- 7 months ago
In the fifth and the final episode of India Today@50 detailing events from 2015 to 2025, Raj Chengappa, Group Editorial Director (Publishing), provides a comprehensive analysis of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership from 2014.
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00:00I wonder where they get these guns from, you know?
00:12They are from the police.
00:14Oh, okay.
00:15Just go back.
00:16This is the one you were saying.
00:17Yeah.
00:18Go back.
00:19This is the one.
00:20This has got the Nepali buildings.
00:21There's a very awkward composition, you know?
00:23No, not this one.
00:24The other one.
00:25This one.
00:26When you see it with the background.
00:27Try it.
00:28It goes with the Nepal flag.
00:29Yeah.
00:30It's better.
00:31The other problem is that Gen Z revolt is they're just stating the obvious.
00:38It's already going on.
00:39But it's the first time that students of that age group come and really...
00:42No, no.
00:43I agree.
00:44But you have to take it forward, no?
00:46Negacy Brands, which are institutions, have a culture of telling the truth.
00:53And there's consciousness that you're answerable to whoever you're writing about.
00:58And the core identity of the India group is integrity and being true to your profession.
01:05The idea of the India magazine was to bring out an editorial voice that was telling a story
01:13of India as it unfolded.
01:15And I think it's kind of being part of India's unfolding.
01:23The time has changed.
01:24Everything has changed around India.
01:26And I remember everything that India today put on cover became iconic.
01:31Many times the toughest of stories that you do, you ask the questions, how's it going
01:37to change things?
01:38The era of 2014 to 25 is an era of transformation.
01:482014 was a really exciting news year, right?
01:51A lot of things were changing.
01:53Prime Minister Modi was a candidate standing for elections, not the prime minister yet.
02:00The newsrooms were just on fire.
02:04So at that moment in time, I was part of all the newsrooms looking at it from a synergy point
02:10of view, but not looking at the day-to-day running of a channel.
02:15And AP is like, okay, you know what?
02:16You have to be in charge now.
02:18And this is very much like AP's way of doing things, which is sort of like throwing somebody
02:24in the deep end.
02:25So either you swim or you drum, because it was a historic election that we were moving
02:30towards.
02:31Everything was in place.
02:32You just needed somebody to kind of pull it together and make sure that everything was
02:36happening according to the India today DNA.
02:39And that's what I did.
02:40Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes to power.
02:42He gets a full majority, something that hasn't happened since 1984.
02:47That's a long period.
02:48After there's so much disillusionment with the way the previous Congress government in
02:54its second term ran the country, you're finally getting a government with a majority on its
03:01own.
03:02The coming of Prime Minister Modi in 2014 was a sea change.
03:08How it affected the man at the bottom, the poor man, right?
03:12He understood it.
03:17The politicians by this time had a kind of image which wasn't very righteous.
03:22And here was a man who arrives at the parliament and the first thing he does is he did a shashtang.
03:27Again, that had never happened, right?
03:29And there was a great deal of excitement.
03:32I was very refreshed by his entrance into the center.
03:36One of the slogans which I liked the best was, government has no business of being in business.
03:42Which sort of said, okay, I'm going to reform India.
03:46The other thing which I was very impressed with was his first Independence Day speech on
03:502014.
03:51He talked about open defecation.
03:54Everybody knew about, nobody addressed it, but it was so fundamental.
03:59And here was a country that after 75 years, close to 75 years of independence, people were still going
04:12We cannot do our own family and sisters.
04:19Here was a country that after 75 years, close to 75 years of independence,
04:25people were still going out on the fields and using that as a toilet.
04:29That was a shame for India, that they didn't have bathrooms.
04:32Women particularly were affected tremendously.
04:35And I think Mr. Modi sensed that.
04:37He took it with a kind of evangelist fervour, a national movement.
04:41That is the era of Swachh Bharat.
04:54Here was a man who was thinking from the ground up.
04:58He understood what the pain and reality of the average man was.
05:11And that was a great need at that moment because the government had become really stuck.
05:28Because he's not dependent on coalition partners, it gives him a free hand to run the country the way the BJP and the RSS wanted to run.
05:47And very clearly, they begin to bring in the kind of changes that they wanted into the structure of the country.
05:56One is the whole temple movement that goes, which is trying to unify a nation with their gods.
06:02But the other side, you have the caste system that is running.
06:05A lot of the politics happens on the basis of caste.
06:09So for Modi, he had won on economic promises.
06:12But somewhere the ecosystem around him, they needed to consolidate their hold on the society.
06:20So when we are talking about beef or Hindu-Muslim or caste or many other things, then there is less focus on governance.
06:31But I think he began to understand very quickly that development was the major pull factor.
06:36So he combines the iron fist with the velvet glove of development.
06:41India was becoming a startup nation with a lot of promise of giving wings to entrepreneurship, giving wings to startups.
07:10Startups promising to shake out the sluggishness that is there in the whole policy making, create better environment.
07:18What they call the ease of business, capitalism, entrepreneurship, businesses.
07:23It would be welcomed. There would be minimum government and maximum governance.
07:27So people were looking forward to that.
07:29So there was a big reform drive in the first term.
07:33He started delivering welfare to the people directly, which is a sea change.
07:38So one of the big steps was to make Aadhaar the most supreme document for personal identification.
07:48This was followed by the fact that crores of people being given a bank account and the subsidies are being directly transferred.
07:58The direct transfer of subsidies into those accounts.
08:01And then the mobile linking the whole system together.
08:07Today, Aadhaar is because of the direct benefit transfer.
08:11It is because of the direct benefit transfer.
08:13It is because of your fault.
08:15And all these schemes were very well thought out.
08:30Prime Minister Modi is a man who thinks far ahead.
08:34In fact, one of his advisors told me that, you know, he has dots all over the place, but only he knows how to connect the dots.
08:42So here was a person who understood technology and used it to his advantage.
08:48Turning India upside down in many ways, right?
08:51Changed a lot of things which were there before.
08:53When Prime Minister Modi came in, two, three things really shifted in newsrooms.
09:03I think one of the biggest things was social media.
09:06None of us were taking social media that seriously.
09:09But because the Prime Minister was in social media and so many of his decisions, his points of view, were expressed through social media, we had to take it seriously as well.
09:19And by doing that, he made media far more inclusive.
09:23This was also the age of social media.
09:25Suddenly, people were finding that they could express themselves and, you know, be heard.
09:29India today knew that this was so important.
09:33And increasingly, it had to stand out in a very, very crowded space.
09:37And it understood this market because its sister, a news channel, Archduk, was doing phenomenally well.
09:43So for us, the competition is not just the TV or digital platform.
09:48The competition is citizen journalists, the social media, the misinformation, the fake news, the memes, everything together.
09:57So it has become very difficult to get attention of readers.
10:04He made Hindi his language of choice.
10:07It changed what you could do in the newsroom.
10:10It was an equalizer in newsrooms where you did not need the language skill.
10:15You needed the ability to tell the story well and have a good perspective on what you were about to tell.
10:22Hi, I am Bandeep Singh. I am currently the group photo editor of India Today.
10:28Hi, my name is Nilanjan Das. I am the group creative editor for India Today group.
10:33How long have the two of you worked with each other?
10:3624 years.
10:3824 years.
10:3924 years.
10:40Wow.
10:41Wow.
10:42I am married.
10:43I am married for 23 years.
10:45We last moved on a marriage?
10:46Yes.
10:47Next year, we will be our silver union.
10:49When we came over here, we worked a lot on covers together.
10:57For example, there was a cover I did, which was the Baba Ramdev cover.
11:01I mean, it just blew on the social media space.
11:06Unforgetability of that cover was something that I was banking on.
11:10So I, with a lot of trepidation, I took the three covers that we had made to Mr. Puri,
11:16and he looked at it, and then he pointed to that cover and said,
11:21Go with this. It'll go viral.
11:23You know?
11:24And sure as hell, you know, that cover went viral in half.
11:28It was an iconic cover. I've never seen a cover go that viral.
11:34Well, social media definitely impacts print journalism, any kind of journalism,
11:39because people are getting information from all sources and quite quickly.
11:43My own mantra is, is that always be aware of your changing environment,
11:48and always keep evolving.
11:50This has been part of our DNA.
11:53Keep looking at technology, and keep adapting it to your own needs.
11:58How the world is changing, and what role you can play in it?
12:02In November 8th, 2016,
12:09at 12 o'clock,
12:12500 rupees,
12:17and 1,000 rupees,
12:20not legal tender.
12:24Everybody is surprised when the Prime Minister comes and says that,
12:27you know, from tonight, the big notes are being demonetized.
12:31It shook the country, right?
12:33But it was very early in Prime Minister Modi's term.
12:37So it was taken in its stride, in a way.
12:41I think the intention was there to flush black money out.
12:44I think the way it was done was very hasty.
12:46It caused a lot of grief to people.
12:49It queued up to put their money in, etc.
12:53That was a period where we were constantly engaged,
12:56just about the after-effects of demonetization.
12:59And, you know, we came up with a couple of more cover stories.
13:03So this was a controversial cover.
13:06We all were judging whether this demo was good or not.
13:10After the effect was seen,
13:12and there are a lot of hue and cry on demo.
13:15So there was a question everywhere,
13:17and it was a burning topic.
13:18So we created something on that.
13:20People think that he's gone after the rich.
13:23So maybe demonetization, there'll be a lot of debate
13:25whether it really worked, didn't work.
13:27The intention was to take out black money out of the economy.
13:32If I remember correctly, there was 50 lakhs rupees in circulation.
13:36All of it came back.
13:37But who got caught with black money or not is an open question.
13:41Some good came out of it in the fact that
13:44a lot of the money came into the formal banking system,
13:48whether it was black or otherwise.
13:50It was a thing which then led to more and more digitization of India.
13:55And by then, you know, our old digital infrastructure
14:00was getting more formalized.
14:02There's almost so much cash stealing.
14:04It's the ease of living.
14:06How I can pay money is a great revolution.
14:09So while we were chronicling Mr. Modi,
14:16we were also chronicling the Congress through its primary leader,
14:20who was Rahul Gandhi at that time.
14:22There's a lot of lack of direction there.
14:26And they pick up issues which haven't resonated with the public.
14:32I think by the 2019 election, the media had become completely, completely different.
14:40You had a situation where social media was very powerful.
14:46WhatsApp was becoming a medium of information or disinformation.
14:52And the BJP was a master at it.
14:55And the Congress was very, very slow in sort of catching up to it.
15:00Because of political reasons, BJP will create certain misinformation.
15:04Congress will create certain misinformation.
15:06And most of the journalists, even those who are veteran journalists,
15:10they didn't know these nuances.
15:12So at that time, we planned to create a cover on WhatsApp.
15:15I remember in that meeting, we decided to kind of create WhatsApp as a weapon
15:21against your opponent for political parties, against people.
15:26This is the WhatsApp logo.
15:28This social media had become a big player in Indian politics,
15:40or it emerged to be, and then become bigger and bigger as we've gone along.
15:44And subsequently, we've seen the WhatsApp election, the YouTube election.
15:48This was the Twitter election.
15:51The people are talking about jobs.
15:52People are talking about economic development.
15:56Demonetization had happened.
15:58GST had come in.
15:59So people are trying to adjust to various things.
16:02I did an interview with Mr. Rahul Gandhi inside an aircraft.
16:06And as far as I have understood him,
16:09he's trying to project and present himself as an ideologue of the party.
16:15He's trying to create a narrative for the party,
16:18the way he believes that BJP has a narrative.
16:21In 2019, we will be able to kill them.
16:38What happens in 2019 is that he's not certain to win the elections.
16:42He has brought tremendous reform.
16:44There's no doubt about it.
16:45But as we go into it, there are a lot of ifs and buts that exist.
16:50Till Pulwama happens.
16:53An explosive-laden car, suspected to be run by a lone Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide attacker,
16:58rammed into a CRPF convoy at Gundipura area in Pulwama's Avantipura.
17:04The biggest terror attack ever on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in recent times.
17:09The Pulwama explosion killed 40 soldiers and sent shockwaves across the nation.
17:15I want to say that they have made a very big mistake.
17:31Our turakshabalans have been given to them.
17:38And then the parlor court strikes where he sends the Indian Air Force to bomb the camps,
17:45the terror camps over there.
17:47Mr. Modi has taken a very clear stand in terms of Pakistan.
17:54If you do anything to us, we will react badly to you and you will pay the price.
17:59If we, the victims, go soft on somebody perpetrating terrorism against us,
18:05how do you expect the rest of the world to...
18:08I mean, will they stand up for you more than you are standing up for yourself?
18:11You know, people should realize that this is a government with a very strong determination
18:16to protect national interest and that it would not be willing to be, you know,
18:25it would be tested at the cost of the people who will take it.
18:28Pulwama and Balako change everything.
18:31There is a national narrative which became the talk of the town.
18:36And people were feeling that, okay, at this hour we need to back this government.
18:41And the mood was a bit upbeat.
18:44What will the result of the country's population be?
18:46The Bharatiya Janata Party will win more than 2014.
18:52The Bharatiya Janata Party will win more than 2014.
19:01The Nationalism came into it and Hindutva was also still there.
19:05So, Prime Minister Modi kind of symbolized that.
19:10And came back to power with a single majority government.
19:15I mean, again, second time that the BJP gets, all by itself it is able to increase its majority.
19:22So, it's an endorsement by the people of India that they believe that she had done a good job on the first term.
19:28But I think it is only 2019 that begins to define Mr. Modi and the BJP and the RSS in a way that there was clearly a reshaping of the Republic.
19:38And we put on the cover, India today put on the cover,
19:57Modestan when he won because this was his fashioning of what was happening of the country.
20:04And then they moved very rapidly to complete whatever the agenda was.
20:09One, of course, was the abrogation of Article 370.
20:12The autonomous status that Jammu and Kashmir had with its relations with India, once and for all he said, no, it's an integral part of India.
20:27It will follow the Indian constitution. It cannot have a constitution on its own.
20:43There would always be controversy as to whether this was the best thing to have done.
20:47There's, of course, a lot of issues in terms of what happened to freedom over there, in terms of constrictions of freedom of speech, people being arrested.
20:56Home ministry is lying in the parliament that I am not house arrested.
21:03That I am sitting in the house inside of my own will.
21:07You think I will stay inside my house of my own will?
21:11While my state is being burnt, my India is a democratic India.
21:16These are not things good for a democracy.
21:19But certainly, at that time, he moved decisively towards it.
21:23And I think much of India appreciated that particular decisive, hard-fisted approach towards that.
21:33To my mind, it was a good thing.
21:34But he has to now follow it through with recognition of the state.
21:38And they already had elections.
21:40So I think it will move forward.
21:42He is moving forward on Kashmir.
21:44Simultaneously, you had the Citizenship Amendment Act coming in and the National Registry of Citizens coming in.
21:54Essentially targeted towards what they call the infiltrators, which are largely, of course, from Bangladesh.
21:59There is a lot of discussion on multiple issues that dealt with citizenship.
22:04And there is a lot of misinformation spreading about it.
22:07Assam was protesting against CEA.
22:09Shaheen Bagh was also protesting against CEA.
22:11But both protests were on different grounds.
22:13Both sides were twisting facts.
22:15You ask about CEA to a BJP supporter, they would say it's a fantastic thing.
22:20Those who are opposed to BJP, they will say it is a plan to throw away the Muslims from the country, which is also not fact.
22:26Nobody had any clue.
22:28Every draft that was passed in Parliament, so I had to read, go through and make it easier for the reader to understand what exactly CEA is.
22:37What is the logic behind excluding the Muslims who came after 2014, and there is a logic why Muslims are not included in it.
22:47So we did a cover story with the title, Who is a Citizen?
22:53A lot of strong things were being done at the same time, till of course COVID intervened in a different way.
23:00COVID was a very unprecedented event.
23:02Nobody really knew how to handle it.
23:04Nobody knew the extent of it either.
23:06It was an international tragedy.
23:08A lot of countries didn't know how to cope with it.
23:11We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.
23:20We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
23:29India was also not that well prepared.
23:33And it was a tragedy in India too.
23:35Everybody was learning on the job.
23:37Chinese pumps spent once or so many.
23:38The third petrol in driving Putin and Matthias shows us almost to grow up.
23:49Exactly.
23:50We have not seen it before the government numbers.
23:54To have an immense storm, it becomes at the very highest state of reinstation
23:58that COVID hears us.
23:59Be two people better to stop adjusting the weather.
24:00usz Klvert lungesłu.
24:02Research with the District of Chile from Iranu.
24:03To have your family scared of you is a reaction that you're not prepared for.
24:11You know, the fact that I would be isolated in a room and all food would be given to me
24:16left at the door and, you know, the feeling of that, it was very powerful.
24:21We are all stuck in our home and there's a sense of fear, acute fear, extreme fear and
24:28helplessness.
24:32And that is the time you had, you first saw the migrants on the road.
24:41That was something that had to be seen and felt.
24:45And we were, as photographers, part of that migrant processions.
24:51There was no answer as to where would they get their bus from, where would they get the
24:55conveyance from.
24:56And, you know, they were willing to walk, you know, with their baggages on their head.
25:02So when you were photographing that sitting in your car and they were walking alongside,
25:08they did not even look at you for hope.
25:11Because the divide was set in so deep, you know, that was, you know, one of the most harrowing
25:17experiences, more than the COVID one.
25:20To experience and to photograph them, that was also a process of looking into a mirror.
25:30We all thought that it is going to get over.
25:34The lockdown got extended.
25:36It got extended and extended.
25:38And it was very evident that this COVID was something that had come to stay and it wouldn't
25:42be with us for a long time.
25:44I think there were some knee-jerk reactions from the government in the beginning.
25:49A lot of tragic events happened with the oxygen cylinders not being available.
25:53People dying on the streets.
25:55I've never seen scenes like that.
25:57We were not sure what medicines to administer to people and so forth.
26:03And the infrastructure was so not adequate to deal with the numbers which we were dealing
26:07with.
26:08The gas cylinders were not there in the hospitals.
26:11People, you know, not being treated and led to unnecessary deaths.
26:15And just sitting at home and watching these scenes on television was heartbreaking.
26:21It used to make me cry, actually, when I used to see some of the images that were coming
26:25out.
26:26There's no way one could not react to it.
26:30The most important work that we do as a media organization or with our team of journalists
26:34is to go down to the ground and tell a story.
26:37So for me, I had to keep two things and balance them.
26:40One was keep your people safe.
26:43In all situations, the safety of the journalist and the reporter, your team, is of utmost importance.
26:48Second, tell the story the best you can.
26:50And a lot of things that we did during Corona was based on this.
26:55You saw how people came together, right, and did things to help each other.
27:00We thought, let's do something where people are their own guardian, their own government,
27:05their own doctors.
27:06So I was looking at Gandhi's photo.
27:09I was looking at statues, sculpture, and suddenly I saw Gyara Murthy.
27:14And if you see in the Gyara Murthy, somebody is helping someone to pull him up.
27:19So I thought, how about I put a mask on them and give them oxygen cylinder, carrying their
27:24oxygen cylinder.
27:25So it is a republic of self-help.
27:30But in the end, the government got its act together, right?
27:33It vaccinated people across the country.
27:36We also produced the vaccines.
27:38I think he's a man of crisis, right?
27:39It started off badly.
27:40No leader in the world came out looking good.
27:41But comes back very strongly with vaccination, a program, the strength of that program.
27:45That was the time when e-commerce really took off.
27:52I mean, everybody from the swingies and the tomatoes of the world, as well as every classroom went
28:15online.
28:16So, you know, an academy, Baidus of the world, all of them made a lot of money.
28:21There was a lot of funds coming into them.
28:24Students were queuing up to join them.
28:26Things looked very robust then.
28:29But once the country was out of COVID, that meant that, you know, people are, the students
28:35are back in their classrooms, in the physical classrooms.
28:38And then the online education took a beating.
28:42Funds began to withdraw from the country because the U.S. began to increase the interest rates.
28:50That meant a whole lot of capital from across the world began to be withdrawn back to the U.S.
28:55So there began the downfall of some of these unicorns.
28:58We saw Baidus, you know, go into a whole lot of problems.
29:02We found PTM getting into a problem.
29:08I think cinema really changed after COVID.
29:11Box office was really struggling.
29:13People were still very hesitant and reluctant to come to the cinemas.
29:17January, February comes Gangobai Kathiawari with Alia in the lead.
29:22And for a female-driven, actress-led film to do in post-COVID environment 130, 140 crores, it was incredible.
29:34We felt like, you know, you need to recognize what this, you know, young actress has achieved.
29:40She was still in her late 20s then.
29:44With streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime and the audiences have everything on the tip of their fingers, right?
29:52So I think what's happened is, is that when people come to cinema, they are expecting something that they don't necessarily get on the laptop or on the mobile screen.
30:02And you had Shah Rukh essentially coming as sort of like in an action avatar.
30:07And Pathan obviously became a force.
30:12It also sort of set into motion a new club, which is a 500 crore club.
30:17And this is also Shah Rukh coming after four years.
30:22And people were wanting to see their superstar, the actor that they have grown up watching.
30:26So it felt like a way to sort of see the resurgence of a star, someone who was being written up, sort of saying, wait a second, I'm still here.
30:37This is the internet generation of Indian player.
30:40This is the social media generation of Indian cricketer that's growing.
30:43And the Kohli and the Rohit generation, what they did, which is very important, is keep saying that we want India to be the best team in the world.
30:49But you're able to see a better level of cricketer than there is.
30:53And the international game has also adjusted in the same way.
30:56So it's not that Virat's obsession with fitness has come because he is Virat.
31:01It's come because of this environment that he sees around him.
31:04And how, what he's able to say, look, I can be sharper at my game if I do this.
31:09There's also now much more expectation on the team to be world beaters.
31:13And women's cricket, that second sort of phase has begun, where more girls are coming through to play.
31:19Academies have been set up primarily for girls.
31:21So you're seeing that also happen as compared to what they were previously.
31:25The market is also looking at our women cricketers in a way that they're saying,
31:28why don't I look at what the women's team has to offer and see what I can make of Switi Mandana or Jamie or whoever.
31:34You know, these lovely women that are there.
31:36And you're seeing this across the sports.
31:38It's almost like the game now, the structures of the game have to catch up with the talent that is around.
31:42The India of today is very different from the India which Narendra Modi inherited.
31:49What has happened is that the physical landscape of India has changed tremendously.
31:54We've passed a lot from the top of the world to the whole world from the world.
32:09And the reality comes.
32:13We're very激烈 and we must have now.
32:18At that time, an issue that had burned for 50 to 70 years, exactly the amount of time
32:36that German Kashmir burned, that issue was getting sorted out in terms of a decisive
32:41sort of verdict that happened in terms of building the Ram Temple.
32:46The Ram Mandir Temple, we followed this right from the destruction of the Babri Masjid,
32:51and the whole Indutra movement, and Shilinyas, and so forth.
32:56And the culmination was, after the Supreme Court ordered it, was the building of the Ram Mandir Temple.
33:03So I think it was the end of something which had started many years ago.
33:10In so far as Ayodhya is concerned, this was a title dispute.
33:15What came to the Supreme Court was a first appeal against a claim on title, and we decided
33:22that on well-settled principles of adverse possession.
33:25You see, I've always believed that India is in a kind of a Samudra Mantam stage.
33:35There's a big churn always happening, and there are many forces in that churn.
33:38In the 2024 election, there was a sense, as I mentioned, what happened in 2019.
33:45People were not happy with the economic situations.
33:48They were not getting what they had expected.
33:51But they were not also trusting the opposition of India, that opposition alliance.
33:58So they were voting on different contexts, so the local issues mattered.
34:04There was no big narrative like we had expected that the Ram Temple would become a very binding issue.
34:12They were not ready to vote out.
34:15They were not ready to take in someone else.
34:19So that indifference or lack of excitement translated into 240 seats.
34:31There was a great leveller, where the Indian voters, they put certain brakes and give it a direction.
34:40In a way, they told the ruling party that, fine, we are taking this car, but you have to
34:46modify it to our comfort and our requirement.
34:50I would just sum up the decade as the decade, I think, that defined India in many respects.
35:09Prime Minister Modi has done a fantastic job in the global outreach.
35:14Prime Minister Modi seems to be that he is very conscious of India's role in the global order.
35:21And I think over time, he has made an intangible change in how Indians see themselves.
35:28And I think that that would be his greatest legacy.
35:32Prime Minister Modi has brought a muscular foreign policy, especially in relation to Pakistan.
35:39No inch is given as long as you have terror attacks happening in India.
35:57And then we've actually been to war.
36:01This is where India stands to stop terrorism and until you get no dialogue.
36:26Right after Operation Sindhu, we are always at a nice edge.
36:47Without doubt that there's, you know, what it does is that we are not a country that will crumble very easily.
36:53I think in the last 50 years, India has changed from golden, sleepy, to something that is leading the world.
37:03And there's a lot of pace and energy in this country.
37:08The world at the moment is going through a process of de-globalization.
37:12There you have President Trump coming in and turning the world order upside down.
37:17You have Putin in Russia, right, who is doing his own thing.
37:24Can I ask you one question?
37:29Yes, sure.
37:30Do you regret anything that you would have done just simply, and what your favorite role would be spent out there?
37:40Well, it seems as if this were a traditional question.
37:47But I think, more or less, there is no sense in looking backwards and regretting what was done, because what's done is done.
38:04You have President Xi in China, invades part of India, creates trouble for us, right?
38:14In Israel, you have Netanyahu, right, who's invading Gaza.
38:19But democracy all over the world, as we're seeing, doesn't vanish in a flash.
38:24It vanishes with erosion of institutions, slowly, which could be the media, which could be the enforcement agencies, which could be the judiciary.
38:35So, these are the things we have to safeguard.
38:38In this age of algorithm and AI and technology, you have to go with your gut.
38:45This is where I think legacy brands have a place.
38:50There's a very interesting quote that may we live in interesting times.
38:54Like, we couldn't have it more interesting.
38:56So, you have people who love to tell stories, and that's part of the DNA.
39:06I congratulate India Today magazine for completing its golden years of journalism.
39:11It has been one of the best news organizations which I have ever worked for.
39:14Congratulations, India Today.
39:16At 50, so heartening and so gratifying to see the institution and the brand and the magazine turn 50 now.
39:27May you see another 50 years very quickly.
39:30Delighted to celebrate the 50th birthday of India Today.
39:34Many, many congratulations to Arun Puri, who's the brainchild of this entire venture.
39:39I think there are certain moments in your life that become pivots.
39:42And I think one of the pivots for me was a line I read in AP's letter of the editor.
39:48And the line says, men age, magazines don't.
39:52So, thank you AP for giving us the framework that you have, that we can be here standing with our head tall and our spine firm.
40:01For now, I will see you next time too!
40:06Let's see you at the end of the channel!
40:13Let's see you next time!
40:15I'm
40:17I'm
40:19I'm
40:21I'm
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