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 Biography |
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| Intellectual and social values that shape my work in journalism |
I chose journalism as my profession at a time when it was not associated with fame and glamour as it is in today's India. Young people are joining this profession today to fulfill their ambition to be with the rich and the famous or the so-called celebrities and glitterati of the society, and be identified with them one day. For me, journalism was a natural extension of my hobby of writing that I had cultivated from my school days. 75%
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Among the older generation of Indians, journalism is seen as a mission of life, as a tool of social reform and political freedom. |
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This has its root in India's freedom struggle in the first half of the 20 th century. Almost every big leader of the freedom struggle was also a journalist – Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak, Lajpat Rai and so on. They either owned their own newspapers and journals or worked for others as journalist. That time, the goal was attaining freedom from the British Raj and newspapers and magazines were seen as tool to achieve that goal. Therefore, this profession was treated as a mission and journalists as missionaries. The trend continued for some decades after India became independent also. |
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As India progressed as a democratic nation and got recognition as an emerging leader in science and technology in the decades of 1970s and 1980s, a perceptible change was seen in the larger role of media. Newspapers were no more considered a mission, nor a journalist was seen as a missionary. Media became an important part of the democratic set up and it was perceived to be playing its role in fulfilling the national goal - all-round development of Indian people and meeting the challenge of eradicating poverty. |
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So, when I started dabbling in journalism in early 1980s, I knew that I am not joining the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, nor was I becoming a missionary. At the same time, I fully realized that it was not like any other profession. There was a sense of great responsibility, a feeling of doing something positive for the society at large and an ambition of touching the lives of people in some way. Also underlying somewhere was a sense of rebellion against the establishment and things that were going wrong in the society and the country.
Mid-seventies, June 1975 to be precise, was a watershed year in India's democratic history. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency and imposed total press censorship. This was also the first time, I was exposed to news media in a big way. It was during the emergency period (1975 to 1977) that I saw for the first time a newsroom and an agency ticker. It was also a turning point for the Indian press. When the press censorship was lifted after the end of emergency and the rule of Indira Gandhi, the Indian press realized the importance of freedom. This new-found freedom led to resurgence of Indian press, and a magazine boom started. Suddenly there was buzz about journalism all over. All this had a deep impact on me and somewhere down the line, I decided to become a journalist. |
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| I have always been guided by values like freedom, fairness, equity, social justice and simple living, in addition to journalistic values like being accurate, factual and unbiased. Inculcation of all these values had much to do with my family and social background, as well as national events like the Emergency and its fallout. Though my father has never been a politician, he has had socialist leanings and was close to socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia for a long time. It was but natural for the entire family to be influenced in someway by Lohia's thinking and philosophy. I had access to almost entire collection of books written by Lohia on a plethora of subjects. After Lohia, I was influenced by thoughts of another leader Jayaprakash Narain, who led the political battle against Indira Gandhi in the Emergency era. In journalism, I was particularly stuck by simplicity and hard work of the editor of a local weekly for which I used to write “Letters to Editor” as a student. |
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It is my firm conviction that media has the power to influence the society in many ways, and that this power should be used in a positive way. I have been greatly pained at the general state of the Indian press, particularly English language, metro press, in the past few years. The policy of economic liberalization pursued by the Indian government since early 1990s has driven mainstream media to become a tool in the hands of the market. The so-called market forces decide what is going to be the news. The traditional news values are getting lost very fast. Those reflecting interest of only handful are replacing issues or topics that concern majority of the people. This trend only makes me resolve with greater vigour to write on issues and concerns that affect most people, and are not solely driven by the market demand. |
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