In this episode of Election Beat, Vamsee Juluri, professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, and the author of Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Intelligence, says the Indian media is too focused on Hindu nationalism to please politicians and therefore fails in its duty of civilisational revival.

He observes that TV channels are noisy and the polarisation in the name of ratings is driving a “race to the bottom”. He argues that the relationship between news media and India as a democracy has changed “foundationally” and to understand this, one needs to go back into colonialism and the Enlightenment “project” to understand why news exists.