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| NEEDED : LIFEBLOOD FOR TEHELKA | |
| By: Anil Thakraney October 23, 2002 For over a year now, Tarun Tejpal and his gang of ballsy journalists have been brutally and systematically butchered by the mighty establishment. Stab by vicious stab. Their investors have been harassed, their journalists have been hunted, their income has been questioned, their office has been ransacked, there are hundreds of dubious cases filed against them. The smooth efficiency with which the government has moved to crash the dotcom down, brick-by-brick, is simply amazing. I mean, if these guys had shown a fraction of this skill to deal with the serious issues facing this country, like communal violence, illiteracy and starvation, imagine what a difference it could have made to our collective fortunes. The entire state machinery has been put to work just to save the government’s arse! And the real pity is, as taxpayers, we foot the damn expenses. And while this brazen persecution of a gutsy media operator has been going on, the rest of us have been watching helplessly from the sidelines, much like the cowards who stood by and watched a young girl being raped right in front of their eyes, on a Mumbai local train, and did nothing to help. Not realising that Tehelka’s death is the death of freedom of expression, the death of democracy, the death of journalism itself. If the government is sending out a message that says ‘don’t mess with us, or we’ll screw you’, it’s doing a pretty good job of it. On every occasion, the government has tried to take the spotlight away from itself, to obfuscate the issue, by questioning the means adopted by Tehelka. Bribes, whores, liquor. Sure all that happened. But so did crime, sleaze and corruption. We saw Bangaru Laxman take the cash, period. That was real, nothing can change that. Let’s face it, if you are going to fish in a pond of slime, you will have to be ready to get your hands dirty. If you are going to try to trap slimeballs, you can’t conduct yourself like Bapu. What hurts the most, is that these blokes are the last few remaining journalists in this country still doing their job. The Indian media is fast dumbing down, and most journalists, including some ‘respected’ editors, are busy sipping wine at social soirees in the company of socialites, or travelling on junkets to exotic destinations, or commenting passionately on Sehwag’s batting technique. A few are in fact on the payroll of politicians and businessmen. And then there are some have been reduced to the role of DTP operators, as the advertiser-led MBA in their unit plays ‘editor’. Last evening, Tehelka.com’s website suspended operation ‘until further notice’. Tejpal tells me he had no choice because his ‘organisation’, which is now all of “two and a half people”, has no money to pay for the server that hosts their site. They haven’t paid salaries for months and their sweeper doubles up as the receptionist. Still, the man has decided to battle on. Tejpal has hope that he will be exonerated of all charges, he has hope that he will survive to fight another day. And yes, gentle reader, you can help his badly bleeding outfit live. In whatever capacity you can. Send him donations, invest in his company, shoot off angry e-mails to the PM’s office, contribute letters to publications, take part in talk shows, land up in Delhi with protest messages on the T-shirt, fly a kite saying you need Tehelka to stay on. whatever. Just don’t do nothing. Because for one, courageous journalists, a swiftly dying breed in this land, must be conserved. And two, because injustice has been done: crime was committed, the message was delivered, and instead of the guilty being punished, the messenger has been shot. And we can’t just look on helplessly, like those cowards on the train that night. |
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