| Caveats: The Indian center is very different from the American center. Economically, the Indian center is closer to Bernie-Sanders than it is to Biden. The Indian left (academic and on the ground) is actually communist and the Indian right still tends to be fairly center-left (as far as the US goes) The social left-right dimension is its own thing, and does not map neatly onto similar intuitions in the west. The last caveat is that Indian secularism is very different from western secularism. _________ That being said, This is a good list. > The Print I am personally biased towards favoring 'The Print' more so than the other organizations. Shekhar Gupta leads an ideologically clear (socially liberal, economically liberal) media house, always quotes their sources and does well to separate reporting from opinion. I would not call it right leaning by any means. > Caravan I have mixed opinions on Caravan. At their best, they are great. But, they can vary between excellent left-leaning journalism to outright left-wing fear mongering. I'm sure you'll see some strong opinions thrown around about them, and both the positive and negative tend to be well deserved. > Wire and OutlookIndia I have a low opinion of both. I wouldn't go as far as to call them a rag, but I wouldn't defend them against those accusations either. > Swarajya - but a strong source to understand BJP and Hinduvta politics from their perspective Agreed. Won't go there for news, but serves a purpose. |
A lot of Western commentators don't tend to realize that aspect of Indian politics, instead applying a federal American lens (though American politics is actually equally diverse as well).
To any Americans reading this thread, Indian politics is HEAVILY local party driven. BJP MPs from states like HP would have entirely different opinions or backgrounds from BJP MPs from a region like Purvanchal (Eastern UP). In additional, most elected officials in Indian politics don't really have party loyalty. They'll change parties at the drop of the hat (or start their own) if they feel their opportunity to climb up the political rungs are best served elsewhere. That is a MASSIVE reason the BJP/NDA+ won like a steamroller in 2019 - a number of up and coming INC politicians changed party affiliations because their upward potential was blocked by regional INC machines.
In addition, it is very common for regional political barons to split off from the national party and make their own regional party - this happened with the INC in West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee and the TMC), Uttar Pradesh (Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party), Maharashtra (Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena - which itself split into 2 parties this week - and Tariq Anwar and the NCP) , and Andhra Pradesh (YSR Raja Reddy and the YSR Congress) to name a few states. Captain Amarinder Singh - the former Chief Minister (Indian equivalent of Governor) of Punjab - himself is rumored to be making a regional party in Punjab now as well after internal politicking in the INC forced him out of CMship.
That said, similar stuff will eventually happen to the BJP as well. I've heard rumblings at the grassroots level in Haryana, HP, and Jammu about discontent with local BJP acolytes and there is probably going to be a major shift in Indian politics over the next 10 years as a new generation of local parties form.
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> The Print
Agree with you that they are not right leaning in any way. I labelled them as slightly center right due to their occasional support for certain pro-market reforms (ones that I do support by the way). Honestly, I probably could have called them centrist but the edit timer has run down on that comment.
> Wire and Outlook
I'm curious about your reasons for having a low opinion of them? I've had reservations about some opinions the Wire reports, but at least in the region my family is from they've been pretty even handed reporting on abuses of power that have occurred. W/ regards to Outlook I was debating whether to add them to this list, but I have read some quality articles from them on occasion.