Time To Speak Up

Being the publisher of a large magazine is a blessing as wellas a curse. You are in an enviable position to be a social change agent.However, you are supposed to treat all other media -- including good journalism-- as competition and treat them with suspicion.

Post the Tehelka sting, planned andexecuted at Tehelka's offices and later aired on Aaj Tak and HeadlinesToday as a joint operation, many media-watchers have asked me a very commonbut sinister question: "Why now? Don't you think it is motivated?"Every questioner was looking at an answer that wanted me to ignore the contentand focus on the motives behind the operation. And motives, we know, can alwaysbe insinuated, even imputed.

I have known Tarun and Aniruddha Bahal (now operating CobraPost,which has aired many exposes on many other channels), the founders of Tehelka,for long. As their publisher when they were at Outlook, I used to beboth excited and fearful of their exploits, but never saw any reason to doubttheir motives. At Outlook, we believe in following a story and puttingit in the public domain, without bothering about the after-effects. Even at thecost of sounding immodest, I implicitly assume that the people groomed at Outlookcontinue to follow the same philosophy. And, even if I hadn't ever known Tarunor Tehelka, I would still go with the contents of the sting and notlook at excuses to rubbish the operation.

And lastly, if they have tried to recover some of theircosts by selling it to any television channel, and that too a channel as big as AajTak, I don't have a problem. Tehelka is a commercial enterprisewhose survival depends as much on making their work viable as on crediblejournalism. And let's remember the power of television which is important inreaching a larger number of people.

However, the response that the sting has evoked from someamong us is both shameful and dangerous. And when it comes from leaders -- theso-called intellectuals and especially editors who are supposed to mould publicopinion -- it is despicable. I have read ChandanMitra and I am constrained to say that I am happy not to have ever known ormet him. I think I am freer than him because I can see, hear and processeverything that is said on camera not through the prism of my own magazine,organisation or people.

Mr Mitra wants you to investigate Godhraand the 1984riots before the current operation is taken at face value. Just because theinfamous Delhi schoolteacher sting was a contrived operation, he would have yourubbish this sting as well. He wants you to justify the timing of the operationbefore the contents are accepted at face value.

It just doesn't end there. Elected representatives andpublic officials seem to be excused on the grounds of being 'braggarts' (and no,I will not say anything about his research at Oxford University) -- 'small-time,small town politicians who are known to exaggerate their importance given half achance'. He seems more bothered about the money that Aaj Tak paid Tehelkaand the money made by mobile phone operators than the contents of the stingoperation.

Have we as a country fallen to such a state that murders,rapes, wrenching the foetus out of a pregnant woman, hacking a person bit by bitand then burning him alive have all become part of 'bragging'? If this is thecountry that Mr Mitra thinks he represents as a parliamentarian, then ourleaders have failed us in creating a civil society and on that charge alone,they must be driven away.

Have we fallen to such a state that every political partyin this country -- the stung included -- would benefit out of a systematicdehumanising of our collective conscience? Can't we as a country prevent peoplefrom benefiting out of mass rapes and murders? Do we need to see even the mostdespicable things that happen around us through a prism of caste, creed,religion, political parties, competition, business, sex, region, and so on?

The political compulsions are such that the stung partythat should be ashamed seems smug and even jubilant whereas the oppositionCongress, that should have been creating a hue and cry, looks visibly shaken andmost unhappy. A day after the contents were aired, we had a union ministerbelonging to the Congress claiming it to be a Bharatiya Janata Party operationto 'encash the sentiments of the people through an overexposed Godhra episode'.

Both the BJP and the Congress are spreading the word aboutthe sting operation having been done at the other party's behest. No one wantsto take the issue further; it is vote bank politics at the worst. Even astatesman that our prime minister is supposed to be has not uttered a singleword condemning the contents of the expose.

Under the Press and Registration of Books Act (whichregulates the publishing industry in India), as a publisher you areresponsible for everything that is printed in your publication. At the sametime, following the basic tenets of editorial freedom, I get to know about allthe stories published in Outlook along with millions of our readers.And no matter what the laws say, that is how it ought to be and I am proud to beworking in such an environment.

Being a publisher with tens of cases filed by Raja Bhayyasand Narendra Modis, I have become immune to cases filed by certain kinds ofpeople, especially politicians. So perhaps I should not be too concerned bytheir reactions to the Tehelka expose. But when I see people becomingimmune to tragedy, death and human suffering, I think it is time for the averageIndian to speak out.