Lunch on Last Day with Journalists

Monday, March 8

The ACCESS trip was topped off by a lunch meeting with two journalists. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri covers foreign policy and security for Hindustan Times, which he loosely equated to the Washington Post, while his wife, Indrani Bachi, writes for the Times of India, loosely equated to the New York Times. I got to speak at length with Mr. Chaudhuri, and one thing he said that struck me was that although the Indian government does not guarantee freedom of speech, newspapers generally don’t have to worry about censorship because of the sheer number of papers, Mr. Chaudhuri cited thousands. How could a government manage to censor them all? Instead newspapers are more concerned with bribery of reporters by corporations, and Stockholm Syndrome when reporters become biased toward the people they cover.

Mr. Chaudhuri was very impressive in that he was extremely well-versed in the myriad issues we discussed, everything from the US Civil Nuclear Deal (which he covered) to microfinance to a recent study he told us about that revealed the conservative nature of young Indians.

Sarah Hiller