“If it weren’t for YouTube, I would be out of this profession,” confesses Ravish Kumar, a veteran broadcaster and winner of the prestigious Magsaysay award, regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel prize. Long an anchor at ndtv, one of the few sober news channels in India, Mr Kumar left in late 2022 when it was acquired by Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire known for his close ties to the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. These days Mr Kumar is an independent journalist with a channel on YouTube, with over 10m subscribers and 20m views a week. The video-sharing site has become a refuge for independent voices, from sidelined journalists to political satirists.
Take Dhruv Rathee, a 29-year-old YouTuber, who has emerged as a leading figure of online dissent. With around 20m subscribers, his channel is among India’s most popular. A recent video in which he argued that India had slipped into dictatorship was viewed 32m times in just one month. Other seasoned journalists, formerly national-tv anchors, like Punya Prasun Bajpai, Abhisar Sharma and Ajit Anjum, host shows with large audiences. Adding edge on the digital front are satirists such as Neha Singh Rathore, a folk singer, and Kunal Kamra, a comedian.
On paper India has a lively media scene with around 400 news channels and 20,000 daily news publications in over 20 languages. But press freedom in India has been in retreat for a while, and under Mr Modi the decline has accelerated. According to an annual index of press freedom by Reporters without Borders, an international watchdog, India’s ranking dropped from 140th among 180 countries in 2014, the year Mr Modi was elected, to 159th in 2024.
The ownership of prominent media groups is concentrated. Reliance Industries, a conglomerate controlled by Mukesh Ambani—another billionaire friend of Mr Modi—controls more than 60 media outlets in India. As the industry has consolidated, the space for critical reporting has shrunk.
Other social-media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp are popular, but for those shunned by mainstream platforms, YouTube is the natural choice (TikTok has been banned in India since 2020). YouTube has more than 460m users in India, attracting four out of five adult internet users.
India’s YouTubers owe their success to three factors. First is a mastery of the medium. Mr Rathee’s videos are typically 20-30 minutes long, presented as detailed explainers on a particular topic. His commentaries are accompanied by slick animations, charts and newspaper clippings. He often links Mr Modi to corruption scandals and controversies, something mainstream outlets assiduously avoid. He is not afraid to be provocative. A recent video compared Mr Modi’s oratory to Hitler’s. And he mixes political videos with ones about travel and other topics of more general interest. One of his more popular videos covered the sinking of the Titanic.
Second is their sophisticated use of social media. Though YouTube is their main platform, the online dissenters have built up large followings elsewhere. Mr Rathee has nearly 12m followers on Instagram and Facebook combined, and Mr Kumar around 9m (see chart 1).
The final reason is simply demand. As Abhinandan Sekhri, co-founder of Newslaundry, a media-monitoring website, points out, the dominant Bharatiya Janata Party still wins only just over one-third of the national vote. A big majority does not want “hyper-partisan content”. Most Indian news channels offer very similar fare. Debates are unnuanced shouting matches.
Independence brings its own limitations. For one, it can be a lot of work. Mr Rathee’s success has allowed him to have a team of 15 to help him research and produce his videos. But Mr Kumar spends almost 15 hours a day writing, refining and shooting his videos. With scant resources, most independent broadcasters rely on secondary sources for their information. And despite their impressive online growth, their audiences are tiny in comparison with traditional news channels’. Nor can they boast of influence. Mr Kumar rues that the government has stopped noticing them “as if we do not exist”.
Even so, it is trying to rein them in. Over the past year it has passed laws that overhaul much of how India’s internet is governed. A new broadcast bill is in the works to regulate cable television and includes language on monitoring news on online platforms. Independent digital-news outlets have formed an advocacy group, but individual YouTubers will face the government’s wrath on their own.
The government is also trying to silence its critics at source. Google reports that last year it received over 2,100 requests from it to remove content from YouTube (see chart 2). In April Bolta Hindustan, a Hindi news channel, was suspended for violating Google’s terms and conditions. The channel’s owners claim (and Google denies) that the suspension was in response to a government notice. That same month “National Dastak”, another news channel, also faced disruption. A spokesperson for Google said that it has since reinstated Bolta Hindustan and that “only one video” from National Dastak was blocked. But creators are always worried about government action or their channel being banned for breaking YouTube’s terms of service.
Still, those on the fringe are plucky. In early May Shyam Rangeela, a 29-year-old comedian who regularly posts videos mimicking Mr Modi, announced his intention to stand for election against the prime minister in his constituency in Varanasi. His candidacy was stalled for unclear reasons. But he has vowed to fight on. Mr Modi, on the brink of a third term, may find that keeping dissenters in check is harder than he thought. ■
source : The Economist