I have been reading about the attacks on journalists, arrests of activists, writers and watching how all democratic space for dissent are c...
I have been reading about the attacks on journalists, arrests of activists, writers and watching how all democratic space for dissent are closing.
More than 150 journalists have been arrested, detained and interrogated between 2010 and 2020, a study by journalist Geeta Sheshu has documented. Of these cases, 40% were reported in 2020 alone.
The raids this week by the Enforcement Directorate on the offices and homes of journalists of the independent news site Newsclick
are a part of that attack on free speech, dissent and democratic space. But the political significance of the raids on Newsclick are of much greater political significance than attacks on individual journalists.
Newsclick has emerged as an independent news platform built over years of careful nurturing of talent and creativity of younger generation of journalists. I remember the first shabby studio in 2009 where I was first interviewed by Prabir Purkayasthy, the organisation’s founder, about some events in the North East. It was just one room. People who barely knew how to handle the equipment held the cameras and experimented with the lights.
Teaching politics
Purkayasthya did most of the interviews himself and without the aura or glamour of TV presenters. On the tenth anniversary of Newsclick in 2019, he told the audience that he had started the organisation because...
