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Tehelka is up for sale. The person who controls the company which currently publishes the iconic magazine--whose founder editor Tarun Tejpal has been behind bars from 30 November facing allegations that he sexually assaulted a junior colleague--wants to sell his stake in the firm. But the seller, Kanwar Deep Singh, a controversial Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament belonging to the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), is yet to hone in on a buyer though he claims he has received various offers and...

Since much of India's mainstream media and the corporate sector is rather gung-ho about Narendra Modi becoming the country's next Prime Minister, here's a contrary point of view on why the Gujarat Chief Minister may not be able to fulfil his ambition. This article argues that the road ahead for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate is going to be far from smooth. The chances of the BJP obtaining close to, or more than 200 seats in the next Lok Sabha is far from certain...

Given the allegations of financial misdemeanour against New Delhi Television Limited, the question arises as to whether the media group is being persecuted. Highly-placed sources in NDTV certainly believe they are, that too by individuals close to the Sangh Parivar. On April 8, 2013, during the "Think India Dialogue" organized by the Network18 group -- headed by Raghav Behl and financially supported by Mukesh Ambani's group and which is NDTV's rival -- Gujarat Chief Minister and the BJP's prime...

A serious allegation levelled by Indian Revenue Service officer S.K. Srivastava against the management of New Delhi Television Limited is that the company bribed an Income Tax officer, Sumana Sen, to allegedly influence the Income Tax Department’s assessment of NDTV’s income. Sen’s husband, Abhisar Sharma was employed with NDTV as a senior journalist. Was there a case of conflict of interest in Sen handling the tax assessments of NDTV? Were Sharma and Sen "bribed" in the form of trips to Europe...

This story is a slew of claims and counter-claims, with allegations of financial misdemeanour, money laundering and tax evasion flying thick and fast. The dramatis personae includes two political heavyweights one of whom is a cabinet minister, one of the country’s best know TV personalities who is owner of a media company, a controversial income tax official with an arrest warrant against him and two of his female colleagues accusing him of slander. Behind the allegations levelled last December...

The Indian economy is currently in bad shape, some would even say in a pretty perilous state, despite all the optimistic claims being made by government spokespersons, more of which will undoubtedly be made by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram when he presents his government's vote-on-account in lieu of an annual budget in the Lok Sabha on February 17. The annual rate of growth of the country's gross domestic product shows no signs of rising above the 4.5-5 per cent mark. Investor...

A year that has seen a record number of working journalists lose their jobs ended with a high court setting a significant precedent. In what is a unique judicial intervention, a vacation judge of the Madras High Court at Chennai issued an interim injunction restraining the management of New Generation Media Corporation Private Limited from acting on a letter served on 35-odd employees asking them to either accept a sharp cut in remuneration or leave the company. The injunction will at least...

The Tamil Nadu-based Sri Ramaswamy Memorial (SRM) group has decided to indefinitely postpone the launch of its English television news channel. Consequently, 40-odd employees of group company, New Generation Media Corporation Private Limited, have been verbally told to leave their jobs or accept a drastic cut in salaries. Quite a few of these employees, some of whom had been waiting for a year and a half for the launch of the television channel, are predictably upset with the terms under which...

It seems the Election Commission of India is the only body in the country that is seriously trying to combat the pernicious practice of "paid news". If other organizations, including organizations that claim to represent the interests of journalists and other media professionals, played a more proactive role in curbing this corrupt practice, the phenomenon of masquerading advertisements as news could be curtailed to some extent. This is unfortunately not happening at a significant pace. On 3...

When gods have feet of clay, even believers become atheists. Tarun Tejpal, just over 50, used to be an iconic figure in Indian journalism. He was a man who led a media organisation which shook a government, unseated influential officials, broke new ground in investigative journalism using sting operations, and championed causes in favour of the underprivileged. Today he has been disgraced and humiliated, accused by his young daughter's close friend and his employee of sexual assault and abuse of...

Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of Open, was served a notice of termination of employment on Wednesday November 13, 2013. The weekly is published by Open Media Network Pvt Ltd, a company in the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group headed by industrialist Sanjiv Goenka. Goenka has reportedly wanted Manu Joseph, the editor of the publication, to remove Bal from his position for quite some time now. Joseph resisted but finally gave in to "rebuild his relationship with the owner" and "push through an...

A report of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has levelled a series of allegations against India's biggest privately-controlled corporate entity Reliance Industries Limited, headed by the country's richest man Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, accusing it of having engineered a series of allegedly illegal transactions to control a company that controlled the NewsX television channel which, in turn, resulted in "wrongful" losses to the extent of hundreds of crores of rupees. Though the SFIO...

Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by the burst of firecrackers and hectic shopping by families across India, was subdued last weekend. The lights were dimmer, the footfalls in malls smaller and the mood less exuberant. The reason: consistently high inflation. High food and fuel prices have sharply eroded the real incomes of large sections of the world's second-most populous country, contributing to anger and social unrest that have often spilled over on to the streets. "I think twice...

The nexus between politics, big business and white-collar crime is present in myriad forms across the globe. In India, the corrupt coalition between those who have and those who wield authority — often present in the same person — is strengthened by other sections, which include bureaucrats and media personnel. If the conversations involving Niira Radia bear testimony to the role of a few influential journalists in perpetuating this nexus, what coalgate has revealed is how the cosy relationship...

As you enter Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, the Mansagar Lake is a sight to behold. One of the largest man-made water bodies in the country, it was built in 1610 by Raja Man Singh I, the then ruler of Amer, by damming the Darbhawati river. But this placid water body, built by a feudal lord for recreation as well as for irrigation, with an ornate palace (Jal Mahal) in its middle and a temple on its northwestern side, has become the subject of bitter contention in recent times. A legal tussle...

The Story so far The Mansagar lake, one of the largest manmade water bodies in India with a palace called Jal Mahal at the centre of it, a popular tourism and heritage spot in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, was handed over for redevelopment to a private real estate firm as part of what was allegedly a "sweetheart deal". The area was given on a long lease of 99 years at what was considered to be very low lease rentals. After various public interest litigations were filed against different...

Lalu Prasad Yadav is in jail. As is Rasheed Masood. Both have been disqualified as legislators. But are elected representatives now likely to be less brazen while participating in acts of corruption, even if the long arm of the law remains rather lengthy and the wheels of justice continue to grind excruciatingly slowly? Is India’s political system becoming more transparent and hence, less corrupt? One may be tempted to reply in the affirmative to both the questions raised in view of certain...

It was a reunion organised by Potty, not his real name of course, who was coming to Delhi with his family after having spent more than three decades working for the IMF. Besides yours truly—Thak to the initiated— there was Dasi, a one-time Trotskyite who, lo and behold, became a self-appointed ideologue of right-wing Hindu nationalist forces led by NaMo. Alcohol and large dollops of nostalgia were followed by a trip down memory lane to Pandara Market, now far more tony than it was in the 1970s...

Lalu Prasad Yadav has risen from being a virtual non-entity, even in his native Bihar, to arguably one of the best known political leaders in India even if he has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. True, Lalu had been a member of the Lok Sabha as early as 1977, when the Janata Party made a clean sweep of all 54 seats in Bihar riding a wave of popular anger against the Emergency which had ended barely three months before the elections were held. Yet, hardly anybody outside his...

For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the irony could not have been more cruel. The man who is credited with lifting the country's economy from the brink of disaster in 1991 as finance minister in PV Narasimha Rao's government, is today facing a situation which is not very much better. In fact, in at least two respects - economic inequality and the international exchange rate of the rupee - India's economy appears to be worse off than where it was two decades earlier. India is not in danger of...

The “restructuring” at Network 18 which resulted in the exit of an editor and three senior employees is becoming something of a cause celebre. Journalists organisations are taking it up and issuing statements, the mainstream media has begun writing about it. There have been sackings before but not over ESOPs, involving business journalists employed in a joint venture with an international business magazine, floated by a high profile media house owned by one of the country’s wealthiest magnates...

Some Questions and Answers on a Tycoon, a Law Officer and an Editor Question: What is the nature of the relationship between one of India's richest men and the country's top legal officer? Answer: Good friends. Question: Can legal notices be deployed to prevent a publication from coming out with an article even before it is published? Answer: Such attempts are indeed made but these are not always successful, since not all editors and publishers are easily intimidated or buckle under pressure...

With a substantial section of the Indian media choosing to hype the upcoming 16th General Election as an American presidential style contest between Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, it is not surprising that popular interest in the controversial leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has grown exponentially in recent months. Predictably, two journalist-authors and their publishers have sought to ride the crest of this wave of interest about a...

A consultation paper prepared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and released in mid-February makes out a strong and persuasive case for imposition of legal restrictions on cross-media ownership by corporate conglomerates. In the past, there have been several organisations, including TRAI and a committee of Parliament, that have argued why the domination of particular groups over different sections of the mass media, including print, radio and television, in specific...

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is probing whether investments by so-called shell companies linked with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), headed by Mukesh Ambani, caused intentional losses to the company's shareholders. The investments were made during 2009-10 in companies that were part of the INX Media (now 9X Media) group which owns and operates television channels. The ongoing investigation by the SFIO (which is part of the government of India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs...

The paradox is rather apparent. In the contemporary history of India, never have so many once-influential politicians had to spend time behind bars as they have in recent times. Yet the second UPA government, headed by a Prime Minister who was known as Mr Clean, is also being perceived as one of the country’s most corrupt regimes, packed by people with flexible ethics. Before one seeks to explain the contradiction, here’s a roll call of important politicians who were recent guests of the...

BCCL’s Newsprint Burden As the biggest publisher of newspapers in India, it is hardly surprising that BCCL is the single largest consumer of newsprint in the country. The company consumed Rs 1,246.90 crore worth of raw materials in 2010-11, the bulk of it newsprint, comprising over a third (38 per cent) of its turnover that year. The company’s imports stood at Rs 1,374.26 crore, up by as much as 2.8 times from Rs 484.91 crore in the previous financial year. In a report published in Business...

Arvind Kejriwal put it rather bluntly when he asked rhetorically: Who’s running the country, Manmohan Singh or Mukesh Ambani? After a long time, the question was posed in a manner that laid bare the ugly nexus between politics and business – the nexus which is at the root of much of the corruption that is widespread in India today and which is responsible for the ugly underbelly of economic liberalisation, that is, brazen forms of crony capitalism. That Kejriwal’s statements could not be ignored...

Private treaties: boon or bane for BCCL? BCCL was the first media company in India to accept equity shares in lieu of money for advertising space. Others followed thereafter. Here are excerpts from the April 2010 report of the sub-committee of the Press Council of India (PCI) entitled “Paid News: How Corruption in the Indian Media Undermines Democracy” which is available on the Council’s website. The writer of this article was co-author of the sub-committee’s report as a member of the PCI. “BCCL...

BCCL is one of the most profitable companies of its kind. In the financial year that ended on 31 March 2011, the company earned profit before tax of Rs 1,489.2 crore on a total income of Rs 4,749.3 crore, implying a phenomenally high profit margin of 31.89 per cent. In 2010-11, BCCL earned a net profit of Rs 968.74 crore (20.4 per cent of turnover) -- up by as much as 3.8 times from Rs 252.26 crore in the previous financial year. (This is the last balance sheet of the company that is available...

Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this fact to its readers and subsequently gained financially from its publication, have been endorsed by a committee of Parliamentarians in a recently-published report. Whereas the report, prepared by a panel of MPs belonging to different political parties, does not mention the ToI by...

“For some, coal means diamonds and gold. For others, the coal signifies bread. They go underground not to take out coal but to sustain their life. They put their lives at risk. They are ready to face death at any moment. But they don’t earn much. The bulk of the profits generated by mining coal is appropriated by the mafia. This is the main reason for poverty here.” This was a perceptive statement made by Amit Raja, a talented journalist who has authored a book titled Aag mein Jharia (Jharia on...

A set of bewildering questions are being raised by industry lobbies and a section of the media about the levy of a one-time fee for excess electromagnetic spectrum fee held by India's telecommunications companies and the refarming or reallocation of spectrum in the privileged 900 MHz (MegaHertz) band that had hitherto been "reserved" for the early entrants. An impression has been sought to be created that these measures have suddenly come out of the blue and that these are both anti-industry and...

A cartoon in The Hindu (that predates the current Ambedkar cartoon controversy) depicts the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, trying to calm down a bunch of jubilant students, saying “I banned Marx, not marks”. Trinamool Congress chief Banerjee’s ire is primarily directed towards her arch political rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose mouthpiece, Ganashakti, which she does not want the State-funded libraries to subscribe to. There are many others on her list...

IS INFLUENCE being used to scuttle a major money-laundering case against the Agarwal family, the mining magnates who control the Vedanta Resources/Sterlite corporate empire? Circumstantial evidence certainly points in this direction. On October 13, there was confusion in the Delhi High Court, where a division bench comprising Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar was about to hear a case: It suddenly transpired that the Enforcement Directorate (which is under the...

Is more competition what India's latest exchange for financial instruments, MCX-SX (Multi-Commodity Exchange - Stock Exchange), will be able to bring to the table and is this the key to a vibrant and more inclusive capital market? Had it just been a matter of competition between exchanges, the advent of the National Stock Exchange would have made all the difference. The NSE, however, started playing "big brother" soon after it ousted the Bombay Stock Exchange from that position. A source close...

India's financial markets are at present highly skewed and dominated by a few players. Consider these facts: The cash equities segment is only 10 per cent of the total turnover of all stock exchanges with 45 per cent of the turnover accounted for by 25 brokers. Equities' futures and options (F&O) comprise more than 75 per cent of total trading volumes on the country's exchanges. Over 70per cent of the total cash equities turnover is cash settled and the entire equity F&O turnover is cash settled...

With the MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) receiving approvals in August to start trading in currency options from both the watchdog of India's capital markets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the country's banking regulator, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the dust may have settled on the newest stock exchange after four years of courtroom battles but fundamental questions about the state of bourse management in India remains. As news broke in July that the MCX (Multi-Commodity...

Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this fact to its readers and subsequently gained financially from its publication, have been endorsed by a committee of Parliamentarians in a recently-published report. Whereas the report, prepared by a panel of MPs belonging to different political parties, does not mention the ToI by...

THERE IS a reason to believe that the legal suit that NDTV has filed against The Nielsen Co is based on an investigation conducted by Nielsen’s own global head of security, a former FBI official. This report suggested that Television Audience Measurement (TAM) India operations were among the most corrupt in the group. NDTV will use Nielsen’s own internal report to make its case. Perhaps that’s the reason why NDTV chose to file the complaint in New York where Nielsen has its headquarters. This is...

In July and August, instead of breaking news, Deccan Chronicle, reportedly the largest-selling English daily published out of Hyderabad, was making news, especially on the pages of its rival publications such as The Times of India. The newspaper’s publisher Deccan Chronicle Holdings Limited (DCHL) and its flamboyant chairman T. Venkattram Reddy are going through their worst-ever crisis. The company and its promoters are deep in debt, they are facing criminal charges of forgery and fraud, share...

Consolidation of media activities is formalized through conglomerates and increased corporate institutionalism. A look at the business activities of some of the leading media organisations in the world confirm the proposition that economies of scale lead to the formation of oligarchic markets. In India, however, the formation of new media conglomerates in recent times is also a consequence of existing debt-burdened players seeking associates to bail them out while seeking synergies for...

The mass media across the world and in India as well are converging and consolidating. Creators of content are coming closer to distributors and disseminators. Erstwhile competitors are becoming collaborators. The dividing line between broadcasting and telecommunications is getting increasingly blurred. While these phenomena restrict consumer choice by reducing content diversity, the technological advantages of integration make these processes inevitable and inexorable. It has, therefore, become...

What should one say about a feature film where there is superlative acting, which has outstanding production qualities, is incredibly realistic in terms of style and treatment and is, above all, an avant garde work which seeks to depart from typical formulae that are supposed to ensure a movie is not just commercially viable, but also enables the producer to laugh all the way to the bank and back? What should one say about a film that makes waves in the south of France as a shining paradigm of...

For the diminutive, bespectacled, dhoti-clad Bengali babu, the short distance on Raisina Hill between North Block and Rashtrapati Bhavan represents the final lap in a long journey that began more than four decades ago. Pranab Mukherjee has successfully reached the pinnacle of his career. But his movement away from the hurly-burly of active politics can only weaken the already-beleaguered second United Progressive Alliance government in Delhi. That’s one paradox. As Pranab babu enjoys his walks...

Who owns the mass media in India? That is a rather difficult question to answer. There are many media organisations in the country that are owned and controlled by a wide variety of entities including corporate bodies, societies and trusts, and individuals. Information about such organisations and people is scattered, incomplete, and dated, thereby making it rather difficult to collate such information leave alone analyse it. Nevertheless, a few salient aspects about media ownership stand out...

A report prepared by an independent institution recommending imposition of cross-media ownership restrictions recently entered the public domain nearly three years after it was submitted, following a rebuke to the government by a panel of lawmakers. The report, running into nearly 200 pages, was prepared by the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) at the instance of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B). Though this report was submitted in July 2009, it was placed on the...

IT MAY sound funny, but is meant to be deadly serious. A White Paper on Black Money! Well, that is exactly what was tabled in Parliament on 21 May by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The document, running into just under 100 pages, prepared by the Central Board of direct Taxes in the department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance, is significant — not for what it states, but what it does not. The document goes into some length about how ‘black money’ should be defined, the various factors...

The crisis in Europe is not merely an economic one; it has profound political and social dimensions as well. The impact of the double-dip recession in that continent is being felt across the globe and also in India. The European crisis has contributed to the sharp and sudden fall in the value of the Indian rupee vis-à-vis the American dollar, but the parallels do not stop there. On the political front, the weakening of centrist and conservative political parties in Europe mirrors the weakening...