A WEB OF FAVORS

VoN | January 5, 2016 | Controversy | No Comments

Launch a website and reap a harvest from government ads seems to be the new mantra for MP journalists. By doing so, they have become PR agents and are undermining the profession…

By Rakesh Dixit in Bhopal

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Web journalism might be viewed as the future of media business. But in Madhya Pradesh, it smacks of a scandal. For some time now, media watchers in the state have been speculating about the quantum of largesse the Shivraj Singh government has doled out to “loyal” journalists to run websites. The state’s public relations (PR) department has doggedly denied information about the number of sites and the money paid to them through advertisements. Right to Information applications by journalists to ferret out information in this regard have proved futile.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan addressing a press conference in New Delhi.

Eventually, a question raised by Congress MLA Bala Bachchan in the state assembly on December 8 forced the government to put out the facts. These were shocking even by the egregious standard of media appeasement in Madhya Pradesh. The government’s reply was contained in over 50 pages.

`93-CR LARGESSE
The minister for PR informed the assembly that his department paid `93 crore as advertisements to over 600 websites in the last three years. Besides, it gave over `50 crore as grants to more than 100 NGOs being run either by journalists or their spouses/relatives or BJP sympathizers in the same period. Employees of the PR department also have NGOs registered in their relatives’ names. These NGOs are supposed to popularize government schemes and policies through various communication forms such as music, drama and the visual media.

Beneficiaries can be divided into four categories—out-of-job scribes and retired publicity department officers without any other known sources of income, in-job journalists with many sources of income, relatives of journalists and PR department employees, journalists having more than one website with same address and BJP/RSS sympathizers having no journalism experience at all. 

A majority of the registered websites are non-functional. Of the functional ones, nearly 80 percent have not updated content for years. Only government advertisements in them are regularly updated. 

Surprisingly, a majority of the registered websites are non-functional and violate the requisite norms of displaying the names of the domain administrator and owner on the websites. Of the functional ones, nearly 80 percent have not updated their contents for several months to years. Only government advertisements in them are regularly updated. Original content is conspicuously absent in 90 percent of these websites. They only upload government press notes from the PR department’s website, MPinfo.org. Some of the functional websites include MPpost.com, socialmedia.com, whispersi­nthecorridors.­com, Bhopalpost.com and Bichchu.com.

UNREGULATED SECTOR
Those familiar with “web racketeering” say no rules or regulations apply in releasing advertisements to websites. The PR department does have an advertisement policy for newspapers/magazines and electronic channels. But websites get advertisements on the whims and fancies of the department’s top brass and their political masters. The department’s annual report indicates that the only criterion for advertisements to websites is that they should upload the state government’s press releases for viewing on priority.

On the quantum of advertisement money to websites, the disparity is glaring. One famous website on bureaucracy has cornered advertisements worth `18 lakh in the last three years. However, the average amount given to websites in the last three years is between `8 lakh and `10 lakh. This varies according to the website owner’s ability to peddle his influence with the government.

In the wake of a row over arbitrary distribution of advertisements, PR commissioner Anupam Rajan is now toying with the idea of framing a policy on advertisement to websites. The government of India’s advertisement policy is being examined in this regard. A minimum number of hits on the websites is likely to be considered essential for approving advertisements.

However, the department’s officers say the commissioner is well meaning but helpless before a nexus in the department that draws its power from the chief minister’s patronage. The real boss who calls the shots is principal secretary SK Mishra, who is the most trusted confidante of Chouhan.

Mamta Yadav, a web journalist, says well-known journalists have managed to gobble up several crores in the name of advertisements to websites run by them, their spouses or relatives. “On the other hand, genuine web journalists like me barely get `10,000 to `15,000 a month as government advertisement,” she said. Her portal, Malhar Media, is an honorable exception in the huge maze of bogus portals and websites.

FLEECING GOVERNMENT
Freelance journalist Shurie Niazi, who has been trying to expose this racket for a long time, says launching a website is the easiest way to fleece the PR department. Niazi tried hard to glean information about websites through RTI but his attempts were thwarted. He said that websites require very low investment. It barely takes a few thousands of rupees to set up a portal or a website. Yearly maintenance costs only a few thousands. Moreover, the website owner is not expected to do much of content uploading /downloading to claim advertisements. One person can be engaged to administer several websites. And this is precisely what several web journalists have done.

Web and portal journalism was not in vogue till 2010. Only a few journalists had websites and they were reasonably upright. Veteran journalist Dr Suresh Mehrotra is one of them. His website whispersinthe­corridor.­com attracted a sizeable number of government advertisements, both from the state and the public sector. 

Aping him, many more out-of-job journalists in the state launched websites. The state government duly obliged them with regular advertisements that on an average ranged from `15,000 to `25,000 per month. Seeing the easy income senior journalists earned through websites, racketeers in the media were lured to do the same. Websites proliferated as unscrupulous scribes launched websites.

When the Vyapam scam began to singe Chouhan’s image, a sizeable number of journalists were quick to exploit the chief minister’s sense of insecurity. Setting up websites was one of them.

KINGPINS OF RACKET
Sources say that three persons are alleged to be the main facilitators in the website rip-off. The triumvirate is tasked by the chief minister to manage the media. They ensure favours to journalists in the form of money or other benefits.
Veteran journalists recall that the degeneration in the media’s integrity in Madhya Pradesh began from Arjun Singh’s tenure as chief minister in 1980. Successive CMs carried on the dubious practice of buying susceptible media with favors, including cash, government house allotments, gifting plots and allowing them to make money through transfers-postings, etc.

But many allege that Chouhan has crossed all limits. His penchant for buying journalists has resulted in a serious crisis of credibility for the media in the state. Journalists have to stop accepting the CM’s largesse if the profession has to regain respectability.

Millionaire peons of Madhya Pradesh

FIGHTING CORRUPTION

Are raids on Madhya Pradesh's millionaire peons a smokescreen for the rot at the top?

Despite complaints of corruption, ministers and bureaucrats don't appear to be on the state Lokayukta's radar.

Rakesh Dixit  · Yesterday · 04:30 pm

Photo Credit: AFP/STR

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In his three decades of service, Arun Kumar Singh Baghel, a head constable with the Madhya Pradesh police, would have earned something in the range of Rs 50 lakh. But that’s not how it turned out. On December 28, a raid by an anti-corruption agency at his home in Indore reportedly yielded evidence of unaccounted wealth worth more than Rs 4 crore, including farmland, vehicles and jewellery.

The disclosure hardly came as a surprise, given Singh’s lengthy posting at the transport department’s regional office in Indore. On December 11, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said that regional transport offices are the most corrupt organisations in the country and that their loot surpasses that of dacoits in the forests of Chambal.

In Madhya Pradesh, corruption is not confined to the transport department. A glimpse at the records of the anti-corruption agency Lokayukta will reveal the rampancy of graft in the system. The enormity of the problem was exposed when the lowest rung of government employees were found to be flush with money following raids by the agency.

All-pervading problem

In the past five years, the Special Police Establishment of Lokayukta has discovered that at least a dozen peons and patwaris – the lowest ranking employees in the revenue department – have amassed wealth worth crores.

Last October, a raid at a patwari’s house in Raghogarh in Rajgarh district unearthed illegal assets worth Rs 10 crore.

A month before that, illegal assets worth Rs 7 crore were discovered in a raid at the Gwalior home of Kuldeep Yadav, a peon. This included six big houses in Gwalior. Yadav had been appointed as a peon in a cooperative bank in 1983, with his overall salary during this period amounting to Rs 20 lakh.

While the findings were startling, they only marked the continuance of a pattern. In April 2012, Lokayukta police raids at the home of Ujjain Municipal Corporation peon Narendra Deshmukh revealed assets worth Rs 13 crore.

Deshmukh had joined the municipal body in 1980 and his 31 years of service had yielded an official salary of around Rs 15 lakh. So a haul of 18 acres of land, farmhouses, 10 bank accounts and four luxury cars left the authorities astounded.

The rot in the system, of course, spreads to higher levels too. To name a few on a long list, separate raids on an agriculture department director, a health director, a forest officer, and a deputy director general of police revealed unaccounted assets in the ballpark of Rs 30 crore to Rs 50 crore each.

The most notorious case was in February 2010, when an income tax raid on married Indian Administrative Service officers Arvind and Tinoo Joshi unearthed documents that reportedly valued the couple’s assets at Rs 300 crore.

Taking credit

Despite the magnitude and frequency, these disclosures of ill-gotten wealth haven’t really ruffled the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.

In his initial days as chief minister, Chouhan would argue that the unaccounted assets were amassed during the tenure of the previous Congress-led government in the state.

Lately, however, he has started attributing raids by the Lokayukta, an independent anti-corruption agency, to his government’s zero tolerance policy against corruption.

Last month, state Bharatiya Janata Party president publicly praised the chief minister for “directing the Lokayukta to go hard against corrupt officials”. This claim was denied by the Lokayukta, Justice PP Naolekar, who said that his office did not take orders from anyone.

Selective targeting?

Opposition leaders remain unimpressed by the raids and the state government’s gestures of self-appreciation, while members of civil society have criticised the Lokayukta’s “selective targeting”.

Right to Information activist Ajay Dubey, who has been campaigning for the prosecution of tainted ministers and senior bureaucrats, has called the Lokayukta raids a diversionary tactic. “The raids are meant to create an illusion about the Lokayukta’s fight against corruption so that people don’t talk about graft at high places,” he said.

Former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that massive corruption in the state cannot be curbed by targeting clerks, peons or patwaris. He dared the Lokayukta to conduct raids against top bureaucrats and ministers.

Since assuming charge in 2009, the ombudsman has so far given clean chits to 11 ministers and over a dozen bureaucrats, claiming that the complaints against them were not backed by solid evidence. There were no raids and the cases were closed after preliminary enquiries. At the moment, no minister is being investigated by the Lokayukta.

Justice Naolekar had also dismissed complaints against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his wife in 2011. The couple was accused of buying four dumpers fraudulently and leasing them out to a cement company in 2007.

The government’s decision in August 2014 to extend the Lokayukta’s term by a year drew sharp criticism. Social activists had staged a demonstration in front of the Lokayukta office to protest the decision. Naolekar’s predecessor Justice Faizanuddin had termed the extension till June 2016 as illegal.