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About Rajiv

Former political editor of the Times of India, as representative of the paper in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital, Rajiv Shah has covered the state government between late 1997 and early 2013. In formal journalism since 1979, he believes in what George Orwell said, "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." 
Before Rajiv joined TOI in 1993, he was in Moscow, covering Mikhail Gorbachev's rise and fall between 1986 and 1993 for Delhi's semi-Left daily Patriot and Link newsweekly. 
Though ideologies have fascinated Rajiv, he feels, in the changed scenario, they are losing ground. And when someone asks him, what is replacing ideologies, he just has one answer: "I am a newsperson, How do I know?"
On being appointed as political editor, apart from doing routine news stories from Gandhinagar, he began writing blogs for the Times of India's online blogging  site in 2011. His column, which he continued till 2017, was called True Lies, where his TOI blogs can be still be accessed. They have been also been preserved here.
Some of the clippings during Rajiv's Link and Patriot days (1979-93) can be accessed here.
Many of his byline stories published in the TOI between 2001 and 2013, when he covered the Gujarat government under Narendra Modi as chief minister, can be accessed here and here. Post-2013, Rajiv has been editing Counterview.net, where he also writes blogs and news stories (click here to read).
The write-ups in this news blog are a modest attempt to bring forth impressions of the life around and efforts of the establishment to influence it.
Contact Rajiv here:  counterview.in@gmail.com

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