In 2021, as the mainstream Indian media continued to transform into the propaganda arm of the ruling party, intrepid digital platforms, mainly from the English-language press, have published some groundbreaking investigative stories and forced the rest of the legacy media to follow their lead.
Local reporters have been finding innovative ways to report on the death and devastation caused by India’s devastating second wave of the coronavirus – even as the authorities tried to downplay the severity of the crisis. Bhavya Dore speaks to reporters who staked out the banks of the river Ganges and stationed themselves outside morgues and hospitals to investigate what was really happening.
Secularism in the world’s largest democracy is threatened by a Hindu-nationalist movement that takes pages from the playbooks of authoritarian leaders around the world. In this longread, journalist Maddy Crowell shares the first-hand story of one New Delhi-based magazine that is trying to protect democracy in India when other news outlets fail to hold power to account.
