The Marathi wing of the leftist propaganda website ‘The Wire’ closed six months ago. Interestingly, this death of the self-proclaimed free, fair, and fearless journalism went unnoticed for half a year. Today Marathi journalist Nikhil Wagle mentioned the closure of Mrathi Wire 6 months in a now-deleted tweet. In this tweet, Walgle called out Siddharth Varadrajan – the founder of ‘The Wire’ – for not paying compensation to the Marathi journalists who worked in the Marathi wing of ‘The Wire’.
Nikhil Wagle tweeted on 20th April 2023, “Marathi The Wire closed down six months ago because of financial problems. Sujay Shastri and Nitin Brahme, two talented journalists, were jobless. They were not even paid due compensation. Not expected from Siddharth Varadarajan.”
However, Nikhil Wagle deleted this tweet after some time. He added another tweet on his timeline as an explanation for deleting this tweet. In this explanatory tweet, Nikhil Wagle wrote, “I have been requested to delete the tweet about Marathi The Wire. In good faith, I am deleting it. But facts remain the same. The Wire has treated its Marathi edition with contempt. Regional publications are always treated like this.”
Interestingly, one Marathi Twitter user Amol Kale replied to Nikhil Wagle and wrote, “Speak in Marathi, don’t flaunt English.” After some time, Nikhil Wagle deleted this explanatory tweet too.
The Marathi version of ‘The Wire’ started in 2017 with the intent to harness the benefits of the fertile land of progressive Maharashtra where the so-called renaissance took place. With parties like the Nationalist Congress Party and Indian National Congress normalising the use of three magical words ‘Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar’ to unnecessarily bash upper caste Hindus in the state under the garb of preaching progressive thoughts, The Wire found this state best suited for pushing their agenda of utilizing faultlines in the Hindu community. The attempt, however, miserably failed.
The prime reason behind the failure is that the so-called progressive movement in Maharashtra has aligned itself with the direction taken by Sharad Pawar. For all practical purposes, progressive thought in Maharashtra translates into a quasi-Bahujanism that surprisingly puts Maratha – a Kshatriya upper caste – at the core of its beneficiaries and decision-makers. Therefore, liberal Marathi readers often prefer portals like Bol Bhidu, Saheb, etc. and portals of noted Marathi newspapers like Loksatta, Maharashtra Times, and Divya Marathi.
In non-conventional digital news media like YouTube channels, veteran Marathi journalist Bhau Torsekar is breaking a new record in viewership and subscriptions every other fortnight. Another YouTube channel ‘The Analyser’ run by Sushil Kulkarni and Shrikant Umrikar has also received a huge response in the Marathi state.
The Wire Marathi hardly succeeded in its purpose as people in Maharashtra outright rejected the leftist shades of liberal thoughts and embraced Hindutva long back in 2014. The Wire Marathi, therefore, could not get much traction in its five years of operation. Portals like BBC Marathi were enough to cater to elite leftist Marathi readers. The anti-Modi sentiment in Maharashtra’s liberal leftists is also pleased by occasional long marches by farmers’ organizations. The leftist movement in Maharashtra, in fact, did not pay attention to The Wire Marathi. The financial crisis quoted by Nikhil Wagle also implies towards lack of readership and acceptance low enough to cause a survival threat in absence of revenues generated by web traffic.
OpIndia also mailed Siddharth Varadarajan to know more about the truth in the allegation about non-payment of dues to the journalists after the Marathi outfit of ‘The Wire’ was shut down allegedly due to a financial crisis. Siddharth Varadarajan did not reply to the mail. It is notable that many liberal Marathi people might not be aware of The Wire Marathi shutting down. Also, there are many others who did not know that it even existed. With the people of Maharashtra supporting the Hindutva ideology on a large scale, it is obvious that ‘The Wire Marathi’ died an unnoticed death.
Update: The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan has since responded to OpIndia’s email denying the allegations. His email is reproduced verbatim for fairness here:
“There is no grain of truth in the allegation that The wire marathi’s employees were not paid their dues. You need to retract your story which I just read, after which I saw this email.”
