Tehelka readies for a relaunch

BY ninan| IN Media Practice | 29/09/2003

Among those currently standing up to be counted as paid up subscribers to the idea of independent, people-funded journalism, are a dozen or more Mumbai-based businessmen as well people like Naseeruddin Shah, Mira Nair, Pandit Ravi Shankar and the Editor of the Economist. Tehelka is apparently a fashionable and politically correct cause for both the liberal and conservative intelligentsia, as also for the page three types who read. You can expect the Nafisa Alis and Nandita Dases to be joining the queue to become founder-subscribers. You can also predict who will not — Jaya Jaitley, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Tarun Vijay, Hema Malini ... .

With six weeks to go for the launch of India`s first people`s paper, as he likes to call it, Tejpal is harassed, voluble, and as always, not at a loss for expletives. A lot has still to fall in place. The team is mostly new, though Kumar Badal who finally got out on bail after being implicated in a poaching case is around, the only investigative journalist from the original team. Aniruddha Bahal, now a successful novelist, has moved on to start a website of his own, Mathew Samuel who impersonated his way into the Defence Ministry has gone his way, and so have Tejpal`s wife and brother who began working elsewhere when Tehelka shut shop. That leaves him and Shoma Choudhury, a colleague from Tejpal`s Outlook days. A handful of other journalists have moved across from other publications to sign up, taking pay cuts to help the new idea work. The launch, meanwhile, has been postponed from October to November.

Ask him what the new weekend paper will offer and he says, how the hell do I know, I`ve spent 99.9 per cent of my time in the last 10 months raising money. But promptly thereafter he begins to churn out quotable quotes on what the publication will stand for. Some of them I recognise, from earlier interviews. The paper will be like a beautiful hammer, pleasing to look at but effective at driving in the nails. It will do positive, independent journalism. And it will have transparent editorial and corporate practices. And what about all that other-side-of-the- story bit, getting responses and quotes to allegations made? "How can you ask for their side of the story when you are doing a sting?" he counters.

Tarun Tejpal also rants a bit about defining stories by the risks they take. "Tell me the last time someone picked a target that could hit them back. It is not dictated by money. If it was, the Times of India would have been doing two `Operation West Ends` a day." So the new Tehelka will be brave, fierce, transparent. And independently financed. He hits the road every month, covering some seven to 10 cities, to tell people at rotary clubs and elsewhere how they can support his newspaper and save India from the malfeasance of its rulers. On the ground, a subscription drive is kicking off in eight cities. You can become a founder-subscriber, or join the Tehelka Engaged Citizens Circle, or take a three-, two- or one-year subscription. A TV campaign began strikingly enough, and ended abruptly when it got too expensive.

Why is he back to conventional media this time around? Because it is a weapon of war, he says. "The State cannot squash you. A website simply does not have the same impact. I had everybody and his auntie writing on the website but nobody was reading it." But the website will also be revived, and run on subscriptions, $29 for six months.

Alongside Tehelka`s twin revival however, old victims of its exposes are busy making sure that its troubles will not end. The Venkatswami Commission had twice rejected the demand that the tapes needed to be sent abroad to be examined. But when it was succeeded by the Phukan Commission, Justice Phukan decided they should be sent abroad. So they were, to England, to an undisclosed firm, in an undisclosed location. The report was due in August, it did not come. In September the firm said it was not enough to look at the tapes, they needed to look at the equipment on which the tapes were made, as well. Meanwhile, the case filed against Kumar Badal continues to be heard in the courts.

Finally, there is a little story doing the rounds that carries its own message. In August the Financial Times of London published a story on Tehelka, and its new plans. Shortly thereafter, its correspondent in Delhi was called to the Prime Minister`s Office for a friendly chat.

India`s vocal middle class may be rooting for Tehelka, the paper. Its governing class, unsurprisingly, is not.