Nepal is the most open society in South Asia today

A media house that does its job fearlessly, independently, and responsibly will win the public's trust.

Siddharth Varadarajan is the founding editor of The Wire, a New Delhi-based online news portal. Besides lawsuits worth millions of dollars, Varadarajan and his colleagues have faced the wrath of the Indian government, corporates and right-wing forces for reporting on the corporate-political nexus, communalism and democratic backsliding in India. In a recent conversation with the Post’s Dinesh Kafle and Suresh Raj Neupane , Varadarajan spoke about the challenges of running a public-spirited independent media house in an increasingly hostile political environment. Excerpts: