In this episode of Election Beat, Mrinal Pande, writer, journalist and former editor of the Hindi daily Hindustan, tells Savyasaachi Jain and Nirupama Subramanian why Hindi news organisations have bought into the narrative of Hindutva. According to her, from the time when the Hindi press was ignored by most political parties, the right wing was cultivating it, having sized up its reach across 11 populous states. 

Mrinal Pande recalls that at the height of the Khalistani movement in India, Hindi newspapers wrote “derisively” about minority communities. She makes the point that while English speakers in India have access to a large pool of news sources, those who read, write and speak only one language are completely dependent on newspapers published in that language. 

She also flags the cutbacks in news gathering expenditure and the dependence on stringers who are paid low salaries and supplement their incomes with paid news and by procuring advertisements for the paper.