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print versionThe 1980s witnessed an epic battle between two corporate emperors — Dhirubhai Ambani and Nusli Wadia — with doyens of the then dominant print media taking sides publicly. One can only speculate on what was in it for the eminent editors embroiled in the fray
There are tapes and tapes and tapes. The coiled records of thousands of conversations in which many famous Indians are tangled so hopelessly today, fall in a special category.
To many of the old-timers in the Indian media, the Watergate tapes of the early 1970s were the first in an ever-unwinding series. In that remote age of relative innocence, as shocking as the details of a US President’s political plotting of a petty kind were the dreadful profanities emanating from him every now and then in the process. We reacted then in two different ways.
All of us, of course, were amazed at the hypocrisy of the highest and mightiest of the part of the world deemed to be democratic. Some of us indulged in self-righteous condemnations of the ways of the West. The cynics among us, however, wondered, secretly at least, whether India and its democracy could not do with some similar tape-aided treatment.
We had to wait for decades. Tehelka, then a news website, gave India its first of such politically explosive tapes in 2001. To the outrage of all endangered political species, it introduced sting operations as an instrument of journalistic investigation. Titled ‘Operation Westend’, the taped exposé of corrupt practices in India’s defence purchases claimed its first victim in Bangaru Laxman, then president of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The operation also caught others, including close associates of then defence minister George Fernandes, in ethically compromising positions. More exposures followed, with the best entertainment perhaps being provided in 2003 by the BJP’s Dilip Singh Judeo, environment minister in the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, getting sozzled and selling mining rights in his home state of Chhattisgarh to a fictitious Australian firm.
Four years later, Tehelka (now a magazine) came out with tapes that again targeted the BJP. Titled ‘The Truth: Gujarat 2002’, these showed the pogrom of that year as the result of political complicity and, particularly, the role of notorious Chief Minister Narendra Modi (who has received a fresh clean chit a few days ago from former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani).
The Watergate tapes sent President Richard Nixon packing out of the White House. The Tehelka counterparts led to less dramatic consequences. The lightweight Laxman lost his job. Fernandes, however, resigned only to be reinstated soon. Judeo quit his post, only to stage a comeback as a BJP leader in Chhattisgarh as a crusader against ‘Christian missionaries’.
We do not know what the revelations of the Radia tapes, rocking the country for weeks now, will result in. It is clear, however, that they have raised wider issues than the preceding tapes recording only politicians’ words and misdeeds.
The tapes, as is well known by now, consist of conversations between Niira Radia, a powerful lobbyist for leading corporates (headed by Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani), and many celebrities, notably including media stars of a supposedly national stature. The tapes have acquired a special topicality because the main subject of the conversations is Andimuthu Raja, till recently the telecom minister and now the target of corruption charges allegedly involving even more astronomical amounts than investigative telescopes could ever espy.
The tapes are largely about the lobbyist’s efforts to ensure Raja of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a southern regional party adding crucial strength to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition, a berth in the cabinet to be formed after the general election in 2009. The efforts were being made despite Singh’s known bad experience with Raja in the previous government, and his suspected role in the ‘2G spectrum scam’ over alleged loss of huge amounts to the exchequer caused by underselling of frequency allocation licences to telecom companies. The efforts were being mounted especially in view of the 3G spectrum allocations in the offing.
To a lesser extent, the tapes are also about the feud in the Ambani family, with the lobbyist mobilising the media for elder brother Mukesh against the younger Anil.
Competing politicians, of course, figure in the conversations. But that is no news and is not what has made these tapes unique. The brand new feature consists in the way corporate battles are fought over the telephone lines, and even more in the manner in which the lobbyist communicates politely worded commands to leading media lights. An anchor and a columnist are heard promising to play power brokers, with the latter also offering to script the lines for a media ‘interview’ of Mukesh.
Come to think of it, there is, really, nothing new about corporates trying to influence either the formation or the functioning of governments — and with the connivance of the media and media-persons. The 1980s witnessed an epic battle between two corporate emperors — Dhirubhai Ambani and Nusli Wadia — with doyens of the then dominant print media taking sides publicly. This columnist knows of humble reporters, fortunate enough to get the beat of this big fight, switching overnight from Charminar, a bidi-like cigarette, to State Express 555 — comparable to a shift from country liquor to the choicest Scotch. One can only speculate on what was in it for the eminent editors embroiled in the fray, one of whom has jut turned against his own BJP on the 2G scam.
We can only speculate because those were pre-television and pre-tape days in mass media terms. Those days are gone forever, and a profession that claims to crusade for democracy cannot complain.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint
