Will Deccan Chronicle live?
An old hand who worked for Deccan Chronicle narrates how the present owners acquired the paper back in 1977 for a princely sum of Rs two lakh that they extended to bail out the then owners’ loan from a state-run finance agency. When the paper started in 1938, it was a partnership of the two Mudaliar brothers. It proudly proclaimed itself as “the people’s paper”. In the 36 years since, the enterprise has transformed into a holding company listed on the stock market, an asset leveraging which the new owners borrowed upwards of Rs 4000 crore in the market. Not to run the paper, but to start an airline service, an IPL cricket franchise, a leisure store, and what have you.
The Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCHL) publishes Financial Chronicle, The Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle and Andhra Bhoomi (Telugu daily, weekly, monthly of the same name).
The DCHL story began to unravel since the middle of 2012 when IFCI filed a petition in the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking the liquidation of Deccan Chronicle, fearing the fall-out of its financial collapse. Following this, the Hyderabad-based financial firm Karvy Group filed a complaint against the promoters Venkatram Reddy (Chairman), Vinayak Ravi Reddy (Vice-Chairman) and PK Iyer (CFO), alleging forgery and misrepresentation.
The CBI filed an FIR against Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd and its auditors on July 8, 2013 alleging that DHCL entered into a criminal conspiracy during 2009-11, to cheat Canara Bank, Secunderabad branch. The FIR accuses DHCL of taking corporate loans totalling Rs 1230 crore by allegedly submitting false and fabricated financial statements and by suppressing the borrowings taken from other banks.
Arrest warrants are out against the chairman, vice-chairman, PK Iyer and one of the independent directors, Sukumar Reddy. This week, India Bulls Housing Finance Ltd (a non-banking finance company) took legal possession of the house belonging to Urmila Reddy, mother of Venkatram Reddy, even as several modern printing presses and the main building of the paper in Secunderabad remain mortgaged to various entities. The management has been desperately trying to restructure by demerging printing and publishing operations from its other operations by creating a new entity. However, even that process has run into rough weather as some of the lenders have raised issues of regulatory compliance.
Deccan Chronicle (DC) has been an aggressive player in the Hyderabad media scene. Major later entrants like The Hindu and The Times of India have found it difficult to displace it from its leading position over the years, as it has a loyal readership amongst the Hyderabadis. It promoted itself as synonymous with Charminar and Hyderabadi Biryaniin in its recent series of articles celebrating 75 years of its existence.
The paper was conceived by three friends — Theodore La Touche, a journalist, B R Chari, an advocate, and M N Jaisoorya, Sarojini Naidu’s son, a homeopath, according to the owner-Chairman, T Venkatram Reddy’s piece on the paper’s website. They sold the idea of an “everybody’s paper” to Rajagopal who supplied paper to the Nizam’s government press.
From everybody’s paper, in 1977 Deccan Chronicle became the paper of T Chandrasekhar Reddy, the irrigation-construction magnate who later became a Congress MP. Reddy, who is no more, was the brother of T Subbarami Reddy, the Congress MP. His son and the present owner of the paper Venkatram Reddy himself was a Congress MP for some time.
The paper does have much brand equity in Hyderabad. From the time PNV Nair built up its circulation with some energetic journalism on local issues, many readers still look to Deccan Chronicle as a habit, though the paper has gone through a lot of changes in orientation and emphasis over the last decade or so.
Under the editorship of AT Jayanti, a rare example of a woman editor of a major newspaper in India, the paper was often criticised for carrying obscene Internet downloads and sex columns. Occasionally, some young journalist may lift it out of the morass by doing a brilliant piece, but the supplements of the paper are often over the top with dubious page three and filmy content. Jayanti, however, had nothing but contempt for such criticism. At a women journalists’ conference, she implied that such critics, especially women, were hicks who didn’t understand high fashion.
The paper was also facing a high attrition rate of staff because of difficult working environment. Some of the desk work for inside pages is being outsourced to people outside Hyderabad for some years now. The editor herself has been based in Chennai over the last several months, coming in to Hyderabad for a few days at a time occasionally. Some of the senior staff have also been briefly moved as it was becoming difficult to work out of the Hyderabad office, but seem to have come back.
Even though the paper was struggling to keep afloat over a deluge of litigation in recent times, it could not resist counter attacking The Times of India’s claim of being the number one paper in Hyderabad last month. The paper continues to be printed without fail, though the print and paper quality fluctuates wildly.
As far back as August 2012, Amarnath Menon of India Today dubbed the travails of Deccan Chronicle as “Chronicle of Collapse.” Nearly a year later, the saga is still unfolding. Some of the senior management are untraceable, reported to be on ‘personal visits’ abroad. Some of the former employees believe that the paper will be bought over and the title will continue to survive. Others are not so hopeful.