Where were the Big Media in the six years when scamming through Electoral Bonds carried on uninterrupted? What accounts for the lackadaisical coverage and intriguing silences that marked the coverage of the issue by the big guns — the same big guns that had boomed loud and clear throughout the Bofors years? These words of Chitra Subramaniam, the media heroine of those days, come as a reminder of what could have been.
Towards the end of 1989, the Rajiv Gandhi government, she observed, had begun to feel hemmed in by media revelations and both houses of Parliament were rocked by stormy scenes every day: “Official business ground to a standstill and debates were peppered with allegations and counter-allegations. Pushed to the wall the government sought to introduce the Defamation Bill 1989 to gag the press….the Indian press corps hit back and hundreds of journalists took to the streets, demanding that the bill be withdrawn in the 1980s. Journalists walked out of official press conferences across the country and there were black-band marches in all metropolitan cities.” (‘Sting and Stink in the Tale’, Breaking the Big Story, edited by B.G. Verghese).
Compare the media outrage over that corruption-ridden gun deal and the Electoral Bonds scam that is roiling the country today. The first, which yielded bribes amounting to Rs 64 crore, led to the Opposition resigning en masse and the defeat of the Rajiv Gandhi government in the general election of 1989; the other – which like the first directly involved the ruling establishment — was marked by the conspicuously pusillanimous stance of news television and newspapers, despite strong evidence that the bonds were really a sordid cover-up for bribery, blackmailing and backslapping at the highest political level.
In many ways, the Electoral Bonds story points to how effective the Modi government has been in dismantling much of India’s mainstream media through a strategy of fear peddling, personal patronage and the systematic courting and control of proprietors. It also points to the emergence of what is often termed the “alternative media” — online news portals, YouTube channels, even single journalist-driven outlets — which far outstripped the mainstream media in the coverage of this story. Not having lost their appetite for credible, establishment-exposing news, they emerged as the true Fourth Estate in the country. Little wonder then that it is this category of the media which has been at the receiving end of the latest raft of media-gagging efforts mounted by the Modi government through various orders issued under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The strike launched by the ED and Delhi Police on NewsClick last October is indicative of the very deep anxieties that the political establishment harbours of minuscule players with minds of their own.
Ever since Electoral Bonds became a part of the political landscape, there have been some remarkable efforts put in by alternative media to expose their perfidy, often drawing upon information unearthed by transparency bodies like the ADR and indefatigable RTI crusaders like Commodore Lokesh Batra.
In November 2019, the now defunct HuffPost India, made full use of information unearthed through RTI applications to reveal how instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office ensured that Rs 10 crore worth of electoral bonds were redeemed despite having expired. This was just before the Karnataka elections of 2018 and the very fact that the PMO took such a close interest in this matters points to which party was the principal beneficiary of those bonds.
Then there is Poonam Agarwal, formerly with The Quint and who now has her own YouTube channel, explainX. When the Electoral Bonds emerged in its paper avatar in 2018, she did an investigative report for The Quint by buying them. In an interview with The Wire (‘’Unique Numbers Recorded by SBI’: Investigative Journalist Who Bought Electoral Bond’), Agarwal looks back at that important purchase: “It was my curiosity that made me get a forensic test done of the bond. When I gave my Rs 1,000 bond to the Truth lab forensic lab to test, they said that there is a hidden unique number which is visible under UV Ray. To prove that it is a unique number, I purchased one more bond worth Rs 1,000 and got its forensic test done. Both the bonds had different numbers hidden in the bonds. Hence it was proven that bonds carry hidden unique numbers.” This alphanumeric code, visible only under ultraviolet rays, is today very much in the news since it links the donor and their party of choice. Curiosity, which in this case drove the investigation, is the stuff of great journalism but it has to be given free rein in a newsroom that does not pull its punches.
Representative image of Indian currency notes. Photo: rupixen.com/Pixabay
In 2022, The Reporters’ Collective and Article 14 put out details on what lies in those sealed covers. ‘Electoral Bonds Supreme Court’s sealed cover on Electoral Bonds. Opened. So Easily’ (TRC, June 6, 2022) and ‘Debunking a ‘Sealed’ Myth’ (A14, June 6, 2022) pointed to the failure of the Supreme Court to hear the case in 2019. These two digital media organisations then went on to reveal what lay in those sealed envelopes presented to the apex court. They did this through the simple expedient of interviewing party leaders and crunching data from annual audit report filings of political parties. They thus discovered, two years before the present revelations, that “105 political parties did not receive funds from Electoral Bonds. Only 19 political parties did. Between 2017-18 and 2019-20, they received Rs 6,201 crore. And a whopping sixty-eight percent of this unaccounted money was cornered by one party, the BJP.”
The Wire has also kept a keen eye on the ball from the early days. On May 2018, it carried a story , ‘Centre Overlooked EC’s Concerns on Changes to Laws on Political Funding’ based on the RTI application of Pune resident Vihar Durve, which unearthed the letter the EC had sent to the Ministry of Law and Justice. It had termed the step to institute Electoral Bonds as a retrograde one and also expressed the fear that it would lead to the setting up of shell companies for purposes of political donations. It is another matter that this wise and timely warning was completely ignored by the Modi government. In January 2020 came another Wire story uncovered the shoddy origins of this scheme (‘RTI Reveals Electoral Bond Scheme Passed After Only ‘Informal Discussion’ Among Officials’). It cited a file noting which revealed that a briefing meet was hosted “by the Minister of Corporate Affairs on March 8, 2017 where the proposal for issuing electoral bonds following amendment to the RBI Act, 1934, was raised. It was stated that this ‘will bring much awaited reform for giving/receiving of donations for/ by political parties.’”
Striking too is that even as the Electoral Bonds story was breaking in late February this year, two online portals – Newslaundry and The Newsminute – were the first to interpret the initial data on the money trail (‘Part 1: Behind the BJP’s rise and rise, bonds, trusts and raids on corporates’, February 20).
These are just a few instances of internet media organisation that did not forget their journalism. There are many others who worked equally hard on exposing one of our biggest scams in recent history. Today, as we rue the manner in which the Indians were sold a lemon through these bonds; the manner in which the ruling party was able to strike gold and use it to destroy electoral democracy in India, the Indian public needs to acknowledge and support the invaluable work of these modest online media establishments which have emerged as the moral conscience of the country.
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Understanding the toxic newsroom
The death of senior Mumbai-based Satish Nandgoankar, a senior editor with the Hindustan Times, has led to a rare moment of introspection and exposure within the media community. The Mumbai Press Club conducted its own inquiry into the circumstances of Nandgoankar’s death by interviewing those who knew him and inviting his wife to speak to its members. Many unsavoury details emerged, including the fact that Nandgaonkar had been intensely humiliated by his editor over a delayed story, and termed as “useless”. The inquiry also revealed that Nandgoankar had tried to help freelancers whose stories didn’t make it to the print edition, by uploading their stories online. A few days before his death, the responsibility for uploading stories was taken away from him. All these developments and feelings of humiliation could have triggered the heart attack that took his life. On March 1, Mumbai Press Club sent out an open letter to editors, media houses, and the Editors Guild of India, appealing for newsrooms that are “safe and supportive” — something that has become difficult to find in these times of an intensely competitive work culture.
The letter pointed out how toxicity percolates from the top editorial leadership who often enjoy the support of the management. This makes it incumbent, it said, for bodies like the Editors Guild of India to intervene and investigate the matter.
In the wake of these developments, the online portal The Citizen, carried a three-part series on newsroom dominated by bullies (‘Journalism At Work – Toxic Newsrooms’, March 14). It quoted one employer who observed that the organisation she worked in “functioned like a family-run local grocery shop. Irrespective of their education, the owners had no respect or decency to speak with the employees. The language they used was extremely derogatory.” Her editor, she added, was a “horrible person and she would go to any extreme to demean the employees by howling at them in front of the entire office or in the WhatsApp groups.”
Within the first month of her joining work she had her first panic attack, after being humiliated in an office Whatsapp group of more than 100 employees. “The second time I had a panic attack in the office, I thought I was going to have a stroke/heart attack. I thought I was going to die right there on the spot. The working hours, condition, ambience, work culture, the bosses, the meetings, the schedules, the salary… every basic thing there was inhuman.”
Nandgoankar’s death needs to be a wake-up call for an industry that is sleep walking into a crisis.
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Release NewsClick’s founder-editor now!
Excerpts from the statement put out by the Delhi Union of Journalists, which is organising a protest meeting today at the Press Club of India:
“Sixteen journalists, from various parts of the country, are currently charged under the draconian UAPA. Seven among them are in jails or under arrest. Eight journalists are on bail with UAPA charges on them. One journalist is charged but not arrested and one has been acquitted of the charges.
“On October 3, 2023, the Delhi Police had arrested eminent editor and columnist Prabir Purkayastha, alleging that he used foreign funds to report on protests by farmers and workers, the struggles against the Citizenship Amendment Act and other people’s movements. The police and the authorities have opposed the bail applications of 74-year-old Purkayastha, despite his advanced age.
“Journalists in Newsclick, the small, independent media organisation founded by Mr. Purkayastha, were raided and interrogated by the Delhi Police and other agencies. About 400 mobile phones and laptops were seized from the homes of these journalists. The Police have not returned these despite multiple complaints and requests.
“In the meantime, the Income Tax department has made huge demands that amount to freezing the bank accounts of Newsclick. Consequently, about 100 journalists and other employees associated with the organisation have not received their salaries for the last three months. The organisation has filed a case against the Income Tax decision in the court.
“The seizure of electronic equipment and the denial of access to salaries is a direct and blatant attack on the right to livelihood. It poses severe hurdles in the conduct of journalists’ professional duties. All these point towards a strategy of this government to muzzle independent media which voices the issues of workers and farmers. During the ongoing protests of farmers, even X/ twitter accounts and other social media handles of several journalists and independent media houses have been blocked.”
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Readers write in…
Why amplify Israeli official-speak?
- Venkatesh takes issue with the piece entitled, ‘Hezbollah Rocket Attack: Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv Asks Citizens to Leave Border Areas’ (March 5): “This article could have done with better nuance and better information. For starters, why amplify Israeli official-speak such as calling Hezbollah a “Shia terror organisation”. Most clear-thinking people know and vocalise it as a resistance operation legitimately involved in ejecting occupiers from their land. Hezbollah officials are part of the Lebanese parliament; UN policies support occupation resistance! Which brings me to the next point: the spot where Pat was killed is euphemistically termed “Margaliot, a northern border community in Israel.” This region is itself part of the spoils of the 1948 Nakba. Ten minutes of research would have established this. The article goes on to say, “Since October 8, Hezbollah has intensified rocket launch attacks on Israel’s northern communities and military installations, purportedly in solidarity with Gaza”. Surely you know that Israel has been bombing Lebanon, Syria and Gaza and that Hezbollah is likely responding to Israeli provocation and not necessarily “purportedly” in solidarity with Gaza?
“The Wire must up its game!”
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Calling on Bhutan to free political prisoners
Mail from Dr Roshmi Goswami, co-chairperson and Dr P. Saravanamuttu, bureau member, of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a regional network of human rights defenders: “SAHR has called on the Government of Bhutan to release the political prisoners it has detained for decades. It made the call on the occasion of the 16th World Social Forum (WSF) held in Nepal, where a session was organised on ‘Bhutan’s Prisoners of Conscience’. The session drew attention to the expulsion of Bhutanese citizens of Nepali origin, also known as Lhotshampas, which started in the late 1980’s into the early 1990’s. While the situation of the Lhotshampa refugees was relatively well known, the reality of political prisoners, many of whom have spent more than 30 years in Chamjang Jail, has only recently been reported. Further, there are also significant numbers of disappeared citizens of Bhutan about whom not much is known.
“While at present Bhutan puts up a front of a country high on the Gross National Happiness index, it hides the sufferings of the Lhotshampas who were strategically expelled, made stateless, and also detained as prisoners categorised as ‘non-nationals’ or ‘anti-nationals’. These Prisoners of Conscience are held in prison for their expressions of political beliefs or identity assertion, while others have been framed. Different international human rights organisations have recognised 50-100 people are still held as political prisoners in Bhutan, without trials or cases being brought, with 37 kept in Chamgang Jail….
“SAHR believes that Bhutan’s progression towards a democratic state, where the citizenry is truly ‘happy’ and content, requires the release of the prisoners of conscience. SAHR further calls on the international community, including Nepal as the host country of refugees and India as a country that has not done its bit on the refugee issue being the land neighbour of Bhutan and with deep links to the Bhutanese state, to work to persuade Bhutan to take back the refugees who have refused to take the option of third-country settlement. These Lhotshampa refugees languish in the camps of Southeast Nepal, maintaining a principled stand on their ‘right of return’.
“SAHR is also concerned that the remaining several thousand refugees in southeast Nepal are now without support of international organisations such as UNHCR and WFP. Similarly, the Government of Nepal has disbanded the refugee camps, and it has also become difficult for the refugees to move about and lead normal lives. SAHR demands that the Government of Nepal as well as international organisations re-engage with Bhutanese refugees and provide support and security to the refugees still in Nepal…The Lhotshampa refugees in Nepal have the right to decent living and quality of life, for which they should have the right to work.”
Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in
