ALMOST ANYONE WHO is anyone in the fraternity of scribes has written an obituary of the legendary editor, author and loveable rogue Khushwant Singh who passed away on March 20 at the age of 99. Ergo it’s obligatory for your editor to also opine on the life and times of this iconoclast who shook up the world of Indian journalism in the 1970s by transforming the staid old Illustrated Weekly of India (IWI) into the country’s first mass-selling magazine.

Following IWI’s success, a host of new magazines including India Today, Sunday, Stardust and Bombay among others, flooded the market and opened up career opportunities for a large number of celebrity journalists such as Aroon Purie, M.J. Akbar, Shobhaa De and Vir Sanghvi. Your correspondent also clambered aboard the bandwagon as the first editor of Business India and later Businessworld, magazines which catalysed the liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991.

Although acquainted with Khushwant at the time, I was never a court favourite invited for the celebrated shot of Scotch between 7-8 p.m. My genre of new journalism — focused on wealth creation for national development — was contemptuously dismissed by mainstream journalists as public relations for industry leaders. However I do remember a kindness before I became a full-time journalist. On the recommendation of his son and friend Rahul, Khushwant gave me a letter of assignment to cover the 1976 US presidential election, on the strength of which the Reserve Bank of India magnanimously allowed me to purchase $500 from its vaults to travel to the US. I diligently wrote and submitted a 1,500-word feature on the subject. But it was promptly returned to sender with a cryptic scrawl “not suitable” on it signed by assistant editor Fatima Zakaria.

Frenemies profession

The ethos and culture of Indian journalism is not very different from the world of Indian politics. In journalism too, there are no permanent friends or enemies. At best the relationship between publishers, editors and journalists who drive the fourth estate can be described as frenemies or friendly enemies. Once you put in your papers or are fired, all the blood, tears and sweat you may have put into the publication are forgotten and you become a non-person.

The accuracy of this observation was impacted upon your correspondent rather forcefully last month, when invited to Delhi to chair a panel discussion at an education seminar organised by Businessworld, the well-known fortnightly conceptualised and launched by your correspondent for the Kolkata-based Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) group way back in 1981, and painstakingly developed into a Rs.50 crore brand during the seven years I served as founder-editor. Early this year, BW was sold for an undisclosed sum by ABP to NKM Holdings, a company promoted by the Delhi-based Anurag Batra, publisher of several niche magazines including Pitch, Franchise Plus and Impact among others.

All hopes of being accorded a homecoming of sorts were dashed, when upon arrival Batra “forgot” to introduce me as founder-editor of the publication. Moreover as soon as the chief guest, Union HRD minister of state Shashi Tharoor completed a hurried address, Batra, editor Prosenjit Datta and the top brass of BW vanished from the venue leaving the founder-editor of BW to the inexpert mercies of the mistress of ceremonies who mispronounced my name and later publicly ticked me off for conducting an overly argumentative panel discussion.

The lesson learnt is that it’s a hard, harsh world at the top of the newspapers business, with no permanent friends or enemies. 

Most closed cartel

Still on the subject of journalism and business journalism in particular, by a stroke of luck my successor at Businessworld, R. Jagannathan who was spinning away deep in the internet space on an obscure website, landed a plum job as editor of Forbes India, an affiliate of the US business fortnightly founded by the legendary Malcolm Forbes in 1917 and launched in India in collaboration with the TV 18 Network in 2008. Stroke of luck because founder-editors Inderjit Gupta and Charles Assisi were sacked overnight last June for reportedly demanding esops (employee stock options) they had been promised when they started the India edition of Forbes. When last heard of, they were filing a million dollar suit for breach of contract.

Meanwhile the latest issue (March 21) of Forbes India has made waves by featuring a cover story on the success mantra of the Marwari community which dominates India Inc like a multi-headed colossus. The 30-plus page cover story attributes the remarkable success in industry, trade, media and even fast foods of this community to several admirable traits including cash-flow management, financial independence and sheer risk-taking capability. I have a different take on the success mantra of this unputdownable  community which has its origins in the harsh deserts of Rajasthan. My belief is that it’s India’s most closed cartel, a community intimately linked with carefully arranged marriages which from time immemorial has provided venture capital to its members, to the total exclusion of outsiders.

Moreover its claim to great risk-taking capability is exaggerated as Marwari businessmen have the safety net of the close-knit community.  Nor are members of this tribe fiercely independent as depicted in the Forbes story. They pay a heavy price in terms of loss of social freedoms and submission and servitude to patriarchy and community norms. Yet the defining trait of this tribe is that it is pitiless in the pursuit of primitive capital accumulation, with all philanthropy motivated by profit calculus.

Don’t get me wrong. This is an objective assessment, not a criticism. As wealth generators, creators of millions of jobs and contributors of huge direct and indirect taxes, this community is invaluable for India’s growth and development. But it’s useful to know what to expect — especially what not to expect — from the country’s most enterprising business community.