Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

206 Pages·2014·1.47 MB·English

by  Vinod Mehta

Vinod Mehta

EDITOR UNPLUGGED
Media, Magnates, Netas & Me
Contents
Praise
Dedication
1. Walking into the Sunset
2. TV and I
3. Niira Radia and the Art of Lobbying
4. The Ratan Tata Problem
5. Corporates and the Media
6. Drinking in the Last Chance Saloon
7. What I Would Do Differently
8. Six People I Admire
9. Do Indians Lack a Sense of Humour?
10. Davos Man versus Jholawala
11. Arvind Kejriwal: From Hero to Nearly Zero?
12. The Dynasty
13. Understanding Narendra Modi
14. Last Word
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
Praise for Lucknow Boy
‘Vinod Mehta’s generous vision and keen curiosity effortlessly turn personal
history into social and cultural history. One of those books that ought to be
savoured rather than quickly swallowed. A wonderful memoir’—Pankaj Mishra
‘I very much enjoyed reading Lucknow Boy, and in particular the parts on
London and Lucknow—so evocative’—Patrick French
‘Vinod Mehta is an engaging raconteur, full of a fund of well-told remembrances
recounted with bounding good humour . . . never tarrying at a single story too
long, flitting along from one memorable tale to another, evoking in a minimum
of words a maximum of ethos, telling it as it was with little or nothing held
back’—Mani Shankar Aiyar, Tehelka
‘His autobiography is more readable than that of any other Indian, largely
because Indians tend to praise themselves and thus become unreadable, while
Vinod, despite his many achievements in Indian journalism, remains modest and
mocks himself’—Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times
‘One of the reasons I so enjoyed reading this book was [Mehta’s] willingness to
mock himself’—Mark Tully, Deccan Chronicle
‘In his charming memoir . . . Vinod Mehta writes of the leisurely pace of life in
his home town . . . Mehta believes that [his] “secularism was deeply personal”,
[it] was learned through life, not academic instruction . . . His experience
resonates with mine’—Ramachandra Guha, Telegraph
For Sumita and Editor
Sar zamin-e-hind par aqwaam-e-aalam ke firaaq Kaafile baste gaye, Hindustan
bantaa gayaa
(On the sacred land of Hind, caravans of the world, Firaq Went on settling and
Hindustan went on finding its form)
—Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq’ Gorakhpuri

1
Walking into the Sunset
I
n February 2012, I completed seventeen years as editor-in-chief of Outlook.
When acquainted with this startling statistic no one was more surprised than me.
How could a person with a well-deserved notoriety for being a rolling stone stay
put at one place for what seemed like an eternity? From 1988, when I joined the
Indian Post in Bombay, to 1995 when I arrived at Outlook, via the Independent,
my employment longevity went from eighteen months to five months to eighteen
months again. In 2012, my reputation as a card-carrying troublemaker, unable to
get on with proprietors, seemed to have been demolished.
While my enemies were disappointed and friends relieved, I was just grateful
for the extended shelf life.
After an inglorious exit from the Pioneer in 1993, I actively prepared for early
retirement. A life of freelancing and book-writing appeared to be my sole
options. Or so I thought. I began asking around how much columnists earned
and how much rookie authors could expect to make. The answers were not
reassuring. Still, penury did not stare me in the face. Regardless, I became
resigned to an existence of simple living and, if possible, high thinking.
Besides, I had no great opinion of my writing skills. When I first became an
editor in 1974, I saw myself as an editor first and an editor last. The idea that I
could position myself as an editor–writer did not strike me. Being a successful
editor seemed a daunting enough challenge. Most of the writing I did—columns,
book reviews, leaders, essays—were invariably meant for the publication I
edited. And most of them were written at short notice to make up for
emergencies—the edit-page writer who went AWOL; the lady critic who
discovered on coming home that her husband had run away with the neighbour’s
wife; the sports reporter who got disgracefully drunk the night before and was
therefore in no condition to deliver . . . My emergency prose filled up holes in
the paper. In short, I was a gap-writer.
Another difficulty: my job on a daily basis, as you would expect, necessitated
making quick and final decisions on other people’s manuscripts. Curiously, I
was an extremely poor judge of my own writing. I needed a second or third
opinion. When I was told by friends or colleagues, whose opinion I had sought,
that I had produced bullshit or a masterpiece or something in between, I took
their judgement as the final word. In the office I could ask colleagues for an
honest opinion, in my study at Nizamuddin whom would I approach? Thus, even
the prospect of full-time freelancing appeared loaded with uncertainties.
Nevertheless, after seventeen years of life in a single office, I needed to look
beyond editing 24x7. But what? My wife and other well-wishers suggested that
while I could keep one foot in the writing boat, my other foot could look for
fresh pursuits. A medley of possible diversions was thrown my way. Do you like
golf or gardening? No. Do you like listening to music? Not much. Do you play
any instrument, or would you like to learn how to play an instrument? No. Do
you like fishing or trekking? No. Do you like NGO work—like distributing
condoms to prostitutes? No. The truth is that after forty years of irregular
employment, the only job I could do was launching, editing and running print
publications. I was useless at anything else. And it seemed too late in the day for
me to cultivate a passion for broccoli farming or contract bridge.
Be that as it may, having arrived at the Biblical terminus of threescore and ten,
I was desperately looking for another timepass. The warning delivered by
Malcolm Muggeridge rang in my ears, ‘Few men of action have been able to
make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.’ This was reinforced by the Enoch
Powell edict: ‘All political careers, unless they are cut off midstream . . . end in
failure.’ I knew that a graceful exit, however desirable, might be a bridge too far
for me. Moreover, I carried the burden of previous ungraceful exits.
In the British Conservative Party they have the ‘men in grey suits’ who knock
on the door of the sticking leader, hand over a bottle of whisky and a revolver,
all of which conveys a blunt message: time is up, chum. In our political culture
there is a need to create an equivalent body to the men in grey suits—perhaps
men in black kurtas and black pyjamas. Across the spectrum, our political parties
could use an institutional arrangement which bluntly communicates the exit
message for those who don’t take subtle or unsubtle hints. I am not going to
name names.
Like politicians, or men of action, as Muggeridge calls them, editors too have
a tendency to stick to their chairs, refusing to take hints suggesting they have
outlived their sell-by date. Some of them have had to be removed literally
kicking and screaming. Samir Jain, the owner of the Times of India Group,
needed to organize a deft operation to get his flagship’s editor, Girilal Jain, to
vacate the chair. Giri, meanwhile, if he had to go, had a Plan B which envisaged
putting his favourite Fatma Zakaria on the gaddi. The coup d’état was mounted
by Samir Jain in 1988 while Giri was out of the country: the print line on the
paper was changed just as the Times of India went to press. Then there were the
murky goings-on at the Statesman in the late ’60s during which C.R. Irani