Hello! Welcome to This Is India from the Guardian. I’m Niha Masih and I’ll be writing to you every week about the stories, ideas and news makers of modern India.
I’ll do a deep dive into one story – from politics and internet culture to tech and entertainment – and round up key events, trends and debates that are dominating the discourse among Indians, especially the youth.
It’s impossible to start anywhere other than the Cockroach movement, which captured headlines worldwide. When gen Z protesters poured on to the streets of central Delhi, they weren’t just taking on the mighty establishment of prime minister Narendra Modi – they also confronted another powerful institution: India’s mainstream television media.
At Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory that has long served as the capital’s designated protest site, the protesters chanted slogans about examination leaks, calling for freedom, for justice, fighting against oppression, with expletive-laden profanities directed at political leaders, communal politics and “godi”, or lapdog, media. Reporters from mainstream media were heckled, chased away or even beaten.
This crystallisation of anger was a reflection of the dissonance between what protesters on the ground saw and experienced and what viewers were being shown on television screens. For those not at the demonstrations, social media provided a window into what played out. For some, the contrast was a reminder of the warning posed by George Orwell in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, about a society being asked to disbelieve their own eyes and ears.
The Cockroach movement had called for a march to parliament on 20 July, demanding the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, over a recent examination paper leak. Thousands of people converged on the capital, and law enforcement authorities carried out a violent crackdown, deploying teargas and pellet guns against them, and beating back protesters with batons. On one street, I saw teargas fired at the crowd. But when protesters ran for cover, they were met with another volley from that direction, trapping them.
“The police beat us so badly. Some had blood flowing down their skulls and their noses were broken,” 17-year-old Deeksha Mishra told the Guardian’s south Asia correspondent, Hannah Ellis-Petersen. An initial estimate from the Cockroach movement put the number of wounded protesters at about 150.
Television channels, however, framed the crackdown as simply “clashes”. Using the term “agitators”, New Delhi Television (NDTV) questioned whether those on the streets were “mobilised ‘mobs’”. On social media, Times Now cast the protesters as anarchists and highlighted police statements about injuries to cops. Republic TV promised an “explosive exposé” on the protests, urging their viewers to call in with their opinions about what they described as “anarchy”. They sought to link an American embassy security advisory, issued before the march, as indication of foreign involvement. ANI, India’s influential news agency and a major supplier of video footage to channels, shared no posts on X on 20 July about the police action or injuries sustained by protesters, according to an analysis published by factchecking outlet Alt News.
This coverage was not an aberration, but part of the profound transformation of mainstream media, especially television news, during Modi’s 12 years as prime minister. As the government consolidated its hold on power, prime-time shows came to be seen as an extension of the ruling party’s agenda, rather than spaces where those in power could be questioned. Night after night, in shrill debates, the channels targeted and attacked the opposition, human rights activists, critics, members of minority communities, academics and others. It was in this environment that the phrase “godi media”, coined by the veteran journalist Ravish Kumar, became common parlance.
The Cockroach protesters, however, managed to flip the script. The social currency and instant virality enjoyed by gen Z creators and influencers have been unmatched. Young people documented the consequential moments on the streets with their signature humour and irreverence.
In one viral video, a boy detained at a Mumbai demo filmed a policeman threatening to plant drugs on the detainees. The video switches to selfie mode to show the boy sniggering and poking his tongue out before it is turned back to the police officer. Indian media reported that the state government suspended the officer and ordered an inquiry. In another widely shared video, a man opens the latch of a police van as it begins to move, helping free some of the detainees.
After public pressure culminated in Pradhan’s resignation, even supporters of the government joined the chorus against television news. Vivek Agnihotri, known for making polarising films aligned with government agenda, wrote on X that television news had lost public trust and predicted that attempts to counter gen Zs through social media controls would fail. “No matter what you do, you can’t manufacture authenticity,” he wrote.
For gen Z, who consume news primarily through social media, bypassing television news is relatively straightforward. And the visible backlash at the Cockroach protests against “godi media” could accelerate the growing irrelevance of a medium that had long been the principal arbiter of public narratives in the country.
Ria Chopra, 27, author of Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India’s Gen Z, says the shift may slowly be moving beyond younger audiences. She recalled being surprised that a friend’s boomer father watched nearly hour-long footage of the police crackdown by the independent creator Samdish Bhatia and his cameraperson, Parth Nainwal, on YouTube. “A part of the reason is that they know kids who are going to these protests, or it’s happening right at [their] doorstep, so [they] cannot help but want to know about it. This is a cause that everyone cares about.”
Chopra considers this a moment of reckoning for the media. “There’s definitely a gravitation towards small, independent and citizen reporters who are on ground,” she said, adding that she hopes they can “capitalise on this to do more national stories and directly take on godi media”.
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What else we’re reading about
Pellet guns | The use of pellet guns against protesters on 20 July was authorised by the Delhi police, the Hindu’s Vijaita Singh reported, citing a log maintained by the Rapid Action Force in police records. Delhi police had previously denied using pellet guns against protesters.
Political instability | Writing in the right-leaning Swarajya magazine, R Jagannathan, its former editorial director, argued that the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan may offer the Modi government only temporary relief. The unrest, he wrote, reflected the dissatisfaction with governance at every level.
Violence against women and girls | India’s new education minister, Pralhad Joshi, is already under fire. In a 2022 interview that has been widely reshared, Joshi defended the central government’s decision to approve the release of Hindu men convicted for the gang rape of a pregnant Muslim woman during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. “I don’t find anything wrong in it as it is done as a process of the law,” Joshi told NDTV.
Delulu or fomo? | In a bid to connect with younger Indians, the ruling Bharatiya Janata party is going all in. Prime minister Narendra Modi has filmed four reels in a week. In a separate video post, the party borrowed the Friends theme song to pitch Modi as the one who will be “there for you”. Another video, set in a gym with a trainer talking about building a strong nation, tries to chase the algorithm. So far, the internet’s verdict is unanimous: it’s giving cringe, not slay.
Online mobs | Many female protesters who participated in the Jantar Mantar protest are being doxxed and threatened by Bharatiya Janata party supporters for what they deem to be “objectionable” content or using expletives aimed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ayush Tiwari reported for Scroll. One teenager was forced to issue a public apology to Modi.
Vibe check
As a doomscrolling millennial, I’m happy to report that Instagram’s algorithm is now serving me funny and creative content from the protests. Abhinav Bisht’s (@issac1rl) re-creation of a TikTok trend with friends, filmed in front of a group of armed security personnel from the protest site, has been living in my head rent-free. The video has crossed 175m views, more than double the number of Taylor Swift’s current pinned reel.
Get in touch
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