An ungrateful MPian

Some banners sprung up in Bhopal last week, proclaiming pride in being an MPian. The MPian is an altogether new coinage.

The banners obviously followed the State Government’s call to citizens to take pride in having been born in Madhya Pradesh.

The call coincided with the MP’s 53^rd foundation day. This is Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s latest fad, which ludicrously manifested itself in his utterance recently in Satna that jobs in MP belong to sons-of-the-soil and not to some outsider Biharis.

That he immediately retracted the statement hardly takes away tomfoolery of the singularly parochial statement.

One surmise has it that Shivraj Singh deliberately did a Raj Thackeray in Satna to preclude his chances for BJP national president post.

Be it as it may, the government has –perhaps less wittingly than otherwise-- sought to start a dangerous trend.

I strongly reject the MPian campaign. I too am born and brought up in Madhya Pradesh but don’t see any reason in the fact to be proud of. This is just a geographical accident just like my being a Brahmin is a biological accident.

What is so great about being born in a particular region or in a particular caste? The very idea, in fact, is obnoxious.

And what do I be proud of? The egregious fact that MP continues to top in the country in infant and maternal mortality rates? The ignominy of being born in the State where rapes are highest in the country? Or, where more than 68 percent children are appallingly malnourished?

What has the Shivraj Government done to mitigate the sufferings of the poor children and mothers to qualify in asking me to be proud of “ an MPian?

All these talks of false pride are red herrings. When the government cannot or does not want to address real issues, it resorts to such a gimmick. I refuse to buy the gimmick.

Before any one declares me an incorrigible cynic, let me categorically state that I would most certainly feel proud if the government shuns hypocrisy about removing corruption, dedicates itself to core issues of mitigating poverty, re-priorities its policy for the poor and deals sternly with communal elements, stop mollycoddling the mafias and power brokers.

Then and only then might I say I am proud of being an MPian.

Of Madhu Koda, Shivraj and D company

Madhu Koda’s profile in Hindustan Times last week reminded me of Shivraj Singh Chouhan. I discovered many common things in the disgraced former Jharkhand chief minister and cocky Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister.

Both were born sons of ‘humble farmers’; both cut political teeth in the RSS; both have been elected to Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha; both started –off with clean image; both managed to hoodwink people for long about their crores as CM.

Both are in early fifties. But Koda is now exposed. Will Shivraj too have the similar fate? Similarities between them don’t end here. The most striking similarity is that like Madhu Koda’s main corruptors—all those Vikas Sinhas, Sanjay Choudharys et al-- Shivraj too has a D Company to guide him on how to milk the government.

A suave builder heads the company. Top bureaucrats, police officers and, needless to mention, some media men, feel privileged attending the D company’s parties which, the CM too graces quite often.

Recently at a senior minister’s party, Mr D was one of the most-sought-after guests. The host sorely missed Mr D singing while himself sang duet with the CM. The host duly asked about Mr D from the stage on microphone.

Mr D is, arguably on top in the pyramid of power brokers in Madhya Pradesh. Mr D is also Mr Fixit. If you are a filmmaker, he will organize hassle-free locales. For a Yoga Guru, he has the requisite resources to ensure a huge jamboree in cooperation with VVIP spouse.

For officers looking for good postings, he is the one-window shop. The safest thing about him is that no body is going to write about his multifaceted feats. For, most journalists in Bhopal for now have other things to do- finding a house of their own is one for now.

Prabhash Joshi: Genius with contradictions

Veteran journalist Prabhash Joshi’s sudden death on November 5 has freshened myriad memories- of his polemical writings, deft coinage of new words and phraseologies in journalism, love for Hindi, rise and fall of ‘Jansatta’ the paper he founded, his association with the JP movement, loyalty to late Ramnath Goenka, nostalgia for Malwa, prolonged assaults on Bharat Bhavan under Ashok Vajpeyi, flip-flop on anti-Congressism, and, most memorably, his not-so-subtle attempt at simultaneous straddling medievalism and progressivism.

Admittedly, I’m not qualified to profile Prabhashji, for I didn’t know him that well. However, through his write-ups and my friends who knew him closely, I have constructed the journalist-thinker’s persona in my mind, which, at best, is a bundle of contradictions.

Like his mentor Jai Prakash Narayan, Prabhash Joshi too groped in the cavernous alleys of ideologies, perhaps beguilingly believing that the ideologies are malleable to a journalist’s stream-of-consciousness kind of writing for effect. He was sorely mistaken.

JP too, rather facetiously, sought to bring leftists and rightist together to wage his war against Indira Gandhi in 1975. He seemed to succeed for a while. The war cry of Total Revolution had drowned the irreconcilable ideological contradictions inherent in the Janata Party that JP had midwifed to dethrone the Congress dictator. What happened to the Janata Party is too well known though.

Prabhash Joshi too allowed his high intellectualism (his genius was unquestionable) to go ideologically adrift, especially in the twilight of his life. He sought to advocate obscurantist Brahminical order and Marxist economy in the same breath.

He seemed to see nothing unusual in breaking bread with Marxist doyen of Hindi literature Dr Namvar Singh and finding fault with the Indian cricket team selectors for not selecting more Brahmins! At times, his memoirs in the Kagad Kare (Black and White) would be too personal for any reader’s interest, forget concern.

I heard Prabash Joshi’s name first time long after he had become quite a name in journalism. It was in 1982. The paper – Gyanyug Prabhat- I was working in Jabalpur had folded up. Most of us had blithely looked forward to the demise of the paper. Future plan was last thing in my mind.

However, as months passed, others grew concerned. Incorrigible Marxist- romantic that I was then, I sniggered the colleagues’ careerism. Three of them—Rajesh Nayak, his cousin Manohar Nayak and my friend from Uttarakhand Arvind Upreti- moved to Delhi and joined Jansatta.

The paper was launched the following year. The paper brought a new idiom and a whiff of fresh air to an otherwise stale Hindi journalism. Yet, I would evaluate the paper critically on content while most of journalist friends seemed besotted by its stylistic writing. This much, however, I was pretty convinced that this paper is different and holds great promise for Hindi journalism.

Rajesh Nayak, when returned Jabalpur after joining the paper, had a host of stories to share. His enthusiasm was infectious. He would vividly describe the individual qualities of Prabhash Joshi, Manglesh Dabral, Ram Bahadur Rai, Alok Tomar and several others.

Jobless, I would derive vicarious pleasure of a journalist-warrior in the Rajesh’s anecdotage that he narrated with inimitable flourish – some times while sharing Charas-stuffed cigarettes at Kakka’s “ Chandukhana.”
(Will try to provide details of our smoking and drinking binges later)

A few months later, I went to Delhi and met Rajesh and Manohar. I also went to Jansatta office. The atmosphere was truly amazing. I saw Prabhash ji working till late night. He would churn out lead article for edit page in a jiffy, so to say.

The popular myth in a young journalist’ mind that big editors sit in a cabin with red light aglow at the entrance to scare others off exploded in Jansatta. Freedom to reporters was charmingly anarchical. I sensed an unmistakable envy in Indian Express staff for ‘poor Hindi (wallah) cousins’ and that was unprecedented. I returned hugely impressed. Since then Jansatta became a staple diet for morning.

The paper went several notches higher in my esteem for reporting the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere in India in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. No other Hindi paper showed such great courage in highlighting the miseries of the hapless Sikhs being butchered.

Four-five years down the line, however, the Jansatta began to lose its sheen. The crusading zeal had, mostly, degenerated into witch-hunting. Prabhash Joshi’s own fads manifested themselves rather poorly in write-ups. Experimentalism would often breach the acceptable.

The star reporters failed to digest the newfound power and began mollycoddling politicians. Freedom, the USP of the paper, would be increasingly abused by reporters. Prabhashji couldn’t have been so naïve not to know what was going on under his nose. Paper’s rightist slant became uncomfortably evident during the height of the so-called Ramjanambhoomi movement.

Of course, this slant had Ramnath Goenka’s blessings and Prabhaji couldn’t have defied his master. The fact that Joshiji himself developed ambition to enter Rajya Sabha did not help the matter. BJP was his first choice for realising the dream. But the party ditched him.

That infuriated Prabhashji so much that he idiomatically called the then BJP president Kusha Bhau Thakre ‘a cat’s excreta’. For some one who so critically wrote a piece on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, Prabhashji’s ideological shift to Congress amazed his friends and foes alike. Now he was one of the bitterest critics of the BJP and, by extension, supporter of the Congress.

In one of my blogs, I wrote how Naya Theatre is orphaned by Habib Tanvir’s death. More of less, the same happened with Jansatta. Prabhashji’s energy and dynamism was matchless. Although the paper’s slide had begun during his time, his formal exit dealt a body blow. Prabhashji, like Habib Tanvir, had no second man of equal caliber to don the mantle.

If he had not indulged too much in politics and condoned cronyism in the paper, Prabhashji would have been remembered in more glowing terms. He was an original thinker and irrepressible writer. I offer heart felt tribute to the great journalist.