At the recent AI summit in New Delhi, the atmosphere carried a sense of technological triumph. Giant screens flashed live demonstrations of generative tools. Speakers spoke of speed, scale, disruption and the future of content creation. The hall was full, the press attentive, and the message unmistakable — creativity had entered the age of automation.
At that very moment, far away in Aizawl, a group of media students quietly switched off their phones and shut their laptops. For the next three days, they would not touch a single digital device. Instead, they worked only with paper and pencil — brainstorming, observing, discussing and drawing. Their task was to create journalism, not through prompts but through presence.
They were not alone. Similar scenes were unfolding in Kottayam, in Jammu, and even in Delhi itself. While one world accelerated toward machine-generated expression, another was deliberately slowing down to rediscover human expression.
This contrast reveals something deeper than nostalgia. It signals a shift in how we understand thinking itself. Over the past two decades, political lampooning has steadily declined in mainstream newspapers and magazines in India.
Full-time cartoonists have become rare. What was once a powerful democratic tool — a sharp cartoon capable of questioning authority in a single frame — has gradually vanished or softened into safe illustration. There was a time when political cartoons occupied the pride of place. One recalls the famous cartoon by Keshav Shankar Pillai, popularly known as Shankar, where Jawaharlal Nehru is shown prodding a snail representing the Constitution, with B.R. Ambedkar seated atop it. At the time, it was accepted as democratic satire. Decades later, when the same cartoon was reproduced in an NCERT textbook, it triggered uproar.
What changed? The cartoon did not. Somewhere along the way, newspapers reduced their appetite for satire. Whether out of caution, commercial pressure, or fear of backlash, sharp commentary slowly gave way to decorative visuals. Cartoonists were replaced by illustrators. By no means does this devalue illustration — illustrators contribute significantly to visual storytelling.
But what a cartoonist does is different. A political cartoon interrogates. It punches. It provokes. It distils a complex situation into a single frame that makes the reader pause and think, Yes, exactly! And now, even illustrators are being replaced.
Flip through any major daily published from the national capital, and you increasingly encounter AI-generated images accompanying opinion pieces and features. The shift is subtle yet telling. A human artist interpreting the mood of a story is replaced by an algorithm capable of producing polished visuals in seconds.
For publications, speed improves, and costs drop. But with AI imagery, something intangible disappears — instinct, lived experience, and moral courage embedded in a hand-drawn line.
Ironically, while local cartooning declines, one thing remains untouched: the quarter-page dedicated to American syndicated comic strips — from Hägar the Horrible and Peanuts to Calvin and Hobbes. For decades, American syndicates dominated the Indian market by offering high-volume, low-cost content. Because these strips were already profitable in the United States, they could be sold cheaply to Indian newspapers, creating a structural barrier for indigenous creators.
We constantly hear that attention spans are shrinking. Young people, we are told, want only short content. History suggests otherwise. In the 1990s, Bollywood insisted that audiences demanded sensationalism. Then came simple love stories like Maine Pyar Kiya and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak — and they became massive hits. The audience had not demanded vulgarity; the industry had assumed it. Two decades ago, we believed children no longer read books. Then Harry Potter arrived, and children eagerly waited for 600-page volumes.
Veteran journalist P. Sainath once responded to the claim that readers would not care about rural reporting by asking: “When did you last meet your readers to make that claim on their behalf?” The problem was never attention. It was assumption.
Today, the pace has intensified. After reels and shorts comes AI — content produced at the speed of typing a prompt. Text, images and video can now be generated faster than they can be meaningfully understood. Creation begins to outrun reflection. While countries such as Australia debate restricting social media access for children in order to protect attention and development, we are preparing to introduce artificial intelligence to students as early as Class III. The direction is revealing — instead of asking how young minds learn to think, we are teaching them how to consume. A generation risks becoming fluent in tools without acquiring knowledge.
Shraddha Sarki’s comics developed in Aizawl While You Scroll… captures this condition with unsettling clarity. Her protagonist ignores a real neighbourhood civic issue — a burst pipeline — because a reel says otherwise: “10K likes = it’s a fact.” Around him float memes, trends and viral distractions, embodied as a grinning “brain-rot monster” that feeds on endless scrolling.
In the final frame, the creature’s purpose becomes clear: keep the youth occupied while history quietly disappears from their syllabus. The satire is not merely about phones; it is about attention being deliberately redirected away from reality.
Recently, nearly a hundred media students, under the New Media Communication programme at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, are learning journalism without screens; classes run from 9 to 5pm. They observe surroundings, talk to people, verify experiences and translate complex realities into four-frame wall-poster comics.
The comics are photocopied and pasted in public spaces to initiate discussion.
The issues they chose reveal why this matters. Arya Choudhary created AI Friend, exploring emotional dependence on artificial intelligence after news of teenage suicides in Ghaziabad. Instead of sensationalising tragedy, she examined isolation when virtual companionship replaces human connection. “Comics speak to every age group and address real issues honestly,” she reflected.
In Jammu, Avni Jain’s Blind by Choice showed a dried riverbed turning into real-estate opportunity — until floods return. Annapurna explored poaching and extinction. Ankit Patel examined cross-border drug trafficking ignored by mainstream media. Isha Kumari’s Kya Mumbai Kya US… exposed hypocrisy in attitudes toward migrants. Khushi Jaiswal’s Maanga Kya – Mila Kya? questioned development promised to flood victims but replaced by tourism projects.
Together, these works reveal something striking: while mainstream media moves toward automation and speed, young journalists are rediscovering depth, ownership, and accountability. The most powerful lesson they articulated is this—they own the medium. It is created by their own hands. It requires no algorithm, no expensive software, no digital dependency. It allows them to choose their audience, initiate dialogue, and address issues that may otherwise remain ignored.
In an age obsessed with immediacy, slowing down becomes an act of resistance. While machines learn to draw faster, these young journalists are learning to see better. And perhaps the future of meaningful storytelling will not belong to those who generate the most content—but to those who dare to observe, reflect, and create with intention. Time to go grassroots.
The writer is the initiator of the Grassroots Comics movement.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
