By Venus Upadhayaya

I started working as a journalist in 2005 after graduating from a journalism college in Bangalore. So after twenty years of work, I can be credited to be a senior journalist. In college I was mentored by the late VN Narayanan, a veteran journalist who had worked and led many leading English newspapers of yester’s India. He brought us up on the many first hand stories of India’s legendary journalists and also stories of Indian Express’ blank editorials as a defiance against censorship during the Emergency.

Narayanan gave me three important lessons in journalism:

1: A journalist is a generalist!

2: Just go and do it!

3: You have the capacity to think.

And he instilled in me the belief that I have the power to barge inside any office and demand an answer. It has taken me two decades of work and many journeys to understand what Narayanan gave me.

After my first stint as a journalist in Kochi, Kerala with the New Indian Express, I left for Nagapattinam to help with the documentation of stories in a Tsunami Response Project in mid-2006. The project was spread across 30 villages in Nagapattinam, Karikal and Nagercoil. And within a few weeks under certain circumstances I found myself in the helm of affairs, leading a massive project. This meant daily travels to deeper countryside in the disaster impacted community on India’s south west coast. It also meant overlooking a trauma care program for children and direct dealing with sensitive situations involving multiple human stories needing intervention.

At Nagapattinam I had my first chance to design a community newspaper for children based on a participatory approach. This is something that also emerged from my quest as an educator. The children named their newspaper, “Min-Mini-Poochi” (meaning firefly in Tamil) and we designed and printed it in a small printing facility in the Nagapattinam port town. It was my first experiment with media for change.

However the tragedy permeating the town took a toll on me emotionally and I started to travel every weekend to Pondicherry about 4 hours away to associate with Sri Aurobindo Society’s model village development project called SARVAM. My next community newspaper project was with SARVAM’s seven villages in 2007. It was called “Gramam Pudiya Oodayam”, it’s registered with the registrar of Indian press and continues to publish even today.

You can read about my work on Gramam Pudiya Oodayam in the Wall Street Journal’s article: The Village Voices of Tamil Nadu

In my twenty’s I was extremely hungry for knowledge, experiences and had a burning desire to understand India. So I spent a decade travelling extensively around south India working as a journalist, communication and development project analyst with multiple NGOs and funding agencies. My journeys in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala those days were enlightening and extremely educative. I understood those regions of India first hand and developed a deeper understanding of its realities and contradictions, and an immense love for its spirit. I kept writing all this while for multiple media platforms like The Hindu, The New Sunday Express and the Deccan Herald.

It was during my second stint with Sri Aurobindo Society in 2011 while working on the design of a community radio statio for SARVAM that I started volunteering for the New York based The Epoch Times. This media gave me the freedom, the challenges and the training I needed in enterprising, global journalism.

My association with The Epoch Times today is over 13-year-old including two intense training periods in New York in 2014 and 2018. They provided me skills in narrative analysis and geopolitical journalism. During this time I also worked with an Asian team to set up NTD India from 2017-2018 in Bangalore. NTD is The Epoch Times’ sister media and NTD India was a bilingual website in Hindi and English. It was stirred those days by Facebook’s monitozation strategies.

NTD India was the leading Facebook channel in India in 2017 along with National Geography India but it had to be shut down due to some crisis and I headed to New York in August 2018 for a three-month rigrous training following which I worked with their web team in Manhattan and subsequently with their geopolitics desk in New York and Washington before urgently and abruptly returning to India to report on the India-China border crisis in Oct. 2020.

From 2020 until early 2025 I worked as a Senior Reporter with the Epoch Times at New Delhi travelling, reporting and writing on India, India-China and India-China in the global south. So when I was chosen as a MOFA Taiwan 2025 fellow there was no way I couldn’t bring my journalism along and that was the beginning of Indo-Pacific Politics, a Platform for Regional Discourse.

I was going to stop working for The Epoch Times and wanted my own platform where I could write and publish. It was purely self-done and self-thought and I started to work on its design while looking after my hospitalized mother in India, weeks before flying to Taiwan for the fellowship. It’s good to witness it unfolding.

So why am I writing this today? I’m writing my story and my journey to Indo-Pacific Politics to reinforce my aspirations and self-belief that stems from my love for journalism and media science. I’m innovation driven and solution-oriented and offcourse starting my own media website meant creating a social-capital driven platform. My fellowship project actually deals with building joint social capital between India and Taiwan for democracy and I believe my platform, Indo-Pacific Politics is my project in action.

It’ll live beyond the fellowship and it’ll certainly grow beyond me in a full-fledged media in the years to come. Meanwhile here’s a list of my important articles written in the last few years:

For Epoch Times

For Sunday Guardian

For Rising Kashmir (I write regularly for them on geopolitical issue pertaining Jammu and Kashmir)

My Series ‘From Kashmir to Haridwar for Bridge India, UK‘

Read my all other articles on Muck Rack

Recommended Articles:

On the Brink of a Multipolar World, India’s Grand Strategy Is Largely Defined by China, Analysts Say (3/1/2025)

China Called India’s Foreign Minister a ‘Problem’ as Part of Political Maneuvering Amid Border Tensions: Experts (10/15/2024)

Northern India’s Ancient Trade Routes Show Promise for Economic Resurgence (10/6/2024)

Narcotics and Narcoterrorism Add to India’s National Security Woes in Western Himalayas (11/04/2024)

The Trans-Karakoram Valley: Small Civilizational Corridor Is China’s Base to Larger Geopolitical Game, Analysts Say (7/27/2024)

China’s Grab for Mineral, Water Resources Along the Indian Frontier: Ladakh and Aksai Chin (6/11/2024)

2024 Polls in India: A Look at Electoral Democracy in the World’s Oldest City (6/2/2024)

With a Massive Youth Population Poised to Drive Growth, India Encourages Startups, Development in Northern Border Regions (3/36/2024)

IN-DEPTH: Pakistan–China Axis Behind Fresh Terror Attacks in India’s Kashmir Region: Expert (12/27/2024)

IN-DEPTH: India Faces a Narrative War Over Unrest in Violence-Torn Border State (7/31/2023)

China’s Tibet Policies Could Create Many ‘Environmental Refugees’ in Asia: Experts (6/29/2023)

Former CCP Leader Jiang Zemin’s Campaign of Repression Laid Groundwork for China’s Digital Dictatorship: Experts (12/3/2023)

Raids on Chinese-Linked Drug Operations Put Spotlight on China’s Ambitions in US Marijuana Market (8/18/2022)

Historical Roots of India-China Border Conflict Lie in Mao Zedong’s Conquest Designs in Xinjiang and Tibet: Historian (4/20/2022)

Taiwan’s Tougher China Stance Should Bolster Support From Other Nations: Experts (4/06/2025)

ANALYSIS: Another ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ as India, Taiwan Deepen Ties in Face of China Threat (7/25/2023)

China Is More Likely to Attack India Than Taiwan in Near Future: Author (7/6/2022)

India-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement Would Benefit Indo-Pacific Region: Taiwanese Official (2/10/2022)