Ravish Kumar (born 5 December 1974) is an Indian journalist, author and broadcaster in Hindi. For more than two decades he worked for the television channel NDTV India, where his nightly programme Prime Time became known for reporting on unemployment, education, health and the concerns of ordinary people. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2019. Since leaving television in 2022 he has broadcast on his own YouTube channel.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Ravish Kumar Pandey |
| Born | 5 December 1974, Jitwarpur, near Motihari, East Champaran district, Bihar |
| Age | 51 |
| Education | Loyola High School, Patna; Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi; Indian Institute of Mass Communication |
| Occupation | Journalist, television anchor, author |
| Known for | Ravish ki Report, Prime Time, Hum Log, Des ki Baat (NDTV India) |
| Awards | Ramon Magsaysay Award (2019); Ramnath Goenka Award (2013, 2017) |
| Spouse | Nayana Dasgupta |
| Children | 2 |
Early Life
He was born in a village near Motihari in the Champaran region of Bihar, the district where Mahatma Gandhi led his first satyagraha in India. He went to Loyola High School in Patna. He came to Delhi for higher studies, graduating from Deshbandhu College, and enrolled at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.
Career
NDTV
He joined NDTV in the mid-1990s in a junior job, sorting and answering the letters sent in by viewers. He became a field reporter and then an anchor on the group’s Hindi channel, NDTV India.
- Ravish ki Report: documentaries from the lanes of Delhi and from small towns and villages, about migrant workers, sanitation workers and the urban poor
- Hum Log and Des ki Baat: discussion programmes
- Prime Time: the nightly programme he presented from 2011
The style
At a time when Indian television news turned to studio shouting matches, he went the other way. He spoke slowly, in a Hindi full of the idiom of Bihar, and gave whole series of programmes to subjects other channels ignored: the delays in government recruitment examinations, the condition of universities, the shortage of railway jobs, bank employees’ pay. In 2016, to protest at the state of television debate, he presented a programme with a blank dark screen.
He became a sharp critic of what he called “godi media”, lapdog media, his term for channels that he said had become mouthpieces of the government. He was in turn the target of sustained abuse and threats online.
Resignation
In 2022 a company of the Adani Group acquired a controlling interest in NDTV. On 30 November 2022 he resigned. In a farewell video he compared himself to a bird that had lost its nest.
YouTube
He now publishes programmes on his own YouTube channel, which has more than ten million subscribers.
Recognition
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation honoured him in 2019 for “harnessing journalism to give voice to the voiceless”. He has twice received the Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in journalism and was named Journalist of the Year by the Mumbai Press Club. A documentary film about him, While We Watched, by Vinay Shukla, was released in 2022 and shown at festivals around the world.
Books
- Ishq Mein Shahar Hona, short love stories set in Delhi, translated as A City Happens in Love
- Dekhte Rahiye
- The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation (2018)
- Bolna Hi Hai
Personal Life
He is married to Nayana Dasgupta, who teaches history at a college of the University of Delhi. They have two daughters. His brother, Brajesh Pandey, has been active in politics in Bihar.
Featured image: Ravish Kumar receiving an award from the Vice President in New Delhi, December 2017. Photo by the Vice President’s Secretariat, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
