A Down To Earth reporter refused a windfall to not do this story

It's not every day that an innocuous email from a geophysicist leads you to a prime ministerial residence that is big time real estate. And we aren't talking 7 Race Course Road. I had to check out the villages of Prini and Jagatsukh near Manali, Himachal Pradesh, which had complaints against a proposed 192-megawatt hydro power project costing Rs 992 crore on the Allain and Duhangan rivers. Its proponent: the lng Bhilwara group, better known for the 'Mayur' brand of textiles, and a Norwegian concern. The project's environmental impact assessment (eia) report was flawed, reportedly.
It was one of those stories one wasn't quite sure of. I had phoned up a known academic, who had been an independent observer appointed by the International Finance Corporation (ifc), an arm of the World Bank which has a 10 per cent stake in the project. He'd told me the environmental and social impact assessment (esia), done to meet the ifc guidelines, was faulty and based on data from 1993-94.
He'd mentioned the project now incorporated the critique of ifc . I had also called up a social activist, who follows such cases avidly. He'd told me the project had violated eia norms by not holding a public hearing. I finished my assignments in Pathankot and got on to a rickety bus to Manali. I got my first 'quote' while still on it. A man from Prini was on board."The project is a blessing and has created employment in the area," he said. After a while, he quietly noted that his brother was a project contractor. On reaching Manali, I called a person who, the geophysicist had told me, was opposed to the project. "I was a key member of the movement against the project. But they are my employers now," he told me. He gave me a name and phone number of a person who was part of the protest. Ditto. After going through a chain of hesitant ex-protestors now employed by the project proponents, I managed to speak to one person who was willing to talk openly.
Dinesh Sharma, 34, the pandit of Jagatsukh, returned to his village after graduation in Delhi, and also runs a local environmental ngo. "The project was proposed in 1993. But we found out only in 2003, after it had been cleared," he complained. He took me to meet others. Among them was Sanjeev Sharma, who said: "When we asked project officials, we discovered to our disbelief that along with all government clearances, the project proponents had no-objection-certificates (nocs) from the sarpanchs (heads of village panchayat) of both Jagatsukh and Prini." Vidya Prakash Bharadwaj of Jasgatsukh elaborated: "When we approached the local political leaders and government officials, protesting this secrecy, they branded us as anti-national."
Pannalal, 76, laid out the villagers' objections: "After boulders fell on village women from the construction site, we got angry. We insisted the full reports of the project and its environment and social impact be made available in Hindi. We demanded a public hearing. Who will tell us how the diversion of Duhangan river will affect irrigation of paddy fields downstream?"
It was then that Dinesh Sharma and other residents of the two villages wrote an email to ifc. The villagers commended the role of ifc, which pulled up the Allain Duhangan Hydro Power Limited ( adhpl) for violation of esia norms — this was the corporation's first investment in India. Ashok Joshi, project director of adhpl, later told me: "We had everything cleared until we entered into an agreement with ifc."
Later, I got a phone call from an adhpl employee — no point naming him. A meeting was arranged for 'site-seeing'. While ferreting personal information from me, he tried to dissuade me from doing the story. I got broad hints of a job offer: liaison officer with a monthly salary of Rs 40,000 and a Tata Indica car. He showed me a house where I could settle — after getting married. "Then came the sweet assurance: "We know your editor very well."
I proceeded to Prini, where I wasn't allowed to speak to the sarpanch who had given the project the noc in 1997. Her father-in-law Karamchand headed the protest against the project. Then things changed: "We were fooled by some activists. But we don't want to go against national interests now." Prini, it later became apparent, was by and large supportive of adhpl — the village of 700, where former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has a summer abode, has several instant lakhpatis. Land prices are up from Rs 7,000 per bigha to Rs 1,25,000 per bigha. Jindu Ram was paid Rs 1.2 crore for his land that went into the project. He parks his brand new Hyundai Sonata in Manali. Village roads aren't fit for the luxury car. Then came the most startling revelation: the geophysicist who'd written to us had become a adhpl consultant.

NEWS GOES CRAZY

High Drama Hindi news channels have transformed news by making it hysterical. They are broadcasting events that used to be considered unworthy of reporting, and they are covering them in ways that are dramatic and comical but very honestly Indian. Meenakshi Sinha reports the old-fashioned way.Without a mike

You don’t have to be famous and dead anymore to be on TV for hours. Being plain ridiculous will do. Like Gajraj from Barauli village who claimed that he met Yamraj, the traditionally deepthroated god of death. Gajraj not only remembered having Coke and popcorn on his way to meeting Yamraj, but also recalled seeing the god seated on a buffalo and flaunting a big moustache. “There was too much light against a white backdrop where he sat,” he narrated on national television. Gajraj even remembered Yamraj’s enquiry committee suddenly realising that they had got the wrong man. In fact, he clearly recollected how Yamraj reprimanded his attendant, “Ullu ke pathey, yeh kisko utha layey ho.” Thus Gajraj returned to Earth and thus he lived to tell this tale on Aaj Tak — Sabze Tez. A panel discussion followed in the studio where expertsand a psychiatrist discussed death, previous birth and other related matters.
That Gajraj’s story was carried for over two hours on national television is only another pointer to the way language news channels have altered the definition of news, and in the process, transformed their own fortunes. These channels are almost always showing that curious thing called, ‘exclusive’. It must be their high journalistic standards that prevent them from calling their weather reports, ‘breaking news’. In their quest for maximum viewership, language news channels may appear shrill and hilariously dramatic but it has to be said that they have contributed the first real innovation in Indian cable. Somewhere along their evolution, they stopped pretending that news is a transaction between one serious man and another. They left the geriatrics of Indian politics that not many really cared about, and scoured the streets of middle India to find entertaining stories that best reflected the realities of this country.

Englishnews channels are suddenly looking like Nirad C Chaudhary. Their Hindi rivals are running away with huge advertising revenues by airing live stories like those of Gajraj and Kuni Lal from Madhya Pradesh who predicted his own death (wrongly, it transpired). As the time of his foretold death neared, reporters went into a frenzy, cameras zoomed on to a frail man sitting with his hands folded inside a temple. They even got his wife's poignant quote, “inko toh pehle se he malum tha kab jayengey”. When he survived the death he had himself portended, those experts who seem to have a lot of spare time discussed through studio panels, the apparent science behind astrological predictions. A little girl who claimed to recount her past life too was given excellent treatment on prime time. In the name of reality TV, a news channel let an anchor cover her own wedding. She wielded the mike in between her mehndi and other ceremonies. The camera followed her on the customary arrival at the husband’s home, but prudently stopped short of covering the first night. The English-speaking, almost refined types of this country, may raise their eyebrows in disdain at all that is going on in what are called ‘language channels’, but the truth is that it’s when such stories hit the air that the news finds soaring ratings, clearly exposing what the majority actually wants. “If certain programmes affect people by large, I don’t see any reason why we should not air them,” says Raju Santhan, editor, Zee News. Forever gone are the days when news telecast entailed ribbon-cutting by ministers, inaugurating a bridge or a portrait of a political leader followed by insufferable speeches. “Though the format was handed to us by DD, is that news?” questions Uday Shankar, CEO and editor, Star News, who had earlier launched the first 24-hour news channel Aaj Tak five years ago, and made a success out of it. Shankar readily admits that the distinction between entertainment and news is blurring. “Newspapers have the advantage of separate pullouts like the lifestyle, food, travel and entertainment supplements. In TV, it’s a linear progression.” Therefore there’s a method to the madness. Stories of human interest, a celebrity caught in a controversy, sadhus and their unholy escapades, flesh trade in the name of massage parlours, a couple in love and on the run against family pressure are all forms of news which have little or nothing to do with what’s traditionally called, ‘national interest’. But this is the type of news that is broadening the base of news channels. These days, it’s not just grim unhappy fathers who watch news as the heavy dinner is being digested. Now, everybody watches news. Especially women who by far matter more to most of those companies with huge ad budgets. In the past two years, average news viewing share increased to roughly 55 minutes in 24 hours. Television news advertising revenues are over Rs 500 crore a year, and growing. Shankar calls the current state of Hindi news channels experimentation. Many would even say that it is a successful experimentation. But other television journalists who have largely resisted the temptation of bringing the circus into the studio are not so kind in their analyses. Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, says: “Ultimately credibility of the news channel will be the final calling. A Kunji Lal story or a previous birth episode may get one the TRPs for a few days, but people will eventually flock to channels which showcase credible news.” Sreenivasan Jain, resident editor, NDTV 24x7, Mumbai, says that fierce competition among news channels has produced, “a kind of lawlessness”. He complains that when one channel lowers the bar, “everybody jumps the gun. We have to resist the urge to stoop to the lowest common denominator. But I feel that there are people even in those (Hindi) channels who feel uncomfortable with such stories, because we are all journalists atthe end of the day”. The battle between the artiste and the baniya is as old as the battle between good and evil itself, with exactly the same promise that the war will continue till the end of time. While journalistic standards is a readily granted virtue like morality, though nobody is fully sure what the two are, the compulsion of Hindi news channels to worship drama is easy to understand. The day Star News aired the story of some youth in a Faridabad ashram, it dislodged Aaj Tak as the market leader. The story was about young men and women who were holed up in the ashram against the wishes of their families. Star News went live from the temple gates showing some kind of a guru, his rebellious disciples and their families caught in a war of words. These days, when a bomb explodes or a mob wife is interviewed, news channels bag 18-19% of satellite viewership. According to Shankar, a layman is primarily interested in his routine and not national or regional politics. “Why should we cover Laloo who lied his way through? Besides, how many people’s lives are affected by political news?” The policy for broadcast news is simple — ‘Compelling TV’ is the new phrase coined in newsrooms across channels. The story, packaging or the visuals have to be attentiongrabbing and simply compelling. “The viewer, whether on the channel by appointment or by mere surfing, must be compelled to stop and absorb,” says Siddhartha Gupta, director, Channel 7. In this milieu, it is easy to understand the lure of crime news. Across all channels, crime journalists are becoming the news brahmins of television. At the top of the heap is Sansani, a hysterical crime bulletin anchored appropriately by Shrivardhan Trivedi, a man with theatre background, who gives a daily account of the latest crime from across the country. One may have many opinions about Mr Trivedi, but when he is screaming at the camera, it’s difficult to change the channel. And that, news channels say, is exactly what they want more than the fair play awards.