Cine Ink, London-based hub of podcasts, launched a new series “London Vārta: Freedom of Speech” on Saturday, 27 April, 2024. The series interviews renowned journalists and television anchors who are finding it increasingly difficult to question the govt of the day in India while remaining in the mainstream media. Some of them have launched their own channels on YouTube.
In the first episode of “London Vārta: Freedom of Speech”, Utkarsh Amitabh, CEO of Network Capital and the Chief Marketing Officer of 5ire.org, a blockchain unicorn valued at $1.5 Billion, explains why so many people are finding space online for their interests in politics and literature. He unplugs myths associated with algorithm and social media in general. He posts as @amitabh_utkarsh on X platform.
Utkarsh is a writer at Harvard Business Review, Chevening Fellow at University of Oxford and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper who represented the community at the Annual Meeting in Davos.
He is in conversation with broadcaster Pervaiz Alam. Utkarsh Amitabh has recently authored a book: Passion Economy And The Side Hustle, published by Penguin.
He is also the Chief Marketing Officer of 5ire.org, a blockchain unicorn valued at $1.5 Billion.
Utkarsh Amitabh is a writer at Harvard Business Review, Chevening Fellow at University of Oxford and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper who represented the community at the Annual Meeting in Davos.
Abhisar Sharma: In the second episode, Abhisar Sharma, one of the best known television anchors in India, unravels details of his departure from the mainstream media and the circumstances that led him to launch his own Youtube channel, and, yet, he says harassment by the government agencies continued. He has been questioned by the Delhi police in two different cases.
“I will keep questioning the government. I am not backing off,” says Sharma in his interview with Cine Ink.
Abhisar posts as @abhisar_sharma on X platform, and has got a following of about 5 million subscribers on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@Abhisar_Sharma. A tagline on his channel says “This is the platform where we hold the powerful accountable.”
Background: A report by the Reuters news agency in April, 2024, headlined the phenomenon “Critics of India’s Modi migrate online as mainstream media stays deferential.”
With more than 800 million people online, India is the country with the largest YouTube audience, 462 million, in the world. With more than 400 million WhatsApp users, the country is seeing a record number of exchange of good, bad and ugly internet links.
A report “The 2024 Indian Elections: The Strategic Use of Journalism, Social Media, and Internet Governance in a Modi-centric Election” by Ralph Schroeder, Neeraj Shetye and Maknoon Wani, published in April 2024, for the Oxford Internet Institute, the University of Oxford, says:
The Worrying State of Indian Journalism – India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has consistently deteriorated over the past few years, touching a record low of 161 out of 180 countries in 2023, falling 11 positions compared to 2022. One of the main issues leading to the downgrade is the concentrated ownership of Indian media where businesses such as Reliance Industries, which is close to the Prime Minister, has been able to buy more than 70 media outlets in the country. This has significantly affected Indian journalism: As Antara Dev Sen observes, “An independent journalist is the bedrock of responsible media as opposed to embedded journalists, enlisted by dominant political, ideological or business interests”.
The report adds: Disinformation on social media played an important, though not decisive, role in the previous two elections. 2014 is sometimes dubbed the ‘Twitter election’ and 2019 the ‘WhatsApp’ election. 2024, with YouTube among the main outlets that Indians use for news may come to be known as the ‘YouTube election’.
Cine Ink (www.cineink.com) has been founded by former BBC broadcasters, Achala Sharma and Pervaiz Alam.