Some journalists get confused and start believing that they make the news, rather than just reporting it. This, and journalistic groupthink, has led to a skewed discourse: India’s supposed ‘centrists’ would be considered ‘far Left’ elsewhere. Their conventional wisdom is curiously anti-national as well.

“All the news that is fit to print” simply isn’t printed in India; only that news is printed which supports a particular viewpoint. Besides, those who do not toe the line are blackballed: you cannot get published. Several people have told me their personal experience of being excluded for their views.

This perverted system engenders a persistent anti-India bias in international media, too. When in India, foreign correspondents interact primarily with Delhi’s insular, incestuous sling-bag-wallah-journalist nexus that sneers at middle India; their endemic prejudices infect the foreigners too.