Saurabh Dwivedi’s Exit from Lallantop and the Shockwaves in Indian Media
- From Visionary Editor to High-Profile Employee: The Rise of Lallantop
- Why Many Mistook Saurabh Dwivedi for the Owner of Lallantop
- The India Today Group, Ownership Power, and Editorial Control
- A Forgotten Lesson from 1998: The Sacking of H.K. Dua
- How Ashok Jain’s Action Changed the Editor-Owner Relationship Forever
When Editors Stopped Being Independent and Became Employees
Justice Markandey Katju examines the sacking of Saurabh Dwivedi from Lallantop, linking it to the long decline of editorial independence in Indian media.
The sacking of Saurabh Dwivedi
By Justice Markandey Katju
The recent resignation of Saurabh Dwivedi, the editor of the well-known Hindi digital news platform Lallantop, is being widely discussed in India and has created a great stir in Indian media circles.
There are many speculations about why he resigned from Lallantop after having conceived of the idea of a Hindi digital platform, and almost single-handedly built it up for 12 years, and made it very popular.
My own opinion about the matter is this: Saurabh Dwivedi became so famous because of his shows that many people thought him to be the owner of Lallantop, and he himself started thinking that he was indispensable, and could do whatever he liked. The truth, however, was that he was only an employee ( though a highly paid one ), the employer being The India Today Group, run by Aroon Purie
There was a time in India when editors could function independently, without interference by the owner, but all that changed in 1998 when Ashok Jain, the owner of the Times of India newspaper, having the highest circulation in India among English newspapers, sacked the editor HK Dua.
Ashok Jain (1934-1999) was the Chairman of the parent company of The Times of India, Bennett, Coleman & Co. (BCCL) and H.K. Dua was the Editor of The Times of India when he was dismissed.
After Ashok Jain's 1998 arrest on a charge of Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violations, H.K. Dua claimed his dismissal was a result of his refusal to use his editorial position to garner support for Jain from politicians and the public. It appears that when Ashok Jain asked HK Dua to accompany him to the FERA court, the latter refused, saying this was a personal matter of Jain and was no part of his job as the editor. The next day, he was unceremoniously dismissed.
This incident sent a strong message to the entire Indian media that editors were only employees and must do whatever the owner said. From that date, editors lost their independence and began kowtowing to the owners..
It seems that Saurabh Dwivedi forgot this. He had become so big and well-known that he probably started imagining that he could do whatever he liked in his shows, irrespective of the owner's wish.
Now owners are businessmen, and would like to be in the good books of the government, as they seek several favours from the government, and would not like to displease it as that may entail adverse consequences ( in the form of income tax and ED raids, etc ).
Some recent shows in Lallantop seem to have upset the owner of the India Today Group, as they had apparently annoyed the BJP government, e.g. the show 'Does God exist' featuring the Urdu poet Javed Akhtar and a Muslim cleric. The last straw was the show in Lallantop about the death in Indore of some children who drank toxic water. In his show, Saurabh Dwivedi put the blame for this tragedy on the Madhya Pradesh government, which is run by the BJP.
Saurabh Dwivedi's sacking from Lallantop will reiterate today the message sent in 1998 to editors in India after HK Dua's sacking: do whatever you are told by the owner, don't think you are independent, and don't get too big for your boots, unless you wish to lose your job, which may possibly drive your family to penury or starvation.
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman of the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
