The error-rich Indian Express
“The tyranny of the printed word” is how the eminent sociologist, the late Dr Kamla Chowdhry, my esteemed colleague and friend, described our inherent tendency to believe all that appears in print. I have always nursed an opposite bent and treated all that I read with perhaps an excessive sense of scepticism. Sometimes this pays off. The Ideas Exchange with Mr Natwar Singh (The Indian Express, August 10, 2014) was a particularly rich instance of this.
I thought “I am 30 years older to [Mr Narendra Modi]” was possibly a typographical error in my local edition, not an unusual occurrence. But the e-paper had the same number. Never mind, perhaps Mr Singh was a little confused between 30 and 20 (the actual age difference between him and Mr Modi), I told myself.
I stumbled again when I read that “In the 1967 elections...Kamraj lost to 26-year old Karunanidhi.” I wondered how the DMK patriarch, who is 90, was only 26 some 47 years ago. I was further puzzled since Mr Karunanidhi always contested from Chennai but Mr Kamraj never. It turns out that Mr Karunanidhi was 43 (born in 1924) in 1967, and had already represented his Chennai constituency in the Assembly for two terms since 1957.
Mr Kamraj contested from his home constituency of Virudhunagar in 1967 (he had relinquished the chief ministership in 1963) and suffered a shock defeat at the hands of a relatively unknown DMK student leader P Sreenivasan. I thought again, a small lapse, but at least Mr Singh got it right that the Congress stalwart lost to a greenhorn DMK candidate.
But I choked when I read that “Panditji’s sister Krishna Hutheesingh was in school with me,” since Ms Hutheesingh was 24 years Mr Singh’s senior. The Express later clarified on 12 August that this was an error on its part and the reference was to her son, a day after I drew the attention of the editors (Mr Unni Rajen Shanker, Editor, and Ms Vandita Mishra, Opinion Editor) to this glaring error.
But the clarification was not quite convincing for several reasons. First, it said, rather baldly, “Singh went to school with Hutheesing’s son.” The original was a direct, first person quote, cited above, which left little room to entertain such clarification; at the very least, the correction should have been in that same attributable form.
Second, the error was so egregious that even a cursory reading should have highlighted it; possibly the Express staff were so enthralled by the narrative power of Mr Singh that they did not wake up to it until a pesky reader expressed his dismay rather strongly.
Third, most of the exchange is available on YouTube. These parts are faithfully transcribed in the print version, without errors. The portion with the Hutheesingh reference is prominently missing.
Under the circumstances, this Doubting Thomas may not be entirely off the mark in expressing his reservations about this belated clarification. This suspicion is reinforced by the mail I received on the same day from Ms Yamini Lohia, Assistant Editor, Editorial Opinion (neither Ms Mishra nor Mr Shanker have extended the courtesy of a reply) stating that “we have already clarified our error on the main take-off point for your piece,” which clearly implies closure, and a hasty one at that.
Be that as it may. This experience made me think. Mr Singh clearly wanted to place himself where he was not. How much of the rest of the interview suffered from such lapses? How likely was a prime minister, reputed for her haughtiness, to agree to allow a junior diplomat (which is what he was to Indira Gandhi in 1966) to hitch a ride on her plane lent by the American President?
How likely is another prime minister who keeps his own counsel to have solicited, leave alone acted upon, the views of a largely discredited former foreign minister, as Mr Singh implies with regard to Mr Modi’s SAARC initiatives?
And could the lady of 10 Janpath have seen him “every day for six-seven hours,” since she is well-known for doling out her time by the thimbleful to all except the family?
Mr Singh has gained plenty of attention from his supposedly tell-all book. But I wonder how much of it comprises similar “memory tricks”. Even our best publishing houses have not distinguished themselves with meticulous fact-checking. Playing accuracy police makes me spend more time than needed while reviewing books, but I cannot abide sloppiness on this score.
Sadly, even more than publishing houses, our many newspapers seldom pay attention to accuracy in reporting and even less to correcting errors when they are pointed out. This is most grievous when reputed columnists display a certain laziness in checking what they say and subsequently, arrogance when they fail even to acknowledge the error.
Jyoti Malhotra, the foreign affairs expert, repeatedly referred to President Bush defeating Al Gore in 2004 (it was 2000), Mihir Sharma claimed that Ohio put President Obama in the winning position in 2012 (it was Colorado), Janmejaya Sinha the consulting maven wrote an entire lead column in the Express in July 2013 pegged on the unfounded rumour on the Internet that the rupee had depreciated 670 times in the 96 years since 1917 (it depreciated 20 times), Inder Malhotra the nostalgia meister, claimed in April 2013 that two former Shiv Sena chief ministers were in the Congress (there was only one, Narayan Rane). He had earlier written that all the Muslim women prime ministers that the world had ever seen were from South Asia (Benzir Bhutto, Begum Khalida Zia and Sheikh Hasina). He had forgotten Tansu Çiller of Turkey and did not seem particularly bothered when this omission was pointed out to him.
The list is endless, and so is my patience in pursuing them. All too rarely, I get a surprise: Paranjoy Guha Thakurta had claimed that T T Krishnamachari (as finance minister) had vehemently opposed P. C. Mahalanobis’ appointment to the Planning Commission in 1955, but acknowledged that this was wrong when I drew his attention to the fact that C D Deshmukh was the finance minister in 1955 and continued in that position until July 1956.
Shailaja Bajpai, the stern headmistress at the Express Media School, graciously admitted her error in calling the dismal Southampton test match between India and England the second of the series (it was the third).
Unfortunately even when errors are admitted, the corrections are seldom printed and on the odd occasion they are, only in an insignificant corner where they are entirely likely to be missed. By then, given our natural bent to believe what appears in the papers, the damage is done: these half truths and misrepresentations acquire etched-in-stone status. Contrast this with the usual American practice, where corrections are prominently displayed and later print or electronic editions invariably carry an announcement that the earlier version was erroneous.
To return to the topic that started this tirade (which may appear pedantic to some): the Express carried a truncated version of my comments as a letter on 14 August. It was all so sanitary! We are all interested in any and all “evidence” further damaging a defeated, dysfunctional, dynasty; that is understandable. But should it involve taking liberties with the truth, which “involves us all” as the logo of the paper that carried the interview proclaims with some justification?
For the record, I have always thought The Indian Express to be one of our great newspapers and continue do so. Its editorial and opinion pages are the best in the country. It is invariably the first among the several papers I read every morning. Its former editor Shekhar Gupta deserves the entire credit for taking it to these heights.
My review of the recently published collection of the Gupta columns, Anticipating India has elicited a comment that I have been less than critical (http://www.rediff.com/news/special/reading-this-book-is-a-little-like-eating-at-barbeque-nation/20140515.htm ). The Express opinion space used to welcome my contributions, but now I am persona non grata, doubtless because, my admiration notwithstanding, I have relentlessly subjected it to my accuracy policing.
(The observant reader would have noted that there are no examples here from the Times Group, the motherlode of all such lapses. Need I explain?)
Shreekant Sambrani, an economist, teacher and institution builder, is a gadfly-on-the-wall who writes on the varied things he observes He can be contacted on shreekant.sambrani@gmail.com).