Backstory: Diamonds Are Created Under Pressure, so Too Investigative Stories Involving Diamonds

A fortnightly column from The Wire’s public editor.

Nirav Modi. Credit: Nirav Modi Jewels/Facebook

The full dimensions of India’s largest banking scam are yet to come into view with even its current price tag – Rs 114 billion – appearing somewhat modest. Already there is the talk of an additional liability of Rs 3,000 crore (‘With 2013 and 2017 the Key Dates in Nirav Modi Scam, Congress and BJP Can’t Pass the Buck’, February 17). As that super-capitalist Henry Ford is once said to have observed, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

For those Indians who have never, and never will in a hundred generations, own a Rolls Royce Ghost (Nirav Modi’s preferred set of wheels), the sums estimated to have simply vaporised through some extremely swift moves in this fraud could induce hallucinations. Yet, it is the money that belongs to them – 99%of the country’s population – that ultimately bails out the banks that bails out the scamsters, who quite possibly bail out politicians in search of handsome electoral wins and the enduring affection of the 99%.

This chain of causality can only be broken if regulatory agencies and the media perform the function of the chowkidar, to borrow an evocative expression used by Prime Minister Modi to mean the Ultimate Guardian of the Country’s Resources. It is, at least in theory, through the power of their chowkidari, their alertness, their questioning, their investigative stories, that the media can expose the Nirav Modis and Mehul Bhais before – not after – they’ve robbed the bank. If diamonds are created under pressure, so too are investigative stories involving diamonds.

To get to the before part of it, let’s see how India’s mainstream media treated the Nirav Modis and Mehul Choksis before the scam broke. Nirav Modi has long figured in the media space, not as a crook but as a celebrity who rubs shoulders with royalty and whose gems sparkled on some of the most exquisite necks in the world. The media celebrated his appearance in the Forbes’ billionaires list and hailed the fact that he could swim away with major acquisitions in the messy meltdown of global markets in 2008 (‘Inside Nirav Modi’s Potemkin World’, February 16). A tango between such showmanship and spotlight provided by the media was how it worked. As one mainstream jeweler pointed out, “promise 24% internal rate of return, launch multiple stores and deploy endless amounts with fancy media campaigns to support the whole illusion” (‘Explained: Punjab National Bank’s $1.8 Billion Fraud’, February 15).

The links go even deeper and get even darker. At least two major newspaper establishments in the country had, or were in negotiations to have, mutual partnerships with Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali group (‘Media firm BCCL invested in Mehul Choksi firms, HT Media ‘evaluated’ but didn’t seal deal’, Indian Express, February 22), not the most propitious signs surely for energetic media scrutiny of them. No surprise therefore that although a whistleblower, in this case, had approached a major economic newspaper from one of these groups with the story, he was firmly rebuffed (‘The pink press was caught napping. Again’, Newslaundry, February 20).

With this for background, consider the manner in which the media covered the scam after it broke. The first thing to note is that had the Punjab National Bank (PNB) kept the grievous injury done to its balance sheets under wraps, this story would never have come out even now. Our biggest banking scam of all time was not broken by the media, let’s digest this slowly. As things panned out, on Valentine’s Day – traditionally celebrated with full-colour ads of the Nirav Modi Valentine Day’s Collection – PNB’s complaint to the CBI of these fraudulent transactions escaped the vaults of secrecy.

What followed was some high octane reporting and some awesome perception management. One of the first pieces of information was that the Enforcement Directorate, having leaped to the task of bolting the stable door, had rounded up Rs 5,000 crore worth of goods that Nirav Modi had kindly left behind. Subsequent projections lowered the amount, but the Rs 5,000 crore sum had its day in the sun. The anxiety of much of the mainstream media to exonerate the current government from any direct relationship with the scamsters was as apparent as it was touching. When that image of Prime Minister Modi breathing the same air as Nirav Modi in a Davos Hall became public, it was time for the patriotic among the media to diss it. Republic TV, as always first with such news, came up with the headline ‘REVEALED: Nirav Modi 'photobombed' The CEOs' Photo Op With The Prime Minister In Davos’. That claim, as pointed out in the piece, ‘How Many Billionaires Will Get Away While India’s ‘Chowkidar’ Looks On?’ February 19), doesn’t work, because “nobody can casually access the Indian prime minister and accost him, either in India or abroad”.

The moment Rajiv Kumar, vice-chairman of the Niti Aayog, let out the nugget that this practice of issuing LoU notes to Nirav Modi had actually begun in 2011, there seemed to be a sigh of collective relief: as always it was the scam-ridden UPA that was responsible; the master-script of Congress bashing could still be made to work. The UPA’s dismal record on corruption notwithstanding, the point is that “the same set of businessmen, big and small, who were gaming the system earlier continue to thrive under the Modi regime” (‘Mr Prime Minister, Contrary to Your Claims, the System is Still Being Gamed by Crony Capitalists’, February 19). One reader – ‘Anonymous’ – put it well: “Scams can occur under any party. The problem arises only when you hoodwink the people into believing that you are different, more capable in lawmaking, administration, defence, education (hard work/Harvard) etc.”

One of the most important stories never to have made it in the mainstream media space concerned the close links between the various dramatis personae of this tableau and some of the most prominent names of India Inc. The Wire’s piece and infographics, (‘From Nirav Modi to Vipul Ambani, India Inc’s Recent Scams Turn In-Laws into Outlaws’, February 21), neatly mapped the marriage arrangements that help to ensure that “control over capital doesn’t go out of the community”. It proved to be an extremely popular feature, giving rise in turn to several memes circulating in the social media space. The mainstream media, however, could not be nudged into doing their own fact-finding along these lines.

While marriage arrangements seemed blessed in heaven, socio-political arrangement ensures that those who need to get away from the arm of the law do manage to get away (‘After Nirav Modi, a Look-Back at High Profile Indian Businessmen Who Have Skipped Town’, February 19).

It is only government dissenters, as noted in the piece, ‘Rough Edges: Long Arm of the Law Falls Short When It Comes to the Rich and Famous,’ February 22) who are left to negotiate the labyrinthine maze of the criminal justice system as they deal with the numerous cases of sedition filed against them. A new book, Sedition in Liberal Democracies, that was reviewed in these columns ('Review: Sedition and the Quick Leap From Dissent to Deshdroh’, February 21) raises the question of “the role of mass media, the way in which media projects, teases out, entices, and at times even incites sedition cases, mediating the leap from sedition to ‘seditious’, from an act of dissent to that of deshdroh”.

§

Journalists, incidentally, may soon be schooled by entities like the National Investigation Agency (NIA), as the Kashmiri photojournalist, Kamran Yusuf, discovered. He has been detained without charge since last September and was recently booked as a “stone pelter”. In order to justify their action on keeping Yusuf incarcerated, the NIA argued that he was not a ‘real’ journalist because otherwise, he would have discharged his “moral duty” by covering the government’s development projects in the area (‘Want to Be a Journalist? The NIA Will Now Tell You How’, February 16).

Real journalists apparently are also not supposed to tweet generally on norms that should govern the media. Angshukanta Chakraborty, the political editor of DailyO, had her contract peremptorily terminated for tweeting on why media organisations should not protect journalists spreading fake news (‘At India Today, Anchors Can Spread Fake News While Editor is Sacked For Speaking Out’ and ‘India Today Editor Fired for Tweeting Against Fake News Hints at Legal Action’, carried on February 13 and 14 respectively).

The former editor is clearly a woman of commendable principles, intelligence and courage. She has spoken out on this “unacceptable and unlawful” action of the India Today group against her. The process of dismissal is cringe-worthy. Not only was her office identity card confiscated with immediate effect and she was disallowed access to her office desktop, she was not given the statutory one month pay in lieu of notice nor even paid for the working days in the month of February that she had put in. Extraordinary, the new forms of managerial repression marking the functioning of media concerns.

§

Talking of diamonds, full marks for this little gem, ‘Exam Question Asks Students to Explain Why HRD Minister Was Wrong on Darwin’ (February 23). Full marks too, to Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, for quizzing students with this one: “The minister of state for Human Resource Development [MHRD] in India recently claimed that the Darwinian theory of evolution is wrong because ‘Nobody, including our ancestors, in writing or orally, have said they saw an ape turning into a man’. What is wrong with this argument?” Never too late to teach the basics of critical thinking to young people.

§

Too many photographs of the redoubtable Sunil Deodhar to illustrate the story, ‘Meet Sunil Deodhar, the Man Who Changed the BJP’s Fate in Tripura’ (February 15). While the interview with him asked all the right questions, the numerous images carried with it imparted a somewhat promotional touch to the story that could have been avoided. Still, interesting to note how RSS functionaries have acquired such competence in the use of social media – many of the images put out were taken by Deodhar himself. Here, certainly, is a man who plans to go far in new India.

§

A platform against which defamation cases have been cynically used should celebrate its moments of recognition. So congratulations to The Wire’s Anoo Bhuyan for getting Bournemouth University’s Journalism of Change Award, 2018. The story that won her the award concerns 1,528 cases of extrajudicial killings in Manipur, an issue that is presently under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. It also happens to be among the first stories she did for The Wire (‘Sorting Through the Paper Trail of Fake Encounters in Manipur’, April 20).

§

Muhammed Sabith, an MPhil candidate at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Calicut, and a regular reader of The Wire, wonders whether The Wire tends to be too soft on Left politics and policies. In this context he was happy to read Professor Apoorvanand’s ‘The Onus is on CPI(M) To Put an End to Competitive Political Violence in Kerala’ (February 15), depicting the “hard reality in my state, Kerala” and commends this platform for discussing the issue of “competitive political violence" in the state.

§

Bhavesh Waghela wants to know, “since The Wire boasts about being a neutral and independent news media network”, when will its readers get the privilege of reading articles of scams and corruptions of the last 60 years during Congress' regime? He voices his scepticism whether The Wire has the “adequate permission or courage to do it.”

Write to publiceditor@cms.thewire.in

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.