Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

Today I'm in Delhi and my guest is one of India's best-known media figures, Enram,

director of the Hindu Publishing Group.

His home base is Chennai, home of the venerable Hindu newspaper,

which has been a family-owned institution for more than a century

and which now forms

part of a wider media, tech and property business. But for Ram, as he likes to be known,

it's always been about the journalism. His scoops exposing corruption in Indian defense procurement

won him a host of awards going back to the late 1980s. As an editor and media executive,

he's always seen it as his role to hold those in power to account. But in recent years,

independent investigative journalism in India has come under enormous pressure. A decade of BJP rule

has seen much of the mainstream media become closely aligned

with the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Journalists challenging the official narrative

have experienced intimidation and much worse. The government has also pushed through legislation

giving it unprecedented powers over digital platforms and online content. On the face of it,

the world's most populous democracy would still appear to have a vibrant information culture

with a multitude of newspapers, TV news networks and hundreds of millions of users of social media.

But in today's India, is it really possible to speak truth to power?

Well, Enram joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. It's a pleasure, Stephen. Well, it's a great pleasure

to talk to you. Your journalistic career seems to me to symbolize the vigor, the vibrancy of the Indian

media scene. You began your career, let's say, in the late 60s.

You're still hard at it today at the Hindu publishing group. It's a positive story, isn't it?

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