An official spokesperson for the ruling party at the Centre recently conducted a poll on Twitter, asking his followers to vote whether a senior Indian journalist should be the spokesperson for a terrorist organisation. His followers celebrated the poll, welcomed it, and then vilified the journalist in question. This happened because we live in an age of propaganda, fuelled not just by the rise of social media, but by enablers masquerading as journalists among us. You know who they are.

I began my career as a journalist a few decades ago, first with a magazine, then a national newspaper that once famously published a blank front page as an act of protest against the government. The celebrated edition appeared before my time, but is still the one I still remember vividly because it made me feel that my profession of choice meant something. There was a righteous power there, at work whenever I published a story that generated tangible results. It was a time when journalists doing their job were respected, because what they did was recognised as potentially life-changing.