Courting the media, Arjun Singh style

IN Opinion | 16/03/2011

Singh considered it important to be closer to those in the media who criticized him than those who sang his praises.

G V KRISHNAN gives an insider’s perspective

Reprinted from the blog, My Take by GVK

Arjun Singh and I left Bhopal for Chandigarh around the same time – 1985. He was appointed Punjab governor and I was posted to Chandigarh as The Times of India’s Punjab correspondent. The coincidence triggered shop-talk in Madhya Pradesh media circles. Small-time media dignified gossip with a news report saying Singh had arranged for my transfer to punjab by calling up Times Group chairman Ashok Jain.

In a tribute to Arjun Singh in The Hindu, a former aide and senior IAS official, N R Krishnan, says Singh (as Madhya Pradesh CM) was extremely cordial with the media and moved with media persons at every level with easy familiarity. As someone who was on such terms I can claim some familiarity with Singh’s ways with media men (we had no women in the Bhopal media corps those days).

I remember, on the day I arrived in Bhopal, information director, Sudeep Banerjee, IAS arranged my meeting with the CM. “Mr Singh would like to say hello,” he said. How many CMs do this to a rookie in the press corps? Such was his style. Another newly arrived reporter, Suresh Mehrothra, was with me at that meeting. This was in 1982, and since then we - Singh and I – had stayed in touch, throughout my media career. A couple of months into my reporting assignment in Bhopal, Singh invited himself to my residence for breakfast saying his wife and he relished south Indian ishes, notably, upma. Presumably, he told my Hindustan Times colleague Qureshi that he loved biriani, and invited himself to Qureshi’s place.
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Singh addressed as ‘Boss’ The Statesman correspondent, Tarun Bhadhuri, because they had known each other since Singh’s days as a humble back bencher in the state assembly. He was not even with the Congress then. Bossman Bhaduri taught this MLA the ropes of drafting press statements and getting them into print.

During Singh’s regime media was a favoured lot much to the disgruntlement of the bureaucracy and opposition politicians. Houses in prime localities were given to the media and newspaper managements were given sites for presses. No wonder there was a proliferation in the ranks of media persons, many of them bringing out four-page rags with exotic names like Chandi ka jhootha or Sone ki Chidiya. Press accreditation was bit of a racket. Many journalists exploited their connections to get housing plots from the Bhopal Development Authority.

That many such beneficiaries were his bitter critics did not concern Singh. He was truly a political animal who thrived on media visibility. He worried when he was ignored by media. A reason why, I believe, he courted the media was his belief in the power of information. He knew how to use information to his advantage. As Mr Krishnan noted in The Hindu write-up, Singh was on friendly terms with all media persons. I would add that he was particularly friendly with his critics in the media. Singh believed he stood to gain by way of feedback from them. Not many politicians were given to such thinking.

From Chandigarh he went to New Delhi as a political high-flyer under the Rajiv regime and I was shifted to Chennai to serve out my time with The Times of India. While in Chennai I received, in 1992, a surprise communication from the registrar of Pondicherry Central University, informing me of my nomination as a member of the University Court. I was nominated by the President of India as Visitor of the university for a three-year term. It didn’t take me more than a moment to see how the President and Pondicherry University came to think of me. Singh was then Human Resources Development minister and Banerjee (whom I had first met as information director in Bhopal) was Education Secretary. Anyway, being a syndicate member, I had occasion to attend annual meetings of the university’s policy-making body, and have coffee with the VC in his chamber.

As for that media gossip I referred to at the start of this post that Singh got me posted to Punjab, it was just a rumor. However, so wide-spread was the perception that many in The Times of India believed that I had become Singh’s man. I had problem getting some of my news reports passed by the news desk, which also believed I was pro-Singh.

Singh could clearly distinguish between fact and perception. Perhaps, this explains the equanimity to which Mr Krishnan refers in his tribute. As he put it, “Throughout his long public life, as he was praised and pilloried in turn by friends and foes, he maintained his equanimity.’’