the MeToo movement or how women and children are treated, etc.
#
Most of the language media do not have a progressive stance.
#
But there are people working in those media organizations who do have it.
#
And if they were given the resources to start something new, they can make people in that
#
For example, if we talk about the MeToo movement itself, half the media kept away from it because
#
they have too many skeletons in their own closet.
#
Men don't want reporting on MeToo.
#
Now, when there were instances of MeToo in Tamil Nadu, for example, most of the media
#
kept away from it because they don't believe in it at all.
#
They don't have a progressive stance at all.
#
At the same time, if we had Tamil independent media, we would have had voices, right?
#
But unfortunately, even on YouTube, the people who are more popular now are patriarchal,
#
There are very few people who make sense, who are progressive, who are democratic, etc.
#
And some of them are becoming huger on YouTube.
#
But the larger population of people who are patriarchal, there's no doubt about it.
#
So in languages, especially, we need to bridge that gap.
#
Now, thankfully, one good thing is, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the TV and newspaper media
#
You cannot compare them to your English channels, no way.
#
They do better stories, they do better journalism, no doubt about it.
#
So also people don't feel that need for independent media as such, but I still think there is.
#
I still think that they take very problematic stance on certain issues, especially when
#
So I feel at least feminist spaces in these languages are needed.
#
Telugu and Kannada is like a black hole.
#
Newspapers still are better, but TV channels are, I mean, you should sit and watch, then
#
you will understand what I'm trying to say.
#
There's literally no good work coming out.
#
And they are fantastic journalists, and they have fantastic stories to tell, but it's not
#
So I don't understand, even people are ready to put money into news channels, but why don't
#
they want quality then?
#
We did a story a few years ago where I think there were 70 news channels in Telugu.
#
It may have decreased or increased now, I don't know.
#
So there are 70 different people who are ready to give money to these news channels.
#
Why does at least one person not think I want quality?
#
So the language scene definitely needs to become better because it also shapes society.
#
It helps shape society to a large extent.
#
So people in those mainstream media organizations who feel strongly about something, who are
#
progressive voices, I wish they had platforms.
#
So I'm going to come back to languages, but I'm going to digress briefly because you spoke
#
of the patriarchy and how women's stories are looked at and so on.
#
And we are, of course, in a studio now where the AC is off, which should affect me more
#
than it hurts you because the reason that in our offices, men are often okay with whatever
#
the AC temperature is, but women are feeling cold more, is that these standards for what
#
the temperature should be of air conditioning were designed in the 50s and 60s where offices
#
So they were designed for men.
#
And women's bodies respond differently and they feel colder at a different temperature.
#
And therefore you will have the tendency that men are completely chilling and even making
#
the AC cooler and women are shivering and putting shawl and all of that.
#
And for me, I find that a good metaphor for thinking about how it's a world designed for
#
So my question here is that when it comes to journalism, and now I'm asking a question
#
about the entire span of your journalistic career, where you worked with a lot of women,
#
obviously they're visible, but do women exist in the sense that is everything just the male
#
Is everything focused around the issues that men care about?
#
And does everything then go along those lines, like you've already spoken of the frustration
#
that you had where, you know, your Delhi based channels are not taking South issues seriously.
#
But is it also just a pan India issue when no one looks at it from a woman's gaze, everything
#
is a man's gaze and that determines what stories are done.
#
So because you spoke about the air conditioning, I just want to say something that when I worked
#
in Times Now, it used to be really cold in the office.
#
And I used to go complain saying, please reduce the temperature, I cannot sit here.
#
They say this is what it is.
#
It's a centralized air condition.
#
So I am the kind of person who then stuffed cardboard box panel, like cardboard sheets
#
And I said, I'm going to put it.
#
And I just stuffed cardboard pieces in all air conditions in my room.
#
So I'm that kind of woman.
#
If you're not going to give the temperature for me, I will make sure that I get it.
#
That's the first thing.
#
And second thing is, yes, it is completely male gaze.
#
I'm not saying the woman is not there in media.
#
The woman is there, but again, not all kinds of women.
#
It is still a very upper class dominated media scene in India.
#
And second is there are a lot of women, like if you look at the population of women in
#
a media organization, it could be around 30, 40 percent.
#
If you take a channel, it'll be around 30, 40 percent.
#
But what are these women doing?
#
They're not decision makers.
#
There are very few women who are editors, very few women who head beats.
#
So therefore, it's not just enough that you have women in the newsroom.
#
That number has gone up and it's very rotating.
#
The newsroom itself is such a, it's so difficult to work.
#
I mean, even in the news minute, I'm not talking about other organizations, but that cycle
#
of news itself is such a hard thing to follow that people just leave the profession itself.
#
They can't take it anymore.
#
And more women leave the profession than men do.
#
So eventually, you know, promotion, promotion, the guy who's going up is always the man.
#
So there are women in newsrooms, but they're not representative of all women and they're
#
not reaching the decision making centers of a newsroom.
#
So unless we correct that, it is going to be very difficult.
#
Like when I started the news minute, now, when I started the news minute, I had actually
#
no idea how to start a website.
#
I did not even know that there is a cloud space and things are stored there.
#
I just thought Danya Rajendran, who was 10,000, I had 10,000 followers on Twitter then that
#
Millions and millions will read.
#
This is what I thought.
#
Clearly, that's not true.
#
So when I started, I had no clue.
#
I started a news aggregator, imagine, because I read somewhere, Huffington Post, a news
#
I thought, okay, that's fashionable.
#
Imagine I don't have any money.
#
I've asked my husband for money and I'm starting something taken to people.
#
I had no idea about even me as a woman reporter in Times Now.
#
I realized that so much of my reporting was through a male gaze because my editor told
#
me to report in a certain way.
#
And it is when I came to the news minute that I started thinking, why am I doing the same
#
One turning point for me was in 2016, where it's a very small story, but there is a very
#
popular actor called Manju Warrier in Malayalam and her husband is Dilip.
#
They are this one big couple and they get divorced.
#
And there is a lot of chatter because the child decides to go with the father and it's
#
a girl child, opts to go with the father, not with the mother.
#
Oh my God, she must be a bad mother, horrible mother.
#
And even today, people discuss that a lot.
#
Why did the mother not get the child?
#
Why did the child go with the father?
#
So I thought, big deal.
#
Everybody doesn't have to be a great mother.
#
If given an option, my son would never come with me.
#
He'll go with my husband.
#
But the fact is, I'm not a great mother.
#
That's not my primary job, I feel.
#
And I suck at it most times.
#
So he has a choice, right?
#
But why should I be judged on it?
#
I am very good at something else.
#
So we wrote a story saying not everybody needs to be a mother first or not a child can connect
#
to a father more than a mother.
#
There's no rule written that it has to be the mother who's the most important person
#
When we wrote that story, a lot of people were taken aback.
#
My colleague Saumya Rajendran wrote it.
#
I don't remember if she was.
#
She was not a newswoman.
#
So I contacted her and told her, can you write in this angle?
#
And she agreed with me.
#
And it became very viral.
#
A lot of people shared it.
#
And I realized that we are not telling stories from a woman's perspective.
#
Why should every story be about questioning Manju?
#
Why can't we just say what is wrong?
#
Let the child go where the child feels happy, right?
#
So from then on, for me, in the news minute journey, from that story, I decided that if
#
I want to look at a story, I'm not going to think like Danya in Times Now.
#
I'm going to think differently.
#
I mean, I've had many learning lessons when in Times Now itself there was a story I covered
#
of a rape of a child by her own father.
#
He was working with the embassy here.
#
He was a foreign national.
#
He was a French citizen.
#
And we covered the news a lot.
#
So in my mind, I'm thinking justice for the child, justice for the child, right?
#
And in my pursuit for justice, I am putting out all sorts of gory stories.
#
How she was violated, what was the exact nature of rape, etc.
#
Because I'm thinking justice, justice, justice.
#
Then the mother sat me down and said, I understand your intentions.
#
But many years later, my daughter will read all this on the internet.
#
And your pursuit of justice would have ended by then.
#
So my daughter would never get the justice.
#
By the way, the father was acquitted.
#
But why would all these details be there on the internet?
#
So that, Violent Times Now itself, my perspective of this pursuit for justice changed.
#
The person who wants justice is the person who should control the narrative, is something
#
which I decided even then.
#
And then this 2016 story about Manju Warrier also made me realize that, look, we need to
#
start telling stories differently.
#
We are always saying this from the male gaze.
#
And it starts from even the most local crime story.
#
This is another instance.
#
I had a colleague called Priyanka Therumurthy, she used to work in Tamil Nadu Bureau.
#
So there was a story about a man getting killed on the first night and the headline said that
#
the woman kills the hubby because he's not handsome.
#
So I told Priyanka that, call the station and check on the story.
#
Now, why did that person, this story came in all the newspapers, because it is an agency
#
Because the reporter would have called the station and said, what is the FIR?
#
The FIR is based on the complaint given by the dead man's family, which says he's ugly,
#
she didn't like him, so she killed him.
#
Crime reporter does not put any brain, writes a story.
#
I told Priyanka, you call the station.
#
I did not give her any instructions, but she called me back and said, ma'am, I asked them
#
what did the woman say and they said that the woman did not want to get married.
#
Her parents forced her to get married and on the first night when he tried to have sex
#
with her, she in a fit of whatever tension, rage, whatever, killed.
#
That's her version, which may be true, may not be true.
#
But the point is Priyanka had that sense to ask what is the woman's version.
#
She was not thinking like a crime reporter.
#
And then I realized that when you're a woman reporter in your newsroom, when you have someone
#
who's a Dalit or a Muslim from the LGBT community, I'm not saying that a woman has to report
#
only on women's issues or a Dalit person or somebody from the community should report
#
But they bring a certain sense to the newsroom, which is why if you have women in all levels
#
of decision making, they bring that change to your organization and organizations have
#
They cannot say that, oh my God, inclusivity is not something I can really target because
#
You look at merit also, but this has to be in your vision, otherwise your organization
#
will not speak all voices.
#
So for me, in the beginning, it was only about the feminist viewpoint, telling a story from
#
And we put all our energy into it and it really worked, I feel like we have been able to make
#
For example, people who watch Tamil movies, they must be knowing that a few years ago,
#
every big movie had the hero stalking the heroine, stalking, singing, stalking, singing.
#
It has stopped to a large extent now, like an actor like Dhanush, half his movies were
#
He doesn't act like that anymore because of the criticism.
#
And I'm very happy that other than writers like Ana Bhattikar, we at the news minute
#
wrote first about these things very, very powerfully.
#
I still remember the wife of one of these top actors calling me and saying, I will watch
#
out for the scripts from now.
#
And today you can see that effort of Ana or Soumya and so many others continuously writing
#
There is a change in the film industry.
#
And when we wrote that first article, there was this girl called Swati who was murdered
#
in a railway station in Chennai.
#
We wrote about the fact that Tamil movies should not have stalking scenes.
#
They will come with this arival, which is a sword.
#
So we wrote that this kind of valorizing the hero, this toxic masculinity is not correct.
#
We face such a backlash.
#
One of the biggest, most respected reviewers actually wrote a piece in one of the newspapers
#
saying that there's no empirical data to prove that people follow what they see in movies.
#
But once we started the trend, more and more, I mean, they were already writers who were
#
writing this, but as an organization, nobody was following it.
#
See, you can have a writer in the Times of India, one review will look at a movie in
#
But we made sure that the news minute or any review looks at the movie in a certain way,
#
in a feminist viewpoint.
#
And we wrote more and more about it.
#
We were getting thrashed left, right and center, but we didn't stop.
#
And today I believe that all those people along with us in all those organizations have
#
really ushered in that change.
#
It's not like the film industry woke up one day and decided I will not write stalking
#
It's because society reacted, the media reacted.
#
So that way, I feel that we need more and more women and that will definitely bring
#
So I have a couple of further digressions from this digression.
#
So I hope we eventually managed to get back to where I was going.
#
I have been diverting your attention too much, right?
#
No, because you're just so full of so much knowledge and great insights that I'm just
#
But so we'll take one of those digressions before we go into the break, which is one
#
of the best books I've read in the last decade is this book by Subhil Tetlock called Super
#
And one of the sideways insights in that, the book is not about that, but one of the
#
sideways insights in that was about the study which showed that the best factor in decision
#
making, when you think about the quality of decision making, the most important factor
#
is not intelligence or education, it is diversity.
#
The more diverse a group of people, the better the decision that you will get.
#
In fact, therefore, I would say that the route to merit is actually through diversity.
#
That's where it comes from.
#
And one example of that, of course, is that the story of the woman who killed her husband,
#
that you managed to get another point of view to deepen and make the reader's appreciation
#
of that story richer because you had a diverse reporter, because you had a woman who could
#
look at it from the woman's point of view.
#
And similarly for other stories, you'll have other points of view and other layers which
#
you kind of cut through.
#
And this is something you've also spoken about and I just think that what editors should
#
do, like if I was running an organization, my first principle would always be that if
#
there's a position and there are two equal candidates, you take the one who increases
#
the diversity in whatever way, across whatever margin.
#
And this is something you've spoken about as well.
#
So how do you think editors should approach this?
#
Because I think many editors wouldn't even be aware that this is a problem, that we have
#
this, you're really hiring from the same pool of people, everything is homogeneous.
#
And in a sense, from 30 years ago, it would be natural because you'd have your entire
#
talent pool coming from like St. Stephens in Delhi and Hindu in Delhi, if you're there,
#
everybody knows everybody else, it's the same pool of people.
#
Today that pool of people is everybody, I mean, not everybody, but way more people have
#
access to technology, are exposed to the world, have points of view and whatever.
#
So as an editor, what would you advise to other editors be, how should they approach
#
See, I am not from St. Stephens or any college in Delhi or Bombay, like I said, I studied
#
in Government Victoria College in Palakkad.
#
So if I, I then bring a different perspective to the newsroom, right, which others didn't.
#
So that way, every person has to be looked at like that.
#
I have vacancy now in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu bureaus.
#
And a lot of male reporters are there who have sent their resumes, they are very talented,
#
I'm not saying they are not.
#
In fact, some of them align with what our organization wants very well.
#
But we already have two male reporters, one male reporter is Prajwal in Karnataka and
#
we have Shabbir who's joining us in Tamil Nadu.
#
So I'm very clear how much ever talented the resume from the male reporter is, I don't
#
I want a female reporter there.
#
I'm not saying that Prajwal will not be sensitive to a issue dealing with women, but he will
#
not have the viewpoint of a woman, right?
#
Then my other question is, I have to take a woman.
#
Now in that itself, I have to look at where do they grow up, are they going to be same
#
city bred, same kind of vision they have, have they come from a village or a two-tier
#
And they'll have a better perspective of things happening in the state, what is the community
#
or caste or whatever or religion they belong to.
#
So these are all different things.
#
Now everything cannot be boiled down and every time I cannot make that perfect choice.
#
These are all thoughts going through our minds that we want diversity.
#
I'm not saying that every person we hire is to increase diversity in the newsroom or it
#
does not end up like that because eventually I'm also thinking, oh my God, I have to fill
#
I can't run the bureau with just Prajwal.
#
It's too much work on him.
#
I have to have a second reporter and eventually maybe I will agree to one compromise, but
#
I'm not going to compromise on the fact that it is going to be a woman.
#
Now where is she going to come from?
#
What caste is she going to belong to?
#
Those are compromises I may eventually make.
#
As of now, I've not recruited anyone, but I'm saying as an editor, this should be in
#
You are not a newsroom if you have everybody thinking the same way, everyone coming from
#
Then there is no perspective.
#
I mean, you have some decent progressive perspectives about everything.
#
But if you want to report about a political movement or if you want to report root causes
#
of things, like I have a reporter called Charan Teja.
#
He covers Andhra Pradesh in Telangana.
#
The stuff that he writes about OBC movements in Andhra, how the BJP is trying to come into
#
the OBC classes, take the votes away, make sure that the smaller OBC organizations join,
#
that's something that he can see on the ground on a daily basis and he understands that my
#
top-down vision from Bangalore, right?
#
So it makes a whole lot of difference.
#
I'm not saying that it is possible for all news organizations to do it all the time.
#
I understand there are a lot of issues because we sometimes do not get resumes, we don't
#
get the people we like, but as much as possible, the onus is on each of us to try.
#
And if we don't try, then we cannot say, you know, it's not my business.
#
I know when News Laundry was trying to do that survey about inclusivity and even how
#
many women are there in the newsroom, a lot of people did not want to talk to them.
#
In fact, when they called me for the caste survey, they asked like five or six really
#
I mean, in the sense, what is your name, where do you come from?
#
Some random questions they asked.
#
Those are important ones.
#
But generally what I think about certain things, the last question is, what is your caste?
#
So I said, boss, this survey is about caste, right?
#
Why didn't you just ask me after the first three questions?
#
So he said, no, if I ask it first, a lot of people don't want to reply.
#
So I want to warm them up and then I go to the last question.
#
That is how problematic it is.
#
People don't want to talk about their privilege and within the newsroom, they don't want
#
Now, I don't think I have a perfect solution or I have changed the newsroom that dramatically.
#
I also wish to do more and in a newsroom of 40 people, it's more difficult to do.
#
But if you are in a larger newsroom, I think you do have the bandwidth to do it.
#
So if more editors think that way, then we will see change, no doubt.
#
I mean, imagine if Times of India had all women editors for their website.
#
At some point of time, somebody is going to say, right, stop these nonsensical clickbait
#
articles which you have.
#
It is just degrading women.
#
I'm sure there will be some editor who will say that and if she had three others support
#
I know for a fact, there are women editors in the Times of India who have said that.
#
No, said that meaning they should be in a position to stop it.
#
That's what I'm saying.
#
It's not only about saying their opinion, but they have the powers to actually stop
#
it and give alternatives.
#
I'm going to write more serious stuff.
#
Even if you write five holiday destinations, fine.
#
I'll fill my site with that or five recipes to make dum biryani.
#
Someone should say and they should be listened to.
#
I have one recipe to make dum biryani and that is to open the Swiggy app on my phone.
#
Yeah, I don't cook it also.
#
And the other thing that you kind of forgot is that, you know, as an editor, what you
#
do not want is somebody to do to you what you did to your friend Odna when he asked
#
So let's go in for a quick commercial break now and on the other side of the break, we'll
#
continue talking for a few hours more.
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer.
#
In fact, chances are that many of you first heard of me because of my blog India Uncut,
#
which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I love the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well, that phase in my life ended for various reasons.
#
And now it is time to revive it.
#
Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up, each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com.
#
Welcome back to the Seen On The Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Dhania Rajendran on her fascinating journey so far and the Indian
#
news media and so on and so forth.
#
And going back to the question of language, I mean, the other thing that I often think
#
about is that, yes, you know, when you speak of the English speaking people of this country,
#
people like us, that the kind of media coverage that we see and the kind of reporting that
#
we get from mainstream media is indeed abysmal.
#
But I think the problem of people in the languages is far, far greater because they simply don't
#
have that much in terms of diversity of views and information and knowledge available to
#
And I sense that there is therefore a greater kind of hunger from it.
#
And now I'm much further away from that than you are.
#
I got a sense of it when TikTok exploded.
#
I just went perhaps too deeply into it.
#
I even designed a course on it, TikTok and Indian society taught it for a month.
#
But at the start of that month, these buggers banned TikTok because hey, I'm so macho, I'm
#
going to teach China a lesson.
#
So that unfortunately went.
#
I see glimpses of that on YouTube, where in random corners, beautiful things are happening
#
in whatever languages I kind of understand a little bit.
#
Give me your sense of that hunger.
#
And this is a different kind of hunger, you know, the English speaking guys, hunger is
#
give me depth, everything is shallow, blah, blah, blah.
#
But she would have access to everything else from the world.
#
She can go to NYT and whatever and the whole world is kind of out there.
#
For the language speakers, that's not quite the case.
#
And it would feel that one while it would be richer in a certain way in terms of local
#
detail and color and all that, it would also be malnourished in other ways in terms of
#
what's happening in the world, viewpoints and so on coming in.
#
So what is your sense of not now like earlier when I asked you about the language journalism
#
ecosystem, I really meant from the provider's point of view, where you laid it all out really
#
But now I'm saying from the audience point of view, what is it like?
#
So one thing I feel maybe the people who consume news and views in languages don't even know
#
that there is a diversity of views out there.
#
They're perhaps not even aware of it because in their languages, it is simply non-existent.
#
So it is slowly mushrooming in YouTube where I see a lot of people, for example, I follow
#
Malayalam and Tamil more than the other languages.
#
There are these two YouTubers I can immediately think of, they call Mallu Analyst, it's a
#
guy and there's a woman called Gayathri.
#
They speak mainly on feminism, whether it can be a news break, it can be about a movie,
#
but the fact is they have slowly built an audience who are more and more hungry to know
#
Like you see a Mohanlal or Mammootty movie and you're not allowed to question the toxicity
#
Till now, nobody has done it.
#
But here are people who are ready to do it and they're not looking for an interview with
#
Mohanlal or Mammootty or the access, nothing.
#
And I realized that more and more people are consuming them because they also want to form
#
They want to look at things differently.
#
So that space is definitely there in all languages.
#
But sadly, people are not even aware, a lot of people are not even aware of the options
#
because they're so used to consuming news in a certain way.
#
They're so used to certain opinions that they don't know the other one exists at all.
#
So if we were to give those options to them, they will look at things very differently.
#
Even day to day things unfolding in front of them, they will look at it very differently.
#
I'm sure people are very hungry for it and I see it often, like for example, when this
#
Bishop Franco case came, the judgment came, I'm not an Instagram person at all.
#
I've never been on Instagram much.
#
Sometimes I put photographs.
#
My son and I had a huge meltdown once and he wanted me to delete every single picture
#
My Instagram is very limited to a few pictures.
#
At that day, I was so agitated when this Bishop Franco verdict came and I randomly went on
#
Instagram in real life in Malayalam, that too, and Malayalam-English combined.
#
And by the end of the day, it had almost like 7-8 lakh views.
#
And then I realized that's because people are hungry for different viewpoints and they
#
Most of those people, because I'm very new to that platform and they're watching it.
#
They thought, okay, I made sense.
#
Then I started getting emails, I started getting messages, people asking me, well, how do you
#
How do you perceive that?
#
Then I realized that, okay, that's a platform with younger people and they are really looking
#
out for more ways to look at one event than just what has been already told to them.
#
Space is definitely there.
#
People are very hungry.
#
People want to understand things, but I don't think we have enough talent out there.
#
We have enough resources out there to make use of this.
#
And I hope it changes, that scenario changes in some time.
#
I mean, one hope is that at least for individual creators to go out there and maybe reporting
#
requires much more in terms of funds, but for an individual person to go out there and
#
at least share alternative viewpoints is like way easier today.
#
It is, but there is another weightage to it when it comes from an organization, right?
#
I mean, an individual, for example, a Gayatri or a Manlu analyst, I said, makes a lot of
#
impact because they speak about feminism, they are against patriarchy, they question
#
politicians, actors, whoever it is.
#
But if they were also representing a system like an Asian or a Manorama, which has a certain
#
weightage in society, and then the audience realizes that this is the viewpoint coming
#
in from that organization also, then I think it will be taken more seriously and it obviously
#
reaches a lot more people.
#
So I wish organizations also paid attention to the fact that it's, you know, we have to
#
move out of this rut of just putting out news there one by one by one by one and not pausing
#
to understand what is the impact of this news?
#
How should I look at it?
#
How should people look at it?
#
What do I learn from it?
#
These are questions you need to ask, right?
#
So I wish that that language space was used better.
#
You were speaking about the role of video earlier.
#
So that's something that I've been thinking about in the sense that many of us who create
#
in whatever way we do, like I've all my life thought of myself as a writer.
#
And right now I'm not writing, we are talking, right?
#
And I will at some point do things on YouTube as well.
#
And one of the things when I teach my writing course or my podcasting course, one of the
#
things I keep kind of emphasizing on is that don't think of yourself as tied down to this
#
one thing that I write or I do this or I do that.
#
You have things you want to express and you can express them in multiple ways.
#
You can use your imagination in multiple ways and so on and so forth.
#
And at some level, even how we think of the media is something that I've realized that
#
we need to re-examine because earlier you'll think that, okay, maybe I'm a print journalist
#
or maybe I'm a TV journalist or whatever, but there is one form and I've boxed myself
#
And the truth is, as people like you know in the digital media, that there are various
#
ways to reach the reader, the listener, the person out there who wants what you're giving.
#
And like I looked at your Instagram and I quite liked it.
#
You might say you're not very active there, but I kind of liked it.
#
You're putting up snippets sometimes, you put up that seven image thing about the tax trade
#
and all that, thereby making that personal connect, which I'll also ask you about because
#
I think in the new creator economy that also plays a part.
#
But in general, you know, and this is clearly something that you've put into practice in
#
You've thought about that and you mentioned earlier the importance of video.
#
So take me a little bit through your thoughts on this, that, you know, there are these particular
#
forms, like one of the things that I realized maybe in just the last few months because
#
I wasn't open to thinking about it in those ways before that, though I should have been
#
because I was a blogger once, is that we used to think 30 years ago in terms of limited
#
Like if I'm writing, it's an 800 word article or a hundred thousand word book.
#
If I'm a filmmaker, it's a 24 minute TV episode or it's a 90 minute Hollywood film, 180 minute
#
Bollywood film, whatever.
#
I guess for a TV person, they would also be these fixed forms that you'll have this three
#
minute segment and the anchor cuts to you and you take two quotes like that or whatever.
#
And the problem with thinking in those fixed forms, the problem with those fixed forms
#
to begin with is that form determines content.
#
So when you think like that, you are constraining what you can do.
#
And I think today we've reached a time where those constraints have to a large extent dissolved
#
And therefore, if you think in new ways, new kinds of content will emerge, which equally
#
will shape the person producing the content, the kind of work that you do.
#
Maybe a reporter will realize that I don't just have to get two quotes for an 800 word
#
I can also write a 3000 word newsletter.
#
I can also shoot a video.
#
I can try and go a little deeper in different ways.
#
So you're kind of at the center of this as a practitioner who's figuring all this out.
#
So tell me a little bit about that.
#
So I always thought of myself as a TV person.
#
Eight years in TV, I got tired of it and I somehow moved out of the medium.
#
But it's always there in me.
#
I want to do visual, right?
#
But I think the first few years of the news minute, I consciously kept visual away from
#
my brain because I wanted to also try the written word and I did not discourage anyone
#
But slowly I've also realized that TV is indeed a very powerful medium.
#
Visual is very powerful, sometimes more than the written word.
#
And therefore, I cannot discard it.
#
I cannot think, oh my God, I worked eight years in time, so I don't want to do it anymore.
#
And the problem is when you run an organization, unfortunately, the way you think is what a
#
lot of other people start thinking like or mimicking.
#
So if I don't give importance to the visual, everybody else is going to think the editor-in-chief
#
herself doesn't believe in visual.
#
She doesn't believe in multimedia elements.
#
So I think we saw a small downward curve for the news minute in that way for visual one
#
But now I'm trying to again take it up because I realized the value of visual.
#
And if a written word is something which is not scalable, like I said, it reaches only
#
50,000, 1 lakh people, and the video has more potential, you're ultimately saying the same
#
You're writing the same story in different formats.
#
So I want to pay more attention to video that way because I feel that more younger people,
#
people from various walks of life, it's no longer your echo chamber.
#
There is a different process of people consuming videos.
#
Therefore, I think that it's not just the news minute.
#
Most news organizations are now tilting towards it.
#
The Quint, for example, is one which has used it quite well.
#
Over the years, they've never left, taken their attention off from video.
#
The Wire I see is doing more and more.
#
News Laundry is someone who's always stuck to video.
#
The News Minute is one which was in video and then went out.
#
For everyone, video is a powerful medium.
#
There's no doubt about it.
#
And I think younger people consume video more.
#
So if you want to reach out to younger people, I think you have to be in video, sound everything.
#
And as far as people who are journalists, I doubt there are any journalists who now
#
think that I'm a print journalist.
#
When print journalists go to a place, they are asked to record videos or they are asked
#
So their vision cannot be narrow anymore.
#
I think those days are gone.
#
But the problem is that it's not enough that you envision yourself as a journalist who
#
will go to the ground and say, okay, I will also shoot a bite.
#
I will also write my story.
#
Everybody can shoot a bite.
#
But can you construct a story around it?
#
So that is where we have a problem.
#
We are just letting everybody shoot videos and put it out and there's no quality at the
#
end of it, which is why organizations now have to take a call that I want quality also.
#
I just don't want quantity.
#
I hope all this works out and we'll have quality videos.
#
We're going to launch a few shows.
#
I'm very nervous about it because I don't know if I can do interview shows, et cetera,
#
but everybody else says you can, you can.
#
No, no, you absolutely should.
#
I mean, you should learn a lesson from yourself in the sense that what I often tell my writing
#
students is that there is a trade-off we face between getting it done and getting it right.
#
And I think too many people paralyze themselves because they want to get it right.
#
And they're so obsessed, like, you know, how will I look on camera or, you know, who will
#
read me or what is, you know, and the imposter syndrome kicks in and all that.
#
And my advice always is that, no, just get it done.
#
The only way to get it right is to get it done again and again.
#
You might suck at the start, but you do it again and again and you'll get better.
#
And that's exactly what you, in fact, kind of did with the News Minute, where, you know,
#
it started, like you said, you were aggregating a few things and it was a completely different
#
thing and then it sort of grew into what it is now, something with a genuine vision, which
#
is being driven in a particular way and all of that.
#
So tell me a little bit about that journey that, you know, firstly, why did you leave
#
Because, I mean, who would leave Ornab as you were pronouncing?
#
And then how did you, from there, how did the journey to the News Minute happen?
#
So I left Ornab, as you say, in 2013.
#
On January 1st, I resigned.
#
I decided this new year is going to be a beautiful one, Danya, and I resigned.
#
But I had three months notice period, so eventually I worked till March 31st.
#
I mean, it was a decision which was coming.
#
I got tired of TV and I felt TV was not changing.
#
It was exciting in the beginning, you know, to stand on live from 6 o'clock in the morning
#
to 9 o'clock in the night, every time breaking news happens.
#
I have abundance of energy.
#
I have no problem with that, but I felt we were too agenda driven.
#
So much agenda in stuff and slowly Ornab was pushing that agenda.
#
In 2013, he had started it quite aggressively.
#
Even then I did not realize that this is his word against regional parties, against pushing
#
the Congress down, because I am seeing it as the Congress is in power, I question the
#
Yadurappa was the Chief Minister here.
#
I am one of the first people who broke the mining scam report.
#
I look at it as questioning the government.
#
But slowly I started thinking there is an undercurrent of an agenda and of course this
#
pushing the South narrative, plus the toxicity in the news, which is all different combinations
#
I mean, they did ask me to stay back and take a break and come.
#
I said, no, once I'm done, I'm done.
#
I did get an offer from another channel.
#
I don't want to say who, what, why, but they had an interview with me and this obnoxious
#
anchor who interviewed me, who's also the editor, he's like, when you come here, I know
#
you're Ornab's blue eyed girl, but things will not work like that in our channel.
#
The way Ornab does journalism, he went on and on and on.
#
I said, boss, is this my interview or are you wanting to talk about Ornab?
#
Then I just stopped communication with them.
#
I didn't want to go back to a channel.
#
You know, the problem of being a workaholic and then not working is that I'm at peace
#
I was actually organizing birthday parties.
#
I like organizing birthday parties.
#
I like doing decoration, doing theme parties and I was earning money.
#
People were paying me to organize their kids birthday party.
#
So I'm thinking, Danya, leave journalism, you'll become a birthday party organizer.
#
But people are not happy.
#
They're like, where are you joining?
#
Every day, my family, friends, everybody wants to know what is my next job.
#
I told Vignesh, my husband, I have to do some job or people are not going to leave me.
#
So then he said, okay, go join a channel.
#
I said, no, I want to do something myself.
#
And I said, will you give money to start a website?
#
He said, but what do you want to start?
#
So I said, news aggregator.
#
I mean, I actually pity him, you know, he did have some savings.
#
I used all of it for like one and a half years, poor man was left, not left without any savings,
#
but it was just a random idea to start a news aggregator.
#
I had one intern and one reporter.
#
And then I realized that even the one reporting thing I was doing, people were reading it.
#
I thought, let's report more.
#
So I told Vignesh, give me some more money.
#
Then he put in a little bit more money.
#
And then I hired one reporter for Kerala, one reporter for Andhra Pradesh like that.
#
Slowly that idea germinated that let's do more South reporting, let's do more female
#
And I never took money from anyone for the first one and a half years because I don't
#
have an idea what I'm doing and I can't take somebody else's money.
#
Vignesh was ready to give me money and he knew that that's it, that money is gone.
#
But at least he was ready to invest in me.
#
I never took anybody's money for the first one and a half years.
#
Then they approached me saying, we want to invest.
#
By then we had a vision.
#
I mean, half a vision, I would say.
#
But if people had asked me to come to them, if I had gone to a venture capitalist and
#
they had said, give me a business plan, I don't even have one today.
#
I'm not saying everybody should function like that, but I am a person like that.
#
I did not have a business plan then.
#
It just evolved with time how the news minute will be.
#
Maybe five years later, the news minute won't even look like this.
#
It may be a completely different organization altogether.
#
I'm not going to plan that.
#
It will evolve by itself, but I'm a risk taker.
#
Thankfully, I had a husband who was ready to give me money.
#
I have a husband who's ready to give me money.
#
When people approach me, journalists approach me saying that they want to start an organization,
#
it's like alarm bells in my mind telling them, no, please don't, please don't.
#
But I don't want to vocalize it.
#
But what I want to tell them is that, look, boss, it requires money.
#
Naresh started Scroll the same time as me.
#
He clearly had a vision.
#
So they knew they went to deep reporting.
#
They had everything sorted.
#
I would look at the scroll and think, oh my God, I'm actually so clueless.
#
And Chitra Subramaniam was also there with me.
#
So she would do her stories.
#
Today, actually, one of my colleagues left the organization, it was the last day, and
#
we were having this farewell and we were laughing at the kind of things we have written in the
#
Thankfully, the first two years of the site disappeared because we had some technical
#
issue and the site disappeared.
#
If people were to ever go back to that site and take things out, oh my God, I'll be troll
#
So in one way, yes, you have to take risks.
#
News minute was a risk for me, but I'm not attached to the news minute like, for example,
#
when Raghav Bell and Ritu's company Quintolion put money in us and obviously we had to give
#
A lot of people advise me saying that no, eventually the company will be gone.
#
You will not have any shares.
#
What will I do with just shares if I don't have money to run it?
#
I don't know how to run it.
#
Obviously, I need to get investors, right?
#
So I'm not emotionally attached that way to the news minute.
#
It is a product which three people started.
#
I love doing what the news minute does.
#
But five years later, if I have to sell 100% of my shares simply because investment has
#
to come in, I will do it.
#
I'm not going to cling on to it thinking this is my legacy for the next 125 years.
#
It has to do at that period of time.
#
I mean, whether you own it or not, it is your legacy.
#
Two TILs for all my listeners from this.
#
One is that you were Arnab's blue-eyed girl that has now been established and the other
#
TIL is that the force behind the news minute is Zain Vignesh, who funded it in the early
#
I think that sort of haphazardness, that word has a negative connotation, but that lack
#
of a plan helped in the sense that you get in and you're just doing stuff and you evolve.
#
And I think there is a danger in having too much planned out at the start because then
#
you get wedded to a particular plan and a particular vision of the thing.
#
Like your plan could well have been that we will be an aggregator and you could just have
#
stuck to that and it wouldn't have evolved.
#
So do you think that that helps because I see this as sort of a moment of learning also
#
for me and for anyone who's listening that you don't always have to have a plan.
#
Sometimes it's important just to jump in there, to trust yourself and to just go with it.
#
So what are your sort of thoughts on this, having made that journey?
#
I mean, I don't want anyone to follow my example because it's a very dangerous one.
#
See, I came from Palakkad.
#
I never thought at any point of time that I will be running an organization, small or
#
I never envisaged any future like that for myself.
#
I was just someone who didn't want to go back to shitty TV again.
#
And I wanted to create an option for myself.
#
Now, Scroll had a clear idea what they wanted.
#
The Wire had a clear idea what they wanted.
#
The Quint, I'm sure, had a beautiful business plan and they're sticking to it and they are
#
I am just an aberration, I feel.
#
And also, I had the privilege of having some bit of money, right?
#
If I did not have that money, if, let's say, a person does not have a vignet in their life,
#
I can't be saying, okay, I'll start an organization, I figure out in one and a half years what
#
So I had the privilege of having that little bit of amount of money.
#
So I can't leave this advice to somebody else, saying you start what you want and then you
#
Yeah, as long as you don't have the burden of looking after your family or you're not
#
the sole earning member, please go ahead.
#
But if you want to make money, if you have to also pay salaries, then you better have
#
a business plan in place, at least a basic one.
#
Yeah, I think that advice of just start would probably work at the level of an individual
#
But if you're actually going to start an organization, you've got to have some sort of starting
#
Now, as you guys developed, and you've been very clear that you want alternative perspectives,
#
you're focused on the South and those are the directions you're going down on.
#
But the other sort of dilemma that must have hit you and I'm sure that you still live with
#
is breadth versus depth.
#
That do you try to cover a lot of area within what you set out to do, or do you just try
#
to give more time to individual stories and just, you know, do fewer stories, but do them
#
You know, so the choice would be that, okay, I can have 10 reporters in Andhra Pradesh across
#
the place or I have two reporters, you know, how have you dealt with this?
#
That again changes every year, to be very truthful, that changes every year.
#
Like one year we are thinking we will break every story properly, like we are not saying
#
we'll break every story first, but we'll break every story properly.
#
Next year we are thinking, no, we will not break all stories, we'll break a few important
#
Next year we're thinking differently.
#
Now we are in a different tangent altogether.
#
And I think this is the one I like is where I have a separate breaking news team, which
#
are like four or five very efficient people.
#
They look at news and the other reporters have their time to write their stories.
#
So you have both verticals going, there is no clashing of the two verticals.
#
And for depth, you have depth, for immediate news, because people trust us to a level that
#
we will not give wrong breaking news, that if a building hasn't collapsed, we'll say
#
That much trust people have in us.
#
And if a person hasn't died, we are not going to say they died.
#
That way we have now divided the verticals, and I think that works better for the news
#
minute and its audience.
#
But maybe one year down the line, this plan would have changed.
#
So it keeps changing, but I prefer now to run an organization which will tell you the
#
immediate story, but which will also go back to the story and tell you more details about
#
So earlier in this conversation, and I've forgotten where because I noted just a word
#
down, you spoke about how you learned about leadership.
#
Maybe it was in your college times or whatever.
#
But what was that like, like as a manager?
#
Like, I think of myself, my first sort of managerial responsibility was when I was a
#
managing editor of Crick and Four in the mid-autees, and I sucked.
#
And then later on, when I was an editor at Pragati, I think I was damn good, because
#
I thought a lot more about it and put some work into it.
#
And also, I just changed as a person in the meantime.
#
So what was it like for you, because you're thrown into the thick of things as a reporter
#
first, and then you kind of become a bureau chief in times now and so on, and you're actually
#
running a full bureau, you're responsible for other people, you're not just trying to
#
sell your stories, you want to sell their stories as well and make sure it's productive.
#
And now, you're leading a startup, you're leading a startup which is constantly under
#
attack also, which has faced existential threats, and we'll talk about that as well.
#
So it's a whole different level of kind of motivation and management and, you know, unlike
#
in a really big company, you may not have a lot of systems in place.
#
So how has that changed you and how have you changed as a leader and how has the having
#
to be a leader changed you as a person?
#
So right from school or college, if I am the leader of the gang, I've taught myself two
#
I was a member of the junior chamber, it's like your lions and rotary, right?
#
So in one of the classes they taught me, I mean, it was one of those life lessons, right?
#
You have something really bad to say to a person, like really bad feedback to give.
#
So first you keep a slice of bread, which is, hey, you know, you're really improving,
#
but this story sucks, is your patty, and then you keep another piece of bread below.
#
So I have, this has been my policy right from the beginning, when I was junior, senior,
#
I'm always a very sad, in my office, everybody knows this now that I'm a sandwich person,
#
that the patty will come, but it will be camouflaged by two bread pieces.
#
But they know how to take it seriously.
#
And I realized early that this is not a popularity contest.
#
Leadership is not a popularity contest.
#
You cannot at all points of time satisfy everybody, keep everybody happy.
#
You have to take certain difficult calls that has to be done, whether that's in my college
#
So one thing I've always been clear about, Times Now was very difficult to be a leader
#
in Times Now sucked my spirit away in the sense that when you work in a very intense
#
newsroom, which can also be toxic in many ways, you end up becoming exactly that.
#
I mean, I have, I've had the misfortune of sitting on laptops, sometimes opening a computer.
#
And the last person would be the junior reporter in my office who would have chatted about
#
me to someone else and she or he would have kept it open and gone.
#
And they would have bitched about me so badly.
#
And at that time I felt really bad.
#
But now when I think about it, I understand why they said those things about me.
#
If honor was one level, the people in the Bombay office were level two and I was just
#
I was, whatever was being done by the boss is because you are transferring it to the
#
So I was doing the same to people who were working with me.
#
So when I started the news minute, the one thing which Vignesh told me is that I won't
#
have the same atmosphere here because he could, every day my day starts with screaming.
#
I'm screaming at people saying, where are you?
#
You should have been here.
#
So Vignesh said, when you start a new organization, it will not be that.
#
So first thing was, but it took me a lot of time.
#
I mean, imagine to not scream at people when you've already gotten used to it.
#
But I think the leadership lesson that I have learned the most now is that nobody knows
#
And even if you're a leader in a team, like for example, my colleague Ram, who has been
#
with me from the beginning, he's also very forceful, I would say, violent personality
#
like me, but he has certain thought processes and I know that that adds a lot of value to
#
Like sometimes I don't agree with what he says.
#
I want to fight with him, hit him or whatever.
#
But for the organization, I will say, yes, okay, we'll follow what you say.
#
The same with Raga Malika, Anne Isaac.
#
These are all people who work with me, Sowmya, Pooja, Sudipto, who has just joined us.
#
I don't agree with most of the stuff they say, but what being a leader has taught me
#
is that just swallow your pride, listen to what they have to say.
#
Like I will agree to what they're saying, waiting for that to fail.
#
And then I'll say, I told you so.
#
That also happens quite a bit.
#
And then I'll say, okay, you do guys do whatever you want.
#
After two months, I'll come and crack the whip and say, you guys did this.
#
So you learn on the way, but the point is take everybody along and don't create a toxic
#
Another very important thing I've learned is I used to take pride in going to colleges
#
and say, the news is a 365 day business, 24 hours, you had to be awake.
#
I don't say that anymore because people who work with me have taught me that news need
#
So that's a big unlearning process I've had.
#
So if you're a leader, also just listen to everybody.
#
They have a lot of viewpoints, maybe much better than yours.
#
I love the way you're telling me about that evil side of you.
#
All of them are going to listen to this.
#
That's another evil side.
#
I will make sure everybody listens.
#
No, no, but I think they do know that I have an evil side.
#
Like I do inception, you know, like the grain of doubt I will put on one person if I want
#
someone to quit also slowly, slowly I'll build on it, but people do know it's not like a
#
So it's been tough, right?
#
Tell me a little bit about the tough times, whatever you're comfortable talking about,
#
because I was chatting with Aakar Patel a couple of days ago and I don't know how he
#
He's like, yeah, they've taken my passport away, but it's been COVID anyway.
#
What would I do with the passport?
#
It's safer with them, that kind of rubbish.
#
But it can't be like that.
#
You know, I read about what friends of mine go through and I feel bad.
#
I mean, I feel, you know, I feel like I can't take it anymore.
#
I mean, the process really is a punishment.
#
So see, there are different kinds of repercussions of what you do, right?
#
If you do a story, somebody's pissed off with you, the person who's mentioned in the story
#
is pissed off with you.
#
They either go to court or they're going to troll you.
#
That is one that I can deal with.
#
The second is social media pressure, which is really high.
#
I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have talked about it, so I don't have to add anything
#
But that can impact your journalism.
#
You self-censor your work.
#
The third is what the government does.
#
For us, I think one of the biggest challenges has been this whole income tax search which
#
happened in our office.
#
And it was really funny, the income tax search, and we like to make fun of it because when
#
they came to the office, this colleague whose last date was, he was the only one there,
#
and they said, we have come from the income tax department.
#
So he thought he's not filed his taxes.
#
So he immediately went and brought his Aadhar and everything back.
#
They didn't tell him it's a search.
#
They said, no, it's a search.
#
Where is your exit and entry?
#
He said, there's only one door.
#
It's a small office, only one door.
#
He said, where is the marketing department?
#
He said, no, we don't have any.
#
We just have three rooms.
#
And we don't have any marketing people in the news minute, only one or two here and
#
So they said, okay, we're going to seal all the doors.
#
You have to sit inside, give your laptop and phone, and we'll conduct the search.
#
So he said, boss, there are literally like no tables also in our office to keep documents
#
We just keep here and there, and then whenever Vignesh has to take it, he will take it home
#
He said, if you don't allow them to come, I don't know anything about how the news
#
I think after the Karnataka bureau.
#
So that officer understood that he's saying the truth.
#
He said, okay, call the owners.
#
They called us and we came to office.
#
By then in our group, it has been told that income tax guys have come for search, no need
#
Immediately, everybody comes to office because all of them want to be in office and be excited
#
It was not a bad experience for us.
#
It was not the same for Quinn.
#
But I would say the problem was that the case was based out of Noida.
#
We are in Bangalore, which means we had to have a chartered accountant there, a lawyer
#
That's a lot of financial burden on us as an organization.
#
And initially it was fine.
#
They would send us notices.
#
I cannot imagine the government is wasting away time of income tax officers who should
#
actually be doing some good work to ask the news minute, who did you pay rupees 502 when
#
every single transaction is through the bank.
#
We don't give cash to anyone.
#
Every transaction is through the bank, but they want vouchers for every freelancer we
#
Like some camera person in some UDP or common 500 rupees we have paid.
#
Then we had to write back to each of those people saying, do you have the vouchers?
#
I mean, are you really making your income tax officials do this the entire day just
#
because you have a vendetta against someone?
#
And it went on and on and on for three years.
#
The last six months were quite horrible because we would get a bunch of notices, like 12-15
#
And they would ask for all sorts of random stuff.
#
And see, I did not go through any of the tension because Vignesh and Ram and everybody else
#
Not Ram, Vignesh and the Chartered Accountant had to do.
#
So they were managing it.
#
I did not have anything to do till the last notice came.
#
The last notice was asking me to explain whether I got a bribe from this mining baron called
#
That really upset me because if journalism was a way to make money, it's the easiest
#
profession, believe me.
#
I still remember the first time I went for a press meet as a health reporter in New Indian
#
Express was for a health camp being organized by one of those clubs.
#
They gave in an envelope, they gave 500 rupees.
#
I was like, why are you giving this money?
#
In Delhi, nobody had given me any money.
#
They said, no, we give all reporters who came.
#
I said, no, I don't want.
#
A lot of reporters don't take any money.
#
They have so much of integrity, organizations of integrity.
#
So if I wanted to make money, there are a hundred different ways to make money.
#
I don't have to write against the government or against a politician.
#
I can just write for them.
#
So that upset me that the income tax department wanted me to prove that I did not get a bribe
#
It was based on one story by a Telugu media.
#
Basically, at one point of time, this Shekhar Reddy was arrested and income tax department
#
In the diary, he's supposed to have mentioned payments he made to AIDMK leaders.
#
When the story broke, AIDMK was very upset and they made up this fake document with a
#
lot of names of journalists.
#
My name was on top and they wrote, Danya Rajendran, flight to Hyderabad and stay in Taj.
#
And they also made up a story that I am this Shekhar Reddy's concubine, which is why he
#
was flying me to Hyderabad.
#
I have not even seen this person's face.
#
Now that doesn't matter, right?
#
So that document was proved to be fake because a lot of journalists were in different jobs
#
during the year in which this document is supposed to be.
#
So by evening, everybody knew it's a fake document.
#
But some one lakh people have seen it in Tamil Nadu because it's all over WhatsApp groups.
#
It's all over Facebook pages.
#
I can't go convince everybody that I have not taken money from Shekhar Reddy nor can
#
all the other journalists.
#
You can intimidate me however you want.
#
I will continue to do the story.
#
But I know there were a lot of journalists who were upset that day when this document
#
Because there will be people who will question their integrity.
#
Anyway, that Telugu website wrote a story saying that all these journalists react on
#
Twitter and said the document is fake.
#
That's a story on the Telugu website.
#
IT department takes that and says, now you prove you didn't get the bride.
#
You can't prove a negative.
#
I was so upset for days.
#
I was thinking, why am I doing this job?
#
That's the only time I actually felt really upset thinking there's no point being truthful
#
also because there is this one big story which the BJP guys have spread saying that I got
#
So anytime they want to say anything, they'll say, I have this car.
#
How many people will I say, I don't want to explain to people.
#
So I make a joke out of it.
#
I tell them that this is not the brand I want or something else.
#
I make a joke out of it.
#
But this was no longer a joke.
#
Whenever people troll me, I make a joke out of it.
#
But when the income tax department sends you a notice, and I'm explaining this to my lawyer
#
and my lawyer is like, how are we going to explain this to the income tax department
#
that it's a fake document by the AIDMK, blah, blah, blah.
#
Thankfully, Times Now had recorded an interview with the AIDMK guy, like a spy cam interview
#
in which the guy says, no, it was a fake document and we just did it to spite you guys.
#
And we got the video clip and we send that to the department.
#
In one week's time, the income tax case was closed against us.
#
But why should I go through that?
#
Because I run a news organization.
#
Why should I go through it?
#
Why should the government be using any agency to target someone in any manner?
#
It's not just about me.
#
It's about a lot of organizations which come under pressure.
#
So that's the kind of atmosphere that we are dealing with.
#
That's the kind of climate we are in.
#
But it does not deter me, it does not make me feel scared or make me feel like I shouldn't
#
Like my brother, going back to my brother.
#
He keeps telling me in Malayalam, logam ni vijayarcha nannavan boonagliya means the
#
world is not going to change just because you want to change it.
#
I mean, it's coming from a good place.
#
He thinks that there's just too much pressure in my life or there's too much of tension.
#
But I think that's fine.
#
Everybody cannot be leading happy lives or going for holidays.
#
Some people have to have very stressful lives, I feel.
#
So I'm one of those people.
#
As you said, all this is not for a story which the newsman does today or the scroll does
#
today or whoever does today.
#
It's not for a change today.
#
It will come at some point of time.
#
And I believe that I'm contributing to the process.
#
And in that process, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be against me.
#
Some of my work may not even be good or it may not be appreciated, but it's fine.
#
I'll keep doing what I feel.
#
And I wouldn't even say that this is not a happy life.
#
I mean, there is a certain kind of happiness and sense of satisfaction in doing all of
#
So, you know, and also that's interesting that, you know, Times Now recorded those guys
#
saying it's fake or not to the rescue again.
#
He was not there then, but he was in the public, remember?
#
But that's because Times Now journalists were also mentioned in the document.
#
Ah, so that's why they did that.
#
And you kind of benefited from that.
#
And that is another thing that strikes me as just completely crazy.
#
I mean, my way of dealing with the little trolling that I get cannot compare with people
#
But my way of dealing with it is I just block everybody.
#
If people are rude to me, I block them.
#
If they're rude to my friends, I block them.
#
If they just tweet something rude, I block them, even if I'm not involved.
#
It's like, you know, after demonetization happened and I started writing against it
#
and one of my pieces went viral, the entire right-wing IT cell just descended on me.
#
And I think I got addicted to blocking.
#
I would get dopamine hits.
#
So I would sit all day and I would just block, block, block.
#
And after a week, there was this emptiness in my life because I had blocked them all.
#
Luckily, there are all kinds of other trolls who come after you.
#
But you know, jokes apart, it's terrible and it's terrible for women, the kind of trolling
#
Every time I was telling Ram this, every time, you know, I go on Twitter and I suddenly see
#
my notifications full of abuse.
#
I know it's because either Barkha Dutta or Ram Guha have retweeted something.
#
And now their whole loyalist Bolton has come to take it out on me as well.
#
And it's much worse for women.
#
It's much worse for Barkha than for Ram.
#
So was, you know, was that something that disturbed you at points in time?
#
How did you learn to cope with it?
#
I mean, it's easy to say that, hey, don't look at your notifications, but that's easier
#
So how did you, how did you kind of manage that?
#
So I don't block anyone.
#
The reason my logic is that I'll mute people.
#
I don't want to know what they're saying, but I want them to suffer me.
#
So I never blocked them.
#
They should know what I am saying.
#
They hate me, but they will still see me on their timeline.
#
But some of my colleagues have access to my Twitter and sometimes they know I'm feeling
#
They do go on my Twitter account and block people.
#
I mean, I have given them that freedom.
#
So especially my colleague Raga, she thinks that my timeline has to be cleaned.
#
So she'll go and block people.
#
I feel really bad after a point, nobody's abusing me.
#
So without telling Raga, I go and unblock.
#
Also I don't want to live in an echo chamber.
#
I can't live in an echo chamber where everybody is saying the same thing, where everybody
#
So sometimes in the night for entertainment, before I go sleep, I go check some of these
#
Also if I want to bust fake news, I want to call out fake narratives.
#
I have to know what those people are thinking and saying, right?
#
I can't live in this happy bubble where everybody is agreeing with what I'm saying.
#
So I'm never going to do that.
#
And I would suggest to journalists who go out on the ground and report, don't do that.
#
How does it impact you?
#
It does impact you quite a bit.
#
I've had a very bad experience with the Tamil actor Vijay's fans.
#
It was a really stupid thing.
#
I went and watched a Shah Rukh Khan movie, Harry Met Sejal.
#
So I tweeted saying this was such a bad movie.
#
Even Vijay's worst movie is better than this.
#
So I was actually praising the Vijay movie, but it became a huge problem.
#
But it did not impact me as such because I knew that I was right and they are wrong.
#
But what happened is they went to my timeline and took all my stupid old tweets.
#
Like some 15 years ago, I made fun of Karunanidhi ones, which I think I should not have done.
#
I should not have done, but they took screenshots and the DMK turns against me.
#
Then I would have made fun of some other.
#
See, in 2011-10, when I started using Twitter, first thing I was pregnant.
#
2011, I had a baby, so I was sitting at home.
#
And if you look at any of the worst tweets of mine, which goes a screenshot, it's all
#
during that period when I'm not working.
#
So those are times I've cracked the worst jokes on Twitter and everything became a screenshot,
#
which became very problematic.
#
And I still like 10 years later in 2011-22 also, people make fun of me for that.
#
They say, you said this about him then.
#
I have changed as a person.
#
I am a new person altogether.
#
That doesn't matter to them.
#
And I'm not going to convince all those people.
#
But it brought a lot of tension, a lot of pressure.
#
I couldn't sleep at night.
#
I would get nightmares.
#
My eyes would be like blinking, blinking, blinking.
#
I do not even know how to vocalize it to Vignesh.
#
Because I felt like telling somebody I'm feeling very upset about the trolling sort of made
#
So in the beginning, I wouldn't tell anyone.
#
I would feel very upset about it, but I won't tell anyone because I'm a strong woman who's
#
Like I was becoming a different person.
#
I was self-censoring myself.
#
My opinions were becoming less opinionated.
#
And suddenly, I think in 2018 or something, there's an actor in Malayalam called Parvati.
#
She wrote something against Mammootty.
#
She said something against Mammootty in an event.
#
And imagine the kind of trolling she faces, which is five, 10 times more than me.
#
And I also got rape threats, but she got much more than me.
#
So I just pinged her one day saying that, Hi, I'm Dhanya, I'm a journalist.
#
I understand what you're going through.
#
Anytime you want, you can call and speak.
#
And then soon she connected me to her friend called Adhira, another friend Aisha and another
#
We became this gang of five women.
#
We have a public face and we have a private face, obviously.
#
And we all are trolled quite a bit.
#
So we became like a, I mean, I could speak to them.
#
I could tell them that is what I'm feeling because they were going through exactly the
#
same and I could vocalize it and really help me.
#
So I tell all women who come into my newsroom also that find people, your friends, family,
#
strangers, whoever it is, but who takes cyber harassment seriously, who understand that
#
it's okay to feel upset about it, that it's not about bravery or courage, that you can
#
feel very upset about this and talk about it.
#
That gang, when we came together, 2018, we are still very good friends.
#
But from then on, I could vocalize it to other people, like smaller gangs I have or within
#
And that helps me a lot.
#
So now I'm not bothered.
#
If I'm bothered one day, I will tell my friends that this is happening.
#
I'm feeling upset about it.
#
Mostly I try to make a joke out of it.
#
But I want to tell all young journalists out there that nobody's trivializing online harassment.
#
It can impact your work beyond a point.
#
Don't pay attention to it, but don't completely close yourself to it also.
#
I mean, Barkha Dutt is getting at a level which is unimaginable, or Rana Ayub's timeline
#
The other day, for example, Siddharth Vardarajan had tweeted about this case against them in
#
one of the courts in Telangana, where 14 stories, which the wire did, had to be pulled down
#
because the court said so, Bharat Biotech stories.
#
So Siddharth tweeted saying that Bharat Biotech's bullying won't work.
#
I tweeted saying that the courts are always using this as an excuse and just taking down
#
stories without asking for the words of the journalist.
#
If you go to his tweet and my tweet, you can actually see the number of abusers he got
#
Now, he's the editor of the wire.
#
He has doubled the following as me.
#
Shouldn't he get abused more?
#
He should get abused more.
#
Just because I'm a woman, they won't abuse me more.
#
That's the reality of social media.
#
And I have had experiences when I've told my office people to mute Twitter, not to check
#
notifications because young people in newsrooms can get impacted.
#
And the biggest fear I have is that once you get trolled for a story, you are going to
#
self-censor yourself as a journalist.
#
And you are going to push yourself to, for example, a prajwal.
#
He does a story on the hijab.
#
He has a certain vision.
#
If everybody is going to tell him, you didn't find fault at the campus front of India.
#
You didn't find fault at the PFI.
#
Next time, he's going to be forced to think on the ground.
#
Should I take that angle also just to counter, just to monkey balance the story?
#
So I don't want any journalist to be impacted that way.
#
So I tell, I have conversations.
#
I tell them, don't mind.
#
You do what you have to do.
#
If you think it has been talked about, you talk about it.
#
So that's one flip side of social media, either journalists self-censor or they try to monkey
#
And I love that story about the five women coming together, you know, solidarity and
#
friendship and that's such a touching kind of story.
#
Going back to that echo chamber thing.
#
I mean, the reason I block is just for rudeness, not for views.
#
So I have great conversations with people who don't agree with me, which is with pretty
#
But so the views don't matter.
#
You want diversity of views, but you want diversity of views from people who will talk
#
to you on Twitter, like they would talk to you in real life.
#
If anyone is behaving on Twitter in a way that they wouldn't behave in real life, which
#
is basically rudeness, then I kind of just block them.
#
But of course, I have nowhere near the magnitude of problem that people like you and Barkha
#
and really any woman with an opinion out there has.
#
And I'm reminded of the Ashish Nehra solution also.
#
Have I ever mentioned this?
#
So the Ashish Nehra solution basically is that Ashish Nehra once did something and everybody
#
was trolling him for it madly.
#
So the journalist goes to him and he says that everybody's trolling you, don't you feel
#
So the Ashish Nehra just smiles and shows him his phone, which is one of these old Nokia
#
phones back in the day, push button, it's not a smartphone.
#
So now if someone is not on social media, how are you going to troll them?
#
You're going to like go outside their house and throw emojis into the living room or whatever.
#
But not everyone has that luxury.
#
I think, you know, people like you do have to be on social media and have that kind of
#
As far as self-censorship is concerned, you know, I just find that I do kind of self-censor
#
myself on Twitter in the sense that why get into this, you know, random bullshit, you
#
know, whether it's from the Bucks or the Vokes, frankly, you just don't want to get into random
#
But I don't self-censor at all in the work that I do, which is either if I'm writing
#
or I'm doing my podcast or whatever, I am what I am, there is no self-censorship.
#
I think Twitter is, in a sense, you know, kind of especially toxic.
#
Looking at social media, like one of the disturbing trends and I don't know how true it is today
#
that I would see is that a lot of journalists and media houses would take their cues from
#
There used to be a day you'd have edit meetings and people would discuss ideas and all.
#
And I felt that for a certain bunch of lazy journalists, if not the vast majority of them,
#
the process now simply was you go on Twitter, you see what's trending, you figure out a
#
Sometimes Twitter is a story, sometimes you discover it through Twitter.
#
And that's deeply problematic because so much of what's trending on Twitter is number one
#
And so much of the Twitter discourse is really simplistic.
#
It's about black and white.
#
Someone is either a hero or they're the devil incarnate.
#
And obviously, journalists, good journalists want to engage with complexity.
#
So is this a trend that you have noticed?
#
Is it, you know, is it still there?
#
How do you guys look for stories when, you know, what are your processes like?
#
So Twitter, Facebook, whatever it is, they're a source of information.
#
You can discard that source or you need not discard.
#
I mean, I look at it only that way.
#
A lot of people reach out to me through DMs.
#
They tell me their stories or issues they face.
#
For me, it's just a source of information beyond that nothing.
#
It's also a place where I transmit information.
#
These are two things for me.
#
Now the self-censorship, which I talked about is, see, journalism is a daily thing, right?
#
And if you get an abundance of abuse or if you get a lot of opinion, you are you are
#
You're going to think that way.
#
So that's why young journalists, I think when they start journalism, they do get a bit flustered
#
by all the attention on social media and they do end up doing these stories, which is trending
#
But I've largely seen people moving out of that.
#
People do move out of that.
#
They realize that the story is on the ground.
#
You have to go to the ground and speak.
#
You have to follow processes.
#
So I don't think anybody is doing only Twitter based stories for like 10 years of their career.
#
There is a cycle which all of us go through where one or two years we are paying a lot
#
of attention to what is on social media.
#
But slowly you realize, okay, 20% attention to social media, 80% don't give.
#
So I've never had a trouble where I have to constantly tell people not to be on social
#
The trouble I faced is that a lot of people cannot multitask.
#
So if they're doing a story, they'll just do that story.
#
And then they don't know what is the chatter around them.
#
See, you can't ignore chatter, right?
#
Society is all about chatter and social media is reflective of that chatter, though a lot
#
So the only problem I have faced is telling people also pay attention to social media
#
because it's either people who are addicted to it or people who don't want to look at
#
I think everybody has strike a balance, especially journalists.
#
You cannot shut yourself away from it.
#
Neither can you be completely immersed in it.
#
But I think with experience and time, people learn how to do that.
#
And you know, when I read your thread about the income tax rates, the thought that struck
#
me is that journalism has changed in a really fundamental way from 30 years ago.
#
The 30 years ago, things were pretty bad, and I'm kind of glad that that's dissipated
#
But one fundamental negative way in which which has changed is that either you on one
#
side you have media houses which are following the line of the government in power, and they'll
#
do that regardless of which government is in power, because the government has carrots
#
in terms of all the government advertising it can give out to them.
#
And equally, it has sticks in terms of, you know, raid karwa denge, ye karwa denge, wo
#
So that's one part of the media which is no longer, which is basically engaged on the
#
government side in the great narrative battles that have replaced our public discourse and
#
that have replaced journalism to a large extent.
#
And on the other hand, you have people like you and all the people we've discussed the
#
wire and news laundry and so on, where it seems that all of you are being forced to
#
go above and beyond what journalism should be.
#
You should not have to deal with this on a daily basis the way that you do, but all of
#
And what that means is that you are forced not only to be journalists, not only to be
#
entrepreneurs, which is a separate question, and journalists shouldn't have to be entrepreneurs,
#
but you're forced not only to be journalists, but you're also forced to be crusaders.
#
It seems deeply unfair to me.
#
And it also seems to me that that then reduces the scope for good journalism, because then
#
people who do want to do good journalism, but don't have the appetite for the crusade,
#
the appetite for the fight, which it is fine, not everyone does, you know, then what happens
#
and therefore I feel and maybe I'm being too negative and I usually am, that good journalism
#
is therefore not possible in India unless you are also a crusader, unless you also have
#
And that seems to me to be very sad because you should not have to.
#
So I will answer the two segments of your question.
#
The first is I have a small disagreement because this is something I have learned recently
#
that these media channels, if you're talking about TV channels, they take the government
#
side because they get money from the government, et cetera, right?
#
I think that is wrong considering, let's take an Onam Goswami or a Rahul Sishankar or whoever
#
These are the same people who went behind the UPA for two terms when UPA was there.
#
Rightfully so, for all the corruption they did, they went behind the UPA.
#
At that time, did the ads stop them?
#
They questioned people in power, which is why I was part of that, those channels, because
#
I really genuinely thought they are questioning people in power.
#
Now I think things have gone to a point where it is no longer about advertisement.
#
It is no longer about money or revenue.
#
These people are fundamentally, ideologically agreeing with the government.
#
So questioning them is not an issue at all for them.
#
They don't want to question them because they are ideologically now aligned with them.
#
So it is no longer about revenue.
#
If they really wanted, they can behave the same way when the UPA was in power.
#
Are you saying there are no scams today?
#
There is nothing to question the government in daily bigotry that they perpetuate.
#
Why is that not being done?
#
Because you have taken an ideological position.
#
I have a lot of critics in my own family who would say, oh, you are overly critical of
#
You are always against Modi Ji.
#
I asked them, boss, when I was covering the ISRO scam or I was covering the 2G scam or
#
the Tatra truck scam, you didn't have a problem.
#
You applauded me saying I am questioning the government.
#
I am doing the same thing today.
#
I continue to do my job.
#
At that time, I questioned that government.
#
Today, I question this government, which deserves to be questioned more because they are also
#
Siddhartha Adarajan, for example, since we spoke about him, he was editor of the Hindu
#
when Hindu broke some of the biggest stories during UPA of some of the scams.
#
Did these people call him anti-national then?
#
Did they talk about his US passport and citizenship or whatever shit they talk about now?
#
He questioned the government then.
#
Yes, perhaps he questions this government with more vigor and with more passion.
#
That's because of a lot of other things that they end up doing.
#
But you as a reader consumer has changed because your commitment is no longer to your country.
#
Your commitment is to that government.
#
The same way I believe these news channels, which were once asking questions to the government
#
have ideologically changed, let it be an Aaj Tak or all those plethora of Hindi channels.
#
I mean, I don't watch any channels, but I see the clippings on Twitter and I see my
#
own colleagues, people I've worked with, have changed so much.
#
There was this really sickening story from Kerala called Narcotics Jihad.
#
Did that bishop know one person who was given whatever narcotics by a Muslim man to a Hindu
#
He doesn't know of any real examples, but I've seen people who I work with talk about
#
that story as if this Narcotics Jihad is a big deal instead of just saying that bishop
#
I mean, he's just a communal person who wants to create trouble.
#
So they've all taken positions now.
#
Unfortunately, that is how the Indian media scene is.
#
So that's the first part of the answer.
#
What was the second part on?
#
In other words, should you have to be a crusader to do good journalism?
#
That's a very difficult question and I know that a lot of journalists find it especially
#
difficult in the social media scene.
#
For example, if I was marketing for South India in Times Now, here they have to market
#
They have to ensure that it's read more, that they are more opinionated, vocal for people
#
to read, for people to identify, but I think the news will be sort of have a balance where
#
these people go to the ground, they do the reports like if it's a Haritha from Kerala,
#
Prajwal, so many people, but I am sort of that person who takes the flak or the crusader
#
I bank on those stories.
#
That's the real hard work.
#
They're actually going out, but I don't want them to be at the receiving end also.
#
So I become the face who gets abused most.
#
If I wanted those reporters to put their face out there all the time, it's very dangerous
#
So they shouldn't be made crusaders, but there are some people who don't have a problem.
#
They can take that pressure.
#
But I don't think every journalist should expect to become a crusader or that every
#
story should have an impact, every story should usher in change.
#
These are all unrealistic expectations.
#
It is not going to happen.
#
You shouldn't feel disappointed.
#
Your duty is to tell that story at that point of time.
#
You are noting it for posterity.
#
I'm really, what you said in the first part of the answer is something I'll have to process
#
because it's a stark insight that they're not necessarily just opportunistic cowards.
#
They're perhaps true believers and I don't know which is worse.
#
Do I prefer the opportunistic coward to the true believer?
#
I don't even know at some level if there is a difference because the actions amount to
#
the same thing, but there is a difference and the difference is that following the hijab
#
crisis, for example, the hijab controversy and just seeing all the stories you guys have
#
done on it also and the most depressing thing about it is that it is irrelevant to me.
#
That whole issue of whether hijab is good or bad is irrelevant to me.
#
Even the whole issue of these are the rights, our constitution guarantees you is not the
#
The central story is not a story of rights.
#
The central story is a story of something that is happening within our society and it's
#
hate and it's hate for Muslims and it's growing and this is one example.
#
So what you said earlier about true believers just feeds into that and it's kind of happening
#
all around us and it's one of those things that really depresses me that day after day
#
in unexpected ways these little things happen where you see manifestations of this kind
#
of hate and you and your team are out on the ground a lot.
#
So just looking at this one angle, one way of looking at it is that this hate has always
#
been dormant within many people and they didn't express it and now they're expressing it.
#
Now they've been emboldened, now they're on the winning side, let it all come out.
#
The other angle is that this hate was maybe something that has been amplified by the politics
#
of the day and they are feeding off each other and it's a kind of symbiotic process.
#
So what's your take on this because like me, I'm sure you have also seen many people you
#
used to know once and who seemed reasonable and perfectly nice and whatever suddenly being
#
So what is your sense that since you guys go out a lot, you talk to people a lot, were
#
we always like this under the surface or have things really gotten worse, have people become
#
more evil because that is just…
#
So first thing, the danger of having journalists who are true believers is that they are not
#
going to change if the government changes.
#
They have this agenda now and they are very majority centric, bigoted fellows.
#
Even if the government changes, they have this agenda set and they are going to continue
#
with it, which is why I think it is very important that we identify them as true believers who
#
will push the agenda no matter who the government is.
#
I see this as a pattern, they target all regional parties.
#
It's not like I'm in love with any of the regional parties.
#
But I find them better choices than just two national parties looking after an entire country.
#
But these national channels go after regional parties.
#
They do not want regional parties to come up.
#
Now is any party so perfect, there is no corruption, they don't have a dynasty politics etc.
#
No, every party is the same.
#
Somebody is really evil, somebody is bad like that.
#
But I clearly see an agenda as far as national television is concerned to go against the
#
Because they want the BJP in power forever and ever.
#
So I want to recognize that agenda as an ideological one.
#
I don't want to be saying that it's only because they want revenue for the channel.
#
They want that government because they also think that it is okay for Muslims to become
#
second class citizens or whatever it is.
#
The second part which is about society and weather.
#
I keep oscillating in the sense that I have a friend, you know the festival called Onam
#
So her father wouldn't let her buy green clothes.
#
At that point of time we never understood what it is.
#
Later we figured out that it is because the IUML, the Indian Union Muslim League's flag
#
The Pakistan flag color is green.
#
So you don't wear green because you are a Muslim.
#
Green is a Muslim color is what a lot of people in Kerala think.
#
That's why she was not allowed to shop.
#
I've had uncles and when I broke up with my first boyfriend and eventually maybe I'll
#
get married sorts, nobody's ever asked me like, are you getting married?
#
But they will say, you know, choose anyone but not a Dalit or not a Muslim, they'll
#
Today they can write Facebook posts about it and there will be like 100 people applauding
#
So hatred was always there.
#
It was just deep, buried because they had no outlet.
#
Now they're cheered on, they're emboldened and there are no consequences to it.
#
Therefore people are happy to spit out whatever venom is inside them.
#
The other question is about, do you want to change people?
#
Do you want to like have conversations?
#
I have, you know, I have oscillated very differently.
#
Every year I am a different person.
#
Like there are years when I have sat and fought in WhatsApp groups valiantly saying this is
#
not correct, this is not correct.
#
Then I will go into a shell and think, let these people believe what they want.
#
I'm not going to interfere.
#
Then again, I will go into a cycle where I want to change everyone.
#
So that keeps changing.
#
But for me, one game changer was the Sabarimala incident.
#
Now when you have friends who believe in the right wing or when you have family who believes
#
in the right wing and you know, one thing which you must have been told is that, but
#
if it is a real genocide or if there is really violence, they will not support.
#
They are just supporting all this because they want better opportunities, a better India,
#
which is like vibrant Gujarat and all that.
#
But when it comes to real violence, they will not support.
#
So you are under the impression that this person who is supporting this government or
#
any other party, I'm just saying BJP here, but let's say some other party also is doing
#
it for certain reasons.
#
When the Sabarimala temple opened for women, I have a correspondent and she's a Kerala
#
She had gone to Sabarimala along with my current colleague, Pooja, who was with Republic at
#
When they reached a certain place, they were beaten up very badly in the sense that Sarita,
#
somebody kicked her with the boots on her back and she was hospitalized for many weeks.
#
Pooja was also assaulted very badly by the right wing groups who did not want women to
#
go, including journalists to go anywhere near Sabarimala.
#
Till then I was in all my family groups.
#
So when this incident happened and they knew that a reporter in my organization was beaten
#
up, there were still so many people who commented, including my very close family saying that
#
why did you send a woman reporter?
#
This is provocation in one way.
#
So they were indirectly endorsing that violence.
#
That week, I decided I am going to exit all these groups.
#
I couldn't because immediately floods happened and I wanted help from people, but I exited
#
because it was no longer a hypothetical situation for me that if an incident of violence happens,
#
these guys won't support it, they are just otherwise for vibrant India.
#
I realized when violence happens also, they will find a reason to support.
#
When Gauri Lankesh was shot down, so many people on my Facebook wall said Gauri Lankesh
#
should not have been murdered, but why did she say all this?
#
I don't want to be in touch with people who say but anymore.
#
But the last six months, I've been thinking, Danya, can you afford to do that?
#
Maybe you should invest some time into fighting with people, fighting with people again.
#
So this thought process again started in me that I should get back into all those groups
#
Maybe I will change one or two people's thought process.
#
No, I mean our mental equilibrium gets messed up that way and the rule to remember about
#
but as I keep saying is that whenever there is a sentence and then a but comes in it,
#
you know that everything before that but is, you know, it's just so there is kind of so
#
And I do that as a daily thing, right?
#
I mean, in my stories, I'm questioning those people who are saying but.
#
Now after I finish an entire day, which is stressful in many ways.
#
Do I then go home and then again indulge with another group of people who are still saying
#
See, if I was doing another job, like I was doing a happy job in the morning and I had
#
a lot of time in the evening to just fight with people, which is my own family and friends,
#
I have a lot of energy.
#
And my whole body of work is this.
#
So I rather, I would rather send links to people than sit and indulge in their conversations.
#
Yeah, but I don't know, can we again, can we afford to exist like that?
#
Can we just cut off people saying that if you don't believe in what I say, then I don't
#
want to have any connection with you.
#
I don't want to like, there are a lot of family members I speak to about what did you eat
#
We meet in parties and be like, hi, we'll talk about school days, colleges, but beyond
#
that I have no connection.
#
But I don't know, can we afford to do that?
#
Can all of us who believe in certain things just disengage ourselves from others?
#
At what point of time do we start engaging with them?
#
I mean, I thought about this a little bit where maybe a decade and a half ago, there
#
was that law in Maharashtra about how you have to stand in theatres for the national
#
And obviously my problem there is with the coercion.
#
Otherwise, if you play the thing, I'll stand on my own.
#
But so as a matter of principle, because I don't want to be forced to do anything, I
#
decided that I would always sit.
#
And I did that for a few weeks, one or two altercations, never got beaten up, did that
#
In fact, went on Barkha Datsvi, the people to defend my stand and Smriti Irani who was,
#
this was 2008-2009, she got upset with me and I'll share a clip of it.
#
At one point, you know, Barkha, she's talking about the, her last question was she was talking
#
about the anthem and the flag and all that.
#
And she turned to me, she was asking all the panelists that do you think there should be
#
And my answer was the only kind of holy cow I like is a divine steak on my plate.
#
And the look that Smriti gave me, yeah, so anyway, so, but my, but after that, I stopped
#
In the sense, I stopped sitting, I would just stand.
#
And my reasoning was, and where I draw the line is this, my reasoning was that at an
#
individual level, one person in a cinema hall is not going to make a difference.
#
So there, I will not bother to fight.
#
Where I will fight, where I will continue fighting without mincing words is in what
#
I write or maybe today in today's context, it would be the podcast or whatever.
#
So there, where there is a public facing side, where my words can scale, where what I create
#
can scale, I will fight.
#
But in my individual spaces, I will simply not bother because the difference that I might
#
make is too little to justify the effort and the cost.
#
So I guess in your context, that would mean that if you go home, just chill, but in office
#
all day, please do what you're doing.
#
No, but my problem is because I'm very strongly opinionated, I don't want to have even individual
#
personal connection with some of these people.
#
Now that is my problem.
#
Then I'm thinking that maybe I should engage with them a bit more.
#
I don't want to cut off, like literally I've cut off 90% people, I feel.
#
That leaves me with practically no one to speak to except a few people I can still have
#
conversations with, which is why I'm thinking maybe Saturdays, Sundays, whenever I'm not
#
working, I will devote some time to trolling them on WhatsApp groups or family.
#
So I'm yet to take a decision on that.
#
So here's a question, you know, let's say, let's take it for granted that many people
#
Let's say the majority of people have this hate for Muslims, okay.
#
Let's kind of begin with that assumption.
#
I would still not get completely pessimistic and give up on it because my contention always
#
is that all of us contain multitudes.
#
So there might be a person who, you know, one part of his personality has this bigotry
#
or has this misogyny or whatever, but also he wants good jobs for his kids.
#
Also he wants to live a good life.
#
There are different aspects to their nature that one can appeal to.
#
You know, pinkers face the better angels of our nature, for example.
#
There are other aspects and I find that there is one, there is a lack of imagination and
#
politics that we don't try for this, that we take the Hindu vote for granted so that
#
every party is kind of at least, at least in the north just looks at it as a hygiene
#
factor that we can't piss off the so-called Hindu vote.
#
But as journalists, as someone who dives into this complexity every day, do you think that
#
there is something here?
#
Do you think that this is a cause for hope that maybe to all of us, you know, even for
#
a bigot who doesn't like Muslims, you know, even for a misogynist who thinks his wife's
#
place is only in the kitchen, are there other aspects of their nature that one can appeal
#
to to make a better society?
#
In fact, that's something which I keep telling my newsroom that look, let's always not talk
#
Let's also talk about patriarchy because there is high chance that both these people are
#
from the same, you know, same shed or whatever, are from the same group.
#
But when you talk about, when you question patriarchal structures, when you write about
#
that, there is a higher chance that they will identify with that story and change their
#
And if you can influence them there, then slowly you influence them in other spheres
#
So don't always think you have to speak about one thing to one person, you can, you can
#
appeal to them in different ways that how do you make a person think progressively?
#
If not in one way, you have to look for another option.
#
So that's one thing I definitely do.
#
And I don't know, I mean, I never say no to colleges or schools who call me because
#
I feel like I need to speak to those age groups more.
#
I don't want to influence their thinking like my own son, he has a friend who thinks
#
Donald Trump is the best thing which happened to America.
#
And my son is like, Amma, I don't think you like Trump, but my friend is saying Trump
#
is the best thing which happened to America.
#
So I'm just controlling my anger and I'm like, no Vedan, see, this is what happened
#
I try to explain to him.
#
I don't know if he's going to take my viewpoint or he thinks his friend is better, but I have
#
Therefore, I never say no to schools or colleges.
#
I go for all the events.
#
I tell them, I mean, I don't use big words or very complicated stuff, but I tell them
#
this is what is happening, this is what it is, but I don't want to engage with everyone
#
who's like 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old.
#
And it is not by job to change the way people think.
#
That's a natural process that has to happen.
#
And I'm only aiding that process by writing things, by running an organization, by having
#
a group of journalists.
#
In individual space, I think I have renounced myself from doing all this.
#
But like I said, maybe I'll go back to it also, depending upon how much energy I have.
#
And as my son grows older, I think I'll have to do more of that, right?
#
Because I'll have to do some interventions.
#
Like at one point of time, he stopped eating beef because somebody in his playground said
#
that we don't eat beef, cow is sacred.
#
I did not want to question him at all because that's fine.
#
If he thinks he doesn't want to eat beef, he doesn't have to, nobody's forcing him.
#
But we went to a restaurant which has his favorite steak, which is Sunny's, and then
#
nobody asked him to order.
#
After that, that rule is forgotten, like he's forgotten.
#
But now he has a rule in our house where nobody can eat pork.
#
We went to Nagarhole to see tigers and he fell in love with pigs in the forest.
#
And so he stopped eating.
#
And it's almost been a year, I think.
#
But that's a better reason.
#
So the point is, do I want them to tell my son, it's okay, we should eat beef, we should
#
I want him to slowly understand.
#
So we went to a party where he did not allow my husband to eat pork.
#
So there's another guest there who's a lawyer.
#
She came and told my son that, look, you cannot control other people's food.
#
If you don't want to eat, you don't eat.
#
But she said it in such a convincing way that after that, my son has allowed my husband
#
So I don't want to be forceful.
#
But I want my son or other young people to know that there are so many different ways
#
to think about a subject.
#
Don't restrict yourself to your parent who's watching Republic every night or Times Now
#
every night and thinks in one way.
#
And I would tell all parents, if you're watching news channels, don't make your children watch
#
Whatever you have become, you're happy with it, that's fine.
#
But let's not influence their thought process beyond.
#
But I also understand the danger of this.
#
Therefore, I do want to do some interventions as far as my son goes.
#
And that's the same way I look at speaking at a college or a school.
#
I will do some interventions, but I don't want to brainwash them.
#
I don't want to insist that they think in the way that I want them to think.
#
Yeah, and as an act of civil disobedience, you and Vignesh should keep eating beef and
#
pork at home because one of the reasons I like coming to Bangalore is bloody I'm coming
#
from Mumbai where we don't get beef as you know.
#
So when we come here, it's banned.
#
But you still get it here.
#
You still get it here, which is why I love coming to Bangalore.
#
So for me, Bangalore is about, okay, the work is in the recordings, but the fun is in meeting
#
The food is, you know, so you guys are so lucky just to be kind of.
#
But see how you and me have self-censored ourselves.
#
Ten years ago, maybe you would have shared a picture of the steak that you ate in Bangalore.
#
Now you will think, what is the necessity?
#
If I put a picture on Twitter, I'll get like 500 people abusing me.
#
So we have all changed.
#
There is absolutely no doubt.
#
Social media has changed the way we react publicly.
#
The people around us have changed so much that in our individual spaces, we are reacting
#
It is quite stressful for people who believe in progressive values.
#
But I really hope the younger generation will make things easier for us.
#
I mean, I had lunch with Ram Guha and his son, Keshava at Sunny's the other day.
#
And you can guess what I ordered.
#
And of course, I would not put a picture of it on Twitter, but I'm happy to talk about
#
it here because it's a different medium.
#
So that also kind of makes a difference.
#
So as we reach towards wrapping it up, because you've been so patient, though admittedly
#
your foot is broken, so where can you go?
#
But you've been really patient.
#
So a couple of final kind of questions.
#
And one is that there's one side of you, which we've spoken about today, which is the one
#
side of you I know without having met you because it's the public side.
#
You are the fearless journalist, you're doing this news entrepreneur and so on and so forth.
#
And we've seen that side.
#
Tell me a little bit more about sort of the personal side, like what is your other life
#
like in the sense that what makes you happy?
#
Like if you get up in the morning, like at one level, the answer I don't want, but I
#
know will be true, is that what will make you happy is the thought of going out and
#
doing some great journalism in whatever way that is.
#
But apart from that, what are the things that kind of make you happy and that you look at?
#
And perhaps, what are the things that you've discovered make you happy that may not have
#
made you happy 20 years ago, just in terms of how you've evolved through life?
#
So this will come as a very shocking news, but I do a range of things.
#
People may wonder, where do I get the time for all this?
#
But I like organizing parties, as I already told you.
#
Even if there's no birthday, I want to do a theme party for the kids in the apartment.
#
I do it every two, three months.
#
Like during the pandemic, we have had Avengers party, we have had Harry Potter, we have every
#
So I like to make all the decoration.
#
I may be editing a story, but with that, I will do the decoration.
#
So most of my time goes like morning, so I have three pets at home, two temporary pets
#
who keep coming and going, and I feed five cats below my apartment.
#
So morning, we make the food, we do one round and give it to all the cats.
#
Then evening, I do one round, give all the cats their food, and each person has a different
#
diet, like one cat, like a certain dry food, another cat legs.
#
So I make sure all the diet is ready.
#
Then of course, I have to do all the vaccinations, make sure I catch them, neuter them.
#
In case I can't neuter them, I take care of their babies.
#
So a lot of time and money goes into pet care, absolutely no doubt about it.
#
And I read all kinds of things.
#
I can read serious stuff.
#
If I'm really bored, I will read a Mills and Boons.
#
I will read shitty romance stories, because then I'll feel like that story is ended, right?
#
It's like a 200 page book.
#
I'm very happy with it.
#
I binge on Turkish serials.
#
So I do all kinds of things.
#
My only point is that if I'm reading a book or I'm watching TV, I have to know the ending.
#
So I can't start watching something, a series, which is not ended.
#
I first look at the ending, I'll see who's dead, what happens, and then I will start
#
So I'm not the kind of person who can watch, what is it, Game of Thrones.
#
I never watched Game of Thrones while the series was going on.
#
After all the entire series stopped, I watched it, because the tension of waiting for the
#
next series is something I cannot deal with.
#
So I do a lot of other things, a lot of art stuff.
#
I'm not artistic, but I think I am, therefore I keep doing all kinds of stuff.
#
I keep myself very busy that way.
#
No offense, but you're completely crazy.
#
I can't figure out if you're one person or some kind of collective.
#
Sometimes I'll ask my guests about counterfactuals.
#
What if you had lived this life?
#
What if you have lived that life?
#
You are actually living all these lives at the same time, like feeding five cats twice
#
a day, five different things according to what cuisine they prefer is just nuts.
#
But I'm glad you mentioned books, because my final question is about that, and that's
#
sort of the one that is the rigor for all guests who come on the show, that recommend
#
some books and not just books, recommend books, music, films, whatever, that you've really
#
It could be something recent.
#
It could be a perennial favorite, but it could be something that you're so happy about that
#
you just want to shout to the world, like read this book or watch this film or listen
#
Okay, so I don't have a single music app.
#
I don't listen to music.
#
Okay, that's fair enough.
#
Movie, what is the movie I saw which I want people to watch?
#
Okay, let's say the world is ending in six hours and Vignesh says, let's watch a movie
#
together to, you know, bring it to an end.
#
What is the book that I want people to read?
#
You just said that I'll tell and you change the subject.
#
I mean, I'm thinking I'll record the answer properly.
#
So I'm thinking what is the book actually one or two books I want to suggest.
#
So people will buy that book also.
#
I mean, these will all be linked from the show notes.
#
So I'm thinking what is the full title of that book?
#
I don't listen to music.
#
Not everybody does everything.
#
I mean, I don't listen to new music as much as I would like to.
#
I just go back to old comfort music kind of things, which I used to listen to 30 years
#
But books, I'm always reading.
#
So books, I mean, I read all the books, but I don't know what to suggest that I finished
#
Akar, all this Westland publications, Rukmini's book was really nice.
#
She's the person I want to be like, she speaks so calmly and yeah, I tell her that you are
#
what I aspire to be like speak calmly.
#
Yeah, but she can't do five cats and throw parties.
#
So I don't think I should recommend music.
#
I'm one of those strange people who don't have a music app on their phones.
#
I used to listen to music when I was a kid, but somehow I just, I don't have a habit anymore.
#
So what I do is I listen to two songs.
#
There is this one song.
#
I mean, it's, it's really embarrassing to say this, but there's this one Malayalam song
#
called Malare in one movie called Prema.
#
So it sort of hypnotizes me.
#
So if I have to edit a copy, I'll put a headphone, I'll put that song in loop.
#
And then I'll edit my copy because I just want to drown out my noises.
#
So music, I will not suggest, I have no clue about music, about, about books.
#
There is this one book by NWMI, which is the group I belong to, Network of Women in Media.
#
It's called Missing Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters.
#
It's got essays by Kalpana Sharma, Lakshmi Moti, Ammu Joseph, Rajasri Das Gupta and all
#
I think for many young journalists, that would make a lot of difference.
#
There is also Revathi's books, Rohini Mohan books, now Rukmini.
#
So I really want to suggest books written by other women journalists because those have
#
shaped my thoughts and I hope it will help others also.
#
I asked you that hypothetical question.
#
I enjoy all kinds of movies, but I want to tell people to go back and watch some of the
#
old Malayalam movies, which are very funny.
#
But what is the one movie which I would want to watch if I'm going to die in six hours
#
and I have to have to watch a movie?
#
I can only think of really silly movies like Naughting Hill.
#
Which is, why is that silly?
#
I'm just saying that I don't want to think of some, see, like I said, for me, a movie
#
should not bring any kind of tension.
#
I don't want movies in which there's like some tensed plot and people are dying in the
#
I just want a happy movie.
#
No film with a bookshop in it can be bad.
#
So Naughting Hill is perfectly fine.
#
That is one movie which people can watch.
#
And I told you that's the last question, but I lied.
#
One final thing, which is that if listeners want to support the News Minute, what is the
#
Go to thenewsminute.com.
#
On top of it, there's a button called support us.
#
And there are two options.
#
One is you can make a one time payment, which can be any amount of money that you want to
#
give, and you become a member or we have two ties of membership.
#
One is thousand rupees per year and another one is three thousand three hundred rupees
#
But again, if you're choosing the second option, you can give any amount you want.
#
Like we have people who give us fifty thousand rupees or one lakh rupees.
#
It's not like a lot of people, but there are people who do give like that because like
#
I said, they must have closed their eyes and thought, do I want a world where the News
#
Many people cannot afford to.
#
If you cannot afford to pay, you contribute to the news organization in different ways.
#
Share their stories on your timelines, on your WhatsApp groups.
#
Everybody cannot pay, right?
#
Those who cannot pay support in other ways.
#
But if it's an I mean, I make it a point every day evening to at least share one scroll story,
#
one wire story, whatever it is, because I want them also to go on.
#
I want to make sure that they exist.
#
So just do your bit because we cannot all just mourn democracy and say that, oh my God,
#
democratic values are being forgotten in this country.
#
Institutions are being weakened, et cetera, without doing our bit to it.
#
And if our bit is simply supporting people speaking up, then let's do that.
#
And that need not be only journalists.
#
That can be so many other people, right?
#
That can be the five girls who have gone to court saying that I have my right to wear
#
That can be somebody else who's fighting.
#
So everything, whatever it is, do your bit of contributing.
#
If you want to contribute to the news minute, please support us.
#
Please support the news minute.
#
Dhanya, thank you so much for being so patient and coming on the show.
#
I really enjoyed talking to you.
#
I was very nervous because I speak really fast and sometimes I say stuff which I regret
#
So I was like, should I come?
#
But I think it went well.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, share it with whoever you feel might like
#
In fact, any past episode of the show that you've liked and head on over to the newsminute.com
#
slash support us and help the news minute grow.
#
You can follow Dhanya on Twitter at Dhanya Rajindran.
#
You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A, and you can browse past episodes of the scene
#
and the unseen at sceneunseen.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen?
#
If so, would you like to support the production of the show?
#
You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep
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this podcast alive and kicking.
