RETROFIT
Why the jagged edge of news remains relevant
Just before the Big B - Budget - BJP's Sushma Swaraj launched avitriolic offensive against the Treasury benches on the price spike.It was a well researched speech, well spoken and well intoned. She hadthe Government at sixes and sevens as she assailed their ineptitude onprice management. During the course of her speech, she mentioned aHeadlines Today investigation which tracked the reasons behind theinordinately high sugar price rise. It was a blistering attack andwhile the Government, read agriculture minister Sharad Pawar tried hisbest to save his skin, it was to no avail. Good old fashionedreportage had once again worked for Headlines Today which seems to beon a red hot streak lately.
Good, solid, purposeful reporting seems to be paying in spades for thechannel. The laggard has transformed itself from merely being apretender to a claimant for the English news throne. Given that thesweepstakes in the news business are enormously high, that is acreditable achivement. The sugar investigation set me thinking. For inthe immediate past, Headlines Today has been on a roll. Its newsgathering and investigative skills acting as a differentiator. Twoinvestigations on pulses and sacks full of sugar rotting in governmentwarehouses have raised Cain across the board. Angering hoi polloi whoin any case are bearing the brunt of government callousness. I mustadd that the Dal scam was arguably first broken by Outlook, while thesugar sacks lying inert in Kandla and Haldia port was an original.
For the last seven years, India is a net importer of dals and edibleoil. If Pawar has his way, we will soon become net importers of sugaras well. The Headlines Today investigation detailed that:
DAL SCAM: Thousands of tonnes of pulses are rotting in the country"sports and warehouses even as the markets ran short of supplies andconsumers paid through their noses. Prices have trebled. The exposeshowed how approximately 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of pulses were lyingunused at the Kolkata port. The colossal waste was captured on cameraby an undercover team.
SUGAR ROT: What started during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival last yearhas culminated into the hoi polloi venting their collective spleen ongovernment callousness as mismanagement seems to be the order of theday as far as sugar is concerned. As the prices moved into thestratosphere, it was discovered that nearly 11 lakh tonnes of thedaily sweetener has been lying at Kandla port for six months. So whyis the sugar lying unused when it can easily be released in the openmarket to cool flaring prices? While HT's basic premise behind thesugar, in both processed and raw form, lying at Kandla without beingreleased into the market is wrong, the bottomline is that consumershave paid almost the twice the amount over the last six months. AgainHT's claim that the perpetrators of this great injustice on consumers- Renuka Sugar, Bajaj Hindustan Sugar, Emmsons, Rana Sugar and OlemInternational - was misinformed; the reality is that the entireexercise smacks of wilful neglect and deliberate and malafide intenton the part of a section of the government.
HT linked the sugar rot to millers in UP, but one needs to look atPawar's role in this sorry tale. Which means going beyond theapparent. A central customs and excise notification dating back to2002 was amended on July 31, 2009 effectively prevented sugarimporting UP mills from getting the commodity processed by anyoneother than themselves. I hope the UP millers were not hand in glovewith this section of the government.
Bottomline as ET explained that this proviso could have been reversedmuch earlier through a new notification. But it didn't. Around thesame time as the central notification was put out, Pawar startedtalking up prices by saying that there was a sugar shortfall. Thesugar sacks lying in Kandla and JNPT could have easily been lifted andprocessed by mills in Maharashtra instead. However, it chose not to.After much heat and dust, the Cabinet Committee on Prices on January13 decided to reverse this crucial notification. Between July 31 andJanuary 13, profiteers, blackmarketeers and hoarders had a field day.But ET explains this better: "The changes make it difficult for thesugar importing mill/factory/refiner to allow or facilitate any agencyother than itself, even a sugar mill next door in the same state, toprocess the imported sugar. They had to give to give a hidebound,document backed commitment to the customs & excise authorities thatthey were importing raw sugar for processing at their own factories."
Apathy or what? Aiding them all along was food minister Sharad Pawar.First by his alarmist statements. And then by cutting duty on sugar tozero allowing these companies to import sugar at rock-bottom prices.The sugar then was allowed to pile up in the ports. The whiteprocessed sugar was released in small quantities allowing prices toremain high. UP CM Mayawati didn't help, by not allowing imported rawsugar to enter the state since cane was still standing in the UttarPradesh fields. Anyway during the debate on price rise, leader of theopposition Sushma Swaraj trained her guns at Sharad Pawar. “Sugarimport and export are decided by the govt. No one but Sharad Pawarknows best about it. He is the owner of the sugar industry, he is theSugar King of India”, Sushma thundered in the house.
Two other terror related investigations this year also need to be pointed out:
HAFIZ SAEED TAPES: On tape, wanted and dreaded terror network leaderHafiz Saeed threatens India with jihad. Headlines Today accessesSaeed's speech at a "Kashmir solidarity" rally in Lahore on February5, where he is shown spewing venom against India. This wasn't aclandestine underground meet but one on the city's Mall Road. It washeld in broad daylight and attended by over 10,000 people, some ofwhom brandished automatic weapons. Saeed's sudden appearance came justdays before talks between India and Pakistan resumed. In his speech,Saeed said that the jihadis were willing to go all out to liberateKashmir. He drew parallels with the Soviet Union's defeat and USreverses in Afghanistan and told the gathering that India would meetthe same fate in Kashmir.
The Government moved with alacrity, seeking the Jamaat ud Daawa chief's tapesjust two days before foreign secretary-level talks were to begin withPakistan. Subsequently, the tapes were discussed in the meeting of theForeign Secretaries of India and Pakistan.
SHAHZAD AHMED PILOT BOMBER: Earlier this year, the biggest storybroken yet by HT was the Shahzad Ahmad pilot bomber story whichdetailed how the Indian Mujahideen was planning a 9/11-type attack.The Headlines Today story went like this: A 9/11-type terror attackusing hijacked aeroplanes stares India in the face with an IndianMujahideen terrorist having acquired pilot training and waiting tostrike, according to intelligence agencies. Intelligence Bureau (IB)sources say Shahzad Ahmed alias Pappu, one of the key accused in theSeptember 2008 Delhi blasts case, learnt to fly planes in Bangaloreand could now be planning to execute an airborne terror strike.
"A dozen other trained Indian Mujahideen terrorists are also at largeand, together with Shahzad, pose a big security threat. In his earlytwenties and hailing from Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district, Shahzadgave Delhi Police the slip during the 2008 Batla House encounter inthe city. He was the one who opened fire on slain Delhi Police officerMohan Chand Sharma during the encounter. Shahzad underwent pilottraining just before the Delhi blasts and has been absconding sincethe Batla House encounter. Headlines Today accessed Shahzad's Orkutand email accounts, which revealed his terror plot. Photos of Shahzadin the cockpit, displaying flying skills, sending radio signals orposing with other trainee pilots have alarmed the police.
"Close to a month later, UP Police lauded Headlines Today after thearrest of Shahzad Ahmed from Azamgarh. ADGP Brij Lal said the channelcovered the story extensively which helped them arrest Shahzad. UPpolice, in fact described the sequence of events that led to thisdreaded IM militant’s capture. He was alerted by his family after thestory was telecast. Shahzad then contacted his source in Pakistan tohelp him across the border. Unfortunately for him, his phone was undersurveillance. He was quickly traced and arrested from Azamgarh."
It only tells you that if the bulwark of a news channel remains newsthen this long and arduous road of perseverance will pay off.Headlines Today was a punt that Aroon Purie took some years ago tobuild on the edifice of Aaj Tak. It was a punt which seemed to bemeandering aimlessly, till it all came together when he bet on youthover experience. The process of distillation has been slow and capitalintensive, but one can safely say that it is bearing fruition finally.Only because it believed in the relevance of news.
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