FIFTY YEARS AGO, INDIA’S FREE PRESS WAS indeed the fourth estate of the Republic. Powerful editors such as Frank Moraes, Sham Lal, Girilal Jain, Khushwant Singh and C.R. Irani strode the national stage. However in 1975, when prime minister Indira Gandhi declared India’s first — and thus far only — State of Emergency and imposed strict media censorship, the country’s biggest newspaper barons and mightiest editors “crawled when they were merely asked to bend” in the memorable post-Emergency comment of BJP leader L.K. Advani.
In 1994, Times of India Group chairman Sameer Jain sacked the late Dileep Padgaonkar, editor of ToI, for claiming that his was the “second most important job” in India. Moreover in a thorough spring cleaning, Jain upended the traditional hierarchy of ToI by decreeing supremacy of marketing over editorial.
With market leader ToI having become entirely marketing driven, the media has lost interest in human rights, especially in reporting the multiplying trials and tribulations of unglamorous citizens. For instance the open, uninterrupted and continuous exploitation of Indian citizens imported into Qatar to build stadiums and infrastructure for the FIFA World Cup 2022 tournament that kicked off last month, has received scant coverage. An estimated 6,500 migrant labour imported mainly from India who started work some 12 years ago on the first football World Cup tourney ever staged in the Middle East (estimated expenditure $220 billion/Rs.180.62 lakh crore), were working and living in inhuman conditions.
While media worldwide have reported complaints of wage-theft, lack of medical care, pathetic living conditions, non-payment of life insurance to nominees, India’s marketing-driven godi media spotlights the prime minister’s temple visits and page 3 celebrities, blanking out these outrages. Why our fellow citizens are obliged to scramble for slave labour jobs in hostile geographies and who’s to blame, is another narrative. Meanwhile for the media it’s business and more business while once mighty editors play second fiddle.
