Media-govt spat in Andhra Pradesh
Being a critic of the Congress government and a friend of Telugu Desam party, Ramoji Rao is doubly disadvantaged.
Dasu Krishnamoorty
Politicians and media barons are the key players in the high theatre that is engaging media attention in Andhra Pradesh. Its echoes are heard even in Delhi - at a media seminar and in Parliament. The first act of the drama began with the AP government leaking plans to prosecute Ramoji Rao of the Eanadu group of newspapers because his non-media company, the Margadarsi Financiers, had accepted deposits from the public in violation of the Reserve Bank of India norms. Being a Hindu Undivided Family, Margadarsi cannot accept deposits without breaking RBI rules. However, Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy failed to convincingly explain what interest his government has in prosecuting Margadarsi when RBI itself is cool to such irregularity. Ramoji Rao¿s defence could be that there is nothing in the RBI Act that bars a HUF from accepting deposits. But the mere act of the government in declaring that there is a violation of RBI norms could lead to a run on Margadarsi deposits.
The second act of the drama that many newspapers described as self-goal came when the government served notices asking Ramoji Rao and the Sanghi group that owns Vaarta to declare their land holdings which it suspects are above the ceiling set by law. Before doing this, the Chief Minister suddenly declared that he was surrendering voluntarily to the government 618 acres that his family had owned for 30 years and appealed to others to follow his example. The inclusion of Vaarta, owned by a Congress MP Girish Sanghi, is obviously meant to serve as evidence of impartiality. Anyway, it is not unusual for newspapers to violate terms governing use of land they have acquired from government at throwaway prices. Bahadurshah Zafar Marg is a standing monument to such manipulation.
Rajasekhara Reddy¿s ¿sacrifice¿ came after the family had enjoyed the benefit of the land for 30 years. After it took 30 years for Reddy to surrender surplus land, he now has plans to announce a three-month deadline for others to give up excess land. Things began getting curiouser and curiouser, as the Times of India called it when the Chief Minister told the Assembly the next day that what he had surrendered was 310 acres and not 618, describing this change as a slip of the tongue. This is worse than Jagjivan Ram forgetting to file income tax returns for more than ten years. These figures apart, everyone knew that this Vinoba Bhave act was staged to settle scores with Ramoji Rao whose Film City occupies several hundred acres of land, some of which is classified as assigned land. Meanwhile, a Times reporter found that the Chief Minister possessed more land than he had declared before the Election Commission on the eve of 2004 Assembly elections. Chandrababu Naidu demands he quit and face prosecution.
Ramoji Rao thrived under successive Telugu Desam governments and prudent Congress governments earlier turned a blind eye to Rao¿s land acquisitions. But Reddy, lacking such prudence, first turned his attention to Margadarsi Financiers. Ramoji Rao of Eanadu group, Ramoji Film City and Ushodaya Films is an ambitious businessman as are many media barons. Most of them employ media as shield against the long arm of the law of the land. But governments irked by media comment too have skeletons in their cupboards. Aware of their vulnerability, they generally hesitate to needle the media. Jayalalithaa experimented with such a misadventure and paid for it. Now it is the turn of Rajasekhara Reddy to re-enact a showdown with media. Being a critic of the Congress government and a friend of Telugu Desam party, Ramoji Rao is doubly disadvantaged.
Ramoji Rao¿s Eenadu is widely considered as a mouthpiece of the Telugu Desam Party, chief adversary of the ruling Congress Party. Just as a Revenue Intelligence raid on the Raheja¿s a few years ago came to be regarded as an attack on Outlook weekly it owns, it is not illogical to consider action against Margadarsi Financiers as an attack on media by other means. Both the speeches of N.Ram of the Hindu and H.K.Dua of the Tribune at the Delhi seminar lend support to these assumptions. Ram said that even if the media played the role of opposition (as Eenadu is doing), the state government had no right to harass a newspaper. Dua complained that instruments of state were being used against the (Eenadu) group and it was the beginning of encroachment on freedom of the press.
In this unsavoury drama, friends and foes of media are fighting most of the battles in the legislative assembly now in session. There were walkouts, suspension of members, ministerial threats to dismember critics, demands for Rajasekhara Reddy¿s resignation and a lot of noise pollution as Andhra Jyothi described the proceedings. But the self-righteous legislators forgot that none of them was free from blame. Everyone has a piece of the illegal cake. According to the New Indian Express, ?politicians, cutting across party lines and industrialists are jittery about the impact of the Chief Minister¿s decision (to surrender land) as they too appear to hold land in violation of the law.? Congressmen came up with facts and figures of equally illegal land deals by Chandrababu Naidu and Venkiah Naidu. Land is more precious than platinum in Hyderabad city where murder is a common feature of real estate business.
Half a century ago, the First Press Commission had anticipated this anomaly and recommended that media should not have more than ten per cent interest in non-media businesses and vice versa. When media openly declare their adversary role against the state, there is little wonder that the state reciprocates this courtesy. Where media have non-media interests, government gets room to maintain that it is targeting the non-media sector and not legitimate media operations. How does one reconcile the assertion of Rajasekhara Reddy that what he was doing is a strict implementation of law with Ramoji Rao¿s contention that the Eenadu group is the real target of the Chief Minister?
The Andhra Pradesh government¿s action against the media received little editorial censure outside the state. Maybe Ramoji Rao does not belong to the same league as Ram. But an important question is: What is the role of regional editions? The Hindu, the New Indian Express and the Times of India¿s Hyderabad editions have the same status and function as the Deccan Chronicle has. Their role does not stop with a few pages devoted to regional news. They have an interpretation function that is possible only through editorials and news analyses. It is strange, first, that these three newspapers had failed to editorially comment on such crucial developments in the state as media-state face-off and, second, that some person in Delhi or Mumbai or Chennai editorially comments on Andhra Pradesh issues without the insight that residence in the state gives him/her. In most media, the editorial structures are unitary and not federal. This centrifugal movement of editorial authority is an anachronism and militates against the concept of equality embedded in freedom of the press.
In the end, the heat and dust of the controversy will subside and everyone keeps what he has illegally gained even as the public are entertained to street plays of sacrifice and virtue played out inside and outside the Assembly.
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