Dhirubhai And The Media
Sevanti Ninan
Cast your mind back: which Indian in
recent memory has so overwhelmed the media with his death? What was the last
time that both the hospitalization, and the subsequent death of an individual
received live TV coverage, not just his funeral? It is almost as if you have to
go all the way back to Indira Gandhi to find a parallel. And its not just TV
coverage, it is also the reaction of the stock market, the breadth of the who¿s
who turn out, the outpouring of a sea of humanity, and the unrestrained
newspaper eulogies. It is as if the portly, Gujarati businessman was in an
orbit that no Indian has occupied in recent times. Which he was.
Ever since he was rushed to hospital with the stroke
which proved fatal, journalists big and small have been groping for words to
describe Dhirubhai Ambani and his achievements. Once they get started, many
find it difficult to restrain either the adjectives or the anecdotes. There is
tacit acknowledgement that this was no ordinary star in the Indian firmament. A
school teacher¿s son, who never studied beyond school, ended up creating an
industrial empire which accounts for three per cent of the gross domestic
product of a country with a billion people. Given the pace he set for himself
and the battles he fought, the man was nothing if not a walking cover story,
for much of his life.
And yet over the last two decades there was a current
of unease evoked in dealing with Dhirubhai, that did not occur with any other
individual in this land, however highly placed . Former finance minister Pranab
Mukherjee, in an interview to Rediff on the Net titled "I liked him
very, very much," says at one point, "We shared a close rapport as he
was an industrialist and I - for most of my career - was in the finance or
economic ministries. However, that does not mean that our friendship was
¿unequal¿ in any way. It would be absolute bunkum to describe me, or anybody
else, as ¿a Reliance man.¿ Though, of course, the media is free to describe
anyone as anyone¿s man."
Such a defensive statement from a former finance
minister touches upon a problem which politicians, bureaucrats and journalists
alike had in their relationship with the patriarch of India¿s most powerful
business house. Closeness to him could be rewarding in more ways than one, but
it put a question mark over you. Were you a Reliance man or woman? It was as if
neutrality or independence were not possible where a relationship with
Dhirubhai Ambani was concerned. Here was a man who had made such a religion out
of "managing the environment" that everybody who came into contact
with him was thereafter seen as being "managed."
Certainly, where the media is concerned he achieved a mastery that is
unprecedented in the history of independent India. To criticize the man or his
empire was to join battle, no less. No mere journalist could presume to
criticize the performance or practices of the house of Reliance and go
unscathed, or if you like, un-wooed. If you didn¿t play ball, you were very
brave indeed. And if you did you were rewarded. They made neutrality difficult
for the profession. For two decades, journalists in this country, like
bureaucrats and politicians, have been marked. They were either pro Reliance,
or anti, or they did not count. That is, those who wrote under their name. Less
identified were the nameless senior people whom the Ambanis nurtured relations
with, within newspaper and magazine hierarchies.
One foreign correspondent, Hamish McDonald, actually had the temerity to do painstaking research and write a book called The Polyester Prince. It was a clear-eyed account of the man, his achievements, his methods. It was subtitled, The Rise of Dhirubai Ambani. It never saw the light of day in this country. The publishers to be of the Indian edition backed off from publishing it, the publishers of the Australian edition did not succeed in getting the book into bookshops here because the Ambanis threatened to sue if the book contained anything they considered defamatory. Those who wanted to read it had it smuggled in.