Student Politics To Investigative Journalism: Talking To N Ram
N Ram, Student Struggle Editorial Team
Ram Narasimhan or N Ram (74), is one of contemporary India’s leading intellectuals. Chairman of The Hindu Group and the former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, Frontline, etc., Ram has always expressed his commitment to Left political movements and ideals of equality and social justice. Apart from his path-breaking interventions as a journalist, Ram has authored notable books too. Throughout his intellectual and personal life — from a Left student activist to an important journalist of our times — Ram has never been reluctant to be on the side of truth and justice. He was one of the founding leaders of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), and was also the first National Vice President of the organisation. Ram was a regular contributor to Student Struggle in its initial years. In this long and exclusive conversation with us, Ram talks about a wide array of subjects, ranging from student-led movements, the state of investigative journalism in India, political corruption, to the rise of Hindutva today.
SS: You were one among the workers who had been there in the foundational and early growth stages of SFI as an organisation. So for our readers, could you talk a little about the earlier days of SFI? What was the national situation then?
N Ram (NR): See, I was not a student in India at that time since I had already finished my Masters at Presidency College in 1966 and then had gone to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1967. I was radicalised by the tremendous upsurge of protests against the Vietnam War; the US imperialism and the national liberation war in South Vietnam and other parts. And there was the Black Liberation Movement in the US.
The major issue concerning Prakash Karat at Edinburgh University was apartheid, while it was far different for us in the US. I came back to India in 1968 and had immediately started working with the CPI(M). Various students’ federations working in the country were looking for a centralised platform to work together because of the heated impact they were making since the late 1960s. Even my Colombia University campus was engaged with student movements in 1968, when I left it. Not surprisingly in 1970, there happened a huge incident in the direction of unifying all existing movements and give them a new life. The SFI was formed in 1970, and I was called to work for it here in Tamil Nadu at a very young age. It was very small as an organisation in the state and it remains the same compared to what you have in Kerala and West Bengal. Even Andhra Pradesh had better momentum. But Tamil Nadu had a handful of thoughtful and intelligent cadres who read progressive works and Marxist literature. So we were recognised everywhere like MCC, different colleges in Madurai and Coimbatore for our contributions irrespective of our numbers. I was simultaneously involved here in the state and with the literature works happening at Delhi related to SFI. I was one of the Vice Presidents of SFI for a while then. Our work always had been linked to the larger issues happening around our country. There was a time of semi-fascist terror in West Bengal. We often went there and held meetings. We were witnessing that climate of terror and how the students fought back was very much heroic. Nothing of that serious had prevailed in Kerala at the same point but there were violent attacks on the cadres of SFI. It was ABVP and the Congress-backed-KSU which were prominent in Kerala. They had found an imminent threat in SFI with its cadre-based functioning and exponential growth among students. This frustration had unleashed a series of violent attacks on our comrades and SFI had to be very careful at that point. We also had a very powerful organised teacher’s movement. The situation was very much different in West Bengal with a semi-fascist government run by Sidharth Sankar Ray. They even had rigged the assembly election to win with a huge margin when the election commission and the media stood watching silently. But the opposition was quite strong from the left with strikes and struggles, even organised by the students. We used to meet the great revolutionary leaders such as P Sundariah, B T Ranadive, Jyoti Basu, Pramod Das Gupta and so on. So it was an inspiring time.
The press calls SFI the student wing of the CPI(M). But is far from being the case, since we had many others who were not part of the Party. But the core of the leadership was related to the CPI(M) faction, since you needed clear ideological direction to lead the organisation. And it had tried not to remain as a mere student wing of the party by building fundamental organisational units and covering masses which yielded results both in Kerala and Bengal. Andhra Pradesh too had a very good organisation at that point.
SS: It was also the time of great national importance. The 1970s saw the anti-Indira movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan and the infamous Emergency. What was the course of the student activism then?
NR: We worked tirelessly against the Emergency and Tamil Nadu was a sort of sanctuary. The DMK government, with all its governing flaws, was in staunch opposition to the Emergency during the one whole year it ruled. Many of its leaders including the current president Stalin, were detained under the MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act). So, we took advantage of this situation and tirelessly worked underground in Tamil Nadu even though detentions under MISA were going on. We were able to do quite a lot here during the Emergency. The JP Movement did not have much following here in Tamil Nadu and it was very evident from the favourable result Congress had got in the 1977 elections where the latter got wiped out in the rest of the country. So, yes we had sweat a lot for the anti-Emergency struggle.
And I had eventually moved on from the student life, and from the movement in one sense. Yes, it is important to have active cadres in the organisation all the time. But once you lose that live connection with the identity of being a student, you need to move on. For instance, look at the age of the youth congress leaders! So further you move away from the life of an actually enrolled student, it will be difficult to involve in the student movement. Yes, you need whole time organisers, but it is always better to be closer to student life.
SS: Yes, that’s also implied in the SFI’s slogan, ‘Study and Struggle’.
NR: Yeah, there was mass copying in exams then, and SFI did a good intervention against such malpractices and hooliganism. Various relevant interventions from SFI included not only during the Emergency but also in the famous railway strike of 1974.
SS: You were active even before your SFI stint. You had launched a journal called Radical Review along with Prakash Karat, P Chidambaram and Mythili Sivaraman. Can you talk of those days?
NR: Oh yes. We had started this journal right after my return from New York in 1968. Mythili Sivaraman was working in the United Nations then. Chidambaram and I grew up together even going to the same school and then Madras Christian College. He had visited me at Columbia University and started talking of a different strand of socialism after his return. I don’t want to get into that. We began this journal after my return and even Chidambaram was part of it. He was a good writer and even contributed with great fervour to the first two issues. The differences became quite clear by this time and he had left immediately. Prakash Karat came back from Edinburgh in 1969 and met CPI(M) leader V P Chintan. I also met him at the same time. He was a very good student and he quickly became the parliamentary secretary of AK Gopalan. Prakash also contributed to our journal and there were other people like K Chandru, who later on became a judge in the High court. Chandru was a student in Loyola College and was expelled from the campus following a protest. We took him to the MCC, whose Principal Dr Chandran was a liberal man, and got admitted there. I remember taking Chandru there and the Principal quipping “Don’t create trouble here”.
So the point is that Tamil Nadu had dynamic student movement and now there is a need to generate that kind of core leadership. There were people like V. K. Ramachandran, T. Jayaraman etc. and we also have Prof. Venkatesh Athreya who never worked for SFI but later contributed significantly to the movement. His scholarship on Marx’s Capital is unmatched anywhere in India and is considered as one of the world’s leading experts on the text. He was a real asset but came later and sadly was not part of our SFI days.
Funnily, I was not part of the Left when I was a student at Loyola College and Presidency College. I had a very different viewpoint. I was an ardent admirer of Nehru, whom I still admire though with a critical eye. His contributions on non-alignment, scientific temper, and secularism are not to be ignored. And it is very important to assert his contributions in the current scenario. I was simply a student during my MA History days and was not interested in doing anything ‘progressive’. So it happened in New York.
SS: How do you recollect your experience with Student Struggle in its initial days?
NR: I did write articles in Student Struggle, but I held no editorial positions. I could contribute regularly due to my experience in journalism. Reports from Tamil Nadu used to be well written and presented attractively. It was not just me but Tamil Nadu had a good set of writers and speakers disproportionate to our mass organisational strength. It created an impression that much is happening here, more than where a lot of real organisational work in the ground is happening. So this advantage in our literature had created a favourable atmosphere, of which we were thoroughly aware through rigorous discussions. We had very good writers and speakers from Tamil Nadu-SFI, including Soundarrajan, K. Balakrishnan, G. Ramakrishnan and T. Jayaraman etc.
SS: You were talking about the non-alignment movement, anti-imperialist and anti-Vietnam war movement etc. So as we can see, there was a popular anti-imperialist movement and solidarity going on among the popular left student movement in India. However, even though that is continued in many respect, there is no popular and mass mobilisation along those lines. What do you think are the reasons behind such shifts?
NR: I think the biggest setback to the struggle for socialism is the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a debacle and it had a huge impact. We were able to stand straight for a while in India but the effect of the former was far-reaching and debilitating. There is no question about it. But the support for radical activism had come from elsewhere too. The ups and downs at Latin American revolutionary movements and Europe were there. And the glorious fightback of Vietnamese people towards American Imperialism was another source of inspiration. They had outstanding leaders like Ho Chi Minh. Even China along with the Soviet Union had supported the people’s struggle there. With all our criticism standing, that period had a different power balance and it is completely gone now. We need to be realistic by leaving all the pretensions of putting a strong resistance to the imperialist parade. Take west Bengal for example, it is not the same fight. You have to be objective and consider your long thirty years of rule while examining the reasons for the debacle. Moments do not continue on the same momentum, there will be ups and downs. If you look from the standpoint of history, you will understand. There were good leaderships at both the Soviet Union and China during the moments of crises. Den Xiaoping and others were able to save socialism in China. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. It was a complete lie invented. Both protesters and soldiers died during the protests.
There should be decisiveness on what you wanted to protect. So all those things gave you a buoyancy at that point in time, which you do not see today. You got to build it.
There are some bright spots as well. Pro-people policies implemented by the current Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan are some among them. The recent setback in the Lok Sabha elections could be something to ponder upon but you got to maintain your resolve. These are obvious things, but that’s what gives you a perspective. It is a very different situation from the 1970s. Why was the resistance against semi-fascist terror in 1970s called heroic when the left movement itself was minimal? Why don’t we see such resistance today? There are various reasons, and I am not someone to judge on that. But the fact is you don’t see such resistance. And the rise of BJP in West Bengal during the last Lok Sabha elections is alarming. It is very clear that many long-time supporters of the Left Front have shifted sides to NJP maybe to shield themselves from the semi-fascistic terror under Mamta Banerjee.
SS: So when did you join professional journalism? Right after your stint in SFI?
NR: Actually, I had briefly joined The Hindu, the family-run newspaper in 1966. I came back from New York in 1968 and had joined back Hindu and worked for a while. Then I had to stop working for several years due to some differences. Actually, my re-entry was through cricket. The mighty West Indies team comprising of legends Vivien Richards, Loyd, and Andy Roberts etc. visited India for a tour in 1974-75. Even India played well and the series stood at 3-2. I was asked to cover the series for the paper due to my great interest in the sport and I had played it well. I had even captained Madras University and played for Tamil Nadu too. So I covered that series for The Hindu. It was exciting and I still have those reports. I have been in journalism after this and been continuing my career with not many breaks- one happened in 1977.
SS: Covering Bofors case can be considered to have been an important milestone in your career, right? How do you recollect those days?
NR: You often need luck in investigative journalism. The reportage is always based on the leak and then you work on it. So I was in The Hindu‘s Washington correspondence during 1980-82. In 1981, we got hold of something important. India negotiated a line of credit with the International Monetary Fund, the largest multilateral loan in the line of credit history at that time. It was about 6.3 billion US dollars. There were so many conditions attached to the credit in offer. The IMF pushed for labour reforms and some policies for devaluation. I luckily had got the whole documents in Washington. We had serialised the whole expose in The Hindu and it eventually had got a huge number of readers. The details of the reports were even discussed in the Parliament and were later published as a book. That was my first intervention. Whether that was investigative journalism or simply a leak, is another matter. But you had to work for it.
The Bofors was a long one. So we were not the only one after it. The Indian Express, under the editor Arun Shourie and Ram Jethmalani who repeatedly wrote scathing accounts against Rajiv Gandhi was also after the case. But I had started leading this case for The Hindu at that time. We began our investigation in 1987 and by April 1988 our stringer in Geneva Chitra Subrahmniam struck gold with a lead. She had some sources through which we had accessed some documents and published them. But it took a year and a half more to finish the investigation, because of internal issues in the Hindu Publishers, and I went public by virtually denouncing the editor. And every newspaper in the country carried the expose. There were no apprehensions in publishing it as such existing today with the Modi government. The Rajiv Gandhi government had a humongous 4/ 5th majority at the Lok Sabha, much stronger than the majority of the present regime. But the emotional approach of it was much different. So that was the Bofors and that was a real investigation. There were other such important stories like the one by Nagaraj on starvation deaths that first appeared in frontline and later in Hindu. I think it is very important to put enough people and resources for investigative stories. The investigation gives you an edge to engage readers these days especially when people are not reading much of the newspaper. But you also need to have control and preference over it. Take the new leak on how Reliance is taking control of the All India Football Federation (AIFF). You need to thoroughly work on it by talking to various people and finding new sources. But to everyone’s disappointment, nothing of that sort is happening.
I think we as a team did a good job investigating the starvation deaths of weavers in coastal Andhra Pradesh. We got the help of some good scholars such as K Nagaraj, along with a journalist who goes there. And a Congress MP called Prakadakottiah in Andhra Pradesh who organised weavers and made the investigation possible. The mere statements saying about hundreds of starvation deaths in Andhra Pradesh would not amount for much credibility since you need names, and to know where it happened. And that’s what an investigation is. So the MP provided us with a compiled list, which we, in turn, had verified on a sample base by visiting villages and confirm whether those weavers died of starvation or not. It required a lot of effort on the ground. You should be prepared for failures too. Sometimes you may get nothing out of it.
Like Rafale, we had some material but if we don’t get the money trail people won’t take it seriously. So there is no guarantee that you’ll get what you want. But you have to work at it and I think it is very important. But at the same time, I’ve observed that there is an increasing trend of romanticising the concept of investigative journalism. I have given a convocation address at the Asian College of Journalism on what’s special about investigative journalism. All good and serious journalism in its right sense should be investigative. It is one dictum that the great investigative journalists of the old age believed in. One among them was writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who even had written about a shipwreck, which on one side is a brilliant story and on the other, a great investigative piece with great literary quality.
SS: Apart from doing investigative journalism on corruption, you have also done substantial academic research on corruption. We are specifically referring to your recent book, Why scams are Here to stay: Understanding Political Corruption in India. How do you think the system of corruption works in India, and has its operation undergone a shift after the economic liberalisation of the early 1990s?
NR: Yes, I have dedicated a whole chapter of the book to this question. The rent-seeking theory on corruption suggests that if you liberalise, with fewer controls, corruption will decline. But the exact opposite has happened here and they still cannot explain why it happened so. Corruption should not be taken as a moral problem as it often treated either in the scholarly literature or in journalism. It is good to be outraged by the corruption but the moral approach to it has its limits. This is the main drawback of any anti-corruption movements, be it may the Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement or Anna Hazare’s. The level of corruption specifically during the era of liberalisation has escalated dramatically in terms of its scale. Bofors was 50 million dollars, look at the numbers of others these days!
There are different forms of corruption today. There is grand corruption in which the state policies are manipulated and then there is petty corruption which adds up to something very big. But it is difficult to establish a direct link between corruption and inequality. People usually argue that corruption hampers development which in turn lead to inequality. But since that connection cannot be proved logically, the opposition to corruption on this ground becomes weak. I have cited the case of Tamil Nadu, a state where welfare programmes like rural employment guarantee scheme and mid-day meal scheme are run as transparent as in states like Kerala. But they are not free of corruption at all. There is a lot of corruption happening even at the procurement. So it is very clear that you cannot oppose corruption based on policy implementations. Corruption is a basic structural flaw inherent in the capitalist system and there are worse things than corruption in it. I am not trying to rationalise corruption here but trying to get to the heart of it. This is the central argument of it and you never think of it when you are doing journalism. You directly confront it and go to expose corruption as we did in Bofors. Another important thing is the practicality of your expose. You may be able to prove much of the case in the court of public opinion but there would not be much changes if the court of law could not take a hold of it. It was very evident from Bofors case where the prosecution had failed to convict one person named in the charge sheet and many had succumbed to death during the long stint of investigation.
SS: But the outrage and public opinion against Bofors scam had been much larger than the outrage against Rafale. What do you think are the reasons for these differences? Is it because the current regime led by BJP has more control and hegemony over the media?
NR: No, I think the main difference is that there was evidence of a money trail in Bofors. We had got the evidence of payments, secret, coded Swiss bank accounts and important documents which they had to deny as forged. So everyone believed that. But in Rafale, there is no money trail. As we pointed out in the start, nothing is handed over as money, rather here is short-circuiting of the process. We got many suspicious things but not quite the evidence that we were looking for and there is no guarantee that we will get it. However, it is worth it. You have to expose it.
But why pressing issues like Rafale corruption or the unemployment were not discussed during the Lok Sabha elections is something important to ponder upon. It is still early to draw conclusions and we need some good surveys to understand the reason. But it seems like Balakot strike had a big impact on the people and even voices within the left had termed it as a turning point even early as in February. This is not always captured in surveys. The one survey I best trust is the CSDS survey which is partly supported by The Hindu. And during their ‘mood of the nation survey’ in late 2018 had found out that the government was well short of a majority and they were slightly gaining. And then they did a pre-election survey that we supported and published in detail. It had predicted that the BJP alliance — NDA had gained some ground but still not to the point of forming a majority due to economic issues. Then they came up with a post-election survey where they had done a detailed house-hold survey and found out that economic issues and unemployment had not figured at all as factors choosing who to vote for. development and strong decisive leadership were cited as the main reasons people voted for NDA and even Balakot did not cite as a factor for choosing them. But it was very clear that the aspect of strong leadership worked as a proxy logic to Balakot along with the weak alliance efforts from the opposition. The mismatch between the survey’s findings suggests that something hideous had happened and the impact of Balakot had played an important role in it.
Nobody was prepared for this massive result even as the final exit polls predicted of a majority to NDA. India Today exit poll captured it fairly accurately, otherwise, nobody had predicted this kind of sweep. A strong wave. Some psephologists say this sweep was as same as the huge Modi wave back in 2014. The weak opposition and the extremely weak performance of the left added to their victory.
SS: What do you think of the radical rise of Hindutva in post-1990s? It has also happened in tandem with the rise of a neoliberal economy. Do you think there is a necessary connection between Hindutva and neoliberalism?
NR: The link has to be researched thoroughly. There is some writing on it but it has to be more seriously researched to understand the link between Hindutva and neoliberalism. We all underestimated the Hindutva. We all thought they would not go far and I had personally thought that they could not cross 23-25% of the total votes. But, with around 39% of support with a 7% point gain from 2014, there is certainly a wave in their favour and we cannot deny their existence anymore. So it’s a very dangerous phenomenon. I don’t think we should resort to the use of fascism as it is used in some left circles since that is the easy way out. This is not fascism, but there are fascistic tendencies. Terming this as fascism and demanding for an all-party alliance even with Congress is an easy task to do. Congress cannot wash away its hands on not just the many economic policies it had initiated but also its opportunistic approach on the aspects of secularism.
The present scenario is very serious. Most people use the word majoritarianism but it’s really more than that. It is clearly hate politics, building massive organisations and attempted state capture. And they create an environment of fear. They try to keep control on the judiciary, the media and various arms of the state like income tax, enforcement, the CBI etc… And of course, there will be resistance. But it should be very clear that it is not fascism. If you reduce it to fascism, then you are underestimating your own resources. And this approach fails you from getting an accurate understanding of the correlation of forces. It has to be studied. But the link between economic liberalisation and the rise of Hindutva has to be researched and I think some of you can do it.
SS: The rise of Hindutva to state power in India has also happened in the broader context of the rise of right-wing politics across the globe, especially after the economic crisis of 2007-08. However, many have also pointed out at the uniqueness of Hindu right-wing in India, especially in terms of its massive organisational structure — a feature that is absent in any right-wing formations elsewhere. What do you think of it?
NR: Yes, and that is because of the RSS. They have been working for a very long time. Take Tripura for example. I think the left government did exceptionally well given its limitations in the state. But the influx of RSS volunteers to the state from one year before the elections had shown the organisational efforts by the Sangh to capture the power and I’m not sure whether it had resulted in their victory. Is it being matched to what the left is doing? I don’t know. We should be able to do something in resistance like how the left is resisting the growth of Sangh in Kerala. But sadly even there is a slight retreat.
SS: There is a real challenge to print journalism today given the rise of social media and the spread of fake news. How do you evaluate this challenge?
NR: Yeah, I have spent a lot of time researching this and there was a meeting specifically on this in London. You must make a clear distinction between ‘disinformation’, which is deliberate, motivated and malicious, and ‘misinformation’, which is unintentional, which happens all the time. The word ‘fake news’ is a bit vague but is used widely so we have to engage with it. But what you are really talking about is disinformation which is the real danger. Misinformation happens all the time in journalism and academia which also has a process of correction. There is a lot of difference between how you have to respond to both of these. We have reader’s editors or codes of conduct and verification procedures to correct misinformation since there are no deliberate intention or conspiracy behind it. It happens all the time for various reasons and you should minimise that. Disinformation can be a dangerous ad on social media such as Facebook or WhatsApp where it can spread like wildfire. According to statistics, India has the largest number of Facebook users in the world crossing more than 280 million. WhatsApp has over 200 or 220 million users in India. Twitter users are much lower but it also can be toxic for spreading disinformation. And then Instagram is growing very rapidly in India and all these provide opportunities for the manufacture and spread of often toxic disinformation. Even for disinformation, you have to make a distinction between those which cause big harm and those do not. A government paper named Online Harms has been circulated in the UK for discussing how to regulate social media search engines and online platforms.
All these social media platforms are big political resources for the capture of power and profit. There was a disinformation manufacturing factory in Macedonia during the US elections. They made a lot of money spreading disinformation, especially through Facebook. And Facebook has been notoriously delinquent in this respect since their business model works that way. If you put checks on them then they would lose out. Similarly, everything is free on Google and they will not counter any dangerous spread of disinformation in the name of protecting free speech. Disinformation has created havoc in India even by influencing elections and causing deaths of numerous people. So I think the ultimate solution is to hold these online platforms accountable for what they are and what they do. On the other hand,
On the other hand, say they are only platforms and they are not publishers. If you say, no, you are also publishers, then it has its own problems. Then people can’t use it freely. But if they will not accept responsibility for all the harms that resulted through their platforms, it’s problematic. If I publish something, then I can be sued for defamation. Facebook cannot be sued since they claim that they are merely a neutral platform for information. But it has been proven that they give priority to what is controversial, what causes division, and what makes more noise. So Facebook has a huge role in spreading and maintaining the circulation of disinformation.
One of the ideas to resist disinformation is media literacy or media education. Thanks to a parliamentarian, students in Italy are now taught in schools and colleges to detect fake news and what one should do when they detect it. I don’t know how it is done but it suggests a way out of the problem.
SS: When you talk of a campaign against disinformation you are talking of far-right agencies being stopped from spreading disinformation in social media. There is a lot of disinformation regarding Syrian War or on Venezuela in the mainstream media itself. So how do we tackle this paradox?
NR: Yes, that is a dilemma. Because they will start blabbering of freedom of the press and so on when pointed out of this problem. They also should be held to account for the same thing with the same standards. But a high level of risk is involved in this since the government itself is attacking people over Facebook posts these days. They will cherry pick people whom they should support and whom they should attack all based on politics. You pointed out that mainstream media too do it, no? Yes. But the media would not do it to a great extent since they fear to lose credibility. So there is an inbuilt limitation. Of course, they indulge in the manufacturing of consent. The whole thesis by Chomsky and Herman applies very much in India, but blatant, easily detectable fake news can’t be spread through mainstream media very easily. AltNews by Pratik Sinha has been doing a brilliant job regarding exposing disinformation. There was a recent issue of disinformation on Amartya Sen. He was in touch with me and others and he was very upset. They made a lot of disinformation on his former position as the chancellor of Nalanda University and even a senior Times of India journalist tweeted this. It, in fact, was plagiarised from some other sources and we could see the shocking articulation of this from various sources. This was referred to AltNews and they did a brilliant job of investigation and exposing this disinformation. So they immediately exposed it. Now there are hundreds of fact-checking websites around the world and they are even forming networks. The Washington Post has its own fact-checking mechanism. New fact-checking websites such as the BoomLive and AltNews have come up in India. So, today you have possibilities of detecting fake news along with a mechanism to spread it. However, the challenge of disinformation is whopping considering the scale in which it is happening. The mainstream media’s role in it is minimal compared with social media such as Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and even Twitter. What can be done in this situation? We can protect ourselves, but how much can we do that? There is no easy answers or solution to this.
SS: Do you think the student movement can contribute to fighting disinformation?
NR: Yes, very much. Because you are all studying, politically aware and very intelligent. This gives you the advantages that others don’t have. So I certainly think you can contribute to this fight but I don’t know how much time you can devote to it. Student movement can take it up, but this can’t be your main task. It can disseminate the findings of fact-checking groups such as the AltNews and build a mechanism to create awareness about disinformation.
SS: Finally, what do you think the future direction of the Left-student movement would be in this nation?
NR: That’s a hard one to answer. The direction is to keep doing what you have been doing and go deeper by prioritizing issues. You have to identify the key issues such as happening in the field of education that deserves immediate attention. I suppose one priority would be to resist the communalisation or toxification of education. Promoting scientific temper is also very much important.
This interview was jointly done in August 2019 by Azhar Moideen and Ummen Sabu.
Azhar Moideen is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciencies, IIT Madras. Ummen Sabu is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Metallurgical and Material Engineering, IIT Madras.
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