Arrest Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi: Former Tehelka Editor

In a frank and straightforward interview senior journalist and former executive editor of Tehelka weekly, Ajit Sahi demanded immediate arrest of senior journalists Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi for undermining the constitution by their alleged lobbying for A Raja as the Telecom Minister when Union Cabinet was being formed in 2009.Excerpts from the interview are presented below:

Nira Radia tapes controversy stands for the telephonic conversations between Nira Radia, a professional lobbyist and an acquaintance of recently removed Indian telecom minister A. Raja, and senior journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt which were taped by the Indian Income Tax Department in 2008-09. Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi were heard on the tapes acceding to requests from the lobbyist to fix stories and run scripted interviews with politicians.

Ajit Sahi

The tapes led to accusations of misconduct by many of these people. Nira Radia runs a public relations firm named Vaishnavi Communications, whose clients include Ratan Tata’s Tata Group and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries.

What is your view on the issue of Nira Radia tapes?

It is quite clear from the whole Nira Radia episode that Nira Radia, Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi were together trying to make sure that Dayanidhi Maran doesn’t get the telecom ministry. Instead, the focus of their efforts was to make A Raja the Telecom Minister. It’s also very clear now that these things were being done at the behest of Ratan Tata whose company would have been the direct beneficiary from A Raja’s appointment as the Telecom Minister.

The Constitution of India says that it’s the Prime Minister of India’s prerogative to appoint or form the Council of Ministers. Even at the smaller level if any businessman tries to influence the working of a District Magistrate then it would be considered an obstruction in the due process of law and thereby a crime.

Likewise it becomes a criminal act under the Indian Penal Code when the biggest industrialist of this country like Ratan Tata tries to influence not a small affair but the very process of Cabinet formation with the help of the most influential journalists like Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi.

It’s high time that FIR should be registered against Ratan Tata, Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt and they should be arrested for obstructing and influencing the process of Cabinet formation which is a Constitutional process.

Prima facie there is ample evidence to suggest that these people were trying to influence the process of Cabinet formation, and thereby committing a criminal act. However, whether these people are guilty or not should be decided by the Court of the law and not the media.

It has also become clear now that Ratan Tata had business interests behind these maneuverings.

What is your reaction to Barkha Dutt’s answer that “a journalist talks to many people while doing a story”?

Then my direct question to Barkha Dutt would be, “After talking to Nira Radia, did she air the news item showing that Ratan Tata was trying to make A. Raja the Telecom Minister?

What is your view about journalists like Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanhgvi?

Barkha Dutt and Vir Sahngvi are not journalists. They are brokers. I have been saying this since last 20 years that Rajiv Shukla is a fraud. Had he not been a broker, he would not have been in the Congress party.

People are saying about Barkha that after reaching such a height in her career she has turned broker but I am saying that they have reached that height by becoming a broker and not the other way around.

Media calls itself Fourth pillar of democracy and shows interest in the corruption prevalent in the rest three pillars, Executive, Legislature and Judiciary but never talks about the corruption which is existent in the media. What is your view about it?

See my whole point is that when the three pillars of democracy are corrupt then you have to understand that the fourth pillar comes from the same democracy.

Suppose in my family my father is a Judge; my brother is a political leader, my third brother is in government and the fourth one has become a journalist. So how can the fourth brother be corruption free particularly when the other three have been corrupt since last 60 years? This can’t happen that the fourth brother has come from another land. He too is very much a product of the same corrupt society.

The extent of corruption has to be understood in the context. Media or journalism (it would be wrong to use word ‘journalism’ here because there is no journalism left today) has become very powerful. Media is in the hands of the corporate which manipulate and controls it.

Should media be brought under the preview of the Right to Information Act?

Absolutely. Media must be brought under the preview of the RTI because it’s a public figure. It questions, criticizes and scrutinizes the action of everybody except its own.

There is a phrase that “Men in public don’t have private faces.” Likewise media is a public figure. So people like Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi, Rajdeep Sardesai, Aroon Poorie, Vinod Mehta and every editor in the media today are public figure; none of them have the right to run their private business. In any case they should disclose their earnings, property and assets.

What is your view about editors of present day?

You tell me the name of any editor who can talk on national affairs for half an hour. Nobody is there. No editor of any newspaper can do this, let alone the editors of news channels. You ask any editor to write an editorial on Lalu Yadav, encapsulating his political career from 1970 to 2010. They can’t write.

Now when businessmen have started controlling media they have hired people as per their own convenience. Whatever rights editors had in the Working Journalists Act had been eliminated.

TN Ninan of Times of India Group is writing big essays against Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi these days but this is the same TN Ninan who played key role in killing the Act.

What will you say about the job insecurity that a journalist faces all the time?

Don’t say that people are being thrown out from media. As I have mentioned earlier, there used to be a law called Working Journalists Act. Even now you can read about it on Google. According to this Act nobody, let alone the media owners, can ask you to leave the job without issuing a show cause notice. The notice would be followed by an enquiry committee which would investigate the allegations against
the employee in question.

What were your experiences about this Act?

I got my first job as a Trainee Sub-Editor in the Indian Express in 1986 under the Working Journalists Act itself. After two years when my job was confirmed, then in 1989 around 700 people went on a strike in which I played an important role. We won our case in the Supreme Court but the Indian Express management couldn’t throw me out from the newspaper.

In contrast to those days when the Act was operational, today, leave the idea of strike or union, if you say something against the management to the person close to the editor then within half an hour you will find yourself on the road without the job.

Why did you leave TV9?

This thing has become old now. I left TV9 for personal reasons but the kind of work we did for three months in TV9 was historic. All the programmes went on air — Police-Chor Mousere Bhai, Builder-420, Ravans of BMC, Soldiers of Truth, Pardafash and others.

We showed the world what is Journalism. We also showed the world how to make a news channel accountable to the world without going outside the system.

What is your view about mushrooming growth of journalism schools? Students spend lakhs on getting a journalism degree but they don’t get jobs after completing their courses. Why doesn’t the media cover it when hundreds of journalists are asked to leave by their employers but when 50-60 airhostesses are thrown out by an airline company, it becomes a headline?

You are right. These days there has been a huge mushrooming of journalism schools (read shops). People spend lakhs of rupees to become a journalist but the problem is that nowhere there is any sense of social commitment in the career aspirations of these students. You talk to them and ask what is right and what is wrong. You will realize they don’t know about it. Media is just a career for them. They don’t care what is going on air and what wrong and manipulative information is getting published in newspaper. So when journalists are being thrown out you should understand that they are not journalists. Frankly telling, there is no journalism left today.