Shubhranshu Choudhary

Shubhranshu Choudhary is a journalist and co-founder of CGNet Swara, the world’s first community radio on mobile phone. He left his work covering wars in South Asia as a BBC South Asia producer in 2004 to work on the democratization of media in the forests of Central Tribal India, where he grew up. Through his discourse with people he came to believe that the current mainstream media does not give equal access to all voices: the current feudal model of mass communication creates wars rather than solving problems. Since then, Choudhary has been working on creating a working model for democratic media. He realized that more than Facebook, India needs a “VoiceBook” because a vast majority of the country lives on the wrong side of the digital divide. Choudhary won a Google Digital Activism award in 2014 and was also named one of 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2014 by Foreign Policy magazine. He was chosen a Young Business Leader by Boston Global Forum in 2015. He recently developed Radio Bultoo, which current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for expansion all over the country. Currently, Choudhary is trying to set up an Institute for Rural Journalism Entrepreneurship in a remote tribal village in Central India, where he does farming with students to create a self-sustainable school for self-sustainable rural community media entrepreneurs. In the long run, he hopes a critical mass of such media entrepreneurs can create a parallel bottom-up, independent and democratic media. The last few centuries saw the democratization of politics; now, he says, is the time for democratization of communication. The developing world cannot remain behind.